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Tags: Celeb Travel / Victoria Beckham / LHR / In-Flight Fashion / Fashion / → All Tags

Beckham Goes Caped Crusader For Transatlantic Flight

Last week, we had a perfect demonstration of how not to look and how not to handle your passport when Twilight star Kristen Stewart traveled through LAX looking a mess and barely holding onto her passport. But trust good old former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham to trample through London-Heathrow in a black cape-y thing and giant shades and put in-flight fashion back on track.

No, we're not necessarily endorsing going pantsless with only a cape to keep you warm, but if you're flying first class from London back to the States as super world traveler Beckham is, you're welcome to look a little over-the-top. And that is why Victoria also gets a pass for toting a blue bag with a black outfit—at least she's also got her passport under wraps.

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Tags: London Travel / Gay Travel / Tourism Boards / → All Tags

London Gets A Gay Traveler Info Center With Boring Website

Nepal as a gay travel destination was something of a surprise. But the fact that London has just opened up an LGBT Tourist Information Office isn't too out of the blue – but it's a good thing just the same.

The office director says the reason for the center is to show that "London's exciting LGBT life is the best in the world". There might be a few cities which would beg to differ, but you'd have to agree that a huge city like London definitely has plenty for everyone.

But – here's a pretty big "but" – the office's website doesn't show much about the exciting LGBT life in London yet. Sure, it's early days, but the site's just a simple Wordpress blog with hardly anything on it, and really not ready to be launched, in our humble opinion.

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Tags: Travel TV Shows / Celeb Travel / Television Travel / → All Tags

12 British TV Stars Go Around The World In 80 Days For BBC

How many celebrities does it take to go around the world in 80 days? Twelve modern ones, or one Python—that's the equation the BBC has come up with for a new reality show that splits Jules Verne's classic journey up among pairs of stars for a good cause. It's "The Amazing Race" meets "The Superstars," if VH-1 were casting it.

Back in 1989, Michael Palin decided to reenact the journey taken by Phileas Fogg in Around The World in 80 Days for a BBC special, arriving back in London via Venice, Jeddah, Pune and Long Beach after 79 days and 7 hours. (The movie is currently streaming on Netflix, should you need a little travel inspiration.)

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Tags: Harry Potter / Movie Set Travel / London Travel / Movie Travel / → All Tags

Check Out Harry Potter's Most Enchanted Locations In The UK

Harry Potter fans rejoiced earlier this month when they learned that The Wizardly World of Harry Potter theme park will open this spring at Universal Orlando. But for some, the wait is just too long. If you're looking to get your Harry Potter on now, here are a few real-life locations that have been featured in the films, and are now popular tourist destinations:

King's Cross Station
The King's Cross railway station is located on the edge of Central London, at the junction of the A501 Euston Road and York Way. Platform 4 at King's Cross station is Platform 93/4 in the first movie where Harry first got on the Hogwarts Express. A sign for Platform 93/4 still hangs in the station and there is even a luggage trolley that magically disappears into the wall.

That one was easy; more after the jump.

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Tags: Wine Travel / Interactive Menus / Social Media / London Restaurants / → All Tags

Wine Lists Turn To Social Media at L'Anima Restaurant In London

The L'Anima Italian restaurant in London has gone one step further than just letting you choose your wine from a touch screen; last month they ran an online contest so that blog readers (some of whom, we presume, were also restaurant goers) could choose three new wines for L'Anima to add to their impressive wine list.

And it wasn't just a case of voting for your favorite wine off a list. L'Anima went to the trouble of getting three pairs of wine experts to explain their favorites off the shortlist of nine, made these explanations into YouTube vids, and got voters to decide which video was the best.

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Tags: Fall-Foliage-Map / Fall Foliage Travel / Fall Travel / Outdoor Travel / London Travel / England Travel / → All Tags

Fall Foliage Travel: Skip Central Park For London's Hampstead Heath

Reap the benefits of the slow airline of fall by hopping a cheaper ticket across the pond to London. We're not kidding; a friend just booked a weekend trip to London on Virgin Atlantic after seeing that it was just as expensive as some flights between Chicago and NYC.

If you are similarly spontaneous, or just thirsty for a good pub with some fall foliage outside, we recommend heading to London's Hampstead Heath area, like their version of NYC's Central Park. Here, you'll not only get a view of trees turning during the fall colors peak of late October through early November, but also—atop London's highest point, Parliament Hill—you'll have a view over the whole city.

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Tags: Airport Lounges / Lounges / Etihad Airways / LHR / → All Tags

Etihad Airways Rolls Out Luxe Airport Lounges With Free Limo Service

After a long snooze in one of Eithad Airways' crazy fancy suites, you are going to need to eventually stumble off the plane, like it or not. That’s why the airline is starting to expand its offerings when it comes to matching fancy schmancy lounges. The airline opened their first lounge outside of the United Arab Emirates over the summer in Frankfurt, and now they have their eyes on the comfort prize in London.

Along with moving their flights from Terminal 3 to Terminal 4 at London-Heathrow, a new lounge will open for the classiest of fliers on September 30. Give them a call now and book your private treatment room where you’ll be pampered by treatments from the Six Senses Spa. The foot and leg massages will be quite a relief after an overnight long-haul flight. ANd if you’re hungry after a rubdown, just swing by their five-star dining facilities where you can watch your dinner being cooked through an open kitchen.

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Tags: Delta / Airline News / Airlines / Travel Health / → All Tags

Delta Has Been Flying Empty Planes To London For A Car Wash

Environmentalists are not too happy with Delta right now. The airline has been running empty planes across the Atlantic for a good scrub down. Delta admitted to flying these “ghost” flights, because they need to meet Australian quarantine regulations. Officials in the land down under require inbound planes to be disinfected to prevent bad stuff like malaria and dengue fever. See, we don’t want to get malaria, so we kind of understand what they’re doing here, but there's probably a better way to go about this.

Even though the necessary materials to do all this cleaning are available in the US, these treatments must be completed outside of the country. The closest place that is approved by the Australian quarantine and inspection service is London-Heathrow, and that’s why Delta has been wasting loads of jet fuel just to get a car plane wash.

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Tags: Sports Travel / Football / London Travel / Sports / → All Tags

Believe It Or Not: American Football Is Twice As Nice Overseas

The professional football season kicks off tonight, if you’re looking for a little more excitement than an evening planted on the couch, you might want to consider a fall football getaway. For the third consecutive year American footballers are going to cross the pond to play a game at London’s Wembley Stadium. This year it’s the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the New England Patriots battling it out and Virgin Vacations wants to help you get there.

If you’ve got some extra coin hanging around, this package is an excellent way to get rid of it. Packages start at $1899 and include round trip flights on Virgin Atlantic, transfers from the airport, and four nights of hotel fun in London. Of course you’ll also get two tickets to the big game on October 25 as well as access to some NFL fan festival thing. If price isn’t a problem, they’ll gladly upgrade you to the Diamond Package, where you’ll be rubbing elbows with the players’ wives on the 50 yard line.

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Tags: Police / Business Travel / Travel News / → All Tags

It's Business Class Or Bust For London Bobbys

After this news, there’s definitely a London Bobby or two getting the corporate credit card taken away. Apparently, many Metropolitan police officers thought it was a great idea to start buying business class tickets for all of Scotland Yard’s travel needs. Not surprisingly, the spending spree didn’t go unnoticed, and now taxpayers are about £12 million in the hole.

Trying their best to be proper shoppers, officers booked business class flights to destinations across the globe including Australia, the United States, and South Africa. Let’s just hope they remembered to enter their frequent flyer numbers.

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Tags: Shopping Travel / London Travel / Learning Holidays / Educational Travel / → All Tags

Buy Life Lessons As Souvenirs From A Store In London

If the London storefront known as The School of Life is "an apothecary for the mind," then what they prescribe are cures for boredom, sluggish creativity, and an overall feeling of being "stuck." Tough times these may be, and call us equally tough for saying so, but we've grown tired of hearing the same tired moan and groan of pessimism.

Travel is about exploration, not least of all self-exploration, so we were excited to hear about this small shop offering big ideas—a place to break the touristy routine of museum visits and double-decker buses and get a little more out of our next London experience.

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Tags: Spa Travel / Virgin Atlantic / LGW / London Travel / Airport News / → All Tags

Nice Moove: Virgin Atlantic To Add Cowshed Spa To Gatwick Airport

The cows have come home: Virgin Atlantic's clubhouse at London's Gatwick Airport will be closed until the end of November for renovation, including adding a brand new Cowshed Spa for its passengers.

"Cowshed Spa" sounds like an oxymoron, like that other British invention Shabby Chic, but the premium spa brand was named for the original purpose of the building that houses its first location, at the Babington Hotel in Somerset county. (There are no cows there now.) Its six locations in England include one in the London Heathrow clubhouse, where passengers can get treatments like hot stone facials and full-body salt scrubs. Cowshed is also the official spa of the SoHo House in , or so we hear because we can't get in.

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