After a trip to the UK over Christmas, I've come back baffled. Here are the wildest things I've seen.
Think you need to visit a baby jumping festival in Spain to see something weird? Think again.
As I just discovered, you can go to boring old England and have your mind melt.
From carpeted bathrooms to the disgrace that is the English version of a bacon roll, here's everything that floored me about the UK.
Bizarrely, despite being thinner than Vegemite, Marmite is harder to spread. Go figure.
Whether it was orange juice or milk this left me surprised and frustrated.
Chestnuts are believed to keep away spiders, so they are left in corners everywhere from stairwells to window sills and bathrooms. I found this strange seeing as England doesn't have any (proper) spiders anyway.
Forget Carling or whatever other indeterminate warm local ale is on offer... everywhere I went San Miguel (or Estrella Galicia) was doing a roaring trade. And I have a sneaking suspicion most Brexit enthusiasts have a case of Cruzcampo at the back of their fridge...
See also: 26 things Spain does better than the rest of the world
I learned this one the hard way, with the driver and other passengers looking at me quizzically.
You might get away with hiking in trainers in Australia, but in England you'll want hiking boots. Both in the Quantocks and on the Cheddar Gorge Trail I felt like I was ice skating down the mountain, such was the mud. And cleaning my shoes so I didn't get treated like a leper at Border Security on my way back home was a mission.
Whether it's a sausage roll for £1.30 (AUD $2.56) or a slice of pizza for £2.75 (AUD $5.42) Greggs (closely followed by Pret a Manger) is the height of British cuisine. It's far superior to an Aussie service station (in terms of variety), and we need to import the genius idea of potato wedges in a cardboard box, ASAP.
In England everything either comes out of a can, a packet or the freezer, and is then placed into the microwave or oven. No exceptions.
Even weirder: they are often in the loft, so you have to crouch down like a hobbit where the roof slants.
If you get the option of fried bread or toast with your cooked breakfast, opt for toast. Trust me on this one.
The greasier and oiler, the better.
Perhaps it shouldn't have been my first choice of breakfast in a golf club, but I was served the flabbiest, fattiest bacon roll of my life while in England. It was so chewy you could have cut strips off it and put it in a packet of gum. If I ever order one again I will ask for it extra crispy.
It's all Yorkshire puddings, sandwiches, roast potatoes, and peas boiled in a saucepan.
Meat isn't cheap in Australia either, but when I went to check the price of lamb in Waitrose in England, I could practically feel the cashier's claws digging into my wallet. £30 (AUD $59.14) for a shoulder. What in farm-nation?
Baffling. Utterly baffling.
I don't know what it is about English fridges (maybe because houses are so hot due to the heating), but in my experience, they tend to smell funny.
Ok, I'll admit it: the highlight of my trip to the UK was drinking a cup of tea and eating a packet of Kettle chips on the train while imagining my life was a movie.
They go to a Narnia-like land called Wetherspoons, where food is served within 10 minutes of you ordering, and drinks are cheap.
A coffee and a pasty? That's (the equivalent of) $25 Aussie dollars, thanks. Two beers? $30. A nice hotel? You don't want to even know... If visiting London, prepare to have all your money siphoned off in less than 24 hours.
As someone who gets cold easily, I rugged up as warm as possible between my accommodation and the underground. Unfortunately, however, the second the doors shut the tube gives a Finnish sauna a run for its money.
In Notting Hill you can expect to pay an arm and a kidney to buy a tote bag, particularly one emblazoned with Julia Roberts' face.
I found it bonkers that in Australia I can watch any premier league game I want on Optus. But in the UK, even if you have pay TV, some matches simply don't get shown.
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