Transport Troubles

Moving to Southern London has not been without it's troubles. Overall it's easily a better fit for us... not having a kitchen was getting old. There is, however, something Northern London has that the south side of the Thames is still lacking- the tube. The Underground is a fantastically frequent and conveniently commonplace method of travel throughout London, mostly because of the fact that it's, well, underground. No traffic, no pedestrians, and no weather means the trains can run almost seamlessly year round. The trains in Southern London, however, are mostly on the National Rail system which is almost entirely aboveground. The National Rail is notorious for it's tardiness and tendency to cancel routes altogether without much warning. Additionally, the stops are often miles apart instead of a few city blocks which means getting to one often requires taking a bus. This weekend somehow seemed to be particularly challenging for our travels...

Thursday should have been a typical work day. Worship practice at Wood Green is on Thursdays so Jodi will usually bring Alexa home so they can bake something- and I never complain about that. Last Thursday, however, I wasn't needed at rehearsal so we decided to go to Chipotle in Oxford Street for dinner with the Boundless 8 and a new guy from the International Audit Department, Jonas. After dinner Jodi and I went to Starbucks with Alexa and Cameron where we chatted until about 7:30. We took the Victoria line to Brixton as usual but when we came out of the station, we saw that our bus was already at the stop on the next block. We ran to the bus and got there as the last two people in the queue were boarding. The driver, however, didn't think our sprint was worthy of his time and he closed the door before we could get on. We ended up having to take three buses to get home. Stress.

Friday we decided to have an impromptu family dinner, which ended up actually being most-of-the-family dessert. We stopped at Denmark Hill, where the others live, because some of them wanted to change before heading to our house. The bus ride from Denmark Hill to Upper Norwood is usually about 30 minutes. For some reason, on Friday it was 75. Strike two, London transport. Strike two.

Saturday was both fantastic and awful. We had decided a few months earlier to help out our territory at the Camp America job fair here in London so they had more people to operate the booths and didn't have to send as many from the States. But this meant waking up at 5:30 for me and Jodi. We usually wake up at 5 for work, though, so it wasn't terrible. The commute there was easy, too, so all was well. For a while. The fair itself was a lot of fun- it made me miss working at camp but we were able to find some quality staff members for several camps in the West. After the fair we started home but only made it halfway. Trains to our neighborhood were all cancelled because of a "problem on the tracks". We managed to make it a few more stops on another line but then got stuck in New Cross Gate. I still have no idea where New Cross Gate is. Fortunately, we have apps that tell us what to do in these situations but the bus route it put us on took us right into the heart of the only area in London we were told to never visit at night. And it was definitely after dark. We never actually felt in danger but we've also walked the streets of Tunis with armed military police (as in M16 armed) so we are considerably more seasoned travelers than we used to be. Ha. Yeah right. Anyway, we got on the wrong bus, switched back to the right one, transferred to our homebound bus, and then finally made it home 90 minutes later. Strike three, London transport.

By Sunday transport had already struck out so we were good to go... or not. We got to church fine and after church we had a lovely lunch and chat with some new friends from the corps. They also lived conveniently close to a National Rail Station that could get us all the way home with only one transfer at King's Cross! We made it to King's Cross just fine but when we checked the prompter, there was not a single southbound train leaving the station. Now, King's Cross is not exactly a small station by any standard. There are 27 platforms if you count the international platforms and NONE of them were going south. We live in the south. We decided to take the Victoria line (one of six tube lines through KC) to Brixton again, despite the poor luck we had with it two days before. The bus driver was insanely fast this time, which kind of made up for the whole we-aren't-sending-any-trains-through-Farringdon fiasco.

On Monday we were back to our typical travel schedule. No more weekend random maintenance and closures, no more transport issues. We got to our train station and when we got to the platform noticed that they were still announcing issues with Farringdon. A few minutes later, a Tulse Hill employee came onto the platform to tell us there weren't any trains going into London from our platform. This wasn't the end of the world... there is one other platform that goes into London. When we got to that one, however, the train due to arrive at 5:56 wasn't there yet. It was 6:45. It ended up coming only 5 minutes later so we weren't delayed by much but we still had to walk about a mile to work when we got into the city. Fun times.

Today's travels were normal and only one train was a little late. While these situations were all pretty terrible, they are usually few and far between. I'm just funnier when I'm annoyed at something. This week should be good as far as transport goes but there's snow in the forecast for Thursday which the trains dislike...

We didn't take any photos this week but here's a tube and rail map!

Back to Blogging

So it's been a while since we've posted a blog. Like, a month. Lots has happened but we won't go through it all here. I basically decided that while we were on holiday, we wouldn't blog. And then that continued for another week. I doubt we'll keep up the weekly pace.

Anyway, week one of our holiday. The cruise. We took a Mediterranean cruise through 6 cities and 4 countries and I'm going to limit myself to one sentence for each. We first flew to Genoa, Italy, which was pretty uneventful. We had to take suitcases on buses which is not fun but if you're going somewhere cool, like Italy, it's worth it. Our first city on the actual cruise was Rome. Rome was Jodi's favorite city and the only city where we paid for a full tour. Our tour, as you can see in the Facebook album, included most of the typical touristy sites including the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and Vatican City. After Rome was Palermo on the island of Sicily. The port was conveniently close to the main part of the city so Jodi and I explored on our own and managed to get some fantastic photos and gelato. No wifi, though. Even in restaurants that said they had wifi. We then crossed the sea to Tunis, the capital and port city of Tunisia. some words of advice: if you travel to Tunis, have transportation ready or be prepared to walk through gauntlets of taxi drivers that are NOT afraid to literally run after you in search of a fare. After Tunis we had a day at sea where we officially grew tired of our ship's entertainment amenities. We decided it would be a good idea to visit the outdoor jacuzzi when it was 40º F and ridiculously windy. Then we realized how terrible that idea actually was. We were happy to leave the ship the next day when we arrived in Barcelona, which was my favorite city. While Jodi was hoping to exercise her Spanish here, we learned instantly that locals speak Catalan in Barcelona. Neither of us speak Catalan. But Barcelona is beautiful and clean and full of artsy, food-loving culture so I was okay with that. Our last city was Aix-en-Provence in Southern France. It was probably the coldest city but there was something incredibly homey about it. It felt like a movie. I was able to use my painfully rusty French and we found a cafe that served crepes and espresso so, naturally, we indulged. We then returned to Genoa, spent way too long in their tiny airport, and returned home.

Our time back in London was short. Three days after we returned from our cruise, we left again for Los Angeles. Our friends Sam and Leah were getting married and we were frankly growing homesick. a welcomed retreat. Fun fact: the couple that got married met at our wedding. It's kind of our fault. Anyway, we paid visits to old friends and bought more American things than we should have at superspeed because we only spent 6 days in LA. And one of them was reserved for Disneyland. Unfortunately in all of this haste, we forgot to take any pictures of anything ever. So enjoy the cruise photos.

Last week we were at work catching up on everything we missed the three weeks preceding. Exciting.

Click here to see our cruise album.

Safety drills...

When in Rome...

Tuning a tuun in Tunis, Tunisia.