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:
For the answers, see at the end of the e-newsletter.
If you have a travellers tale that you're [!!!] aching to tell, then why not visit the “Travel Sized Bites” section of the Website and share it with the world. Travel Sized Bites
Buses are a great way to get around London and ideal for sightseeing too. There are over 17,000 bus stops all across London so you are never far from a bus route.
Fares cost 70p for bus rides in outer London and £1 for journeys in central London (zone 1.) Children under 16 years old can make any bus journey in London for a flat fare of 40p (14 and 15 year olds require a Child Photocard).
Most bus drivers and conductors are very friendly and will help you if you are not sure that you are travelling in the right direction. Just ask, and if not, they will stop at the next stop for you to get off, cross the road and catch another in the right direction. We all do it!
If you are planning on doing quite a bit of travel around London in one day, it makes sense to buy a One Day Travelcard. This has the added advantage that it can be used on the London Underground and trains within a certain area. There are several zones you can buy cards to cover: Zone 1 covering central London and Zones 2, 3 and 4 covering outer London. Then there is 5 and 6 that covers Heathrow airport. You can buy these travel cards from tube stations and some newsagents. To stop a bus, just put out your hand and the bus will stop, unless it is already full. To get off at a Request stop ring the bell once and in good time to let the driver know.
Night buses run all through the night from midnight on certain routes on a reduced timetable and are prefixed with the letter N. At £1 or £1.50, they are a lot cheaper than a taxi!
Most of London's buses are red, but some come in other colours for example, there is a gold painted bus to commemorate the Queen’s Golden Jubilee; all will display the London Bus Service sign.
Wednesday 4th December, 6:30 pm: CUBANA 36 Southwick Street, Paddington, London, W12 1JQ
£10 or (£8 for members) includes cocktail, tapas and entry to prize draw.
A different format from the African event, more mingling and no central presentation. There are 100 tickets avalible, for more information visit www.ifworldwide.com or contact is events@itchyfeet-uk.com or 07900 975 413
Love them or hate them, the one thing McDonalds has, all over the world, is clean bathrooms! As a part of a cost cutting exercise, and increasing competition from the likes of Wendys and Burger King, McDonald's is to stop operating in three as yet unnamed countries, in the Middle East and Latin America. It also plans to close 175 restaurants shedding 600 staff to beef up profits.
Ever wondered how far it is from Paris, France to Paris, Texas? Well, as the crow flies, it is 4847 miles (7800 km) or 4212 nautical miles.
Expedia.com’s lowest return fare flying from Paris, France to Dallas, the closest international airport to Paris Texas on 30th November costs $626.86, which is equivalent to around 13c a mile.
And in case Paris, Texas catches your eye: Paris received recognition in 1998 for being named “Best Small Town in Texas” by Kevin Heubusch in his book “The New Rating Guide to Life in America's Small Cities.”
Paris, Texas is located approximately 100 miles northeast of Dallas, in the Heart of Red River Valley. It was founded in 1839 and became the Lamar County seat in 1844. It later became incorporated in 1845 and today plays a major role in Texas economy within Northeast Texas. Aside from the numerous parks to stroll around, Paris, Texas has the “Second Largest Eiffel Tower in the Second Largest Paris.”
Britain and the United States are warning of the risk of an attack on the world's biggest camel fair in the deserts of western India and urged their citizens to stay away. The fair, which runs in mid November, draws thousands of foreign and Indian tourists to the lakeside town of Pushkar in the desert state of Rajasthan.
The British High Commission said on Wednesday that although it had received no specific threat against its citizens, it regarded the carnival as “a potential target of terrorist activity”. “Information has been received which suggests that there is a risk of terrorist activity at the Pushkar Camel Fair,” the U.S. embassy in New Delhi said in a statement. “While we have no indication of a specific threat to American citizens, we advise that they should avoid this event.”
Win a Moon Handbook on the San Juan Islands. See www.moon.com for info on Moon guidebooks.
The winner of last month's Moon guide is Mary Attick.
There are several reasons why travellers do not visit Colombia, but perhaps they come down to the same thing: the cocaine industry and the people who control it. Even the Colombian government acknowledge that 80% of the world's supply of the drug comes from Colombia, and 70% of this was now grown in the Amazon region.
Colombia is without doubt a very beautiful country with mountains, forests, beaches, colonial towns and cities, but it is just not safe. Everyone, from people who live in the towns and cities to the countryside, including tourists are at risk. It is one of the few countries in the world that the Beetle would not visit herself. The Beetle’s former Spanish teacher, a London based Colombian was herself viciously mugged within minutes of arriving in her hometown of Medellín.
The new Colombian government have just announced a policy called Trees for Drugs, under which poor farmers would be paid to protect the forest instead of growing coca and are appealing for international funding from the international community to help fund a scheme to pay poor farmers to protect trees instead of cutting them down to grow drug crops.
Cocaine-users across the world are helping to destroy the Amazon rainforest, Colombian Environment Minister Cecilia Rodriguez has warned. Dr Rodriguez said the message to the world's drug users was clear: “I should call the attention of all consumers of cocaine that they're are harming dramatically the tropical rainforest of the world, because this is what the world needs for its oxygen.”
Those of you who are planning to come to London should be aware that because of a firemen’s strike, some of London’s deeper tube stations are closed where safety officials feel that the use of lifts may cause safety issues. To find a list of the closed tube stations, take a look at the London Transport website:
LondonTransport
The Canadian Government has issued a travel advisory to its citizens about visiting the United States.
Because of tightened border controls in America, Canadians born in some Middle Eastern countries should now think carefully before entering the United States, Ottawa says.
American border regulations introduced last month require that people born in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan or Syria be photographed and fingerprinted as they enter the US – even if they are now full citizens of other countries, including Canada.
That has prompted the travel warning from the Canadian Government.
This week it advised its citizens who were born in any of the five countries to “consider carefully whether they should attempt to enter the US for any reason, including transit to or from third countries”.
In the Canadian parliament on Wednesday, politicians accused Washington of harassing Arab-Canadians.
One Syrian-born member of parliament said the American rules make him a second-class Canadian.
Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham says he has already registered his strongest disapproval to US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
He added that he believes changes will be made to the American move when common sense prevails.
The American regulations come as a convenient target for Canadian politicians who sense growing unease amongst Canadians with US policy in the Middle East.
Many Canadians also worry about increased administration and delays at the border, which can be expensive for their export businesses.
Under 30? A member of Globetrotters Club? Interested in a £1,000 travel award?
Know someone who is? We have £1,000 to award each year for five years for the best submitted independent travel plan. Interested?
Then see our legacy page on our Website, where you can apply with your plans for a totally independent travel trip and we'll take a look at it. Get those plans in!!
Olympia London from January 30 – February 2
You'll find the largest range of holidays and ideas to be found under one roof – hundreds of tour operators, travel companies and tourist boards offering everything from adventure experiences to cultural weekend breaks. A limited number of complimentary tickets are available to telegraph.co.uk readers (maximum 2 per user) if booked in advance for Destinations 2003.
Visit www.destinationsshow.com, click on 'box office' and enter the code 'tcuk' when prompted.
by Charles Arthur / Independent/UK (via Common Dreams News Center)
The snows of Mount Kilimanjaro, immortalized by an Ernest Hemingway short story, are melting so quickly they are expected to disappear within two decades.
Researchers have found that the ice fields capping Africa's highest mountain shrank by 80 per cent in the last century, from 4.6 square miles in 1912 to just one square mile two years ago, which has brought down the height of the mountain by several feet.
The ice covering the 19,330ft peak “will be gone by about 2020”, said Lonnie Thompson, a glaciologist at Ohio State University. The process has cut water volume in some Tanzanian rivers that supply villages and hospitals. Global warming is one reason, but scientists say it alone cannot have caused such a dramatic change. The other factors behind the transformation remain a mystery.
New York City may convert de-commissioned cruise ships into shelters for its rising numbers of homeless people. Last month, a record 37,000 homeless people were sleeping in city shelters every night according to the Coalition for the Homeless, which compiles statistics for the city. City officials, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg's commissioner of homeless services, have flown to the Bahamas to inspect disused ships. They say the idea of using them was just one option being considered – but critics say the plan is unnecessary, and have called on the city to provide affordable housing for those in need. City officials stressed that it is too early to speculate on how the cruise-ship idea might be applied in New York.
Where is Europe's largest and most active volcano? Answer: Mount Etna on Sicily. Mount Etna has had four major eruptions in the last 309 years and it has just erupted once again – the last time was 1992.
Although lava flows have reached the tourist areas and the airport in Catania has closed and some hotels have been evacuated, the mayor reassured Catania's 330,000 residents that they were in no danger.
“The situation in Catania is completely under control and our city is not threatened in any way,” Mayor Umberto Scapagnini said.
The heaviest lava flow descended towards Piano Provenzana, a popular area for tourists to take mountain walks in summer and for skiing in the winter. The flow pushed over ski-lift pylons, knocked down power lines before surrounding an empty mountain hotel and lodge. No one was injured. See Murray's article on Sicily in the main part of the e-newsletter to see what Sicily has to offer!
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:
For the answers, see at the end of the e-newsletter.
A Beverly Hills scuba diving store has resisted a federal grand jury subpoena demanding that they identify everyone who had taken, but not finished, recreational dive classes over the last three years.
The subpoena was based upon far-fetched fears that an underwater terrorist attack could be accomplished by partially-trained divers. Apparently the FBI has already obtained information about every certified diver in the United States through the certification organisations PADI, NAUI, and SSI.
Ken Kurtis, co-owner of Reef Seekers, stated: “The scenario the FBI was painting–of divers swimming into a harbor with explosives to blow up ships–is extremely difficult and far-fetched for even the most skilled and experienced diver, and would be next-to-impossible for a newly certified diver, let alone one who had dropped out of a class and never completed training.”
Airlines in Europe will have to pay increased compensation to passengers who are stranded by cancellations or overbooking on flights if new legislation is approved.
At present, passengers who are forced to take a later flight because of overbooking – a common practice among carriers – or find their flight has been cancelled get between EUR150 and EUR300.
The new levels of compensation are lower than figures first proposed by the European Commission that were proposed at between EUR750 and EUR1500 depending on length of flight. Travelers on short haul services that are “bumped” from a flight or are affected by a cancellation, can now claim EUR200 (USD$195).
Those on longer flights can be compensated by up to EUR600 (USD$586). Some low cost carriers have warned that the proposals, passed by the European Parliament on Thursday, could mean a rise in fares unless carriers are willing to accept lower profit. The low cost airlines are unhappy about this and believe that the level of compensation should be adjusted to the price of the passenger ticket, rather than a flat rate covering every airline.
Not covered by this new compensation are events outside the direct control of carriers, including poor weather, long running strikes and security matters.