British people are strange! Les Anglais sont bizarres!

People travel for different reasons, but mostly it’s to discover other cultures, other habits, change horizons… Each counrty is different, and that’s great (even if the differences tend to reduce!)… Our British neighbours are our friends, no doubt about that! But, I must say that they are a bit strange sometimes! During our short stay in London, we were surprised by some little things…

The centre (that’s about the first zone on the Tube map) looks very rich! That’s well known, London is one of the most expensive cities in Europe, and it shows!! I’ve never seen as many Posche and other luxury cars in a few days!

Since we’re talking about cars, there are running low in London… probably because there’s a toll to get in the city. So most people use the public transportation, and taxis. Those are numerous in town, and covered with advertising. So many colours that some hurt my poor eyes!

When walking throughout London, if you look up a bit, you’ll see on every block some surveillance video cameras. Yeap! CCTV is watching you!! The streets are over monitored and even regular people have their own CCTV to keep burglars away. In this country there are as many as 4.2 million cameras!! No other country tops that, so was London dangerous, or is it for fear of terrorist attacks or just pure paranoia…? But this isn’t all! The UK now puts some talking video cameras in some cities. Imagine a second, you’re walking down the street and drop a paper… “Hey, you, the lady with the red coat, pick up your trash please!!!!”

Did you know that a large part of the city belongs to the royal family? You pay your rent to the Queen – not in a direct way, but still - ! As far as the houses the crown uses, there are very impressive! They are simply huge! As a matter of fact you can visit a few, but it’s pretty expensive! If you don’t feel like paying that much, but still want to brings back home a "royal" souvenir? I have something for you: one of these postcards shaped like Elisabeth II, Charles, or Diana! This is simply exquisit!

Everyone knows that in England, people drive on the left side of the road. I believe tourists like us got fooled. So, on the ground by each zebra crossing, there’s an arrow to show and point out where to look before crossing, and a text « Look right » or « Look left »!

On these same zebra crossings are some traffic lights… for horses!! No, it’s not that everybody rides a horse in town; it’s for the troopers and the royal guard.

We also saw lots of cafés, restaurants, libraries, but also some kind of casinos or bookmakers. The latter are legal, and it looks a bit strange for us who are not used to that.

In restaurants, if you ask for a glass of water, the waiter will bring you a glass of iced water, no matter whether it's summer or winter! If you ever tell the waiter you’d prefer the water without ice, they’ll stare at you like you are just nuts. With Anne Laure we realized that, so we tried it in every restaurant, and it’s the same thing each time. If anyone knows why it’s so awful to drink room-temperatured water, please let us know. Next time we will not look like idiots!

British people have the reputation to be a bit crazy, and not to know how to dress… Well, we had a great example one evening in the subway! We’ll never know if this man did bet with his friends or if it was a deliberate decision, but he was proud to show off his nice pink and purple socks under his sad grey suit! Always put a little colour in your life!!

On our last day, we stumbled upon a strange but very convenient system to anchor your dog in the street. This device is directly built in the wall. It looks like a little hook on which you can place the leash of your dog. We must admit that we would never have paid attention nor known what this was for if it wasn’t for the little sign ‘dog stop’ above it! The strangest thing was that there was absolutely nothing around this device: no shops, no restaurants, no bar... nothing!

And finally, this nice road sign: Watch out for the elderly people!