We did not have an easy beginning to our trip. Despite changing our flight to one two hours earlier, our plane to Dallas was delayed by the Monday storms. Why we couldn’t just leave during a tornado I don’t know, but by the time we made it to Fort Worth our plane to London had already departed. Despite lots of panic and uncertainty, we were able to get a hotel for the night in Texas and arrange for different flights to take us. Finally, almost twenty-four hours after we were supposed to arrive in London, we made it.
Of course, after all that we had been through I wasn’t super keen to immediately get back on a form of transportation, however, the Tube was a pleasant surprise. After my experience trying to navigate the New York subway last summer, I was wary about using it, but my fears were unfounded. To access the Tube we had to use something called an “Oyster Card”. I looked up why it was called that and apparently its because of the “metaphorical implications of security and value in the hard bivalve shell and the concealed pearl” and “its association with London through Thames Estuary oyster beds and the major relevance of the popular idiom ‘the world is your oyster’” which seems a bit contrived to me, but what do I know?
Since I was part of a group, I had no worries about getting lost, but I was more concerned about getting separated. One would think how big the elevator down to the platform was there would be plenty of room for us, but we struggled to all get on. The train itself was similarly crowded, with us having to squeeze together to all fit. Luckily the ride itself was very quick, and we were off the train quicker than it had taken us to get to the Tube. The entire process was so painless, and I was so tired, that a lot of it just didn’t stick with me.
The ride back was also very painless. Despite being half-asleep, I made it back safely with the rest of the group, and wisely chose not to go up the over one-hundred steps, and instead rode the elevator, and made it back to the hotel where I was able to get some well needed rest for the first time since the trip began.
The next day in the morning we took the Tube as a group, but on the way back I had to go by myself. This time I was much more anxious about going, since if I made a mistake, there would be no one there to correct me. Luckily, it was simple enough, and I remembered enough from last time despite being so tired the last time I took the Tube back, that I was able to make it back without any issues.
If one thing is certain, experiencing the Tube definitely makes me wish we had this type of public transportation back in America. I can’t help but think that if we had been able to take a train to Dallas before leaving, we might have made it to London on time, and the experience might have been much more pleasant. Anyways, this has been the first of my travel blogs, goodnight, morning, or afternoon, and I hope you’ll read the next one.
-Jack Duncan
Theatre in London U of A 