Our time in the UK was short, shorter than anywhere on the trip yet. You say – the UK has a lot to offer, the transportation system is excellent, why not stay longer? A few reasons: we’ve both been there before, we live on the US East Coast and flights to London are relatively cheap so we will probably go again, and the idea behind this trip was to go places that were a little less accessible to us for whatever reason – distant location, long flight time, crap internal transportation systems. The UK doesn’t fit into any of those categories.

Truth be told we probably wouldn’t have gone to the UK at all had our One World Explorer tickets not demanded we pass through Heathrow to get from Africa to any location in North America. Okay, on second thought the trip wouldn’t really have been complete for one of us (me) had we not been able to catch a game at Anfield. But for the reasons above the UK wasn’t on our “Must See” list for this trip (plus, have you seen the exchange rates lately? Help a brother out Central Banking System).

Anyway, I’m really glad we did. It was a little bit like being back in the states for a few days (sorry if that offends any British readers, but bear with me), we got to converse in English with locals who use that as their first language, meet a long lost family member, got to see a rock show (the Polyphonic Spree at the Astoria -narrowly missed the Beastie Boys again) and attend a professional sporting event. All this and the extra bonus of being able to drink the tap water and eat all the leafy greens our hearts desired – haven’t done that since mid-March!

All in all good things, we will probably see our English Cousins sooner rather than later.