JCP-UK 2012: Neighborhood Pub
I'm back from my 10-day trip to the UK all in one piece! Wow, what a whirlwind of an experience it was...so much so that I've got absolutely no idea how to organize the various highlights of it. Since many of the UK Meet attendees are already blogging about it, I'm going to start somewhere random: my trip to a neighborhood pub.
One thing I really wanted to do when I got to England was go grocery shopping. Yes, I know that's mundane. I just enjoy seeing what's different whenever I arrive in a new locale. Clare and her older son were happy to oblige! We hit the local store and gravitated toward the beer. Since Clare's son has bartending experience, he could tell me knowledgeably about the differences between the varieties, and we decided to stock up on a few different types and have a beer tasting.
Once the hectic excitement of Brighton was over and we returned to London, we settled in for our tasting...and then Clare's husband came home and offered to take us down to the local pub! (We were already nice and lubricated at this point.) One of the things on my checklist was to visit a REAL British pub, rather than a place that catered to tourists, so we jumped at the chance to go.
There were patrons drinking there, but not many. I think Clare and I were the only women there other than the bartender. We ran into a friend of Mr. London's who bought us a round and had a nice chat with us, and the atmosphere felt convivial and very right. The entire ceiling was covered in the little plates they put on the taps to show which sort of beer is in there (I don't know what they're called) and it made for a striking decor!
Clare and I had a fabulous time. She and her family welcomed me into their home and made me feel like an honorary Londoner. How funny, I hadn't noticed that union jack in the corner of the shot until now! Just in case you couldn't tell where we were ;-)
I could never really predict where businesses would be. Something would look like a residential street to me, and then there would be a pub (or a surgeon or something) right there among the houses. Maybe US neighborhoods are more strictly zoned as to residential or business uses.
One thing I really wanted to do when I got to England was go grocery shopping. Yes, I know that's mundane. I just enjoy seeing what's different whenever I arrive in a new locale. Clare and her older son were happy to oblige! We hit the local store and gravitated toward the beer. Since Clare's son has bartending experience, he could tell me knowledgeably about the differences between the varieties, and we decided to stock up on a few different types and have a beer tasting.
Once the hectic excitement of Brighton was over and we returned to London, we settled in for our tasting...and then Clare's husband came home and offered to take us down to the local pub! (We were already nice and lubricated at this point.) One of the things on my checklist was to visit a REAL British pub, rather than a place that catered to tourists, so we jumped at the chance to go.
There were patrons drinking there, but not many. I think Clare and I were the only women there other than the bartender. We ran into a friend of Mr. London's who bought us a round and had a nice chat with us, and the atmosphere felt convivial and very right. The entire ceiling was covered in the little plates they put on the taps to show which sort of beer is in there (I don't know what they're called) and it made for a striking decor!
Clare and I had a fabulous time. She and her family welcomed me into their home and made me feel like an honorary Londoner. How funny, I hadn't noticed that union jack in the corner of the shot until now! Just in case you couldn't tell where we were ;-)
I could never really predict where businesses would be. Something would look like a residential street to me, and then there would be a pub (or a surgeon or something) right there among the houses. Maybe US neighborhoods are more strictly zoned as to residential or business uses.
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