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Wow, what strange foreign customs!


The United States does have strange customs when it comes to booze. Making things all the more confusing is that liquor control is very much a state thing, meaning regulations vary widely from state to state. For instance, in Connecticut, you can't buy retail alcohol after 9 p.m. or at all on Sundays, and you can buy beer in a grocery store, but not wine or spirits. You can buy all of the above in a liquor store. In Tennessee, you can buy retail beer up until 3 a.m. and on Sundays after noon. Like Connecticut, grocery stores can sell beer but not wine or spirits, but liquor stores can sell only spirits or wine, but not beer - and they close at 11 p.m. and are closed on Sundays. In other states, you must purchase spirits and wine at a state-run ABC store (North Carolina is an example of this). States like California and Missouri allow the sale of all types of alcohol (beer, wine, spirits) in grocery outlets as well as liquor stores. Even the drinking age varied by state until the late 1980s until the Feds cracked down. When I went away to college in Missouri, I wasn't legally old enough to drink there but I was legal in my home state of Tennessee.

There are two main topics in this thread, which are being able to drink in a motor vehicle and being able to enter or leave a restaurant with alcohol. I'm sure that having an open container of alcohol in a car in the UK would be insanely illegal. I'm not so sure about the other, though. Is it common practice in the UK to bring your own alchohol into an eatery or be able to leave with unfinished portions?