Eurostar Rolls On

by Iva Skoch on

For those of you fellow train lovers, here’s a bit of news. The awesome London-to-Paris Chunnel train, the Eurostar, is moving next year from its home at Waterloo station to the St. Pancras station.

This train is nothing to sneeze at: central London to central Paris in under 3 hours, in quiet, smooth high-speed (186 mph max speed!) luxury, through the Chunnel, for as little as 29.50 pounds ($58USD).

Apparently, the tracks to Waterloo aren’t modern enough to handle better speeds, severely slowing the train as it rolls into London, so they’re moving the terminus to another station, northwest of London.

In November next year, renovations to London’s St. Pancras station will be complete, allowing eight trains to sit side-by-side in a modern new station. Trip time will drop by a half hour or more. And the St. Pancras/Kings Cross station is pretty centrally located, and on the Circle Line Tube.

Some folks aren’t too happy, though. After all, Waterloo is placed well for those south of the center, and those working at Parliament.

Would You Like Polonium With That?

by Iva Skoch on

While the popular sushi restaurant chain Itsu, famous for the recent poisoning incident involving a “Russian spy” Litvinenko, is hurting in London, the new branch that just opened downtown New York is apparently doing quite well, according to a NY Sun article.

Does that mean Americans are getting immune to the different security threats out there? Or does that mean that sushi, not Starbucks, is the new cosmopolitan answer to world peace?

Either way, I hear the “dynamite miso soup” is a hit. Should you be in the financial district of NY, please test it and report back.

Don’t Rely on GPS to Always Pick the Shortcut

by Iva Skoch on

Lest we become overly reliant on our GPS system for traveling, a recent news piece should give pause.

A London ambulance crew used their GPS to take a mental patient from one hospital to another. For the trip, which should have been only 10 miles, they scrupulously followed the GPS directions, which took them some 400 miles out of their way. They noticed something wrong when they got to Manchester.

The GPS system in the ambulance has been fixed, so they’ll save gas and time the next time they take the trip. I can just imagine hearing that woman’s voice from the GPS snickering: “No, seriously, take the next right. Would I lie?”

Virgin’s 101 Things to Do in London

by Erik Olsen on

London is a sprawling city whose bustle and thrum can sometimes be overwhelming to the uninitiated. You step off the plane in Heathrow and throw yourself into its maw, and without some guide to help you navigate the winding, car-infested streets, you can quickly get yourself lost…which might not be so bad, truth be told. But let’s say you don’t want to get lost and you are looking for a quick and dirty list of the best things to do in the city. Well, you can always get your hands on a good guidebook, i.e. Lonely Planet’s guide to London. Or you can check out this list of the 100 things you MUST do in London. The list was compiled by the good folks at Virgin and while it contains lorry-loads of basic tourist stuff like visit Big Ben and see Notting Hill, there are also some more creative ideas like taking a lunch or dinner cruise and checking out Spitalfields.

Altogether, it’s a decent little list and face it, 100 Things is a lot of, well, things. So you can pretty much bet that you’ll never get through all of them, but trying to do so would be half the fun.

The Consequences of Drinking Tourism

by Iva Skoch on

I had to laugh at a recent article regarding the grueling work of the British Embassy, helping tourists after misfortunes. With the recent glut of cheap flights to Prague, there’s been a rise in “beer tourism,” whereby punters come to Prague to enjoy gallons of excellent, but cheap, Czech beer. (Stag parties alone account for 10% of the 650,000+ British tourists to Prague.) This travel is not without its consequences, however.

According to the article, the two broad categories of light-night hazards for embassy staff are a) being woken up in the middle of the night to replace lost passports, and b) being woken up in the middle of the night to go meet tourists who can’t remember where they are staying and are seeking shelter at the embassy. As you might guess, both problems arise primarily from too much of the yellow nectar.

A recent example is indicative: a man came in after a pub crawl, “unable to recall anything about his hotel, even once he had sobered up later in the day” according to a spokesperson. Another “young man was arrested for dancing in a fountain naked” and had to be assisted by the Embassy. In seven months, incidents numbered 155.

So, the Embassy has responded. It is socking those folks with 84.50-pound charges for using these emergency services, and it’s spending 3,000 pounds on a poster, beer coaster, and leaflet campaign to try to reduce these incidents through education. But, I’m thinking, if you’re too drunk to remember anything about your hotel, I’m not sure you can read a beer coaster….