Tag Archives: United Kingdom

Damn that Dollar!

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England is great and London is possibly one of the greatest cities in the world. There are cool things to do, funky clothes to buy, good shows to see, and yummy food to eat (ethinic food of course). Too bad it costs so damn much to do any of it when you’re coming with US dollars.

It’s really simple to figure out the cost in dollars when preparing to make a purchase. Just multiply by two. Most things cost in British pounds about what you would pay in a major city in the U.S. The problem is that with the crap exchange rate, you basically pay double what you would at home for just about everything. Makes me sad. Even the Charity Shop thrift store is too pricey for us. Just taking the Tube, London’s Metro, a stop or two will set you back $4. Ouch. Lucky for us we enjoy walking.

For the most part we’ve gotten over it and are making the most of our time in the UK. Lots of museums are free, though we haven’t really spent any time in them, and there are interesting neighborhoods and markets to explore. We’ve put our precious quid (British slang for the pound) to good use for The Polyphonic Spree at the Astoria and of course the beloved Liverpool Football Club.

Football and music. Two things that clearly merit the expenditure. It is England after all!

Christchurch …or Disneyland?

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Is it Christchurch, or Epcot?

Is it Christchurch, or Epcot?

I once had a conversation with an Australian woman about the nature of Kiwi’s, “They’re more British than the British she said.” Now, asking an Australian to define the nature of a Kiwi (or vice versa) is never recommended, and you shouldn’t expect an unbiased answer, but in the case of Christchurch …she may have been on to something.

If you stepped into a transporter and were told you were being dropped into say, Oxford England but ended up in Christchurch, it may take you a while to put things together. There’s a huge Gothic cathedral in the middle of town, most of the buildings are appropriately quaint, there are wonderful hedgerows all over. In fact they may be doing England better than the English. It’s like visiting a Disney version of England on the Canterbury Plains.

To that end, they’ve removed all of the mountains! There are no mountains here, unlike everywhere else we’ve been in New Zealand. Sure they say it’s the effect of a huge geological shift in continental plates, induction zones and all that, but I know better. They just wanted to simulate the English countryside a little more accurately.

A telling sign of the Disney influence is the fact that there are street performers everywhere! Everywhere I tel ya. I defy you to walk through a public place – the City Center or a pedestrian mall without being entertained by a mime, juggler or performance artist. Surely part of this is due to the fact that we’re here during the start of the World Buskers Festival, a festival of and for street performers from all over the world, but that can’t explain it all away.

All in all, good on ya for Christchurch Kiwi’s! You deserve a big slap on the back and a pint.

Plan D

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Okay, this one is our bad. After getting screwed by the Irish travel agency back at Thanksgiving we decided on another course of action. “Originating” our OWE flight in the UK. It was going to be great, we would fly there for a few hundred, maybe catch a soccer game, stop in Dallas to see LeeAnnes family on the way to New Zealand and be on with our trip.

That’s before we waited two weeks to get the flight to the UK. Now the prices are a lot higher to get there and that again puts us in a situation where, we are making a lot of very tight turn arounds during the holidays and not saving very much cash. I really wished we would have bought the London tickets when we formulated this plan, but we were so exhausted from the whole Ireland thing we just dropped it.

So now the plan is this: We originate our flight in… (drumroll please) New Zealand! Thank you, thank you!

We will pick up the hit of the tickets to NZ, but originating in NZ is still even cheaper than the UK, and WAY cheaper than the US. And we won’t burn any of our North American segments of our OWE tickets so once we get back to the US we can pop around a bit and visit some folks we don’t often get to see. There are benefits.

And this time I am buying the tickets to our originating country as soon as I can.

So, let’s review our history of iteneraries:

  • Plan A – US Depature – Too Expensive, let’s get it cheaper somewhere else.
  • Plan B – Ireland Depature – Cheaper, but the Travel Agents gave us the wrong price. Not as cheap as we had hoped.
  • Plan C – UK Depature – We screwed ourselves and now the cost of the flight over negates most of the savings we would have seen.
  • Plan D – New Zealand Depature – Still cheaper! Significantly streamlines our flights during the holidays, and gives us flights in the US after our RTW trip is over. Who could ask for anything more?

Now, let us never speak of it again.