Since I just went to Chile and am itching to recap that trip, I thought I'd finish England first. So Rye is mostly pretty cobblestoned streets and ye olde houses:
As a Lamb, I hoped I could go to the Lamb House and have them give it to me, as a potential heir. But, alas, it was closed the day we were there, so I didn't have a chance to find out:
After wandering around for awhile, there was nothing to do but go to an air-conditioned pub and hang out:
Husband got absorbed in a John Major biography found on the shelves and I read more guidebook. We ended up going to dinner that night at SI! Simply Italian across the street:
We didn't realize it was a chain until we got back, but wow, the English know how to do a chain, with locations that are different and menus customized to different restaurants. Unlike American chains, where everyplace looks exactly the same. After dinner, we had more beers at the longest-continually operating pub in England, The Old Bell:
Pretty amazing to drink in a place that's 700 years old, but how do they really know it's been open that long? Most of the places we went to in Rye were at least a few hundred years old, so a lot of places make the claim that they are the oldest. Good pub, though, and the bartender settled our dispute about whether or not Charles would be king (probably not, because the Brits loved Diana and won't forgive him for how he treated her, though he could technically become king if he wanted to, he'll probably turn it over to his son). Finally, here's a sight you don't often see in America, straight men sharing a cider:
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