Ice, Ice, Baby

Planning a trip to London?
It's advisable to do some prep work. Check out some guide books. Plan a travel budget. Make a list of your must-sees - Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, The Tower of London, a show in the West End.
Oh, and here's a big one: Stop putting ice cubes in your drinks.
If you're a typical American, that's tough one, trust me.
Order a Coke in a London restaurant. Here's what you may get:
** 6 oz. chilled bottle and small glass with lemon wedge and 2 small ice cubes.
** Chilled can of Coke, glass with no ice.
** Lukewarm plastic bottle of Coke, glass with a couple of small cubes.
** Small glass, one or two cubes, Coke poured over. Roughly equivalent to 5 ounces of Coke.
You'll pay, on average, 2 pounds for your Coke. No free refills, so sip slow.
And in a restaurant, your choices are what they call "Normal" Coke and Diet Coke. Rarely do you see anything else. Pepsi is invisible in eateries here.
If you want more ice, you can ask for it, but it generally comes a cube at time.
Tap water and bottled water are the same. They're served lukewarm, no ice.
This hasn't been so tough for me, because I'm not a big ice drinker anyway. If the drink's been chilled, I often skip the ice, even at home.
But there is something almost evil about warm Coke.
Look at the bottle. Right on the side it reads "Best served ice cold." And they should know, right?

In our skinny refrigerator (over here, they refer to what we have at home as "American fridge-freezers" and they are really expensive.), we have four ice cube trays. Isn't that retro?
Occasionally, we see Cokes that aren't bottled in Great Britain. Keith stopped at a convenience store one night and picked up a Polish Coke. Another time he brought home a German Coke.
No matter where they're from, we chill 'em.
It's the right thing to do.