The Great Train Adventure

Our first European adventure was to figure out how exactly to get from Heathrow Airport to the place we are staying in a little town outside of London. While you read the story I am about to tell you, I would like you to keep in mind that we were suffering from a glorious combination of severe sleep deprivation and jet lag.

Things started out well, or so we thought. Alan had some directions involving a bus and a train, and we found signs for the Central Bus Station in Heathrow almost immediately. We merrily followed the signs thinking "oh, this is easy! we're going to be so good at this!" Then things fell apart. We descended into a chaotic scene reminiscent of Grand Central at rush hour. We saw a sign for Information and thought "okay, no problem, we'll just ask someone". The only information we were able to gain was that he couldn't tell us anything. So we got in the ticket line and waited for 20 minutes. Meanwhile I will confess that I was getting a touch whiney. I had thought that Alan had this all figured out! I will try to be more easy going in future.

We (finally) get to a ticket window, and the lady has never heard of West Byfleet. She called in reinforcements and after some consultation of dusty reference books was able to figure out the type of pass we wanted. Then more catastrophe- we need photos to make ID cards for the British Rail system. Well, Alan was prepared but never told me that I needed one. More confusion! The people at the window were like "okay, no problem, just run over there with some coins and use the photobooth". But we, California folk that we are, carry no cash ever (you'd think we'd have learned our lesson from our recent trip to New York!).

Finally, what we ended up with was a 7 day rail pass for Alan, and a one way pass for me. But a one way pass to where? The lady had no idea what we were talking about with our bus and train route. More discussion, anxious consulting of books, whispered conversations with the manager. Meanwhile I was getting pretty grumpy, and Alan was getting grumpy right back. But it was sorted out after a while and we were on our way by a different route.

The train trip itself was uneventful. It was actually kind of challenging to convince myself we weren't just on a super cushy NY subway- even the smell inside the station was the same! We traveled via the Tube to a train station, then got on a train to West Byfleet, disembarked some amount of time later, and then walked the quarter mile or so-in the pouring rain- to the house where we spent the rest of the day trying hard not to fall asleep.