Travelling in London

Well I’d like to share my UK experience with you all. I’ve been there twice and the best thing I like about it is the weather. People living there might not agree on this as they usually crave for the sun, but since I’m from a very sunny place I enjoy clouds and rain more.

UK is huge and I didn’t explore all of it, went to a few cities. There are a lot of things to do in London. A lot of sightseeing opportunities exist there. Apart from this there is always something fun happening at say Trafalgar Square or Leicester Square or Covent Gardens.

I’d like to start off with by explaining the travel means there in London. The best way to travel is to use the tube. It’s an underground railway network in the London city which we can use easily to travel wherever we want. It is however not underground in the outskirts of the city. There are multiple stations all over the city. All areas are covered by it and I really didn’t find the need to travel by bus. I did use the bus a couple of times but that’s about it. Mostly I was walking there and exploring the city. I think the best way is to walk!

It’s really hard to believe that the tube system there is so old! I was surprised at the different levels of trains moving underground. It really goes in deep underground as you can see from the picture below. There are areas in which a train will be travelling above another (you can’t see it ofcourse, it’s just their tunnel network).

The first thing you need to do is get an Oyster card. It’s an electronic travel card in which you can put money and then use it to travel on the tube or bus etc. There is another card there as well which is supposed to be cheaper, but I went for Oyster, its good.

You can find the tube map at every station and at first it seems very confusing, because you just see different colorful worms criss-crossing each other on the map :) But its quit simple. You can check out the map here. You just have to see the station you are at and then find your destination station. There will be multiple lines (by lines I mean trains) going from your source to destination (in most occasions i.e if you are in central London). Just pick a train which has the fewest stopovers in between and go on that. You might have to switch lines in between as many times the journey isn’t straightforward. But it’s simple enough. Finding the train at the station is also not hard at all. Signs are everywhere giving you directions to the train you want to go to. The lines have different names like e.g. Baker line etc so if you want to go on that then just follow the directions to that line at the station. There are multiple trains at each station but the directions everywhere make it simple.

Now here’s another thing, you’ll find a lot of tour buses there, like the Big Bus company and they can take you on a tour of the city, but personally I didn’t go for that. If you can spare some extra pounds then go for it, otherwise exploring London on your own is much fun and not hard at all. I did however take their map as they give it for free :p It shows all the places of interest and shows the nearest tube station on it as well :D problem solved! The map is available online and you can click here to check it out. I just saw the place I wanted to go to, and the station near it and then went exploring! Simple and straightforward.

It’s always good if you planned beforehand as to what you have to do and where you have to go but the big bus map was a big big help. I’d suggest you take one as well!