London

The Shard

Regardless of whether it's a good idea, it's really pretty.

London Eye

I always thought this was a bit silly, but it's actually quite impressive to be up in it.

Public Transport

Despite problems it's amazing to be somewhere where you can actually look up a sensible way from A to B and have some confidence that it will work, and know that most transport routes really will have another come along in 10 minutes, rather than running an ok service between 10am and 4PM, and then shutting down for rush-hour, evenings and weekends.

Serpentine Gallery

It is really cute, it feels like a proper posh art gallery (old buildings, white rooms, professional staff standing around discreetly in corners, uncluttered) but completely free just sitting in the middle of Hyde Park.

The exhibition was Thomas Schutte, who I'm embarrassed to say I knew literally nothing about, but it's very nice to take half an hour to just go and see something you wouldn't otherwise have seen.

The most impressive piece was this towering statue (more scary in person): http://www.serpentinegallery.org/IMG_5324-700.jpg I won't try to analyse it.

Natural History Museum

Ostriches are really big! As are emperor penguins, which I think were more bigger than I imagined than ostriches, whilst obviously not being as absolutely big.

And I bought the cutest stuffed toy ever (http://www.nhmshop.co.uk/dino-soft-toys/t-rex-soft-toy/product.html). I am indisputably over 3 years old :) The picture doesn't do it justice: it's really cuddly, but really fierce! It has a bendy plastic skeleton inside, so you can pose it with a lot of freedom and it will stand up in the pose.

National Rail

However, every time I go anyway, I am still horrendously annoyed by buying train tickets. I normally need an off-peak return.

This time I was confused because I tried to find out which trains back from London to Cambridge on Monday my off-peak ticket was valid for, but when I looked up journeys on the website none of the King's Cross trains were listed as offering an off-peak ticket.

I felt it was most likely that my ticket would work as normal, before whatever the rush-hour cut-off was. But I couldn't quite dismiss the nagging doubt that they might have found some loophole and changed the rules so the fast train was never off-peak -- that seemed ludicrous, but not the most ludicrous rules change I'd seen.[1]

In fact, it ended happily, as I decided to just go to King's Cross and try, and I arrived just as a fast Cambridge train was announced, and ran to the platform and got on with about thirty seconds to spare.

Looking at the national rail website now I'm back to a real web browser, it seems my mistake was to look at single fares. There are separate "slightly more off-peak tickets" only valid on Liverpool Street routes, just to make sure to gouge anyone who stupidly buys a ticket before comparing possible different tickets from different train operators, and those do have separate single and return off-peak tickets. So I hadn't realised that the suggested single ticket from King's Cross was "anytime" because the only possible "off-peak" ticket was a day return which cost more than a single anytime.

I should have figured that out if I looked at possible alternative tickets, but my mind stupidly got stuck on the idea that I could look at the website to figure out which trains my off-peak return were valid for, and I didn't consider the alternatives.[2]

And that doesn't even touch on the rules for when a rail ticket "to London Terminals" is valid on a tube ride (it seems "often, but never quite on the one you want to take").

[1] I assumed "peak" meant "peak travel times", but a friend insisted it meant "peak prices", and if it did, "off-peak" would technically be a valid description even if the ticket was only valid on second tuesdays...

[2] I do think it's somewhat deceptive to sell someone a ticket which is supposedly valid on different trains, whilst deliberately obscuring which trains it IS valid on. And yes, I realise if I scrupulously want to travel at a particular time, however expensive or inconvenient, the rail planner works, but that's not automatically the case.