But however creepy all these cameras are, it's still pretty cool. Maybe making videos with closed circuit cameras is the 21st century equivalent of waving to your friends back home via webcam?
Love or loathe the English? The latest Rough Guide for England has a few choice things to say about them. First the bad news: It says that English people are quarrelsome, contradictory and "obsessed with toffs and C-list celebrities."
The good news is more, well, quaint, than good. The Rough Guide people decided that England is
A country of animal-loving, tea-drinking, charity donors, where queuing remains a national pastime and bastions of civilization, like Radio 4, are jealously protected.
We've heard a few complaints about the British before so this quirky Rough Guide assessment comes as no surprise. But since we love a good cup of tea, we haven't struck England off our visiting list just yet.
British Airways' exclusive Terminal 5 at Heathrow is going through some predictable growing pains after receiving its first flights yesterday. We're not sure anyone expected a completely smooth ride--if they did, bless their overly optimistic hearts--but the extent of the kinks and bad publicity is probably a bit worse than anticipated.
According to Reuters, "nearly 70" flights were canceled yesterday, and "a fifth of flights" today, resulting in "chaos" after a "shambolic" opening. (Short-haul flights are most at risk of disruption.) Yep, that sounds about right. How about three months for T5 to really get into some kind of comfortable groove?
If you're holding off on making your way through T5 until things settle down, consider flipping through a photo tour from Flickr user terminal5insider's albums. It'll whet your appetite while the poor souls stuck in London today play guinea pig.
Anyone with a fear of being stuck at the top of a ferris wheel would not have been happy on the London Eye on Monday. There was no big drama--just a malfunctioning tire--but engineers decided to immediately stop the ferris wheel completely.
That meant that about 400 tourists were trapped in the capsules, some of them 450 feet off the ground, for over an hour. Depending on who you listen to, this was either absolutely fine or a complete nightmare.
Naturally enough, the London Eye spokesperson said they were in full contact with all the visitors and had them open the capsule's emergency pack supplies of water, blankets and even commodes. But at least one of the passengers saw it otherwise and said it was horrible: they had poor communication with staff and got panicked into almost stampeding when they were finally let out. Just goes to show that there are a lot of different views from a ferris wheel.
Older travelers in England have been pleased to learn that from April 1, they'll be able to travel on local bus services for free. The free travel applies during off peak hours, all weekend and for two full weeks over Christmas, and a survey's already suggested bus use among pensioners will increase by at least a quarter as a result.
Hilary Bradt, the founder of Bradt Travel Guides, the publishers of books usually related to exotic destinations like Madagascar or Kyrgyzstan, is one of the Brits who's very pleased about the new scheme. To celebrate, she's planning an April trip from Land's End to Lowestoft--which means from England's most westerly point to the most easterly--using only the free bus services.
She thinks traveling across England for free like this will take about a week, covering about 370 miles. Sure, it's slow, but it's also free. And in Britain you can pay a lot of money for a slow, late transport service.
London tourists with a spare hundred pounds (and up to 5 mates) can now get a special behind-the-scenes tour of those famous buildings, the nearly one-thousand-year-old Houses of Parliament. British Tours has just started putting on their private tours that can have you following in the footsteps of whichever British politician you particularly idolize, whether it's Maggie Thatcher, the handsome Tony Blair or the historic Winston Churchill. The bit that sounds especially sexy is when you get to:
View the Queen's Robing Chamber, where the Monarchs get changed for the State Opening of Parliament.
Come on, we know you've all wanted to see Queen Lizzie without her clothes on. Is that why they call it the House of Commons?
While those Trekkies who live up in Scotland are merely looking forward to making pilgrimages to the new Scotty memorial, further south in England, you have the chance to really live your Star Trek fantasy. One (slightly loony) Brit in Leicester has completely renovated his one bedroom flat to look like the Voyager spaceship, complete with touch-panel blue lighting, molded wall panels, and even a life-size transporter room.
While we're all for turning this apartment into a museum piece (dedicated to obsessed fans the world over), the owner is actually trying to make some cash out of the deal ... probably so he can move into outer space. A cool 500,000 pounds (almost a million bucks) will get you a slice of Star Trek heaven.
Manchester Airport isn't such a bad place to spend part of your VD in. Besides the mood lighting, its also set up a secret password program for Valentine's Day. Yup, you heard us right. Pax smuggling engagement rings and other romantic surprises can whisper the password to security personnel, who will screen them in a way that doesn't blow their cover in front of a date. But doesn't the password itself kind of give everything away? Then again, you know they'd consider just about anything else a bomb scare.
MAN also apparently has some of the craziest passengers anywhere. A new report on the state of security at the airport includes a listing of incidents involving angry travelers rebelling against liquid restrictions. That includes a guy who pissed straight into zip-top bag to protest the rules. What his point was, or how that proved it, we're not entirely sure. But he's still our new hero.
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