LONDON
Trains: Tickets seem to be much more expensive than when we lived here ten years ago. I don’t know why. I saw a headline on a tabloid recently: “Trains only for the rich!” But if you book ahead, you can still find some decent fares. England has privatized train service now making it a bit more confusing to book tickets. You can book tickets online through any of the 28(!) private companies such as Southern Railways or First Great Western Trains or use the National Rail site. But you can only print out and pick up tickets at rail stations served by that regional company. So for instance, I ordered tickets for this weekend—return (out and back) for Windsor yesterday (Windsor Castle was spectacular) and return for Horsham (where we're visiting Celia's sister and family) through Southern Railways for today. I couldn’t pick up the tickets at Paddington Station yesterday (where we departed for Windsor) because Southern Railways doesn’t use that station. So on Friday, I made a detour to Victoria where I thought I could print out all our tickets. To add to the mix, I’m never sure now whether my American credit card will be accepted at a self-service machine because European credit cards now use a “chip and pin” rather that a swipe system. This time I was in luck—my credit card worked as an ID to print out the tickets—well, most of them. I had to go into a separate little office (luckily bypassing the huge line at the National Rail Ticket booth out in the main station) to have all the tickets printed again. I ended up with a fat “deck of cards” just for our weekend journeys—each out and back journey plus a receipt tallied up to a stack of 31 ticket “cards”!
Bicycles: Much more enjoyable and easier was biking in Hyde Park on Friday. Watching many people cycle past us in the warm sunshine, we decided to rent bikes ourselves; luckily we were quite near a Barclay's cycle stand. As in many European cities apparently, you can now access a rental bicycle for 1 pound for 24 hours. (We found out later that the actual charge is greater than a pound, but you can ride for free for under an hour.) Figuring out how to use the credit card machine and then release our bikes was a bit challenging, but soon we were on our way, gliding through the park on our 3 speed vehicles, a cool breeze fanning our hair. What a wonderful way to see the sights. You can cover distance faster and your vantage point is higher to see trees and buildings from a different perspective. The parks (Hyde, Kensington, Green and St. James) were all jammed with loungers on an unusually warm summer-like afternoon—mothers and nannies with children, students sunbathing or reading and many others. 
We cycled and stopped, cycled and paused for ice cream, cycled around the perimeter of the parks, and finally stopped and parked our bikes at a Barclay stand near Marble Arch. “What larks!” (Joe Gargery say this to Pip in Great Expectations—which I’m currently cramming to teach this week. . .)
Beth
Trains: Tickets seem to be much more expensive than when we lived here ten years ago. I don’t know why. I saw a headline on a tabloid recently: “Trains only for the rich!” But if you book ahead, you can still find some decent fares. England has privatized train service now making it a bit more confusing to book tickets. You can book tickets online through any of the 28(!) private companies such as Southern Railways or First Great Western Trains or use the National Rail site. But you can only print out and pick up tickets at rail stations served by that regional company. So for instance, I ordered tickets for this weekend—return (out and back) for Windsor yesterday (Windsor Castle was spectacular) and return for Horsham (where we're visiting Celia's sister and family) through Southern Railways for today. I couldn’t pick up the tickets at Paddington Station yesterday (where we departed for Windsor) because Southern Railways doesn’t use that station. So on Friday, I made a detour to Victoria where I thought I could print out all our tickets. To add to the mix, I’m never sure now whether my American credit card will be accepted at a self-service machine because European credit cards now use a “chip and pin” rather that a swipe system. This time I was in luck—my credit card worked as an ID to print out the tickets—well, most of them. I had to go into a separate little office (luckily bypassing the huge line at the National Rail Ticket booth out in the main station) to have all the tickets printed again. I ended up with a fat “deck of cards” just for our weekend journeys—each out and back journey plus a receipt tallied up to a stack of 31 ticket “cards”!
Bicycles: Much more enjoyable and easier was biking in Hyde Park on Friday. Watching many people cycle past us in the warm sunshine, we decided to rent bikes ourselves; luckily we were quite near a Barclay's cycle stand. As in many European cities apparently, you can now access a rental bicycle for 1 pound for 24 hours. (We found out later that the actual charge is greater than a pound, but you can ride for free for under an hour.) Figuring out how to use the credit card machine and then release our bikes was a bit challenging, but soon we were on our way, gliding through the park on our 3 speed vehicles, a cool breeze fanning our hair. What a wonderful way to see the sights. You can cover distance faster and your vantage point is higher to see trees and buildings from a different perspective. The parks (Hyde, Kensington, Green and St. James) were all jammed with loungers on an unusually warm summer-like afternoon—mothers and nannies with children, students sunbathing or reading and many others. 
Beth
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