Ode to Public Transit

...a break from the travelogue 'selfies' to mention public transit around the world. In almost every country we visited, we used public tranist whenver we could. Buses, trains, subways, streetcar trams, etc. And of course, in Venice we had Vaporetto 3-day unlimited cards, so we could easily hop on a boat for a couple stops along the canal and even for the long ride to the island of Murano.

We also loved the technology - most cities have great (and discounted) prepaid or refillable fare cards (which also make the senior discounts easier without showing ID every trip). Wherever these exist, they are RFI cards which means that you just wipe/swipe them across the turnstile reader. One neat quirky thing for single fares on the Istanbul streetcar trams - the tokens are plastic and very light weight.

Here is a short photo essay of transit along our route....

London - the Undergound (subway) and also the bus from Highgate:

 

 

The Prague subway and the train to Benesov:

 

 

The Rome, Italy Metro and the High Speed Train to Florence & Venice:

 

 

Vaporetto and the People Mover to the Cruise Ship Port in Venice;

 

 The Streetcar Tram in Istanbul:

...and in Hong Kong, the MTR (subway), the buses, the cable car tram, and of course the Star Ferry: