Globaliser

There is indeed a significant hill up from Riverside to the Castle - so if it's important to avoid it, then you haven't done the wrong thing. But I think that the last time I posted about that, it was for the benefit of someone who was planning to have all their luggage with them, rather than someone just visiting Windsor for the day.

The only thing that I would add to this great explanation is that on the Tube map you will sometimes see a dotted line connecting two separate stations (eg Tower Hill <--> Tower Gateway, or Euston <--> Euston Square). The legend indicates that this means that it's less than 10 minutes to walk between the stations. However, in all (or almost all) cases, it also means that if you exit at one station and immediately enter the other, this will count as an interchange in the same way as if you had changed trains entirely inside a single station. Although you have to touch out and then touch in again, the system will charge you for the through journey, not as two separate journeys. This is known as an "Out of Station Interchange" or OSI. This part of the fares system also applies if you use a TfL payment method (Oyster or contactless) and change between TfL services and National Rail services on a journey to which a TfL fare applies (journeys entirely within the TfL area, plus a handful of others), requiring you to touch out and touch in (as is usual). Occasionally, you will find that an interchange inside a station will also require you to touch out through a ticket gate and then touch in again at another ticket gate. Some of the signed routes inside Bank/Monument station to get to/from the Waterloo and City Line require this. The same OSI logic applies. Like many other things to do with transport in London, it sounds more complicated than it is. As a user, you will normally be able to just use the available transport, and let the fares system do its work by itself. Unfortunately, I think that Windsor is outside the TfL fares area so this doesn't apply. There are some on the Internet, but I would recommend only looking at them for interest rather than for navigation purposes. (Relying on internal official signage is best for occasional users. I think you'd only want to have a 3D model of any particular station in your own head if you're a frequent user of it and need to get the best out of it.) There is a collection of axonometric diagrams here: https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/3d-maps-of-every-underground-station-ab-14630/ https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/3d-maps-of-every-underground-station-cdefg-14651/ https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/3d-maps-of-every-underground-station-hijklm-14683/ https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/3d-maps-of-every-underground-station-nopqrs-14715/ https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/3d-maps-of-every-underground-station-tuvw-14744/ In addition, there's a selection of interactive 3D diagrams here: https://stations.aeracode.org/ However, please note that some of these are now out of date because a number of stations (particularly Bank/Monument) have had major upgrades and alterations.

As markeb says, as long as you and your husband have two different physical cards, you should be OK. For your daughter, one other option might be to load one of your cards onto a phone, providing it has NFC (contactless) functionality. AIUI, the phone should then count as a further "card" which your daughter could use in addition to your two physical cards. But one potential disadvantage (seeing as you would be sharing one card account) could be that if your credit card company sees three charges coming onto the card account every day from the same merchant, that could trip some fraud or similar detector on the card account. What are the foreign transaction fees? It's easy to get unnecessarily hung up about these. If you only travel in Zones 1 and 2, you won't pay more than £8.50 per day for your TfL travel. At a typical forex rate of 3%, the fee would be the equivalent of 25p, which is really not worth worrying about. Also, TfL only sends one charge to the card per day, so even if there is some form of per-transaction charge, you'd only pay it once per day.

I knew he was old, but I didn't know he was that old!

I don't think that UK train tickets have to be on an app. I've always been able to choose to pick up a paper ticket or to get a PDF instead. I suspect that there would be trouble for any train operator that made it compulsory to use a smartphone simply to travel on public transport.

Yes, that's how they are sized. I have no idea why. As for a ticket that's designed for printing on A4: the bar codes will usually work even if you print them onto A5, so the tiny difference between A4 and letter is completely immaterial. Just last week, an exasperated member of staff at a theatre thanked us for printing our tickets onto paper. They scan so much more quickly and accurately than barcodes presented on a phone.

That's good news - thanks for letting us know!

It makes me wonder whether they will start thinking about doing the SJC for three weeks a year, although the musicians may not be so keen on that.

What time of the year would this be for? Generically, Citadines and Club Quarters would have been my first suggestions. I know people (including a mutual acquaintance) who have used both chains. But I think that they're all central London locations, and probably priced accordingly.

It's not just branding. SWR is a completely different company from LNER. They're only "part of National Rail" in the sense that they both belong to what used to be called the Association of Train Operating Companies, which is now part of the Rail Delivery Group. The members of the group will each sell almost all tickets for any train operated by any group member, as well as through fares that require travel on more than one company's trains. If I had to guess, it would seem less likely to be a deliberate decision not to accept overseas customers, and more likely that it's simply a website/database construction/security limitation that the company sees no commercial need/imperative to resolve. The number of customers who can only give a non-UK address and must register an account in order to book a ticket in advance for SWR trains is probably negligible, particularly given the nature of SWR's network, passenger and fares mix. It's different for (say) LNER which basically only operates long-distance trains on which advance booking is important for a large proportion of customers. It's exactly the same as airlines, driven by very similar commercial imperatives.

As ever, your instinct was correct: that 26-day hole has now been filled (together with some other holes in her schedule). I'm not sure the NCL website understands how the International Date Line works, but that's probably for another day and another thread.

You wanted Saudia?

Yes, normally. It just takes some practice. Having said that, I'm pretty fond of the vast open spaces of the forward upper deck loos on BA's A380s.

I agree about the last point, but I find airline PJs tend to be made of some of the nastiest artificial fabrics that can be found, and are therefore usually quite uncomfortable. So I bring my own stuff, which is well worth the small extra effort of carrying it. It's useful to hear this from you, too. JAL isn't often an option for my routes, but it's been cropping up as a possibility a bit more often recently.

I doubt it. In pre-Covid times, you might have had a decent chance, but even then I wouldn't have booked it. You also need to be aware that the RailAir link is not a train. It's a bus that takes you to Woking (or possibly Guildford) to change there for a train. A quick look suggests that the bus runs twice an hour, but it may be that there is only one train an hour from Woking.