All posts by The Beetle

Did You Know&.London England, London Ontario

London, England, United Kingdom and London, Ontario, Canada, as the crow flies: 3662 miles (5893 km) or 3182 nautical miles

Expedia.com’s lowest return fare flying from London, England to London Ontario, on 1st December costs US $875.28, which is equivalent to around 24c a mile.

Founded in 1828, and incorporated as a town in 1840, London now has a little over 250,000 people. Several suburbs, bridges and places around London, Ontario were patriotically named after the UK in the 18th and 19th centuries: suburbs such as Ealing and Chelsea, there is a Blackfriars bridge and a Covent Garden market.

What to see and do in London, Ontario? There is The Grand Theatre, Orchestra London, the London Regional Art and Historic Museums plus a whole host of special events focused on the visual and performing arts. There are beautiful parks and pathways and good sporting facilities in the Forest City. Family entertainment takes many forms from the lively new Covent Garden Market in the heart of the downtown to the ever-popular Storybook Gardens in Springbank Park.

Airline News

Brussels-based low fare carrier Virgin Express has over the last six months, carried more passengers than any other airline at Brussels Airport, making it the first main airport in Europe where a low fare carrier is the market leader.

Delta Air Lines has announced that it will launch its own budget subsidiary next year. The as yet unnamed carrier will fly, initially, on routes between the US Northeast and Florida. Delta said it later intends to expand the operation across its US network. Fares are expected to come in between USD$79 and USD$299.

Bulgaria intends to launch a new national airline, Balkan Air Tour in December after the final collapse of its troubled flag carrier Balkan Bulgarian.

It is scheduled to start operations on December 1 and will operate services to seven destinations – Berlin and Frankfurt, London, Milan, Moscow, Paris and Tel Aviv.

Air Canada has reached a three-year deal with the Quebec government to provide low cost fares throughout the province using the airline's Jazz budget operation. In return the province, which is a heavy user of Air Canada services, has agreed to buy around CAD$2.5 million (USD$1.6 million) additional tickets every year for the government and its agencies.

The agreement will also ensure that travellers in Quebec will get cut price Internet fares for travel between remote regional communities and both Quebec City and Montreal. The airline says that fares will be cut by as much as 70 percent compared with regular ticket prices and the flexible low cost deals will be extended to all Air Canada Jazz routes in the province.

Oh dear, arisen from the ashes of Belgium’s now defunct Sabena, Delsey Airlines, has filed for bankruptcy. It was flying transatlantic services from Brussels to New York, Boston and Los Angeles. The airline, originally called VG Airlines, was created by the entrepreneur Freddy Van Gaever who was the founder and first CEO of the successful regional airline, VLM, and Antwerp financier Tony Gram, managing director of the travel goods manufacturer, Delsey. The airline had been in talks this week with a possible last-minute investor, but had to concede defeat when the investor pulled out.

Currency Conversion

A recent UK survey for the Department for Education found that of over 1,000 adults, 30% felt unable to compare rates in exchange bureaux. A similar proportion said they were not comfortable converting foreign currency into sterling. Over a fifth of those surveyed admitted they had wrongly calculated how much they spent on holiday, with 12% saying they had run out of money.

The Globetrotters Club has just teamed up with Oanda.com to provide people with information about currency conversions and cheat sheets. To translate currency or make a cheat sheet, visit:

The Globetrotters Currency Converter — get the exchange rates for 164 currencies
The Globetrotters Currency Cheat Sheet — create and print a currency converter table for your next trip.

Racial Profiling at US Airports

Celebrated Canadian author, Rohinton Mistry, has cancelled the second half of his US book tour because of racial profiling at US airports. Mr Mistry – the Indian-born author short-listed for the Booker Prize this year – was “extremely unhappy” about the treatment he received, Canada's Globe and Mail reported.

“As a person of colour he was stopped repeatedly and rudely at each airport along the way – to the point where the humiliation of both he and his wife has become unbearable,” a memo from the writer's US publisher Aflred A Knopf said. “I find it outrageous,” Betsy Burton of The King's English bookstore in Salt Lake City said. “It makes me feel ashamed of my country.”

The US introduced extra security measures – including fingerprinting – for people born in 20 predominantly Arab and Muslim countries following the 11 September attacks.

Last week Canada urged its citizens born in Middle Eastern and Muslim countries to think carefully before going to the US because of the new checks.

The Spratly Islands

The Spratly Islands are 100 tiny formerly uninhabited islets and reefs making up 5 km of actual land spread over 410,000 sq km of sea. They are believed to have oil and gas reserves in addition to good fish stocks.

The problem is that both China and Taiwan lay claim to all of them and Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam and the Philippines to part of them.

South East Asian states have just reached a draft agreement aimed at avoiding conflicts over the disputed Spratly Islands. All 10 member-states of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) approved a code of conduct for the islands in the South China Sea, which will in turn be presented to China, which is not a member.

Friction over the islands, in the South China Sea, most recently erupted in August when Vietnamese troops based on one islet fired warning shots at Philippine military planes.

Mutual Aid

John from the UK is planning to go from Hawaii to Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, South Africa, Europe, the UK, the US, and Hawaii plus any points in between, depending on limitations of the ticket. Because he intends to start from Hawaii, the UK travel agents have been giving him some very high quotes. Can anyone help him by suggesting a good travel agent, not necessarily in the UK to give a quote? He would also welcome any advice on backpacker travel insurance for the over 50's, with sailing included. To contact John, please e-mail him on: Coehabit@aol.com

Need help? Want a travelling buddy or advice about a place or country – want to share something with us – why not visit our Mutual Aid section of the Website: Mutual Aid

So You Think You.re Well Travelled?

Here’s a little Beetle quiz based on airport codes. See how many you get right! Go on, have a guess!

Which cities are served by airports with the following codes:

1. CPT

2. NBO

3. VCE

4. ORD

5. PRG

For the answers, see at the end of the e-newsletter.

Shiva Exhibition

In an exhibit billed as “The Sensuous and the Sacred,” the Smithsonian Institution introduces the public to a Hindu deity called Shiva, noted for being the Lord of Dance.

Admission to the exhibit is free. After it closes in Washington on March 9, it will be seen at the Dallas Museum of Art, April 4-June 15, and at the Cleveland Museum of Art, July 6-September 14

UK Visitor Numbers Drop

The number of foreign tourists visiting the UK saw its biggest fall in 20 years in 2001, according to the National Statistics Office, particularly from US, who are traditionally the UK’s biggest visitor group.

The impact of September 11 and the foot-and-mouth outbreak contributed to the sharp decline, which saw a £1.5bn drop in the amount spent by visitors to the UK. Visitor numbers fell 9% to 22.8m. Because more Britons chose to holiday overseas, rather than stay in the UK, they spent £14bn more than the amount spent by tourists in the UK.

Visitors from nearby European countries, Spain, Germany etc., have come back to holiday in the UK quite quickly, but the high spending US and Japanese markets are not so quick to return.

The British Tourist Authority (BTA) recently announced a long-term plan to increase the UK's income from tourism. Their “Leading the World to Britain” campaign aims to build on emerging markets in eastern Europe and the Far East, as well as putting more emphasis on the distinctiveness of Britain's three nations, and increasing UK tourism's Internet presence.

Bats and Rabies

A man has died after contracting Britain's first case of rabies for 100 years, hospital bosses have confirmed. David McRae, a 56-year-old conservationist from Guthrie, Angus, Scotland, failed to recover from European Bat Lyssavirus (EBL), a type of rabies found in several northern European countries. Mr McRae, who was licensed to handle bats, was bitten by one of the creatures on at least one occasion.

In Europe, where the EBL strain is common, there have only been three cases of humans catching rabies since 1977.

If you are planning on visiting countries where there are bats, please don’t pet them. If you are bitten or scratched by a bat, you are at risk of infection and should seek urgent medical advice.

 

JFK Airport to Use Iris Scanning

John F. Kennedy International Airport has become the first airport in the United States to use iris scanning technology to prevent employee security breaches. Kennedy has been testing the technology on about 300 employees working at Terminal 4 for two months, although the program is not mandatory for now. The idea is that the technology prevents employees from giving their ID cards to someone else. The scanner stores 247 traits of a person's iris into a computer and on his or her ID card's magnetic strip.

Terminal officials said they believe the technique is more specific than fingerprinting, which checks for 85 traits. The $2,000 iris scanner and the $15,000 door barring entry into a secure area have been installed at the customs area leading to the tarmac. If the scanner fails to match an employee's eyes and card, an alarm sounds and security guards are dispatched. After swiping their cards, workers peer into the scanner for 10 to 15 seconds, until the door clicks open. The system works with contact lenses and eyeglasses, but not with sunglasses. The Charlotte, North Carolina, airport used similar technology in 2000, but suspended the system last year.

Silk Road Artefacts Digitised for All To See

You can now “see” a whole load of manuscripts, paintings and artefacts from ancient caves and temples along the Silk Road on the Internet in digital form.

By visiting http://idp.nlc.gov.cn or http://idp.bl.uk, websites developed jointly by the British Library and the National Library of China you can see a collection of artefacts recovered from the Dunhuang cave in China in the early 20th Century.

“The cave was sealed in AD 1000 and completely hidden,” Dr Susan Whitfield, Director of the British Library's International Dunhuang Project told the BBC programme Go Digital. “It was discovered accidentally in 1900 and when it was open, it was found to contain these 50,000 items of manuscripts and paintings.” These offer a glimpse into the daily life of merchants, officials, soldiers, monks and farmers in Silk Road towns.

“The idea is that scholars will always get as close as they possibly can on their computer screens to the objects,” explained Dr Whitfield. The artefacts are now spread across the world, in major museums in Beijing, London, Paris and St Petersburg. The other reason behind making digital copy of the artefacts is to ensure that they are preserved for future generations.

Key West Diver Find

A diver discovered a 40.2-carat emerald embedded in a conch shell while diving at the site of a Spanish galleon wrecked in a Florida Keys hurricane 380 years ago.

The diver, who unsurprisingly does not want his name revealed, discovered the giant raw emerald while washing shells in a classroom laboratory. “Out popped a 40.2-carat emerald,” Patrick Clyne, vice president at Key West-based wreck salvage company Mel Fisher Enterprises, said Monday. “It was one of those freak-of-nature things that somehow got swept up in the conch shell.”

The diver had gathered the shells from a dive off the Spanish galleon Santa Margarita, which sank Sept. 6,

1622, about 30 miles west of Key West. “This is an excellent indication that the Margarita had raw emeralds

smuggled aboard the ship,” Clyne said. “There were no emeralds listed on its cargo manifest.” There were no

estimates for how much the emerald might be worth. But in 1985, a 77.7-carat emerald from the vessel

Nuestra Senora de Atocha, a sister ship of the Santa Margarita, was appraised at $1.2 million. The vessels,

part of a 28-ship fleet that left Havana on Sept. 4, 1622, for Spain with treasures from Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela, sank during a hurricane.

Learn English at Youth Hostels in the UK

The Youth Hostels Association (YHA) has teamed with English Out There to offer English language courses for visitors to London. Accommodation will be at one of six YHA hostels in the capital and the packages include bed and breakfast, an Underground pass and tickets to some famous attractions.

The language lessons are designed around themes or tasks, and students can choose how many they want to take from 20 modules. The students are expected to be mainly families or young people, who want to combine a holiday with improving their English.

Websites: yha.org.uk and EnglishOutThere.co.uk.

Source: britainexpress.com

New Sources for Genealogists

Here's a new resource for genealogists. Origin Search is a search engine just for finding family history information. You do have to pay a fee to use the service, but you can try out the Irish resources for free.

Take a look at their website

Meeting News from Ontario.

Greetings fellow Globetrotters The next Globetrotters' meeting and a “pre-Christmas pot-luck” took place at 7.45 pm to 10 pm on November 15, 2002. Robin Christmas, Linda Rosenbaum & Family talked about “The Ve-Ahavta” (“You Shall Love”) a video of a community development project in Bartica, Guyana. For information on Ontario meetings, please contact: Svatka Hermanek shermanek@schulich.yorku.ca or Bruce Weber: tel. 416-203-0911 or Paul Webb: tel. 416-694-8259.

Meetings are held on the third Friday of January, March, May, September and November. Usually at the Woodsworth Co-op, Penthouse, 133, Wilton Street (south-east from St. Lawrence Market in Toronto, South of Esplanade, 2nd very short block east from Jarvis) in downtown Toronto at 8.00 p.m.

Meeting News from Texas.

Globetrotters Meeting Texas Branch – 9 November 2002 by Emily

We had two groups of speakers at our meeting, both on Spain. The first group was Chris and Julie who displayed some fabulous slides of different areas of Spain: Toledo, Madrid, Balboa and San Sebastian.

Our next group of speakers on Spain was Christina and Susan. They spoke mostly about their recent experience at a language school. This school, based in a restored village, is specifically for Spanish professionals to practice their conversational English. They also spoke about their sightseeing adventures in Madrid after they finished a ten day course helping the Spaniards with their spoken English.

Next, each member and visitor spoke about recent trips and future hopes for trips. Upon closing, a suggestion was made to bring ethnic holiday foods to the December meeting, although this is contingent on the approval of the library where our meetings are held.

The next Texas meeting will be held on Saturday 8th December.

A reminder that Texas meetings will start one hour earlier, at 2pm and not 3pm.

Meetings are held at 2pm at the New Braunfels Public Library, 700 E. Common Street in New Braunfels, Texas. The meeting ends at 5 p.m. If you would like to continue travel talk on a more informal basis, we plan to adjourn to the Hoity-Toit, a local New Braunfels establishment. If anybody would like to enquire about meetings or help Christina, please contact her on: texas@globetrotters.co.uk

Discover Crete Under Water

Scuba diving is the fastest growing sport in the world, each year the number of certified divers doubles. Travel to another world is not just a slogan that many dive centres use to attract the client, it’s true….. to dive is like a dream. Floating underwater is like meditation, yoga or living solitude on a lonely island. You hear nothing, only the bubbles, you feel complete freedom when you are scuba diving. The fish could be your enemy, but in the Greek waters there are only friendly species. Diving in Greece is very popular, the locals like doing it and being a favourite holiday destination……… let’s not forget the tourist. Since the government released some strict rules, particularly about the archaeological places, scuba diving is growing rapidly and in almost every tourist place you can find a diving centre.

On the southernmost point of Europe near the village Plakias on the island of Crete you will find several diving centres. There’s one that opens all year.

Plakias lies opposite the legendary island of Gavdos, where Odysseus spent seven years with the goddess Kalypso. Gavdos is the most southern island of Europe, but there’s no diving centre, only a shepherd with some sheep and goats.

During the wintertime Plakias is a lively little fishermen’s resort. Here you’ll find supermarkets, rooms for rent, restaurants, bars, a doctor, a pharmacy, a post office and a cash machine.

The medieval Town of Rethymno on the north coast is only 45 minutes by car.

Crete in the winter offers a subtropical climate with average day temperatures seldom lower than 16o C and on a good day above 20o C. The island has an average of 300 days with sunshine per year. January and February is the rainy season (good for the farmers) but the tropical showers seldom destroy your whole day. God is taking an hour of your time and you can enjoy the sunny hours afterwards.

Being the cradle of Europe there are many historical places that you can visit. There’s Knossos, the archaeological Museum, and there’s the green countryside with botanical beauties that you’ll find only on Crete.

The friendly Cretans are working in the olive groves or picking the oranges, so Crete is alive during the winter and there are not so many tourists. The locals have time for you and if you like it “siga siga” (no stress) than you should visit Crete in the winter.

The island offers all sorts of activities, like guided walking tours, biking tours, you can rent a car for your trips and let’s not forget the diving excursions.

A good contact point is a local adventure club named Kalypso Rocks Palace.

Let’s stick to the diving where we started this article.

There are dives from the shore or boat starting from an old natural (pirate) harbour that is situated near Hotel Kalypso Cretian Village. The diving scenery here is perfect and the visibility underwater is 20-25 metres, making the Libyan Sea the clearest ocean of Europe.

You’ll see plenty of fish: Groupers, Octopus, Shrimps, Sea Stars, Sea brass, Sponges, Morenos, Corals, etc. Look for them in the numerous small canyons, caves or along the mountain walls. Crete is not comparable with top diving destinations, but by European standards it’s a very good location.

Your gear can be provided and on request accommodation in the hotel or in a pension in Plakias for a reasonable price.

If you are interested tin diving or comming to Crete to look around, please contact the Kalypso Adventure Club www.kalypsodivingcenter.com or email: info@kalypsodivingcenter.com

Update: Kalypso diving centre tell us that any readers of this e-newsletter are eligible for a discount of 10% on diving.

The Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes Night

Here in the UK, we’ve just had our traditional bonfire night, on November 5th, to celebrate the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot. We’ve been doing this off and on, barring wars, since 1605. Each year either on November 5, or the weekend closest, people get together all over the UK to light bonfires, burn effigies of “guys”, and set off fireworks. Increasingly, people go to public organised bonfires, rather than have one in their back garden, as the public display fireworks are far more spectacular than anything one could put on at home. We are talking amazing pyrotechnic displays!

But what is it all about? The Gunpowder Plot was an attempt to kill the anti-Catholic King James I, King of England. The alleged perpetrators were a group of four Catholic aristocrats and Guy Fawkes who was a soldier. Their plan was to lay barrels of gunpowder in the cellars of the Parliament Buildings to be ignited the following day, on 5th November when King James, his eldest son, Prince Henry, and Queen Ann were to attend the opening of Parliament. The aim of the conspirators was, once the king and his family had been assassinated, to propose someone else who was more sympathetic to the Catholics in the UK.

So how did they set about this? The first attempt at tunnelling into the cellars of the Parliament from nearby lodgings failed as water from the River Thames waterlogged the tunnel. Instead, one of the gang used his influence to gain access to cellars beneath Parliament, and somehow, they managed to smuggle in 36 barrels of gunpowder. However, there were problems: the King kept postponing the opening of Parliament, so he was never around to blow up, and secondly, because of the time delay, the gunpowder was going mouldy, and more had to be bought from overseas, to ensure that it would explode.

So what happened next? Just before the big day, someone sent a letter to Lord Monteagle a former Catholic sympathiser, warning him to stay away from the opening of Parliament on November 5th. Lord M immediately passed the letter to Robert Cecil, the King’s Chief Secretary, and even though the gang of five knew about the letter's existence , and that they had possibly been rumbled, they still went ahead with their plans. Guy Fawkes, a soldier, was volunteered to stay overnight in the cellar with the gunpowder and set light to it at the right moment. On the night of 4th November, after a thorough search of Parliament, Guy Fawkes was found hidden, along with the gunpowder in the cellars. He was tortured and the other members of the gang were found and along with Guy Fawkes were tried and sentenced to death in St. Paul's churchyard in January 1606. Later, four of the conspirators were executed at the Old Palace Yard, Westminster. All eight men eventually identified as being part of the plot were hung, drawn, and quartered, the standard punishment for those convicted of treason.