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MY OWN OBSERVATIONS AND NOTES:
· Most Interesting City
in UK = Chester Most Picturesque Town in UK = Ambleside, Cumbria
.
· The bus to Coventry
(Flight Link) was so easy to catch as it was right outside Terminal
3. We went up to the second deck and watched the scenery roll
by over the tops of the hedges. Lovely fields and lambs.
· Most homes in the Midlands
have "Net" curtains on their windows. (I called them lace tablecloths!),
white and all alike. The gardens in the houses in the Midlands
are full of flowers and really pretty. Mostly everyone carries
and constantly uses a mobile phone in the Coventry and Leicester
areas.
· In grocery stores loads
of wonderful multi-ethnic foods. Great variety of cheese, display
of seafood, meats, and many choices of pre-prepared foods.
· Fresh fish abundant
in supermarkets (crab, mussels, whelks, winkles, cockles, huge
prawns, shrimp, and many varieties of fish).
· Roses and Poppies grow
abundantly wild in the fields and are large in width and height.
· Most all women of all
ages wear skirts, nylons and sandals instead of pants like we
do. This was prevalent all over UK.
· All hotels had 'trouser
presses' which were totally useless considering the type of
clothes one wears nowadays - some rooms had irons, which made
more sense.
· Noticed that there were
no outside thermometers.
· In the Midlands there
were many women smoking compared to the remainder of UK. Restaurants
had smoking areas unlike our restaurants which, thankgoodness,
do not.
· No facial tissues or
face clothes in any of the major hotels.
· In each hotel room there
is an electric kettle but the instant coffee is horrid and undrinkable.
· The milk is left at
room temperature and because there is a lot of cream at the
top you have to stir it in before you pour it else the cream
curdles in your coffee or tea.
· Most hotels have dual
electric voltage for shavers and hair dryers.
· All of the hair dryers
were bolted down in the bedroom area instead of in the bathroom
area.
· In some hotels there
were hot towel racks to keep the towels hot - (great place to
hang wet hand washed laundry to dry!)
· The tubs are twice the
height of our tubs so climbing out was hard.
· The plumbing was very
hard to figure out in each hotel - especially the shower and
bath fixtures. In England we had to repeatedly prime and pump
the toilet to get it to flush but in Scotland the toilets all
flushed on one pump.
· "Free House" pubs still
brew their own beer.
· To be called a village
you have to have both a pub and a church but if the village
only has a pub it is just called a hamlet.
· Lack of security in
most old hotel rooms. Many doors did not have a deadbolt lock
nor a chain. There were no screens on any of the windows and
lots of the windows would not open for fresh air as they were
painted shut. Some rooms looked right out onto a rooftop patio
and in one hotel the staff had chairs to sit on right outside
our windows and could just walk right into our room through
the open window! So make sure you get a room on the 3rd or higher
floor.
· Restaurants, Tea Houses,
Hotels - all the food here is expensive so eat in the pubs.
The food there is great and low in price and you get to meet
the local people which is alot of fun.
I would recommend Trafalgar
Coach Tours for anyone. We especially liked the idea of not
having to drive on the other side of the road, no luggage to
haul and load (thanks again Ian), no hotels to check into and
find, and no resestaurants to go searching for. We just sat
back and enjoyed (all except for the Quality Station Hotel in
Glasgow!!!!!). We were also fortunate in having a fabulous group
of folks on board from Australia, New Zealand, US, Singapore,
South Africa, and Canada. Everyone helped each other out and
we all had alot of laughs.
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Photo taken at Bowness.
Sue (Tour Guide) and Ian (Coach Driver)