Made it! We journeyed to London from Boston on Thursday night and landed early Friday morning. Jet lag has hit us rather quickly especially when we think about the fact that the mid day here means we should just be getting up to start our day on the East Coast and instead, we have already been going for more than several hours. It never fails, for me when visiting across the pond, the first day is always a wash and I have to try to get in sync with the local time and not east coast US time. We have actually arrived on a vary rare day here in London, the sun is actually shining and we have just missed more than two weeks of straight rain and snows prior to that. We are excited to have come at a not so normal gloomy looking day in the UK. You can even check here and let me know if you see a day without rain in the forecast. If you do, then you will understand our excitement of seeing and arriving to sunshine in England.
After landing we had to sort out how to get into Central London. We had two options, the express train for around 29£ or the tube or underground (subway) for 6£. Of course, the latter taking a longer journey of around an hour to hour and a half depending on which station you were hopping off. The express train takes about 15-20 minutes to Paddington Station, the main train station and from here you can also catch the tube to your destination. We chose to take the tube to go into Central London as this would allow us a chance to learn the routes and become familiar with the stops and groups of stops known as districts. Just know there is not an immediate guide on which ticket you are to buy or what is a specific district, so make sure to carry a tube map with you as their was not a metro staff member at the airport or information station other than the express train ticket booth. We bought a single day pass that allowed us to have a one way among the many metro tubes but once we exited a station we would have had to have bought another metro tube pass. So if you know your districts ahead of time, you can reduce your metro pass cost by 1-2£’s. Equally, Uber is everywhere in London and very reasonable in cost. Uber is the cost between the tube and the taxi. But if you are coming to London, one must still take a classic black taxi at least once. I was lucky to have an Uber driver, Chucks, who took the time to take me down a few popular streets that were out of the way just for me to see some places in London and he was excited to be a mini tour guide for the few minutes it took for us to go from the hotel to Paddington Station.
Our first day in London was a great start. In the afternoon I left to go to Oxford to take a weekend class at the University of Oxford and to meetup with friends I had not seen in several years. As to traveling to Oxford was very easy to do and took only about an hour by train which left from Paddington. The cost was 29£ for a round trip which was about $40 US and once arriving in Oxford, it is very easy to move around the town and the colleges which make up the University. Everything for directions seems to be based off of crossing the small bridge after leaving the train station, turning left takes you one way and turning right of course another way and no one says go straight, so a level of curiosity does exist for what lies ahead when going straight. \My directions were to go left, around the curve of the bend then take a right at the round-a-bout and usually you are then where you are suppose to be. When this is the local directions to get somewhere you know you have found somewhere great.
As we begin to settle in for the long weekend of class and adventure, below are a few word differences we do not have in the United States and take a moment to translate for us. I assure you, asking for a biscuit for breakfast and getting a cookie gave for a laugh as I had forgotten, in England, a biscuit is a cookie. So very well then, I will have more biscuits!
Lyft = Elevator
Underground = Subway
Tea Time = Break
Trainers= Sneakers
Jumper = Sweater
Chips = French Fries
Biscuit = Cookie
Peckish = Hungry
Ground Floor = 1st Floor
1st Floor = 2nd Floor
Here is to another great adventure in England and more posts to come. Be sure to follow along as we take on the adventure of class at the University of Oxford and some time exploring the sights of London.
Signing off today from “a not rainy day” in Oxford, England