We've been on planes and trains 'til we think we might die far from North America

Ok, so I thought I'd do a travel post! This, my non-public transportation-using friends and family, is how I get around here in the UK.

Well, first of all I catch a bus from a bus stop called Whitehorse Vale/The Bramingham. I don't have a picture of that bus stop though, maybe I'll get you all one later. But I take a bus that looks like this pretty much except it has "24 Dunstable" on the front of it. I never sit up top because well, it's hard to walk up the stairs frankly haha. I nearly have fallen up and down stairs on a double decker bus in London so I just avoid them all together.

So wait a minute, let me tell you how to ride a bus because no one ever seems to be able to explain it. There are no directions. It's kind of like you have to know where you're going or you're screwed. But anyway, the bus stops at my stop and I get in it and I say to the driver, "A single to Leagrave Station," and pay him my £1.50 and then a little ticket strip prints and I rip it out and go pick my seat on the lower deck. From there I get to let my mind wander for about ten minutes as we wind about on the narrow streets of Luton. And I'm telling you, these streets are definitely very narrow. Sometimes when we have to make a turn in an intersection that's not a roundabout it looks as if the bus is going to hit the oncoming cars. We can't even go through this tunnel without making the oncoming traffic stop and back up because we'd plow right into them if they didn't make room. I'm always biting my lips when the bus makes turns or stops just inches from the car in front of it. It's insane.

To get off at Leagrave Station I have to wait until we get near it and then hit a button above my seat which then buzzes at the driver to let him or her know that I want to get off at the next stop. Yeah, there are no assigned names for the stops and the driver definitely doesn't ever stop unless you say you want to get off by hitting the buzzer. I pretty much have to know by sight where I want to get off and hope that the next stop puts me somewhere near it. Luckily the stop I get off at is just a quick minute walk to the station. So, I get off the bus, walk to the station and sit on the platform to wait for my train. To get to London is pretty easy. I basically have to take a train towards Brighton or Sutton which will make stops in the towns between Luton and London and Brighton. I usually take a train towards Brighton everyday except for Tuesdays when I take one towards Sutton. That picture of me over there to the left was taken in St. Pancras International train station in London. I was showing off my £90 travel card for you. Yes, that little orange and beige ticket there costs me $177 but allows me unlimited travel for a week. Whee...I guess. Rip off is more like it!

That's pretty much what the train I take down looks like. I usually get a seat in the mornings no problem so I've 50 minutes or so to just relax. I grab a free Metro paper to read for the first twenty minutes and then the last half hour consists of me closing my eyes and waking up at every stop while listening to my iPod until I arrive at London Blackfriars, which is a rail station that drops me off right above the Thames. Literally. I arrive on a bridge over the Thames. Crazy. I didn't realize that fact until about two weeks ago!

Then it's down an escalator to the Underground where I take the District or Circle Line to Embankment station. It's only two stops so it's a pretty quick little jaunt once I get on the tube. There on the left is a pretty good example of what a tube platform looks like. Pretty empty though, usually it's quite crowded and hot and people are bumping into you all the time which bugs me the most. I need my personal space, dang it! Anyway, that's what the tube arriving looks like to the right there. If you want some interior shots of it, let me know but it's not terribly exciting. Then after two stops I arrive here at Embankment and that's what it looks like from the outside here. I usually just duck under that bridge in the right hand side of the picture and then it takes me to Craven Street where the Benjamin Franklin House is. It's about a three minute walk from Embankment, that's all!






So then, here's my journey in reverse...with more pictures! I scoot back on the District or Circle Line from Embankment back to Blackfriars and head to the National Rail platform which looks like this at rush hour (to the right). Not bad looking you say?


Well yeah, let's just look at my own platform here to the left. That's just a small group of people I captured there. Blackfriars isn't that popular of a station so I usually get on there and get a seat on the train but if you go to St. Pancras International, you'd be lucky to push your way onto the train when it pulls up! If you enlarge that picture to the left and squint at the orange light back there, that's the arrival/departure board for the trains so you know which train is coming next, at what time, and at what stations it will be calling at. That's how you navigate the train system. Just find the earliest train calling at your station and hop on it.

Here's a sneaky picture I took on the train ride home one day. This is rush hour on a train. Most people get seats and then the unlucky people who don't have to stand in the aisles and in between the doors for about 40 minutes. Yuck! I hate having to stand after a long day. I usually wedge myself in a seat at Blackfriars and read my free copies of the londonpaper and The London Lite that they hand out in front of the tube stations to entertain the commuters on their way home. I also count out my bus change as well because more often then not, I have to scoot back home on the good ol' bus.

I arrive back at Leagrave and usually have a twenty minute wait for the bus at the bus stop. I usually give my family a ring while I wait and have a chat. I have pictures of this bus stop going home and here they are!




This one here on the left is looking back towards the station road I came from. This one here on the right is looking in the direction that the bus comes from. I have to wave the bus down to tell it to come pick me up and sometimes if there are a lot of cars parked on the road it doesn't see me and I have to frantically run for it and make it stop. Grrr. Oh, and here is the bus schedule hanging on the pole that tells you a) it's a bus stop and b) when you might be expecting the bus. It's really pretty confusing because it only shows some of the stops and it's hard to read and everything. Luckily the two stops I use are on the schedule so I don't need to think about it much. But the procedure on the way home is the same except I say a single to Whitehorse Vale and ride it until I see the Sainsbury's store by Tez's house. Then I get off the bus, walk less than a minute to Tez's house and wrestle with the lock and have myself a sit down after a long day.

So there you guys have it--Ashley has mastered the English public transportation, ha! Well, as long as you don't ask me to ride the bus anywhere unfamiliar, then that's another story.