Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's Wednesday,

the 20th of August. And as you may possibly make out, from the background noise, I'm on the move

in a Ford Explorer. Luckily, I'm not driving, but my friend Doug is. You might remember that I

talked to top cinematographer Douglas Bolton

earlier this year when we were discussing the differences in driving between the UK and the US.

Well, I'm going to broaden that out today because I've spent a week in the excellent company of Doug who's been

here for about three years now and is therefore well placed to talk about some of the other

changes between the US and the UK. Can we start Doug with something which particularly

annoys me which is the price you see isn't the price

you pay. Yes, hey Simon, and that's true. Actually, a lot of people of my friends that come out

and visit me in the US, they go to the souvenir shops or the shops, they have that great price

for a pair of jeans. And then actually they get to the till or the checkout and they're like, oh no, there's another

almost 3% tax added on that on every purchase.

So that can catch you out a few times.

But you do get used to it after a while.

But yes, if you want to buy something that costs $9.99 and you've got a $10 bill,

well, you're not going to be able to do that because the price will be the other extra 30 cents or so. And Colorado sale tax is actually quite a lot

lower than a number of other states. So worth watching out for that. Next up, can we talk about language?

I imagine that you almost subconsciously

will make adjustments to words you use

or indeed pronunciations

because you know that Americans won't quite get the British version.

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