London for ever - 3

Despite of  its high cost rating of life, London free time can be considered cheaper than other great europeans capitals like Rome, Madrid and Paris on regard of spending your free time.

First of all let's mention  newspapers and magazines. Well they mihgt be considered the first step of employing your free time. Not only because reading is leisure time par excellence, but also because in papers and magazines you can find how to spend better your leisure time.

If you have follow me in the previous articles on London, you have already acquired the great importance that the underground transports (the famous Tube) have in London. Well, in all the Tube's stations you can find daily free papers as good level such as Evening Standard, Metro and CityAM.

Furthermore, now, you can even found the topic enjoying magazine for free: I'm talking about TimeOut, the historical, most ancient and best magazine for shows, events, rendez-vous and anythingelse going on in London.

We must also say that all the biggest museums in London are free: we quote one for all: "the British Museum". Do I need to say more about?

And now Theaters. In London there a lot of theaters for all tastes and any kind of shows: prose and classical  dramas, opera houses, musicals, movies, ethnical and anything else. And some of them are even free.

Personally I remember  a Hamlet representation in the late seventies.

My first love in theatre has been Shakespeare, though the first drama I have read of his, is The Tempest.

But Hamlet has made me think about the real importance of life.

I wanted to attend a school drama in London, when the odd events of life took me far away from there.

But there is  still time to dream over in London!

London for ever - 2

London has got a lot of things to see. That's why you need to know how excellent are the London's transports. Let's say that the best way is to subscribe an Oyster card. It's a very cheap card and thanks to it you can use both the tube and the double deckers, what I call the two big monsters in the London transport system.

The tube is something unthinkeable and not imaginable if you don't see try it personally. It covers all the 33 boroughs on which London is spread. At any time the trains pass by to collect the passengers and carry them wherever they like to go. The most important stations are connected with the airports: Victoria to Heatrhow; Liverpool station to Stansted; Kings Cross to Luton and Gatwick. But if you need to buy a ticket dont'worry about, plenty of staff  are ready to help you. And if your bank has a convention with London Royal Transport you can even pay your fare by simply  swipping your credit card in the entrance and the exit gate.

I personally prefer the double deckers. In many towns in the world tourists are offered  to visit the sorroundings by hiring a panoramic bus and paying for it the right fare (which might cost you from five up to twenty pounds for the ticket. In London you don't have such a cos. Every single double decker bus has a panoramic sight form the uplevel stage. So you can go anywhere, and enjoy the sorrounding pitches without any overcharge but paying only the simple fare.

2. to be continued...

London for ever

You can say what you want about London; That's too chaotic is true; the wheather is not good for most of the year along; the pollution, specially in the central areas is still at an high level,  and the cost of the life, well, leave off 'cause is much better.

Nevertheless London plays a very strong appeals for a lot of people,  if is true, as it is true, that its population is all the time increasing; you can see buldings yards everywhere, expanding the borders of the town ever and ever.

And so, why is London a place of so much interest?

Well I cann't be very impartial answering the question 'cause London for me represents a  special place of the memory.

I've lived there when I was a young man. Nothing out of ordinary. But in those far years I found there a shelter for my troubled soul; there I found a job: very hard at the beginning but lighter and brighter with the  increasing of experience.

London is a great mother, strict but fair, who receives anyone and pays to anyone his own tribute.

I've been there in the past few days, after almost four decades from my first journey.

It has been exciting to be in again.

Though I'm another man now, so different from that young boy full of dreams, naive and idealist, who searched at the time a inexistent  world, I must recognise that London is still a beatiful town.

In the following posts I'll point out details and circustances which make it so beautiful.

1. to be continued...