Leah & Julian in The World

Iconic London: Big Ben & The Tube

This morning we checked the BBC weather site for London. It provided us with a 12-hour forecast: Light Rain, followed by Heavy Rain, then a Heavy Rain Shower, clearing to Sunny Intervals, followed by a Sleet Shower, then a Hail Shower, a Light Snow Shower and finally Partly Cloudy. I was not aware there were so many types of precipitation, and to think we would have the privilege of experiencing them all in one day!

Alas, it was not to be. We toured the neon-lit Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Parliament, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey, all the while with grey-blue skies and not a drop of rain in sight until the walk home when a few flakes of snow (ok, it was probably sleet) fell to the ground.

The other two noticeable things about London are – it is clean, and it is efficient. The Underground system demonstrates both these things. It is litter- and graffiti-free. I can’t picture traveling 10m on a Brisbane train without spotting a piece of graffiti, in fact you will most likely have some on your window to accompany you during your journey. Not in London. The Tube is also very efficient, transporting 1 billion passengers a year. Everything is uni-directional, crowds of Londoners move quickly like lemmings and the whole system is supported by an even bigger above-ground public transport network.

Pedestrians in London are recklessly impatient. I’m not entirely sure they understand the meaning of the little red and green men. Conceding defeat in this area, the council has, rather than re-train the masses, painted in large white letters on the road LOOK RIGHT at the entry of every crossing. It does little to slow the impetuous pedestrians down and they continue to strip layers of red paint off the double-decker buses they time so well to avoid. Did I mention London is efficient?

Big Ben