For most of 2012 I was commuting to work into Waterloo station, apparently the busiest station in London (and busy enough during rush hour, making that the busiest station in the UK. And that should be pretty busy, given how packed the train and tube network are. So it was pretty revealing to see that there was no UK station in this list of top 51 busiest train stations in the world. As an example, somewhere I'm more than familiar with, Osaka Umeda, gets an annual 820,000,000 passengers per year and it's 4th on the list. First of all, holy crap that's a huge number of people. But compare that with the comparatively puny 82,000,000 per year in Waterloo (according to the Transport for London website). Even my old commuting spot of Sannomiya in Kobe (a city less that a quarter of the size of London) is high on the list at 16 with 240,000,000. It really goes to show how the Japanese train network is on a whole other level to that of practically anywhere in Europe. The highest ranking station in Europe is Paris Gare-du-Nord at 190,000,000. And all but six of the stations on the list are in Japan - number one is Shinjuku, Tokyo with a whopping 1.2 billion passengers a year. Link via Digg.com Update: So there was a further post here with a full list of the busiest 100 stations and Waterloo makes it in at 91. 91!

Another day trip, this time in the opposite direction from Bath. Canterbury has a well enough preserved medieval town centre to have been granted UNESCO status. With its famous big cathedral in the centre, it's the seat of the head of the Church of England and all the history that goes with it. On the day we visited the weather was great - one of those rare English summer days this year with sunshine and warmth at the same time. The train journey down was past fields of wheat ready to harvest and orchards of fruit I couldn't quite make out through the scratched graffiti on the window. It was nice wandering the tiny medieval streets that you'd normally expect to find somewhere famous tourist destinations in France or Germany. Unfortunately even here you can't escape the usual chains of restaurants and coffee shops, but I was still taken aback by the history of Nero coffee chain..

I got another chance to be an Olympic spectator as the cycling passed through town not too far from our apartment. I couldn't turn down the chance to see an event within walking distance, and anyway it was going to be over in a matter of seconds. We stood waiting with a pretty huge crowd and loads of volunteers kitted out in their purple uniforms and cheer, shepherding people across the road at crossings. Someone nearby was watching the tv coverage on their phone as we were waiting and could see that wherever they passing through at that moment it was pouring rain. And so we waited wondering whether the cyclists would arrive before everyone got soaked. We were teased a few times with the arrival of police escorts and team cars, each causing a ripple of anticipation to spread out in the crowd followed by a big sigh. In the end the rain arrived just before the riders, and in the space of about 30 seconds all the riders passed through and miraculously not one crashed despite going really fast on the wet road and through the tight curve we were standing at. At the end of the 30 seconds everyone was drenched and ran off just as quickly. It's nice to say I saw the race but I'm just as glad I didn't have to pay this time. Update: The cycling came our way again, this time the men's time trial. And they slowed down enough to actually see who they were!

I'd managed to ignore most of the build up to the olympics (beyond dreading what it was going to do the transport system) and not waste hours online trying to get a lottery-allocated ticket to the Olympic Stadium. So it was a bit of a surprise to find myself on the day after the opening ceremonies in the Olympic park, early on a Saturday morning in a Handball arena along with a thousand other ticket holders whom I wouldn't have been surprised to find out also had, until a week previous, no intentions of getting caught up in the olympic hype. We were all there to see the women's Angola and Russia teams square off, then the South Korean and Spanish teams compete. Aware that almost everyone there that morning probably had no idea of the rules, the MC went through everything during the build up explaining the rules and strategies of the game and trying to get everyone into it. With few people having any idea who to support, the crowd got behind the Angolan's once they were established as the underdogs; the Russian's became the heels and suffered all the boo's. Everyone got in to the atmosphere, but it still wasn't quite enough to stop everyone from dozing off by the end of the second match. We wandered around the park afterwards, grabbing a glimpse of the impressive velodrome and basketball court. The official programme was a fleecing 10 pounds for skinny magazine full of ads, the food was pretty awful, but it was well worth the trip on a cold July (summer!?) morning.

One of those rare nice sunny days was a good opportunity to visit one of England's most famous beach resorts, Brighton. Historically famous for loads of reasons, not least gay community, site of IRA bombings and its weird, onion domed Royal Pavillion. The train journey is less than an hour and a half from London, but for us - taking the train into London, waiting to change at Clapham Junction, and then getting on the already jam packed train, was a little more involved. The beach isn't exactly sandy (unless large pebbles still counts as sand) and the water must have been pretty damned cold not to have a single swimmer (pretty sure there're no nasty stingers or sharks here) but that didn't stop the beach looking packed like in high summer. Brighton has more indie shops and restaurants than I've seen since arriving in the UK and it was also heartening to see not everyone was looking forward to the much publicised jubilee either.

Despite knowing in advance that it would be a crap weekend (another May day with temperatures barely breaking double-digits) we decided to go on one of the recommended day trips from London, this time to Bath. I'd been there once before, on my only school trip of secondary school, where we went to visit the birthplace of Shakespeare and stopped in Bath overnight on the way back. Even then I remember it having been a nice place, but I was also more interested in playing the Smash TV arcade game on the ferry over and back. This time we were up early to get a train to the Waterloo, to get the tube to Paddington, to get the train to Bath. As early as it was, nowhere was empty, especially Paddington station which serves as the train connection to Heathrow. And apart from everyone with their luggage going to the airport there were plenty of people with the same idea as us; the train was jammers. After an hour and a half we got off in what looked like a really nice town, full of tourists and for that afternoon, sunshine. We did the tour of the old Roman ruins complete with Audio guide by Bill Bryson who seemed just a little too bowled over with the place to be believable. It's apparently the only hot spring in the UK - not exactly the land of onsens. Spent the afternoon walking around all the very fancy victorian streets and crescents and Jane Austen period townhouses, and was kind of surprised and disappointed that this place had more cafes and restaurants (not of the franchise variety) than most of the places we'd seen in London. Anyway it's not like we could afford to live in what often looked like an open-air museum.

Despite having been to London a few times there are still loads of tourist spots I've never seen (one of the attractive points of coming to live here are that there are just so many). So it seemed appropriate to try another one. We headed to Baker St station on the Bakerloo line, one of the browner-looking old tube lines (but also one I rarely hear of having major delays), and full of Sherlock Holmes tiling, right around the corner from Madame Tussaud's, another tourist spot I've never seen but one I'm not in much of a hurry to see. There was a long enough line snaking out of the Sherlock Holmes museum on 221b Baker St and, being guarded by a period dressed policeman, at this time was full of young Japanese tourists. The museum was pretty good though, full of wax reproductions of famous characters and props from the stories - severed fingers, pistols, blue carbuncle's - and real letters from random people all over the world asking Mr. Holmes for help or mentioning they'd spotted Moriarty on the No. 17 bus just last week. The most surprising thing was actually how small the place was, or really how small the rooms and how low the ceilings. Maybe it's more true to life, but anytime I've seen Sherlock Holmes on TV or in the cinema, his flat always seemed so much more roomy and less cramped. But I guess that's because they need to fit in all the camera equipment and lighting. We also got a chance to see Regent's Park nearby and walk down through Marylebone, one of the nicest neighbourhoods I've seen in London - plenty of nice shops and restaurants, side streets to stroll, and a cool old book shop specialising in travel books - but yet another central area full of the mega rich. Or maybe considering Mayfair was around the corner, only the super rich.