London Travel Tips
How to get there, how to get around, where to find stuff and how to ask for it. These are tips from the local insider to make your stay here a breeze
Switched on London
Office blocks left with all their lights on over night has become a hot issue with environmentalists, especially in London where the financial distrcits in the City of London and Canary Wharf continually adding new offices.
This week the second Switched on London event will be lighting up famous landmarks and buildings in the area roughly between London Bridge and Tower Bridge to show how environmentally friendly and sustainable lighting can be used to light up major buildings and why its important to for cities to be lit even if people are worried about CO2 emissions.
The project runs from 7-14 February and brings teams of leading lighting designers
Date: February 4th, 2008 |
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Home Secretary admits London’s streets not safe after dark
There was an interesting admission today in an interview with The Sunday Times by Jacqui Smith, Britain’s Home Secretary, that she wouldn’t feel safe walking the streets of London late at night, even if it was through some of the wealthiest areas like Kensington and Chelsea.
The Home Secretary is the member of the government in charge of policing and crime in the UK among other things,
Date: January 20th, 2008 |
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Gordon Brown ringer wanted
This ‘handsome’ chap on the right is Gordon Brown, the current British Prime Minister and dour Scot who spent 10 years in the wings as Chancellor of the Exchequer waiting for Tony Blair to get fed up with being PM.
Being a public figure for that long you’d think anyone with a passing resemblance would have been lining themselves up for a lucrative lookalike career once he took power. Strangely it seems there’s no one out there that looks like Gordon and that’s causing a problem for photographer and film-maker Alison Jackson who uses celebrity lookalikes in her picture and tv work.
Date: January 15th, 2008 |
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Leicester Square renovation
Westminster Council have announced plans for an £18.5million regeneration of Leicester Square with the central part of the redesign a 200-metre white granite “ribbon” seat to allow people to sit and relax. The aim is to make the square less tacky than it is at the moment and a place that will draw visitors rather than being somewhere where people pass through to get from Soho to Covent Garden.
Tom Hanks was in the square last night at the premiere of Charlie Wilson’s War and seemed pretty happy. Not sure if it was for the movie or the council’s plans but for some bizarre reason he was waving an Aston Villa scarf
Date: January 10th, 2008 |
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New hand luggage rules at UK airports
The Department of Transport(DTI) has announced the relaxation of restrictions on the amount of hand luggage travellers can carry onto planes flying from Britain’s airports. Starting tomorrow 7 January providing the airport has installed new security scanners passengers will be allowed more than one piece of carry on baggage.
Being the UK there’s always a catch and the one here is that not all airports have the new equipment. Some London airports including Heathrow, Stansted and London City, do have the new scanners, but Gatwick and Luton don’t. Also the DTI says that airlines apply their own rules and some like Easyjet are going to keep limiting passengers to one piece of hand luggage.
Date: January 6th, 2008 |
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Annual London Survey
The Mayor of London and the Greater London Authority have released the latest London Survey, a survey carried out by MORI into the attitudes of Londoners to living in the city in regard to quality of life issues such as housing, transport, crime and jobs.
Predictably with a survey they’ve commissioned the Mayor’s office is talking up the areas that reflect positively on him, 44% expressed satisfaction with the job the Mayor was doing while 22% were dissatisfied and the GLA trumpets that as a +22 rating. Here are a selection of the other questions asked on the survey.
Q. And how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with London as a city to live in?
Date: January 23rd, 2008 |
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UK starts fingerprinting foreign travellers
Starting yesterday, 14 January, all visitors to Britain who require a visa to enter the country will have their fingerprints taken and added to the national database. Its part of the government’s latest attempt to plug the UK’s porous borders and will effect travellers from 133 countries, although not those from the US or the EU.
Later this year the Border and Immigration Agency will also start counting foreign nationals in and out of the country, which will probably mean filling in another
Date: January 15th, 2008 |
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Brazil to play Sweden at the Emirates
Brazil are returning to London to play Sweden in a friendly football international on Wednesday 26th March 2008 with the game taking place at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium. This will be the third year in a row that the Brazilian national team have played at the Emirates, they beat Argentina 3-0 there in September 2006 and lost 2-0 to Portugal in February 2007.
I went to both matches which were sellouts
Date: January 15th, 2008 |
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Transport Direct Travel Planner
One of the most useful online journey planner’s I’ve come across is one run by the Department of Transport called Transport Direct.
It requires you to enter a start and finish point, the more detailed your information the better i.e. postcode, street addresses, and whether you’re travelling by car or public transport and the intended time of departure. Its comprehensive, covering all the UK and will offer a number of combinations of public transport,
Date: January 7th, 2008 |
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Take a walk in London
With Christmas and the New Year over many people are making resolutions to take more exercise and get fitter. If you over did it with the food and booze during the holiday a useful website to help give you some motivation to shed a few pounds by walking more around London this year is walkit.com.
The site’s aim is to encourage more people to walk by helping them to make informed decisions on when is a good time to walk rather than use a car, bus, tube, train or taxi. They do this by having a search engine that just requires you to enter where you are and where you want to get to, and then a map will come up with the suggested route as well as the distance, estimated time for fast, medium or slow walking, the calories burned at each pace
Date: January 2nd, 2008 |
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