We'll be in London in late July for 4 nights and in mid-to-late August
for two more nights. Because of these two times in London, it seems
like the Oyster card is probably the way for the three of us to get
around.

What does it mean to "top up your Oyster Card with a Travelcard"?
Let me see if I have this right -- We buy Oyster Cards when we arrive
at Heathrow and while making this purchase, we can then choose how
many quid we want stored on each Oyster Card and we can choose whether
we want a Travelcard also electronically-embedded on the cards as
well?

This is just how I read page 10 of:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/tickets/get-the-most-out-of-oyster.pdf

and other such documents on the TfL website.

But it doesn't quite makes sense. How does the "touch" know whether
you want to use the Travelcard or subtract from whatever balance I
stored on the Oyster Card?

On Thu, 8 May 2008 17:09:20 -0700 (PDT), paintedjazz@gmail.com wrote:

Pretty much, though only for period Travelcards. Day Travelcards are
not available - if you want one of those it has to be on paper.

If there is a valid Travelcard it will use that, otherwise it will use
the balance.

On May 9, 1:09 am, paintedj...@gmail.com wrote:

On Fri, 09 May 2008 04:38:14 GMT, wensleydale@pacersplace.org.uk (Neil
Williams) wrote:

It's worth clarifying how this works if the original poster isn't
familiar with it: if you have a travelcard for zones 1 and 2, but take
a tube journey from zone 3 to zone 1, it'll deduct the fare for the
zone 3 portion of your journey only from the pay as you go balance.
The travelcard covers the rest of the journey. If you take a tube
journey within zones 1 and 2, or a bus journey anywhere in London,
it's covered by the travelcard and your pay as you go balance remains
untouched.

On Fri, 09 May 2008 04:38:14 +0000, Neil Williams wrote:

Note that credit cards not equipped with chip-and-PIN (which is standard
in the UK, but many visitors don't have UK-based credit cards) will not
work at the machines, unless this has been corrected since my last visit
in August 2006.

On May 10, 9:53 pm, David of Broadway gmail.com>
wrote:

On 13 May, 20:51, paintedj...@gmail.com wrote:

On Tue, 13 May 2008 13:42:40 -0700 (PDT), Paul Oter wrote:

You can top up with cash at any ticket machine (with coins as well as
notes).

This used to be limited to £5 - is that still the case?

In message
<7d768be2-4dc8-447a-a4e9-29a3ad22ddb1@c58g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>, at
13:42:40 on Tue, 13 May 2008, Paul Oter googlemail.com>
remarked:

Not true. If you use one of the "big" ticket machines you can top up
with banknotes.

"Paul Oter" googlemail.com> wrote in message
news:7d768be2-4dc8-447a-a4e9-29a3ad22ddb1@c58g2000hsc.googlegroups.com