London Top 10

June 4th, 2003

As Trevor correctly pointed out I'm currently visiting bloody London, England. In the week and a half I've spent here I feel that I've experienced enough of this city and it's culture to pass judgement on them. I've managed to gain network access to the Setbacks' mainframe so I'm going to share my findings with all of you in the form of Steve's Best Five and Worst Five things about London (and England in general)...

Steve's Best Five

1. If you're at a pub you can bring your drink outside and onto the sidewalk near the pub. In fact, you can take your drink down the street, into the park, onto the tube and just about anywhere else.

2. They don't call it Diet Coke, here it's called Coca Cola Light.

3. Everybody sounds charming with a British accent, even the freaky people who accost you on the street looking for spare change.

4. There's free public toilets all over London.

5. Charles Dickens used to hang out in one of the pubs I saw on the bus tour.


Steve's Worst Five

1. All pubs and music venues close at 11pm. That's right, last call is at 11 sharp and then they get medieval on your ass if you don't leave right away.

2. The fact that you can take drinks anywhere in the city is great, but I soon realized the only people that take advantage of this are the guys who live on park benches... and let me tell you, they take full advantage.

3. Everything is as expensive as hell. It costs 20 pence to use the toilets in the tube stations, which is about $32 in Canadian funds.

4. I can't understand what people are saying. For example, somebody was telling me about their autistic friend who's a really talented painter and illustrator. I thought, that's really good for them... I later realized that this person was "artistic".

5. The paper money is too big to fit in my wallet unless I fold it up and stick it in sideways, but then it's really fat and uncomfortable to sit on.