Life in London

There are never any pence on the pavement in London, while New York sidewalks are littered with pennies. Beyond that, the cities are quite similar: packed tube/subway cars; Starbucks at every corner in the center of the city; countless ethnic restaurants; the melting pot of cultures. It feels like home in so many ways.

Okay, realistically, it's not identical. The accents are the major obvious difference - everything they say sounds so posh; their streets twist and wind in the most illogical patterns, as do most of the tube lines; their grocery stores sell everything prepackaged, strangly futuristic; the buildings are much older and often more beautiful; their history goes back a lot later than America's; and they buy and sell with pounds, making everything about 50 percent more expensive than the states. Maybe that's why there are no pence on the pavement...