What is the UK like? How do you visit?

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I saw a thread here ago and inspired me to ask this. What's it like in the UK? What is the lifestyle like over there? I'd love to visit you someday. Unfortunately, I can't do that in the near-term, I never work right now and it can take a while (after 2 years of school, which only begins this Fall). I wish I can even convince some of my family to visit with me.

I am a UK citizen and I do love living here, despite the bad economy.

The UK is bigger than you think, and there are a lot more cities and other built-up areas than you think.

Some Americans think us cockneys speak in a posh-like Australian sort of accent and whistle our S's. We don't sound like that.

I've been to the UK about ten times. Mostly spent in the London area.

1. The transit system is (usually) very well organized; much more organized than the New York City system. It's quite expensive, though, unless you get a monthly pass. I wish they would have more "one day" or "weekly" passes.

2. There are well-planned "green" areas, even in Central London. For the most part, London is fairly "low-rise." There are small areas where there are large buildings, though.

3. You have good parts of London, and not-so-good parts. I've never seen an area, though, which is as bad as
a "ghetto" in US cities.

4. I've seen the entire transportation system shut down when there was 4 inches of snow on the ground. Some years, snow doesn't even accumulate in London.

5. The areas around St James Park, Westminster, and the Houses of Parliament are very nice.

6. Make sure, when you cross the street, that you look to the right, not the left. Cars come from reverse directions in the UK.

7. Never take a cab, unless it's a real emergency. They are quite expensive.

8. Food in supermarkets is pretty reasonably priced. Prices in restaurants and take-out places are usually much more reasonable once you go out of Central London.

9. Most cars have manual transmission; if you don't know how to drive stick-shift, it's more expensive to rent a car. Probably about 3 manual transmission cars to 1 automatic transmission car.

10. For the most part, people are very well-mannered. If there's a line (called a "queue" in the UK), don't cut it.

11. Air fares are much more reasonable from about November to March.

It's hard to answer that - I've always lived in the same place, I know what it's like here, but I don't know what it would be like in, say, London, or Wales, or Northern Ireland, etc.

I'm probably not the most qualified person to answer this question as I only went to London and for a few days, but I really enjoyed it and I wish I could return and also see another cities (and I had a very bad experience on my first day, and still loved the trip because the city was real nice).

If you like museums, London is an amazing city I think. I spent a full day on Victoria and Albert Museum (and couldn't see everything :/) and a day and a half on Tate Modern. They are free, and a very rich collection. There is more museums that are famous, but as I had only 4 days in the city I didn't wanted to spent all days inside museums.

It's very rainy but it was way less cold than I expected (I went in January or February I don't remember). And I even got a few sunny hours. I found the city a bit confusing and I got lost a few times (and often I'm good at orienting myself in new places, but I just couldn't grab the city logic), but most of time it was actually very pleasant to be lost I found very nice areas with lots of small houses, and everything was so tidy that it really looked like a scenario.

In contrast to this smaller neighborhood, the riverbank is filled with brutalist buildings that I also enjoy a lot (the national theatre, hayward gallery, the tate modern building).

The public transport is great but I found it a bit expensive. I didn't had any special impression about the people. I ate a pie with mash potatoes, I never had thought about this combination but I found it to be a great idea.

London is a couple of degrees warmer than it would be if it wasn't a city.

Well I'm a Northern lass so I can't tell you much about London, although that's been covered quite well. I'm a country girl too, so not got much city experience. Here are some of my favourite places in the North.

The Lake District:
Does what it says on the tin. It's a district of lakes. (actually this image is huge, I'm gonna do a post per place)

The fields are divided up with stone walls which we call dry stane dykes (yes the sky is that grey and cloudy a lot)



I'm heading to Yorkshire now. I love the old stone buildings.

Here's a little Yorkshire street. This is what home is made of lol. Makes me feel all fuzzy and nostalgic

Last edited by hurtloam on 19 Apr 2017, 4:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

On up to Northumbria now. This is Hadrian's Wall. It was built to keep the mad Scots out. The Roman's couldn't handle them and the Scots are proud of it. The UK has a lot of Roman history.



I think Northumbrian towns have their own little style, but I haven't really lived further south so I don't know.

This my friends is an example of a dead boring English brick house. I think it's smaller than the equivalent American home.


We also have the odd random castle dotted about. This is Bamburgh Castle on the coast

When I visited there, they have a lot of old ruins there of stone, they have all these roundabouts and it's very confusing because they don't tell you what direction you are going because they don't have North South or east or west and they only have town names listed. Also when driving, it's the opposite so the slow lane is the left lane than the right lane. My mom had a row of cars behind us and I wondered why they wouldn't pass us. It's illegal to undertake in the UK. Then when my mom went in the other lane, the people in the car behind us all clapped and all those cars finally passed us and my mom figured out the slow and fast lanes were the opposite lanes there like it is with driving.
Also people take buses or trains and it's very easy to travel from one town to another and gas is very expensive and you pretty much had to pay for parking anywhere in London and there was barely any parking spots in London and the roads were very narrow and they all had one lane roads. I saw they got around differently than we did so they use trains or cabs or buses. Also houses seem to be small and the rooms too.

But I think it's very pretty and I like their ruins. Our ruins is just abandoned buildings and them falling apart and them being vandalized or scrapped. Ours is nothing like the ruins in the UK. Also I noticed the playgrounds in London have age restrictions and they close them at night and even parks closed. Also London was very clean and free of any litter except for the Soho area.

But I also thought UK was also Americanized because of the lifestyle there and what they had there. Yes they had their own store chains and their own restaurant chains but I also saw lot of American places there too. Lot of Blockbusters and Pizza Huts and American fast food chains and TGIFridays, Toys R us, e even saw a Wal Mart in Bristol and my mom says she saw a Home Depot there. I saw lot of Texaco and Shell gas stations and Dominos Pizza. I even saw a few people carrying Krispy Kreme doughnuts in London but we never saw the place. I also saw lot of American movie titles there and TV shows and American channels on TV. I also noticed when they talk about the US, they address it by US state depending on the location they are talking about. Like they said they sold London Bridge to Arizona than to the US. But I do hear they hate it if you say you are in the UK than in (insert country here you're in). I decided I can start messing with people here when they say they are in the US so I tell them "No you're in Oregon" and then tell them its a joke because that is what people do in the UK about when you say you're in the UK than in England or Scotland or Wales or Northern Ireland. I was just being picky like a Brit.

I've also lived in Scotland. They talk a bit differently up there, but not like Scottie from Star Trek. For example a jam sandwich is "a piece n jam". Going to get your groceries is "going for your messages". I had a bit of trouble understanding people at times.

They do eat haggis and wear kilts on special occassions like chelidh dances and weddings.

I've never actually lived in Glasgow, but it's a great place. Greener than you'd think.



This is Ashton Lane. I only went down here a couple of times, but it's a great place for pubs and live music in the Summer.

kraftiekortie summed up London pretty well. I've lived here my entire time and I do enjoy it for the most part. The cultural attractions here are a huge draw for me and one of the main reasons that I put up with the things that I don't like about London (cost of housing, commuting on overcrowded trains, poor air quality in central London). ltcvnzl mentioned the South Bank in her post and I'd highly recommend that area to anyone interested in cultural stuff. It's long been one of my favourite parts of the city.

As for the UK in general, I've not really seen a lot of it. In terms of big cities, I've only been to Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh and Cardiff. I'd say that Edinburgh is the nicest one out of those although all of them are worth visiting. I'd also recommend the university cities of Cambridge and Oxford as well as the coastal city of Brighton. All 3 are within an hour of London by train so are ideal for day trips. I do want to see more of the UK. I'm particularly interested in the Lake District, York, Bath, Liverpool, Snowdonia and the Scottish Highlands. I hope I'll get to visit all of these places before too long.

Having lived near London all my life (25 years), i'd say I would escape to the countryside to somewhere like Dorset on the south coast if I had the money, though houses there can be as expensive as a high-end London apartment in the region of around £5m ($6.4m). Of course i'm talking like high-tech modern houses near the beach.

But i'd be lucky to even own a cardboard box to sleep in in the near future with rising tensions with regards to my living arrangements.

That's one thing I don't like seeing as when you are near a big city you have the pressure of competing with so many other people for jobs, you'd think there'd be an abundance but nope. You see 100,000's of jobs being advertised each day, but the odd 2 million people either in or out of work, looking for a second job or other reasons makes looking for a job that much harder.

I'll cover Cornwall.

Cornwall is a county at the far south-west of the UK and has a sub-tropical climate (temperatures in Cornwall stay above 10C (50F) for more than seven months of the year). We're a peninsula, surrounded by water on three sides and border only one other county, Devon. Cornwall is a rural county containing seacliffs, small fishing villages, moorland, farms and hills, lots and lots of hills. We have no major roads, a single small city (pop. 12,261) and several small towns. Our entire population is only 536,000. If you're looking for a shopping experience, you'll need to go elsewhere but we do have some fine attractions to keep you occupied: Eden Project (that big dome structure from Die Another Day); the open-air Minack theatre; castles; St Michael's Mount; beautiful estates; the Lost Gardens of Heligan; beaches; dolphin, shark and whale watching; surfing; diving; climbing.

Most people come to Cornwall for its beaches. On the south coast they tend to be small, rocky and great for diving whereas on the north coast, they are large, have fine white sand and are great for surfing. Luckily, the county is so narrow that it's easy to visit the beaches on both coasts or even, if you have the time, walk the entire coastline as it has a path (the South West Coast Path) around all of it.

And now a bit of history. Cornwall was an ancient Celtic country in it's own right, speaking it's own language and is still recognised as one of the six Celtic nations, alongside Brittany, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Scotland and Wales. If archaeology is your thing then we have sites stretching from the stone age through to the industrial revolution (a UNESCO World Heritage site). Even our hedges are really old with some reaching back 2000–4000 years!

I love it here!