Trains - it’s a male kind of thing.

Computer courses in Canberra are a bit like Leprechauns, hard to find and if you do find one you have to be lucky if it is any good to you. So where do I go to learn - Sydney of course. Well I could have gone to Melbourne but I have trouble with the language down there so Sydney was the logical choice. My course runs from Wednesday early am till Friday in the mid afternoon and is in North Sydney. I am offered free digs by a lovely friend who lives in Ryde which, in Colonial days was just a leisurely coach ride from Sydney Cove but now is a journey fraught with danger. Do I take my car? The answer to that one is a resounding NO! 

My friend in Ryde lives right on Victoria Road so there is nowhere to park at home; parking at North Sydney starts at $50 a day if you can get it and my heart is in no condition to drive the equivalent of three F1 races, twice a day for three days. So, do I fly or do I take a bus? The answer of course is, I will go by train.

Trains bring out the little boy in me.

Booking a train ticket to Sydney on the web should be a piece of cake even for a techno-bimbo like me and it was, at least for the trip up, but when it came to booking a return … let me just say after an hour I gave up and just booked another single trip from in the opposite direction. Sigh, I hate it when I get beaten around the head by an inanimate object!

During the process I was asked if I wanted First Class or Economy, like, you know, ‘do you want to upsize that’. Well of course I liked the idea of first class so I was given to wonder, what is the difference and how much. The how much was easy, First Class is $55 and some change while economy is $39 and a bit. Hey that’s only $16 but what do I get. Well here it is folks, for your extra $16 you get 50mm extra foot room and a seat that reclines, not 38^o but 40^o this is incredible value but I decided to go with the cheap route until my eye was caught by a piece of information that clinched the deal. First class arrives in Central, fully three minutes before economy. Whoa this is a bargain (click), first class thanks.