Travel Flashback: Airport Adventures

For most of us, travel means. airports. You can't avoid them, but can you learn to love them?

Airports are adding all types of rooms, including tiny hotel rooms for travellers who want to sleep a few hours, massive rooms where premium passengers can lounge in luxury and even prison cells. 

I came across the latter recently on a tour of Zurich Airport. Our minivan passed a large grey building with small square windows on the runway perimeter. A new hotel, 1 wondered. "No, our guide explained candidly. "It's a prison for those arriving who are not legal in Switzerland."

Travel Flashback: True grit in big cities

Seen Slumdog Millionaire yet? The much-acclaimed movie, directed by British filmmaker Danny Boyle, is a gem set in the slums of India. It intersperses shots of India’s tourism icon, the Taj Mahal, with seamy, steamy sections of India’s cities that tourism promoters generally prefer to keep out of the limelight. Slumdog Millionaire also gives insights into India’s underworld, the abode of ‘dacoits’ (as India terms armed bandits), organisers of professional begging rings and other exotic lowlife.

Travel Flashback: Twitter travel freebies beat media munching

An Englishman has flitted his way around the world, flying top airlines and rubbing shoulders with scintillating people, for practically nothing. He used the social media phenomenon Twitter to obtain free travel from fellow users.

Wintering in Britain – get cosy or go Gothic

Anglophile Peter Needham beckons you to explore Britain in winter and reveals some little-known advantages of travel in the chilly season.

 

Most Britons view with suspicion the notion of exploring their own country in winter. They prefer to holiday abroad and leave winter explorations of Britain to unorthodox foreigners and local eccentrics. Winter touring can, in fact, be pleasant and rewarding: you face little competition when sightseeing; queues disappear; road traffic dwindles, accommodation is easy to obtain (and often cheaper), and villages are wondrously free of tourist coaches. 

Struth! Faking it in First Class

IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says a Chinese man who recently made international headlines by dining free in an airline's First Class Lounge for almost a year, may not be the trail-blazer he's been made out to be – it seems he was beaten to the ruse by some devious young Aussie travel agents years ago.