One Year and Counting
Today is the one year anniversary of our arrival in the UK. In honour (notice that is spelled with a U) of this glorious occasion, I have decided to create a top 5 list of the good and bad things about living in the UK. You would get 10 but I just got back from the pub and that would require way too much thought.
Top 5 good things about living in the UK.
1. The Beer
2. Proximity to other places
3. The weather (when it's good, it's really good)
4. The landscape and countryside (if I ever get around to publishing the pictures of Scotland and the Peak District you can see for yourself)
5. Being within walking distance of 20+ pubs
Top 5 bad things about living in the UK
1. The customer service (or lack thereof)
2. The roads (a small accident can create hours of traffic back ups - they don't believe in shoulders here, they also don't believe in the grid system)
3. The weather (when it's bad, it's miserable)
4. Sports (I have resorted to watching football (soccer))
5. 17 hours of darkness in the Winter (some might argue that the 17 hours of daylight in the summer should be a good thing and counter act the bad part, unless you actually like to sleep)
Looking forward to seeing all of you in another 12 months.
Cheers,
Yankee
Venice
Since there are no cars in venice you have a choice of walking, taking a water taxi, or riding the bus. We opted for the bus, since we were doing enough walking already, and the taxis were too expensive (at least for my cheap arse).
Since we have been over here, we have gotten pretty used to using public transportation, but the water buses in Venice are a different story. They are essentially floating cattle cars where they pack you in like sardines (you'll have to excuse the mixing of metaphors). If you look closely (or you could just click on it to expand it) at the picture you can see all the people crammed onto the water bus. What you see (people riding the bus) is actually the least traumatizing part. It is literally a free-for-all getting on and off these things. There is supposed to be an entrance lane for people waiting to get on and an exit lane for those wanting to get off. It seems this is merely a suggestion, because once the entrance line gets too long people just rush the exit line, thus creating the free-for-all. If going in the out door doesn't work for you, apparently you just yell 'permesso', act like you are getting on another bus which is about to leave (there are multiple bus routes), and push your way through the crowd. I thought permesso meant excuse me I need to get through, but it obviously means "I'm an old Italian woman and I can't be bothered to stand in line, so get out of my way".
But other than that, Venice is great.
Our hotel, Hotel Al Ponte Mocenigo, was fantastic, and they served the best cappuccino I have ever had. If you ever get to Venice, I highly recommend both.
To the right is a picture of Saint Mark's Square and the Cathedral. It's pretty impressive, but I don't recommend it if you have any issues with birds. You can't see it but there are pigeons everywhere you look. Apparently people don't realize that pigeons are nothing more than flying rats, because they let their kids feed them from their hands. I didn't have bird issues until I 
visited this place.
With your bus pass you also get access to the islands of Venice, so we toured the islands one day.
To the left is a picture of Burano (known for its colorfully painted houses and lace). They call it a miniature Venice. And no trip would be complete without a visit to Murano and it's glass factories. Below is a picture of one of the glass
making facilities. Pretty fancy chandelier for a factory huh? 
There is also a shot of YG on a bridge in Murano.
To the right is a shot of the Accademia Bridge. It was originally built in 1922 out of wood as a temporary bridge,
but it was left becuase of it's popularity. It is the only wooden bridge still crossing the Grand Canal.
I'm tired of writing and thinking, so now you're just going to get some shots of Venice.
The Grand Canal and the Rialto Bridge, with the obligatory Gondolier.
More gondolas in the side canals around St. Marks square
Beer, It Does a Body Good??
Not that I needed another excuse, but here is a good one for all you beer drinkers.
According to this article, researchers have found that beer may help prevent prostate cancer (albeit at the expense of the liver).
Does it mean anything when half of your birthday cards make references to beer?
Drink up loyal readers.
Cheers,
Yankee
It's getting hot over here
Today was supposed to be brewing day here in the UK (my second batch of home brew), but unfortunately it is too freaking hot. Therefore, I'm sitting here on the balcony, drinking a beer, writing a blog post, and sweating my arse off. Whoever said it doesn't get hot in the UK was full of shite. I'm guesssing it was the same guy who said you don't need air conditioning either (hence the sitting on the balcony).
Yes, I am alive
For those of you wondering about me, I am still here. I have returned safe and sound from my travels around the world, despite the efforts of many Italian drivers.
After trips to Italy, Indianapolis, Seattle and Scotland I am back in Nottingham for a while, and therefore able to blog.
I guess I should explain my comment about Italian drivers. For those who have never experienced it, Italy is quite possibly the most dangerous place on earth to drive. As many of you know, YG and I went to Italy for our anniversary (yes, I am well aware that that, along with my last post, was almost 2 months ago). After several days in Venice, battling the Venetians on the Water Buses (story to come later), and a train ride to Rome, we needed to get away from the crowds. So, we decided to rent ourselves a Ford Ka and hit the road up to Tuscany.
To the right you can see YG standing alongside the massive Ka. As you can also see, the rental car place is on the same road as the Colosseum.
We should have known it was going to be an interesting day, when it started with a cabbie with questionable mental capacity. This guy couldn't speak English, which I don't mind, but I am not sure he could speak Italian. After an interesting drive through Rome and driving around the block a couple of times, and us yelling at him to stop, he finally slowed down enough for YG to jump out. Yes, she left me in the car to deal with the Italian version of Rain Man. This nearly sent him over the edge. He started speaking some gibberish and pointing at all kinds of stuff. At this point, I was so mad it took me several minutes to get the money together to pay this idiot. I got myself calmed down, counted out the money, threw it onto the front seat and jumped out. As we came to find out, we had been within a block of the rental car place for a good 5 minutes.
Fortunately, after that ordeal, the acquisition of the rental was uneventful. Although they didn't have a map, so we were forced to navigate with a tourist guide (not an easy thing to do given that the road system is less than intuitive).
Anyway, back to the Italian drivers. After many near death experiences, for us and several scooter drivers, we made it out of Rome and on to the motorway towards Tuscany. This is where the fun really started. Two lane winding roads, 70-80 mph, and drivers willing to pass 3-5 cars at a time resulted in more accidents than we have seen the entire time we have been in Europe. It also seems that the dashed white lines in Italy indicate where the middle of your car should be. What I thought should have been a 2 lane motorway was essentially 3, again at 70-80 mph.
It doesn't stop there either. Apparently it is common practice to pass people (especially us) 
when you are driving around blind curves in the mountains of Tuscany (gratuitous picture to the left).
Anyway, enough ranting about the Italian drivers. Gotta go.
Cheers,
Yankee
