9 Day London Trip

[Giugiaro]

Good Morning Everyone!

I'm now reporting from the Airport at Oporto, Portugal, on my way to London.
I'll be staying from this Saturday up until Sunday of next week.

Plans for visit at the moment include several journeys on the TfL Network and a journey for the NRM in York. From Friday to Sunday I'll be attending MCM London Comic Con, with a visit to the Acton Depot in-between.

For those who have been following the (now locked) thread about Mind the Gap, this is the journey expected for 5 years already in order to experience and get inspired by London and its railway network. Besides Tramlink, which has been waiting for a design ever since, the new challenge will be Crosslink.

I'll be around at MCM sporting a Portuguese Railway Uniform from the 90's. I'll be taking the role of station master during the morning, and of ticket inspector during the afternoon. Tickets will be distributed to those who want one, with the date imprinted. There's only 30 per day, so come and join me if you want one.

Anyway, I'll be reporting on the journey in the next days over here. Any suggestions about what sort of things are common to be posted in this board?


Thank you for your attention, and see you in the next days.

 

[Giugiaro]

Good afternoon everyone!

So, after a 9 day stay in the UK, here are my impressions on the journeys I made.

First of all, I felt quite comfortable on my journeys onboard the Standsted Express. While boarding at the airport was quite straight forward, boarding at Liverpool Street was somewhat confusing given that there is no way to tell that paper/printed tickets need to enter through the wheelchair gates controlled by staff.

The ticket clerk at Standsted was really nice and even bypassed the issues with the portrait photo (which I lost somewhere on my way to the UK).

By the time I arrived at Liverpool Street, the Tube station for the Met, Central and Hammersmith was closed for engineering works, so I tried to find another alternative, given the Central Line ticket hall was crammed has expected.

I tried to find the TfL shops shown in the map at street level, but was unable to find any of the three suggested. I decided to head back to Liverpool Street and check again.

As I came to know, an Oyster card can be asked at the National Rail ticket hall, but despite having shown the Railcard I purchased at Standsted, the ticket clerk both didn't set the discount on the Oyster, nor given me any kind of advice on it. I ended up noticing later when my Oyster card was eating through all the budget I topped up that nothing had been set to the card at all.

I decided to ignore the issue anyway and just rely less on public transportation and walk more instead. (In what concerns sightseeing, this decision was beneficial). But I did waste around 40£ on it anyway...

TBC
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
So I went around, by walk and tube, for the first two days, having stretched the journeys around Zone 1 to justify the price of each touch out. Travelling on the Tube is what is expected. The big perk of my low height is that I fit everywhere on foot on any Tube stock. Even in the 1995/6 Tube stock I was able to stand up close to the doors and not get my head chop off by the doors. It was nice to scare my MCM friends with it.

Did the same for the last 5 days, going around in Zone 1, making my journeys from Zone 1 to Custom House for ExCeL, as well as making a single journey to Amersham, and back from Chesham. Due to this last journey, I happened to travel for free for the rest of the day between zones 1 and 3.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to visit and travel on the TramLink during this week. The time and money was short for everything I wanted to do and the only time I'd travel to Croydon would be for the TramLink itself. I do have to come back to London in the coming months, so I'll try to take the opportunity to go on a stroll on the TramLink.

 

[Kite159]

Glad you had a good holiday

Shame about the Oyster issues not registering your railcard against it

 

[Techniquest]

I seriously would have taken that to someone on LU and got it sorted, the railcard would have made quite a difference!

If I'm not mistaken, if you did several journeys in Zone 1 in a day (well, 4 would have been sufficient I believe) then it should have hit the daily cap and not charged after £6.40 or so. The London area experts may well correct me there mind.

It sounds like you had a great time overall though!