Day 20: Arrival in London and The Tube

Tower Bridge over the Thames.

We arrived in London on August 14th, which is two days after the end of the Olympics.  No matter – all the Olympic paraphernalia were still up, Olympic souvenirs were on sale, and we avoided some of the crowds and steeper rates.  So we arrived in London from the EuroStar and set off in the now-common procedures of securing some local currency and figuring out the mass transit system.

In London, our main mode of transportation was “The Tube” (or “The Underground”) – that is, the subway.  Every travel guide I read about England recommended getting an “Oyster” mass transit card since that offered significant discounts versus getting separate tickets (either that, or the regular tickets are overpriced to encourage people to use Oysters).  Like most RFID mass transit cards, you can touch in and touch out quickly at the subway stations and it also lets the government track your travel habits.  You can also use the Oyster on busses and most other public transport services in London.  One more thing – don’t wait in long lines at the travel info center to buy an oyster – there are numerous oyster dispensing machines elsewhere in the station without the need to wait in long lines.

Distinctive uniform of the British police.  You can tell by the reflective vest that they put a high premium on safety.	Dad waits in line at the travel center to get our Oysters.

The Tube is considerably different in feel than the other metro systems we’d experienced on the trip.  The Soviet-style metros were generally speaking deep underground with wide walkways and high-ceilinged stations, in line with Stalin’s original propaganda message of the subway being an underground palace for the proletariat.  The Polish metro is new, clean, and modern though their ticket machines need some work.  In contrast, the Tube is a lot more cramped than any of the other systems, the metro in Seoul included.  The walkways are narrow (and very tube-like) with many twists and turns, which definitely gives them some character and makes you feel like you’re navigating some sort of underground labyrinth.  The train cars themselves are also tube-shaped, which makes them feel more crowded as well. 

Still, the Underground is an efficient and relatively cheap way of getting around the city (the exact cost varies depending on your origin and destination, but it costs about $3 one-way with an Oyster (by cash it costs nearly $7), or about three times as expensive as the Moscow metro.

Oh, well now that you put it that way, I guess I won’t use it when the train is moving.	Typical car in the Underground.