A quiet one for Judy and me. Home from our trip and dinner just the two of us. Becky and Brian have the whole family together in Bristol England for their Christmas. Matt and Lindsay have a big family gathering as well.
Our house.
Matt’s house.
Brian and Becky family all in England. They all got Christmas Poppers, and all Christmas Poppers include crowns.
Andy and Christie enjoying a Christmas Day walk in the Great Pacific Northwest.
Happy Holidays to all!
The only thing we needed cash for in England was to drop in the collection buckets of street performers. Everything else, tap a card or tap your phone with Apple Pay (or Google Pay). Lots of places wouldn’t even accept cash. No minimum, nobody complaining if you tapped for something that only cost a pound or two. Oh wait. Toilets. The public toilets in the middle of town that were not at a public facility like a train station or Underground, cost 20 pence. Shortly after we discovered that there was a charge for random restrooms and we had to have a few coins in our pockets, we discovered that there is a tradition of pubs offering their toilets for free to anyone that needs them. No resistance, just a friendly welcome to anyone wandering in from the street. There is a pub close by in practically every neighborhood.
Restaurants. Food carts on the street. On and off trains, buses, and the Underground. No cash changes hands. No throwing money at the turnstile. No handing cash to an attendant. Tap at the turnstile on your way into the underground, tap on your way out, and it figures out how much to charge you. Train tickets away from London you have to buy a ticket, but you can do that on your phone with a click. It’s like boarding passes at the airport, just show the ticket on your phone to the attendant and you’re good to go.
No converting dollars to pounds when we arrived. No scrambling to try to get leftover pounds converted back to dollars before we left. For such an old country, they sure are modern with their payment systems.
The Europeans have eliminated top sheets. That was our experience in England anyway.
You get a bottom sheet and a comforter. No blankets. The comforter is in a duvet cover. I presume the duvet cover is taken off and washed just like a top sheet.
There are a lot of ways to get around in England without driving. Trains, buses, the underground, walking, and bicycles. If you need to carry something more than will fit in a bag hanging from your handlebars, there is this.
We’ve seen several of them riding around London neighborhoods with kids and groceries in them. You can buy one from the Amsterdam Bicycle Company. They’ll ship.
We got different kinds of street performers. Really good singers, check. Really good musicians, right. Juggling flaming torches, got it. And then there was this guy,
Whacking PVC pipe with flip-flops.
Making a surprisingly good sound!
All the way home now. We get to sleep in our own bed tonight.
