OFF: UK travel tips?

[Arin Komins]

On Wed, 1 May 2002, John Majka wrote:

:Subject: OFF:  UK travel tips?
:
:So I've now got my plane ticket to London for this upcoming Hawk event, but
:I'm wondering what an American ought to do about the travel situation.  Is
:public transportation widely and easily available in England?  Should I rent
:a car?  The idea of zipping down the "wrong" side of the road makes me fear
:accidentally driving by instinct (i.e. the USA way) and getting into some
:sort of fearsome accident.... has anyone else been in this travel situation
:and how did you solve it?
:John Majka
:jmajka2 at comcast.net

Out of curiosity, what airline are you flying?  I'm still trying
to find a reasonable rate to get over there.

(hey boc-l'ers.  chime in with what airlines you are flying, and what
price you managed to get.)

As for transportation, well, I think it depends on how close your flights
are to the fest itself.

When I went over to the UK and did the "drooling fangirl follow the band
around" thing, I rented a car, mostly because I didn't trust pubtrans
to get me where I needed to go in the short period of time I had to
travel.

Although Rich managed to get around ok by train when he did his week.

That said, a couple of caveats about renting a car over there:

1) If you don't drive a manual, you may find that most rental agencies
don't have automatics available, and if they do, then they are more
expensive....

2) Make sure you familiarize yourself with road regulations before renting
the car.  The agency I rented from didn't give me any of that, and I was
very confused at first.

3) The slow lane is the left lane, not the right. This is probably
self-evident to everyone but me, but hey....

4) Street signs are frequently somewhat lower to the ground, then they
are in the states.

5) watch out for really narrow roads.

6) Take extra time.  Whenever I got stressed out (as Mike, Jill, and
Rich can attest ;-) ), I fell back into drifting to the wrong side of the
road.

7) When planning routes, Motorways and A roads are decent in size, but
the others can be iffy.

....that said, of course, I'm sure there are going to be a bunch of
us flying into London and needing to get out to the fest site.

We should rent a coach or something, if we can all coordinate times.

Arin
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Arin Komins                                   akomins at uchicago.edu
Manager of Web Systems Architecture
University of Chicago/NSIT                      tel: (773)834-4087
1155 E. 60th St. #302B Chicago, IL 60637        fax: (773)702-0559
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