I need to hear good things about the UK

I LOVE the transportation system!  You can get ANYWHERE on a train or a bus.  I find it to be amazing.  I also find it to be very romantic to ride trains.

Double decker buses!!  They are so cool.

Cheap flights to Europe.  VERY cheap.

Being around old buildings and having a feeling of the history that took place.  I like cobble stone narrow streets with old dutch style houses with old churches and roman ruins mixed in.  It was a slap in the face to leave that history to come to florida where there are strip malls in every direction.  

hearing different languages being spoken all over london.  i love that.

oh, and the cadbury caramel chocolates are much in england than america.  not sure why, but they are.  

Oh!  I almost forgot!  In the summertime are the Proms at Royal Albert Hall - a series of classical music concerts preformed by amazing orchestras and they go on for weeks and weeks.  My beau and I went to see The Planets for 6 pounds each.  The Rite of Spring sold out before we got tickets, but you can go on the day and stand in a queue at Royal Albert Hall to get standing tickets for a fiver!!  We got there late and we about fifty people too far back to get in.  But now we know for next time.

Royal Albert Hall is amazing!!!!

Cornish Pasties and branston pickle
scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam
yorkshire puddings with mash and sausages
roasted parsnips
smoked haddock

These are foods that I never had before moving here, and would miss terribly.

Ok as an actual brit I am not sure I should post on this thread but if I was made to leave the thing I would miss most of all is the Silly Bugger" attitude of Britain.  I love that as a nation we are happy to take almost as much pleasure about being bad at something as being great at it.  I love that Britain is a place where people like Eddie the Eagle   can become famous where the charge of the light brigade can become fundamental to our britishness when it really was a pigs ear.  Where the houses of parliment and big ben can be built with such wonderfull effect then years and years later with all the modern building skills we can build the millenium bridge, a footbridge that the designers builders forgot to take into account people walking on it, and we the British people think to ourselves chuckle a bit and say "Silly Buggers".

That probably makes no sense to anyone but me sorry.

Wow...I agree..this is a great thread...I would miss all of the things mentioned...but most of all...I would miss the sense of wonder I feel as I walk along the coastline here in Bournemouth....and in the countryside....sweeping around corners and never being sure who is coming or what to meet you......I just look out at the Purbecks and I have to pinch myself and say...yes, Debbie...you really are living in England...It is great isn't it??

this is the best list ever!   big kisses to all of you for the burst of positivity!!

speaking of kissing: i love kissing people hello, get in trouble for that every time i go home!
hearty laughs, the laughs where you know people really mean it!
stopping at a pub for a quick drink after a walk along the sea, easy access to picking up cheap wine in france! feeling cozy, all the time. high street shops owned by families, being able to walk to the grocery store to pick up some FRESH fruit and veg, having to stop to let horseback riders cross. getting to name your home.

maybe this one is just personal, but there is a huge chalk drawing of a horse in a hill that i pass by everytime my fiance and i go to sainsbury's. i love that horse. sad really, i've even taken pictures of it and put them on my desk in the US so that i can be "home" even when i'm not.

it really is magical isn't it!  

its so easy to focus on the things we're missing, as opposed to the things we'd miss. feeling a bit emotional now :'( you really just have to love it.

I love that people still socialize and really do "just drop by" to say hello.  

I like being asked if I want a tea or a coffee as soon as I'm in the door.

Not feeling guilty for the occassional candy bar...everyone in the US makes it out to be one of the biggest sins to splurge on the occassional treat (oh I'll get so fat and the like).

People being comfortable with who they are.  You don't see people trying to hide their extra 10 or 15 pounds.

Fashion.

The Indian Take Aways.

Footie, especially on the weekends.

Going down to the local.

CASTLES!!!!!!

The ocean.

The Highlands.

Hearing the bagpipes as I walk around Edinburgh.

The fact that there's a bar in the local movie theater...I get a kick out of that one.

I'll never ceased to be amused by the new names they give to American food products...hehehe.

Travelling by train, I love it!

Getting cheerful "Hiya!" from everyone you know.

The fact that everything is so close by.  You can drive forever and ever in the US and only get through a few states.

That coffees at Starbucks seem cheaper (I know in reality they aren't but they look cheaper...lol).

Jaffa Cakes.

Tea time is the best time of day.

The fact that they all seem to love taking baths, even men.  Something very cute and old fashioned about it.

I like that shops close earlier and that you have the evenings free.

Little kids in school uniforms.

The way it seems that taking babies out for the day is an event.  Special outfit, pram, etc.

The fact that people of all ages still seem to like to have a good time.

The windy streets.

That I get to feel more free about who I am and that I don't have to fit in so much.

There's tons of good things.

taking a late sunday morning ramble to a lovely pub on the river to eat and drink off the hangover from the night before.

how i miss the rose and crown in wivenhoe.  one of the finer points of essex, id say.

So many things to list that I'm not sure I can even think of them all! I agree with everyone wholeheartedly, and I could sit and elaborate much better over a glass of ale alongside a canal at a 400-year-old pub in the middle of summer.

But what gets me most is how I feel about getting "back home" after a visit to the US. Or what I miss when I am in the US. Or get bugged about when I am in the US.

(I hate to say it, but one day I feel like I might actually haul off and hit the next person who tells me to
"have a super day!" in that sort of fakey I-don't really-give-a-darn-if-you-really-do sort of way.)

Oh I thought of another one...the way you don't need to have a bizillion degrees to feel accomplished.  Seems that people have respect for regular jobs in a way that you don't see in the US.  My DF's family are mostly taxi drivers, and that seems to be considered a respectable profession (as it should be), where in the US it's kind of looked down on.

That men and women are considered to be more equal in regards to housework.  Most men I've met don't seem bothered by hanging up the laundry, cooking, or even feeding babies, etc.

I thought of something else...I love that the UK is full of the unexpected. Unlike any other country I have lived in--I am always suprised here.  Like one day, there was TERRIBLE traffic on the M25, so we turned off and drove through Windsor.  I nearly cried at how lovely and unexpected the whole little town was adn now I am moving there next week!  Things like this happen all the time--like the first time I was driving in the South West and all of the sudden I saw stonehenge out of the car window, or crooked buildings or standing stones at Avebury or the Gower penninsula...

It is not just places, it is people as well.  One day I sat at a bus stop and a man came up to wait for the bus with a rainbow umbrella and opera music playing out of his bag while a small car with a huge tree coming out of the window drove by (It was summer, sunny and it wasn't a Christmas tree).  Only in England...

I also like that when you let someone in or through on a road when your driving they still say thankyou with a little nod or a slight raising of a finger off the steering wheel.

 Things like this happen all the time--like the first time I was driving in the South West and all of the sudden I saw stonehenge out of the car window, or crooked buildings or standing stones at Avebury or the Gower penninsula...

Yes Iam remember the first time I saw Stonehenge,and the many times after driving from London to Chard in Somerset(or visa versa).No matter day or night or what the weather was like(except very heavy rain ) as we got closer to it I would roll the window down so I could see it even in the dark I knew whereabouts it was.That will never get old to me

 I also remember sitting in the car a few weeks after being in the UK,and the song "Life Is A rollercoaster" by Ronan Keating came on.That was the first time I heard it,and I was just like wow Iam really in this different  yet wonderful country.Watching the people walk down the street or run trying to get to the train station in time....Its just really hard to explain  the emotions I has inside listening to that song....and still do get teary eyed when I hear "Na na na na na"........

Another song that was popular then was "When A Woman" By Gabrielle.So If I hear that familiar " Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, de" same thing for me  

How Iam so happy to be going back in a few months

"it's not so bad here".

You wanted to hear good things, dear VNP.  Here are the last few paragraphs from your countryman Bill Bryson's book Notes from a Small Island.  He's about to pack up and return to the US, and has gone up into the Yorkshire Dales to say farewell to it all ...

[...]  Halfway down, I had my wife stop the car by a field gate. My favourite view in the world is there, and I got out to have a look. You can see almost the whole of Malhamdale; sheltered and snug between steep, imposing hills, with its arrow-straight drystone walls climbing up impossibly ambitious slopes, its clustered hamlets, its wonderful little two-room schoolhouse, the old church with its sycamores and tumbling tombstones, the roof of my local pub, and in the centre of it all, obscured by trees our old stone house, which itself is far older than my native land.
           It looked so peaceful and wonderful that I could almost have cried, and yet it was only a tiny part of this small, enchanted island. Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain - which is to say, all of it. Every last bit of it, good and bad - Marmite, village fêtes, country lanes, people saying 'mustn't grumble', and 'I'm terribly sorry but', people apologizing to me when I conk them with a careless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, stinging nettles, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, crumpets, hot-water bottles as a necessity, drizzly Sundays - every bit of it.       
                    What a wondrous place this was - crazy as f***, of course, but adorable to the tiniest degree. What other country, after all, could possibly have come up with place names like Tooting Bec and Farleigh Wallop, or a game like cricket that goes on for three days and never seems to start? Who else would think it not in the least odd to make a their judges wear little mops on their heads, compel the Lord Chancellor to sit on something called the Woolsack, or take pride in a naval hero whose dying wish was to be kissed by a fellow named Hardy [...] What other nation in the world could possibly have given us at William Shakespeare, pork pies, Christopher Wren, Windsor Great Park, the Open University, Gardeners' Question Time and the chocolate digestive biscuit? None, of course.
        How easily we lose sight of all this. What an enigma Britain will seem to historians when they look back on the second half of the twentieth century. Here is a country that fought and won and noble war, dismantled a mighty empire in a generally benign and enlightened way, created a far-seeing welfare state - in short, did nearly everything right - and then spent the rest of the century  looking on itself as a chronic failure. The fact is that this is still the best place in the world for most things - to post a letter, go for a walk, watch television, buy a book, venture out for a drink, go to a museum, use the bank, get lost, seek help, or stand on a hillside and take in a view.
        All of this came to me in the space of a lingering moment. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I like it here. I like it more than I can tell you. And then I turned from the gate and got in the car and knew without doubt that I would be back.

And you'll be back too, VNP, and Rhia, and Lou, and Krissy, and so many of you good Americans!  And it will be our proud privilege to have you back ...

Howard

I agree with most of the things listed here.. but REALLY enjoyed Krissy's post.  Those are the things I love about the UK as well.  

Love people popping by for no reason at all, just to say hello and have a chat
Milkmen
Mass transit and riding the trains
The history.. you can walk in the town centre and KNOW that the building you're looking at has been around for hundreds of years with so many stories to tell
Sunday afternoons in the town center.. it's such a carnival atmosphere with young kids out and ice cream and street performers
Cold foggy winter nights
Warm long sunny summer days
Kissing when you greet someone
Being able to speak openly without feeling like you'll offend someone
Not feeling as though you have to be fake to be nice
Popping over to the corner grocer at 9:55 pm to pick up something and still being greeted with a friendly smile and helpful service
How relaxed everyone is.. they don't get so worked up about every little thing the way Americans can
BBC and Channel 4
The smell of curry drifting through the open windows around sunset
As everyone else said.. young children in school uniforms in the town centre
How REAL life seems there.  It doesn't feel like it's changed much.. Here in America you KNOW that life was much different 200 years ago.  You know that none of hte buildings were there, that none of hte cars were there...  In England, you can walk around town and sit at the river and know that 600 years ago, someone was sat in the very same spot enjoying an idle afternoon
Interactive tv program(me)s
I could go on..