Aside from Rome I haven’t been anywhere exotic recently. The closest thing I’ve had to a holiday since the last is going to London for a few trips for various reasons – mainly for meetings. I like London even though it has a similar price problem to Rome, but the travel there is still a nightmare to use.
The tubes are great for getting around quickly but are usually very uncomfortable to use. I don’t know how people use it for long journeys every day in rush hour –it’s not something I’d like to do. They run on time and very regularly but aside from the Jubilee line the whole system seems very dated (although not as bad as somewhere like New York). Even so, the rush hour traffic is worse so I definitely understand why people prefer to use public transport. It seems if you want to get anywhere you have to accept that it’s going to take you a few hours even if it’s a relatively short trip.
I made the mistake of going up to London on the train during rush hour and that’s not an experience I want to repeat. The problem is that my stop is one of the last on the way to Waterloo so the train has already completely filled up by the time it gets to me. From now on I’m definitely going to try to schedule appointments for the middle of the day so I can avoid the worst of the traffic.
I recently got back from visiting Rome and I have to say that it’s an amazing city. It’s never really appealed to me in the past – I’m not one of those people who’s interested in Roman history – but some of the sites are very interesting to go and visit. There’s the obvious ones like the Colosseum and Pantheon, but some of the smaller things that you just see walking around are also fun to learn about.