Arrived in Leeds!

Our bus left London at 1:30pm yesterday afternoon, so when we set off for Victoria Station at 11:30am, we thought we had lots of time. We had to walk to the overground railway and take one train with a connection to the underground train. No problem, and we got there about 12:30pm. Except we wanted to get the £5.00 each refund for our Oyster transportation cards.

When you get an Oyster card for London’s public transportation, you put the amount of money you want on it, and you pay a £5.00 deposit. When you’re done with the card, you turn it in and collect your deposit back. You can also get refunded any unused credit up to an additional £5.00. (I think we had under a pound each left on ours.) Many places can sell Oyster cards and top them up, but it is only the ticket office in the stations that give refunds.

So when we got to Victoria Station, we headed right for the refund counter. Except Victoria Station at noon hour was a zoo! It’s probably a zoo most of the day. The lineup was four aisles long, and they only had three windows open. I guessed it would be at least a 45 minute wait. So Ruth stood in line and I went searching for another option. I found a booth upstairs that had a shorter line and went back to get Ruth. When we got there, we noticed a sign that said “this booth not equipped for refunds”!

At this point, we just headed over to the Victoria Coach station. You’d think they would have another Oyster office there right? Wrong. So now we’re stuck with two Oyster cards and never got our £11.00 ($18.00) refund. Kinda pissed about that! Who knows, maybe we’ll make it back to London on this trip, but it’s not currently in the plans.

Scenery along the way.

More scenery.

Us on the bus!

The Megabus ride went fine. The bus was only about 5 minutes late leaving, and we arrived in Leeds about 20 minutes late, at 6:20 pm. It took an hour just to get outside of greater London! It was a drizzly day and it rained on and off the whole time. Nice day to be sitting on a bus!

More scenery. It sure is green here! Wouldn't have something to do with the rain, would it?!

Glad our Heys epac17 Roller backpacks have wheels!

When we got off the bus, we had a 5 minute walk to the Leeds train station where we bought a £1.80 ($2.95) each ticket to Burley Park. It was only about three miles, and when we got off it was only a 5 minute walk to our couchsurfing host Isabel’s house. Isabel welcomed us with a glass of wine and we chatted for a while before heading out for a late supper. She brought us to a relatively inexpensive Indian curry house where we had a huge meal for about £7.50 ($12.30) each.

The street where we are spending the next few days in Leeds.

Found out that this camera takes great night pictures!

It’s looking a little drizzly out there again this morning, so I guess our Mexican sunshine has taken a detour before arriving here! We’re meeting up with Wendy from the Leeds Tourism Office at 10:00am this morning and she’s going to give us some ideas for our exploring over the next few days. Tally-ho!