alywin

fringefan, on 04 January 2013 - 05:48 PM, said:

I sat in an aisle seat on my one visit so far: I'm 5'6", and not convinced I could bear the inside seats.  The stadium-style seating is useful, though, especially when you're used to the lousy rakes in many West End theatres.  Nice theatre, though - anyone tried the food?  The place was full when I got there, hence I too had to go and use M&S.

Thanks.  I'm going to the South Bank today, so will see if I can find the whole range at the NT.  What I did like about the Evening Standard guide was that I could write comments all over it, which I don't think I shall be able to do on any of the book-type ones.

I came up to the West End again last night - again having to change at London Bridge, without problems - and found it distinctly busy and buzzing, more so than usual for a Tuesday night: queues at tkts, English National Ballet's Swan Lake well sold, restaurants busy.  People working around Oxford Street say that's as busy as normal, just with a different crowd - noticeably athletes and so on.

(I do feel sorry for shops in Stratford Westfield having the centre only open for Olympics ticketholders, though - NOT what they'd hoped for, I suspect).

alywin, on 01 August 2012 - 10:37 AM, said:

Okay, my computer took so long to do its backup that I missed the Charing Cross train, and with some trepidation got on the Cannon Street one.  Had absolutely no problem changing to a CX train at London Bridge, then had business to transact at Charing Cross.  Got on the 38 bus at Denmark Street, and we whizzed off and into New Oxford Street, where we were stuck virtually without moving for about 10 minutes, I should think.  I got off and started walking, but by the time I got to the junction with Southampton Row traffic seemed to be moving fine in all directions.  Walked and bus-hopped up to Sadler's Wells, arriving too late to risk eating in a restaurant beforehand, but otherwise no problems.

Got Northern Line down to London Bridge, and encountered the highly annoying 5-minute detour to the railway trains: wouldn't want to get there too close to departure time, as you could end up missing your train if there was a crush.  Fortunately, I did have a few minutes to spare, so caught my train.  So, not entirely a doddle, but no worse than many other journeys I've made over the years.

I was prompted to come over here after reading the WOS email yesterday which seemed to imply that theatres were having problems and putting part of the blame on TFL (I think) "scaremongering".  As I'm actually based in the suburbs, and no longer work in central London, I really have no idea what the traffice/public transport problems are like, and was hoping someone could give us an idea?

I would be fine getting to Charing Cross, I'm sure, provided I get the Southeastern trains going there, but am worried about the situation at London Bridge with the Southeastern platforms being either "alight only" or "pick up only" - can't remember which.  Since most of my routes into and out of London involve using Southern trains, which only go as far as London Bridge and therefore necessitate changing to get into the West End, whichever ban it is is likely to cause me great difficulty, I think.  (I'm particularly considering going to Islington at the moment, so Northern Line as well).