Truth is...I love the "tube" (aka the London Underground). You can get absolutely anywhere on it for little money, and there's no hassle driving on the crazy London streets or trying to find nonexistent parking.
One thing that struck me while spending time in tube stations is the sheer number of different languages you hear around you. It's almost impossible to pick out what they are because there are so many going on at once. Even English, spoken as they speak it in London, sounds foreign.
We were lucky to have a tube veteran like Ally with us, because even it you know the right train to take, you still need to get on the correct side of the platform for the direction you want to go. It didn't take her long to get back into tube mode, and soon we were zipping around the city.
London has several different tube lines going in all different directions. Which line you take determines how far down you go in the subway. For example, the District Line is closest to the surface and at some points is even above ground. The Piccadilly Line is the deepest, so if you take those trains, you'll be taking stairs and (if you're lucky) loooong escalators down into the deep of the tube station.
The Piccadilly Line connected through our station at Earl's Court, and went all the way out to Heathrow Airport. So that meant that when you rode the Piccadilly Line, you were sharing the space with lots of people traveling with lots of suitcases. Depending on the direction you were traveling, they either looked excited to be coming into the city for vacation, or exhausted and ready to catch that flight home.
Tube stations were also interesting. Outside of the city, most were just a place for the train to stop with maybe a ticket machine or two. They got bigger and nicer in town. Earls Court was a typical one, with ticket machines, a souvenir shop, and several cafes and sandwich places outside. South Kensington was bigger, with more shops in the station. You could grab some food for dinner, some flowers, buy lotto tickets and such. The Fulham & Broadway station (by Stamford Bridge stadium) was nearly a mall, with a grocery store, clothing stores, food court and more. And when you get to regional stations like Paddington or St Pancras, it's a full-fledged shopping center. From these stations, you can connect to trains taking you just about anywhere in the UK.
The trains themselves are functional and plain. They aren't that big, and have just one row of seating along each side. I found it interesting to observe that young women were more likely to offer their seat to an older person than young men were. And when entering or leaving or train, you were warned to "mind the gap" between the train and the station. Sometimes the gap was pretty large.
Speaking of gaps, there wasn't much of any gap between the sides of the trains and the walls of the underground. Two inches max. Guess they didn't want to do any more excavating than absolutely necessary.
We did witness one close call on the tube. Somebody getting off got their leg stuck in the door while it closed. The train was starting to pull away and there was lots of yelling and pounding on the car and it finally stopped and opened the door. Yikes!
Once onboard a train, the recorded announcement tells you the name of the station, and then the final destination of the train. My favorite was the Piccadilly, which went like this: "Earl's Court. This is a Piccadilly Line service to Cockfosters." Had to smile every time that perky British voice said "Cockfosters."
We did figure out that our neighborhood of Earl's Court was not named for some minor royalty, but the large Earl's Court arena that sits just behind the tube station. That was the location of the indoor volleyball competition at the Olympics.
In Barcelona, the tube is called the metro. Same basic principal as in London, though the Barca stations had escalators only for people going up, not going down. Not a huge deal, unless you're "going down" journey included heavy suitcases. The trains were much wider than London's, accommodating 2 rows of seats on each side and plenty of space to stand in the middle. I noticed a lot more space between the trains and the walls of the station, too.
The Barca stations left a lot to be desired. Most just had ticket machines and maybe a couple of vending machines. A few of the larger transfer stations had a tiny booth with snacks. Also gone was the clean white subway tiles of the London tube stations. Barca was into bare concrete walls.
The London stations were home to more entertainment. It wasn't unusual to find street musicians playing inside the stations; some playing instruments, some small groups and others playing an instrument along to a karaoke tape. The Barca subway, though, did have an Elvis impersonator in full white costume, lip synching to Elvis recordings. Priscilla Presley would have been appalled.
We were fortunate in Barca to be fairly close to a couple of main bus lines. In both cities, your metro pass was good for either, and while the underground can often be faster, the bus is far more scenic.
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