More on Transport in/ from London

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

The Babble of Wood Green High Road

Friday at 10:30am - High Road, Wood Green, London

WOOD GREEN

High Road in Wood Green is a bustling place throughout each day of the week.  On Saturdays it is wall-to-wall people moving up and down past the “high street” shops, popping on and off the buses, elbowing each other at the open-air fruit and "veg" stand.  The diversity of the crowd is remarkable and different from the diversity of the San Francisco Peninsula.  There are the white Brits – the younger with black tights under their cut off jean shorts, the older wheeling behind them their fabric shopping trolleys; Muslim women in hijab (head scarves) and their male counterparts in white full length kurta (long white woven shirt) worn over their western clothes; Eastern European women with black and bold flower print scarves; Turks and Greeks; Indians, Bengalis and Pakistanis; and West Indian blacks.  The number of languages being spoken are numerous and to me, unrecognizable.  Furthermore, hearing East London British English being spoken by a West Indies black is pleasantly disorienting.  Lily and Abby cringe when they hear me repeat in my annoying, nasal American English the directions just spoken in a wonderful British accent.  As you’d expect, they’d rather I kept my mouth shut and kept us “under cover.”

At the north end of High Road, past most of the shops near the Wood Green Tube station is our local Haringey Council (borough) library.  I was impressed to find the other day a full shelf unit each for books in twenty non-English languages: Urdu, Greek, German, Albanian, Kurdish, Somali and Vietnamese to name a few.  Twenty book shelves!


Peter

Visiting Parliament

LONDON
After trooping out of the tube station, all 60 of us (AIFS students plus families) arrived at Big Ben to start out Parliament tour. All together we probably took enough pictures to completely cover Big Ben in two layers, bursting our memory cards but enjoying it all the same. Once we were all assembled we went though security. Then we entered the magnificent 1,000 year old Westminster Hall. Listening to several questions though, we realized that one of the students had gotten taken aside at security for possessing a knife. As time passed this rumor bloomed into a thrilling tale about getting arrested, but thankfully the student just had a pocket knife for his lunch and rejoined the tour.

We met Russell our guide and soon found out that he was a hyper energetic, yet excellent guide. Then we made our way through, as Russell described it the 27 miles of corridors. We learned that the House of Commons has green leather seats and the House of Lords has red leather seats. This was because red is the color of nobles, and you can't escape symbolism! Though the whole complex looks incredibly med evil and ancient, it was built in the midst of the industrial revolution. To spare you from the 27 miles of history we learned today, I'll point out some of the most interesting facts:

• the House of Commons has two rooms at either side to stand in to vote. One room is called the yes room and one is called the no room.

• the House of Commons also has 650 people, yet there were only 400 seats.

• a man commonly known as Black Rod is sent to summon the House of Commons when the queen is reading her speech. Traditionally just as he is emerging the house, the door is slammed  in his face and he has to knock 3 times with his rod.

After enjoying the many lavishly decorated rooms of Parliament, we departed the gorgeous building and entered into London at dusk, a magical time, and took a final picture in front of the golden Big Ben.

Oh and by the way, the photo of us in front of Big Ben is not photoshopped; it just looks like that :)

Abby