UK Highs and Lows
Published May 17 2017
It feels a little odd to be reflecting on my time in the United Kingdom without actually having posted much of anything about it yet, but in the interest of not falling farther behind and because I have time here at the airport, let's talk about my highs and lows of my time in the UK, as well as what I thought of the place overall.
Highs
1. National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh - This is pretty much everything I want out of a museum: loads of interesting exhibits, great artifacts, in-depth information, and all that for the low, low price of $0! The incredible size of the museum is a bit of a two-edged sword, as it means there's no way for a casual visitor to see even a tiny fraction of the collection; it would probably take a couple hours of hoofing it around the place to see even the couple dozen "highlight" items shown in the information booklet. This is the kind of museum you need to come back to again and again to really explore, but even for a short visit there's just so much great stuff to see that I can't not recommend it, especially if there's a particular area you want to learn about in-depth.
2. Canary Wharf Lunch Market, London - I happened to see this mentioned on a "what's going on in London this week" web site, and I'm so glad I did. This is a pretty small market with probably twenty to thirty stalls, but it's got food from all over the place, Asian and Middle Eastern and South American and of course more traditional British fare, plus all sorts of fudge, pastries, and sweet things to round off a meal. I got a great duck confit wrap from The Rolling Duck, plus some mini donuts to follow up with, and it was all delicious. If I lived anywhere near this market I'm sure I'd be over there whenever it was open and never run out of tasty things to try.
3. Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh - It was very hard for me to choose what to put in the third slot, but in the end I think I have to go with my hike up Arthur's Seat. It was so wonderful to get out of the city for a bit and enjoy the fresh air and quiet, the walk was pleasant with lovely views along the way, and it was such a gorgeous day that I'm sure anything I tried to do outdoors would have turned out fantastic just by association. For a relaxing day out I don't think I could have picked a better walk to take.
And of course I have to give a big shout-out to the people who made my stay in the UK great. My second cousin Jenni and her husband Robert were incredible hosts during my time in Belfast, as you'll hopefully be able to see once I get the photos together. I'd also like to thank Emile for hanging out with me in London, and for buying me lunch; it was super cool to meet you!
Lows
1. City of London Visitor Trail - This is written up on the City of London web site as a free walking tour (several tours, actually) that you can do by stopping at the Tourist Information Center and picking up a free map. Upon getting there I discovered the map does list a bunch of sites of interest, but there was an accompanying (still free) app you needed to use if you wanted anything more than a two-sentence description. Okay. I downloaded the app and set out, only to find that I wasn't getting the promised "stories" whenever I arrived at significant sites. At first I thought this was because the app's GPS was crappy and couldn't tell when I was in proximity to a place of interest. It turned out that no, although there were ~45 sites called out by the app, there was only additional information available for nine of them. And, because the GPS was indeed crappy, I wasn't even able to listen to all of those because you can only listen to a site's story once you reach it, and the app never figured out that I'd gotten to them. So, the Visitor Trail was nice in that it did give me a walk through the city and a heads-up on some of the more interesting sites, but from the way it was described I was expecting a little more. Now, I know it's free and you get what you pay for and if I'd wanted to be sure I got all the cool facts I should have sprung for the paid-for guidebook, but still. Disappointing/10
2. London Stansted Airport - This airport is cramped, claustrophobic, and way, way too interested in wringing every penny it can out of you. Aside from the bare airport essentials, there isn't an inch of space that isn't devoted to retail space, advertising, or both. You literally have to walk through a large duty-free shop to get to the gates. I had plenty of time to reflect on how eager the place was to prey on my wallet because, past the initial duty-free shop and around a couple bends crammed with chain stores, I came across an ad proclaiming that it was only a twelve minute walk to the gates. "Wait," I said to myself, "You mean I'm still a QUARTER MILE away from the gates?"
Indeed I was. It was a good thing I didn't have any unwieldy luggage. Add to that bathrooms of indifferent cleanliness with insufficient places to hang luggage (my backpack slipped off the hook in my stall and landed with a huge crash that caused my water bottle to pop out of its pocket and roll into an adjacent stall), and automatic hand dryers situated under the bathroom mirrors. I managed to get mine to turn on for about three seconds by waving my hands around vaguely, then was never able to replicate whatever precise angle and gesture was necessary to trigger it and eventually gave up and left with wet hands.
Now, the airport has a couple nice features. For one, it actually has free wi-fi, although you're required to sign up for the airport's spam advertising e-mails in order to use it. While highly obnoxious, this is still better than the numerous airports that just don't have internet or want to charge you $15 for an hour or something similarly outrageous. Also, Stansted actually has a lot of electrical outlets and charging stations, which is in stark contrast to the barbaric conditions at almost every other airport I've been to, where you usually need to wander the concourse until you spot an electrical outlet beside some out-of-the-way loading door and then have to fight over it with six other people who want to charge their phones. And, of course, I've heard Heathrow is also an inhumane nightmare, I'm guessing just in different ways. In the end, though, 2/10 try harder
3. UK Currency - The UK is apparently in the process of phasing in new currency, or has been for a while, and I ran into all kinds of compatibility issues during my time here. They introduced new twenty-pound notes sometime in the naughties, which meant that the twenty-pound note I had from one of my dad's old business trips wasn't accepted by the machines at the Tube (which wouldn't take my card, either). Better yet, you're supposed to be able to take old notes to a bank to get them exchanged for new ones... except none of the banks I took it to would do that for me because I didn't have an account with them. Nice. There's also a new one-pound coin that was recently introduced... which means that you can't use it with, say, laundry machines. On the other hand, the old coin is apparently no longer legal tender, even though most places take it without a problem, but you occasionally find places where you can't use it such as, for example, a self-checkout machine at the airport when you've already gotten rid of all your other cash. Meanwhile, some banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland issue their own banknotes, which are in theory legal tender throughout the country but in practice may get rejected by e.g. shopkeepers in London because they look funny. On the other hand, within Scotland/Northern Ireland it can be hard to find a place that will give you standard Bank of England notes. It's not something a person actually living there would even notice, I think, but for someone who was moving around the country a lot in a short space of time, I had more issues with currency than I was expecting. Get it together, Royal Mint.
Overall I had a great time in the UK. There's loads to explore, and even keeping busy like I did I of course came nowhere close to checking off all the things I would have liked to do. If anything, I kept a little too busy. After getting a bit restless in Tel-Aviv and feeling like I wasn't getting out and about enough, I ended up completely exhausted at several points during my time in the UK and had to outright take days off in order to recover. Too much fresh air and exercise! I also made the mistake of leaving London until last, at which point I was tired from everything I'd been up to as well as running over budget, which is never a good place to be when you're just arriving in London. Of course, I don't think leading with London would have been great, either, given that everywhere else might have felt like a step down.
The weather was a lot better than I'd expected; I actually didn't get properly rained on until I got to London, although I did get caught in a couple brief hailstorms during my Highlands tour. Gray but dry was better than I'd hoped for, and while it wasn't exactly balmy, it never got terrifically cold, either. I went around wearing 3+ layers at all times, but all in all the weather was entirely acceptable.
It was nice to be back in an English-speaking country. Although the language barrier wasn't a huge issue in Israel because virtually everyone spoke good English anyway, it did make me a little less adventurous, and inconsistent romanizations/a lack of standardization in place names made it difficult to find my way around at times (but of that, more later, when I actually get those posts up). I also enjoy being able to eavesdrop on people and even just to understand what was going on in advertisements and identify items in grocery stores. How would I have known I could buy haggis-flavored potato chips ("crisps") if I hadn't been able to read the label? I wouldn't.
As previously mentioned, I ran a bit over budget on this part of the trip. To a degree this was expected, since the UK is an expensive country, but by the time I got to London I was operating on a strict "grocery store food ONLY, with the occasional cheap lunch" rule, which was really too bad. What really bit me was transportation costs; while I could have done much better here by planning farther ahead to get advance fares and a discount travel card, it would still have been the primary expense for this part of the trip. Lesson learned: move around less often, or rent a car. A car would also have been nice for exploring some of the more remote areas I wanted to go to, like the Highlands or much of Wales. The Highlands tour I took was quite good, but I prefer to explore at my own pace and spend less time getting herded through great souvenir-purchasing opportunities.
One final disappointment--the food. I spent the first part of my trip going for what I thought of to be traditional UK sorts of foods, or at least ones that you don't see much in the states: meaty kinds of sandwiches, fish and chips, that sort of thing. Overall they didn't really agree with me. After a couple days of a meat-and-potatoes diet, I was guiltily going for kebabs and, once, actual Mexican food instead. In my defense this is pretty much in line with how a modern city-dwelling UK citizen would eat anyway, I think--go out for Chinese or Indian or what have you, rather than trying to eat "traditional." One thing I really wanted to do but didn't get a chance to was have a real fancy English tea; there was a nice place in York, but the day I intended to go was one of the ones where I'd completely overdone it and felt like my legs would fall off, so I stayed in bed instead. I figured I'd catch a tea London, and then all the places in London were either twice as expensive or had bad online reviews. I don't honestly have any interest in tea, although I'll drink it, but I mourn for all the dainty finger sandwiches and biscuits I missed out on. Absolutely something to prioritize if I return.
So, what did I learn? First, I still need to work on pacing myself. For a long-term trip, burnout is a real problem--you really can't do the "see X in three days" schedules you see online or in guidebooks, where you're going to do two museums plus a walking tour plus shopping plus dining in a single day. That sort of schedule isn't sustainable for more than a few days at a time. I erred on the side of trying to do too much in the UK, and it did leave me, at times, simply too tired to do things I otherwise would have really liked to. Also, while I think most countries have cheaper transport options than the UK, this trip did drive home the importance of considering how to get from one place to another well in advance. Thinking to myself, "Hmm, why don't I shoot over to this other city for a few days? That should be no big deal, the UK's a super small country anyway" turned out to be a rather unfortunate mindset to have. Better pre-planning! Better budgeting! Those are going to be my major goals for the part of my trip that comes after South Africa--that's already planned and budgeted for, thankfully.
My next stop is a week-long stint in Italy, mostly Rome. I'm looking forward to a bit of sun at last!
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