We found eating out more expensive than we expected(we were comparing to our last trip which was 6 years ago, so I guess that's to be expected). We didn't eat in any "fancy" restaurants, mainly sticking to pub meals when eating out and on average paid roughly £12 to £14 for a meal., excluding drinks.
We bought a couple of heat-in-the-microwave type meals from supermarkets and found their quality to be really good and the price reasonable.
We didn't notice too many sushi restaurants in the towns we visited. We did pop into a sushi chain-type restaurant and were a little under-awed by the sushi... it wasn't a patch on our local sushi joint.
Groceries on the whole seemed more reasonably priced than at home. The price of clothes varied a lot - Primark prices were very reasonable and the quality surprisingly good (I bought a pair of PJs which compared favourably quality-wise with Woolies at home, which surprised me)
If you have any type of food intolerance you are very well catered for in the UK with large sections of the supermarket aisles dedicated to gluten-free etc.
I'm vegetarian and I was blown away by the choices on offer for "veggies" in the UK. The Quorn cold meat and cocktail sausages are SERIOUSLY yummy.
The drivers are on the whole much more considerate and obey the rules of the road. There are a lot more traffic circles.
We found more traffic-jams than we expected on the roads and a LOT more cyclists. The Guildford/Send area was particularly bad for traffic jams.
The people working in the shops were in general very friendly, particularly the till-operators in the supermarkets. We also noticed a number of older people working in supermarkets.
I was under the impression that most of the charity shops sold furniture, but I didn't find this to be true. Having said that, the Heart Foundation charity shop we went into had amazing furniture at good prices. We also saw lots of bargains on Facebook marketplace.
The towns we visited were incredibly clean and tidy.
Compared to the last time we visited the UK, we found that many of the High Streets looked a bit "dead" with mainly charity shops, but not much else. We also noticed a number of pubs closed down. I think the mall-culture is hitting the UK, which I'm personally sad about.
The dogs in the UK are extremely well-behaved and silent.
The pigeons are HUGE.
We noticed a lot more biltong for sale compared to our last visit.
Cell-phone signal is very patchy and on the whole not as good as in SA.
The towns seem to get prettier the further you get from London.
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