Top Five List

One of my favorite intellectual exercises is the Top Five list. With the It's A Magical World blog, we can make it interactive. Here's how it works: I name a category. You see my top five things in that category. Then, you think of the top five things you would include in that category and post them as a comment.

Today's category: Cities with amazing public transportation systems

1. New York City
It runs 24 hours a day. You look at the tangled web of colored lines on the NYC subway map and ask yourself whether there is anywhere in the city that you can't get by subway. Besides Laguardia Airport that is. Or Red Hook, or Staten Island, but who really wants to go there? I have literally spent ten hours on the NYC subway on a given day and did not come close to seeing even half of it. The Metrocard system is the most user-friendly fare collection mechanism ever designed.

2. Tokyo
Riding the rails in Tokyo is every bit the experience people say it is. Take the most densely populated city in the world and throw in the reduced version of personal space in the Far East, and you'll become very close friends with whoever you find yourself stomach-to-stomach with. They also have television monitors on the train with lessons in how to speak English, so you can educate yourself while you get to where you're going.

3. London
Okay, so it shuts down before midnight. But again, you can get pretty much anywhere you need to go on The Tube. The stations have wonderfully informative signs telling you when the next train will arrive, the conductors wear cute royal blue polyester uniforms, and the announcements are made in lovely British accents reminding you to mind the gap. Plus, when you say Bakerloo, the accent goes on the last syllable.

4. Paris
The great achievement of the Paris metro is that it has fully integrated the subway system with the RER commuter rail. Transfers within Le Metropolitain are seamless, though you might have a bit of a hike through some of these mega-station complexes. Many of the stations possess historic charm, and the arte nouveau entryways into the oldest stations just can't be replicated anywhere else.

5. Barcelona
If you're a trooper like myself and you're willing to walk everywhere, then Barcelona's public transit system won't do you much good. But it is an incredibly comprehensive system, especially for a city that size. It will take you anywhere you want to go, even up mountains on a funicular line and across the harbor on a cable car. With a ten-ride ticket costing EUR 5.90, it's an amazing bargain.