{"id":17398,"date":"2022-05-10T16:21:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-10T21:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/?p=17398"},"modified":"2023-03-10T13:32:57","modified_gmt":"2023-03-10T19:32:57","slug":"six-tips-for-traveling-in-the-u-k","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/2022\/05\/10\/six-tips-for-traveling-in-the-u-k\/","title":{"rendered":"Six tips for traveling in the U.K."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As of the time I\u2019m writing this, I\u2019ve traveled to London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and the coast of Wales, so I thought I\u2019d share some observations and tips I\u2019ve picked up for traveling in the U.K., for those of you planning to do the same when you\u2019re here.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Mia
Mia at the Tower of London.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

Tip #1:<\/strong> Water fountains don\u2019t exist here \u2014 the closest you\u2019ll get is a water bottle filler in some of the bigger train stations. So if you want water while traveling, outside of when you\u2019re eating a sit-down meal, you have to either bring it with you (and rehydrate when you find one of the water bottle fill stations) or buy bottled water along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tip #2:<\/strong> It\u2019s also harder to come by public bathrooms (referred to as \u201ctoilets\u201d here), and you often have to pay to access them. If you\u2019re going to museums and pubs and stuff, there are restrooms there, but if you want to access one in a public park or certain stations (Edinburgh Waverley, or the Westminster underground station in London, for example), you\u2019ll probably need 50 pence coins \u2014 so keep change in your pocket when roaming.\u00a0I\u2019ve also encountered toilets that wanted 20 pence coins and contactless payment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tip #3:<\/strong> There\u2019s an app called Bounce where you can rent storage space for your bag(s) at local businesses during the day.\u00a0It costs roughly $8 a day for one bag, and if there are participating locations near where you are, it\u2019s a great way to get your backpack off your shoulders if you\u2019re running around exploring all day and can\u2019t check in to your hotel until later.\u00a0My friends and I have used it multiple times and never had issues with lost or damaged possessions.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Landscape
A panoramic view of Glasgow from the Necropolis.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

Tip #4:<\/strong> If you plan to run around London quite a bit, get the all-day travel card (we got the \u201czones 1-6\u201d one) at the underground rail ticket stations.\u00a0It costs about $25, which may seem like quite a bit, but you have to ride the underground to get anywhere in the city, so if you\u2019re hopping on an underground train every hour or two, having the one card you can scan over and over without worrying about whether you\u2019re in the right place, or paying for a new ticket every time you go anywhere is SO helpful. (Just be careful about keeping it in your pocket next to your phone, or in your wallet \u2014 one friend had the stripe on hers demagnetize from being next to her phone, and another friend\u2019s cards kept getting eaten by the turnstiles until he stopped keeping it in his wallet.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tip #5:<\/strong> Watch your pockets, and put the valuables in your backpack in an interior pocket.\u00a0I know they give you all sorts of warnings about travel safety, and it\u2019s easy to brush them off, but I actually had an incident once where I was standing on a train, and the girl behind me opened the front pocket of my backpack to dispose of her leftover bag of crisps (potato chips) and I would never have known if my friend who was facing her hadn\u2019t alerted me.\u00a0Fortunately, she just wanted a garbage can, but I had my student ID and about $50 in cash sitting right there in that pocket where she could easily have grabbed it if she were a thief. So put valuable stuff like money, ID, Bluetooth earbuds, etc. in an inside pocket where it can\u2019t be easily found by someone if they unzip your backpack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tip from Mizzou Study Abroad: On public transportation or in crowded places, it’s safest to wear your backpack on your front to keep an eye on it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\"Landscape
The shoreline in Conwy, Wales.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

Tip #6:<\/strong> Use the Trainline app, and get a railcard.\u00a0They give you a lot of travel advice when you first arrive, so it can be hard to know what\u2019s worth your time and money for your individual situation, but I can say from personal experience that if you travel by train more than once or twice, a 16-25 railcard is worth its weight in gold.\u00a0It costs almost $40 but takes a third off all future rail purchases.\u00a0For context, one round trip from Lancaster to London can cost over 100 quid (about $125) without a card, depending on how last minute you buy the ticket, so the card pays itself off and saves you money very, very quickly. Also, the trainline app (icon is a green background with the word \u201ctrain\u201d in white letters) is super helpful for looking up train times, booking tickets in advance, tracking a train along its route if you\u2019re waiting for it or need to know how close to your destination you are, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
Learn more about this blogger’s study abroad program: Lancaster University<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As of the time I\u2019m writing this, I\u2019ve traveled to London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and the coast of Wales, so I thought I\u2019d share some observations and tips I\u2019ve picked up for traveling in the U.K., for those of you planning to do the same when you\u2019re here. Tip #1: Water fountains don\u2019t exist here \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[195],"class_list":["post-17398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-united-kingdom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17398"}],"version-history":[{"count":41,"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18501,"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17398\/revisions\/18501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}