Day 3 & 4 (6/30-7/1/16)

Day 3 was a slow day.  Laundry had to be done before we were streaking around the countryside.  I did drive twice today.  Once home from Asda, which is the UK version of Wal-Mart, but much smaller and a larger focus on groceries.  I also drove to dinner.  There are so many roundabouts and street signs.  The street signs are all symbols with no words, so it makes learning to drive very challenging.  Again, I curb-checked the car on the left side, this time in a roundabout.
Tipping wait staff here is very different than in the US.  We had read online that most waiter/waitress' don't expect tips as they make a good wage.  So, at dinner we inquired to make sure we weren't being rude.  We were told that most people just leave the change from their check.  So, if the bill is £36.75, you just leave £0.25. She said she has been left 2 pence before, as in 2 pennies.

Day 4 started with my first trip to a tea room. One of the local Coast Guard wives picked me up and took me to the Tudor Rose Tea Room in the Barbican.  The Barbican is an area that is very old world, complete with cobblestone streets.  I had my first fruit scone.  They are not like scones you get in the US, they look more like a biscuit, but they don't taste like them.  They are so yummy, especially with strawberry jam on it.

I met back up with the family at the hotel and we headed out for lunch.  We went to the Dartmoor Diner where I ordered bacon, egg, and chips from the breakfast menu. It proved to be a learning experience.  Bacon in the UK is nothing like bacon in the US. It is much thicker, so much so that there is no chance of it getting crispy.  It requires a fork and knife to eat it, but is salty like bacon. You don't get a choice of how you want your egg, it comes poached (although we have learned some places serve them sunny side up). And the fact that you get french fries for breakfast is funny to me.  Although when I think about it, it isn't much different than hashbrowns.

We looked at our first house today.  It was a cute house, on a cul-de-sac, with a decent backyard.  The kitchen had the washer/dryer combo machine, as well as the water heater and boiler.  While I had been looking for houses online and knew the rooms would be smaller than we are used to, I wasn't fully prepared for how much smaller they really were.  One of the bedrooms would barely fit a twin bed and a small dresser and that would just leave a path wide enough to walk.


On our drive back to the hotel, we saw free roaming sheep on the side of the road.  They were just eating the shrubs along the road. Most of the farms in the area don't use fences to keep their animals in but instead just use hedge rows. So sometimes the animals can just roam where they please, hence sheep in the road.

Fun fact: The Dartmoor Zoo, located here in Plymouth, was made famous from the book and movie 'We Bought a Zoo.'  (We will visit it sometime in the future.)

New words:
Boot Sale = Garage sale, but from the back of your car in a common, public area like a parking lot.
Garden = Backyard
Water Butt = Rain Barrel
Conservatory = Sunroom