choo! choo!

06.may.2005: as much as i dislike the 24-hour system the trains run on, i love the trains themselves. they’re the ONLY way to travel across britain. you get to look out the window and see the countryside, you can get a huge table to put your stuff on, and some trains come with an electrical outlet for your laptop or mobile. an 8-hour train ride doesn’t seem like 8 hours at all. and the virgin trains even have their own programmed radio station consoles.

i bought a $300 britrail flexipass back at home that allows me to travel for 8 days within a 2-month span. so far, it has taken me everywhere i needed to be and more. it’s quite a pricey ticket, but it was definitely worth every penny. i’ve journeyed to london, nottingham, glasgow, edinburgh and bristol all on that ticket, and that’s only 2 weeks into it. and the coolest thing (and i don’t know if i should say this publically, lest the nice folks at national rail find my blog and hunt me down), but there’s absolutely no way the ticket takers know when my 8th day is. i’ve used the ticket for at least 6 days, and they only marked me down for 2. i don’t know if it’s common practice, but they never write down the date on my ticket like they’re supposed to.

or maybe they’re not supposed to, and i think i’m getting away with something perfectly legal. there might be a clause in there somewhere that states that the 8 days are really 48-hour periods or something weird like that.

who knows? all i know is that i’m very very very lucky to have that train access.