Traveling by Tube

     Love the London Underground. Or Tube, as its known here. 

     It's by far the best, the most beautiful, the most interesting, and the most fun of any city's public transportation system, at least for an English-speaking person like me. If there's a better one, I don't know it.  

    I had a Tube-filled day yesterday. First, I traveled to the complete other side of London from where I live (about 25 stops) to check out our stuff, which yes, we're having trucked to Italy Saturday and brought to our side of the hill next week. (Gotta close the chapter on the stuff, right or wrong. And you didn't tell me not to.)

    Then later, I met a former colleague who's working for a couple weeks here, at a pub near his hotel on yet another side of London.     

    With the Tube, it's easy to do that. And the Tube's fun.

    First, there's the neat stations, many of them art deco gems with pretty patterns of multi-colored tiles, stone archways, and intricate iron roofs outside. 

    Inside, they're adorned with beautiful old clocks (that generally work) and plastered with big, great ads -- for London art shows, plays, movies, books, cool holidays. Gigantic, inventive, pretty ads that are fun to read and make you want to go to all the things they're hawking. 

   And then there's the buskers, who can be quite good. And the cute, easy-to-follow signs, with all the different Tube lines in bright, distinguishable colors.   

    The people on the Tube are infinitely interesting too. Everybody takes the Tube. It's not just poor people, like it can be in inner-city U.S.  

    Maybe because of London's congestion charge -- where you have to pay a daily rate to drive into town -- or parking fees, or because the Tube is just so damned convenient, everybody seems to be on it. 

     Not just every nationality. That's a given here. But really interesting people. Who you can just eavesdrop on while you're deep in your paper.  

     Yesterday, I heard two guys discussing the botched-up filming of an episode of a TV show that I've actually watched. Everything that went wrong, who was a huge dick, like that.  

    And then, when the train was down around the City, London's financial district, two young American guys in nice suits got on, loudly asking each other if they believed their colleague's story that he was pulling in 30,000 a week (pounds, I guess) trading something on margin.

     I got to hear two cute British girls, both in short-shorts (the new fad) and tights, talk about their adventures with men like a scene out of a Bridget Jones movie.

     And then one guy was telling a friend all about life as a back-bench MP, or Member of Parliament.  

     And that was just yesterday.

     It's chill, too, the Tube, like many things here. You can eat and drink on it, which I find amazing. (Never can do that in the States). And its not that intrusive that riders can. I don't notice a lot of discarded food wrappers, or any real signs of eating, actually. And it's really convenient that you can bring your morning coffee on board.

     And they're really nice to you too. Which was proven to me yesterday.

     As I was putting my Oyster Card (cheaper travel) back in my purse at one point during my four-newspaper Tube day (you can get a lot of reading done when you're traveling clear across London twice, no matter how much you're eavesdropping), a gust of wind literally blew it out of my hand and plopped it onto the track. 

    Ah. There it was, right there, just a teensy bit out of reach. Sitting on the track. But I know you're not supposed to climb down on the electrified tracks. No way. 

     So I went and found a friendly Tube attendant, who quickly came down with one of those  crab-claw thingies and got my card back for me.

     "Here you are, luv," she said as she handed the card back, cheerful, smiling. "Back on your way, then."