Tag Archives: South Kensington

My London ‘hood

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South Kensington is more than just a pleasant neighborhood within easy reach of a lot of London attractions. It’s an ideal base for exploring and mastering the rest of London — and it’s been serving that role for decades.

Back in my old London neighborhood, South Kensington.

Cromwell Road. Gloucester Road. Collingham Road. Being on these streets again feels like reuniting with old friends. Each name brings back a memory, a smile.

The sidewalks bustle with people of every nationality. Travelers flow up and down the thoroughfares, towing wheeled suitcases bearing tags from the airlines of a dozen nations from Europe, Asia and Africa.

My friends Jay and Irene Berman introduced me to this neighborhood a decade ago. It’s what I call a “travel base,” one of those neighborhoods that ideally suited as a base of operations for the visitor.

South Kensington has served that role for tourists, business people and foreign students for decades, and it’s easy to see why.

It’s strategically located to the rest of the city. You can get subway trains of the London Underground to virtually anywhere from the Gloucester Road Tube station. It’s got everything you need within easy walking distance — restaurants, pubs, grocery stores, banks, post office, laundromat, Internet cafes, hardware stores.

There are some nice sites close by, as well — museums like the Victoria and Albert. Parks like Kensington Gardens and Green Park. Harrods, for those of you out there with the shopping gene.

Walk south for a few blocks and you’re at the Thames River.

But South Kensington has taught me to look not for touristy things, but for the things that give you what you need and want to make your trip a success.

In other words, the things that make you feel at home, when you’re not.

But they’re more likely to be older cities like London, built to a human scale, rather than a place like Los Angeles, which was built around the automobile. Easy access to good public transportation is one of the hallmarks of every good traveler’s hood.

There’s another factor in my choice of neighborhoods when I travel, and that’s lodging. Regular IBIT readers know I prefer apartments over hotels when I travel. Staying in apartments rather than hotels is more likely to put you in a real neighborhood like South Kensington than in a hyper-commercial downtown district.

It can cost a little more than a hotel per night, but apartment stays come with some benefits that save you money over the course of your stay. Having a kitchen to prepare your own meals, and a washer and dryer for your clothes saves you money on restaurant bills and baggage fees, not to mention making your luggage a lot lighter.

I’ve since learned that just every great metropolis has a neighborhood like this, and the truly gigantic cities in the world have more than one.

In New Orleans, for instance, there are neighborhoods along or near the St. Charles streetcar line that are just as functional as South Kensington, and have the added “perk” of being beautifully scenic, besides.

New York City has several of them, in each of its five boroughs, and you New Yorkers out there probably can and should tell the rest of us where they are. Ditto for Chicago, Atlanta and Washington DC.

Indeed, easy access to public transit is one of the hallmarks of a traveler’s ‘hood.

What would you look for in your ideal travel base? Have you ever found such a neighborhood yourself when you traveled — and if you have, where was it and what was it like?

Okay, off to the Imperial War Museum. I’ll add some pics to this entry once I’ve had a chance to shoot a little bit.

London calling!!

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IBIT is coming to you from “across the pond.” Back in one of the greatest cities in the world, and the first of my spiritual homes away from home.

If all has gone to plan, I am at this moment riding a Piccadilly Line train out of Heathrow Terminal 5, bound for South Kensington.

After five years away, I finally am back in London.

Samuel Johnson once famously said that “when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.” Well, no worries on that score, because I never get enough of this city.

Indeed, I blame London for the fact that I’ve yet to set foot in any other part of the United Kingdom.

I know about the charms of Bath, the beauty of the Lake District, the attractions of York and Dover and Brighton and all the rest. I just can’t tear myself away from London’s gravitational pull.

There’s just too much here — history, modernity, diversity, greenery, all wrapped up in a timeline stretching back to the Romans. All of it built to walking scale and all of it so easily navigated via those double-decker buses and the subway trains of the London Underground, the famous-infamous Tube.

And yes, I will remember to “mind the gap!”

Just as London’s the only place I’ve ever been in the UK, South Kensington’s the only neighborhood I’ve ever called home in London. And after a decade’s worth of visits, that’s exactly what it feels like— home.

That means I can tell you that if you’re going to Harrods, your best bet is the Number 74 bus — or if you’re in the mood for a healthy stroll, just walk down Cromwell Road about a mile or so. That a morning or evening stroll along Kensington Gardens’ Broad Walk can be an almost spiritual experience.

But it also means I can tell you where you can find the bank with the four — count ‘em — four ATMs outside, where the post office and the laundromat are, where the little storefront tourist shop is next to the Sainsbury’s 24-hour supermarket, where you can pick up a cheap calling card (or by now, probably a cheap SIM card for your cell phone, as well), along with anything you forgot to pack or anything that broke after you arrived.

I also know which hostel you need to be alert as you’re walking by on Cromwell Road, lest you be bowled over by rats the size of Cooper Minis that occasionally come bounding down the front steps on garbage pick-up day.

At least,I could. It’s been several years since I’ve been back. So I’m really anxious to see what has changed and has remains in my old London “‘hood.”

I’ll let you know.

BA discovers San Diego…again

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A British Airways Boeing 777

© Mtoumbev | Dreamstime.com

British Airways resumes direct flights between London and San Diego. Excuse me while I jump for some serious joy.

They’re B-A-A-A-CK!

Starting June 1, British Airways will resume direct flights between San Diego and London.

BA has tried San Diego twice before, in 1988 and again in 2001, and pulled out both times after a few years.
The first time they quit, it was because Desert Storm had drove up fuel prices. they stopped again after 9/11, when Americans became too afraid to fly for a couple of years.

Now, they’re hoping the third time will be lucky.

So am I.

For details, check out the Airports and Destinations site here.

For San Diegans, it means no more having to schlepp all the way up to Los Angeles to get a non-stop flight to Europe.

As it stands now, if you want to fly from here to Paris or Amsterdam or Rome or Madrid or anywhere else on the other side of the Atlantic (or the Pacific, for that matter), you will have to:

  • a) Drive yourself through two hours (or more) of Orange County and LA traffic to LAX, and pay to park your car at the airport while you’re away.
  • b) Pay for a shuttle ride through said traffic. The cheapest ones cram you into a van or minibus with a bunch of fellow sufferers and may force you to meet them somewhere near the freeway — and nowhere near your house.
  • c) Hop on an Amtrak train for a two-hour ride up to Los Angeles Union Station, to be followed by either a pricey half-hour cab ride or a $7 one-hour bus ride to LAX.
  • d) Drive up the day before to Los Angeles, spend the night at a hotel near the airport and get the hotel shuttle to LAX.

For me, Option D has been the least onerous. For the cost of one night’s stay, many will let you park your car in their guarded lot while you’re gone, at no charge. And they shuttle you between the airport and the hotel for free. It’s actually not a bad deal.

But it still adds up to extra money and time San Diegans wouldn’t have to hassle with if an airline, any airline, flew non-stop to Europe from San Diego.

So why don’t they?

When it comes to international flights beyond, say, Canada or Mexico, San Diego strictly a branch town, a spoke in the aviation hub that is LAX.

That’s what happens when the second largest city in California decides to make do with a small downtown airport with only one runway, wedged in between a bay, a freeway, the downtown and a Marine Corps boot camp.

Successive city councils, county boards and port directors have hemmed and hawed — first about expanding the airport, Lindbergh Field, and then moving it.

The whole sordid tale is too long and convoluted to get into here. Suffice it to say that for about 50 years, they hemmed and they hawed and hawed and they hawed and they hemmed, but ultimately did nothing.

After changes upon changes, Lindbergh Field is more or less the same. Same tight fit. Same single runway. Same branch operation that most non-U.S. airlines can’t squeeze into and won’t come near. Everything same-same.

Comes now British Airways to try again to make San Diego work for them.

My first flight to Europe was on BA, a Boeing 747. Even at my age, watching those behemoths easing themselves in and out of Lindbergh’s relatively tight approach was a major thrill.

Especially when their final approach took them low enough to let drivers on Interstate 5 check the inflation on the jumbo jet’s tires.

What I didn’t realize, until the day I became a passenger on one of those flights in 2000, was that when you took off from San Diego for London, you’d only be airborne for about an hour before you were on the ground again.

To pick up more passengers in Phoenix.

That’s the way it was back then. Phoenix passengers got the non-stop to London. San Diegans got what we usually get when it comes to trans-continental flights.

Which is to say…hosed.

Soon thereafter, though, BA went all-in, operating Boeing 777s non-stop between here and London.

It was lovely. Leave the car in a cheap long-term parking lot near Lindbergh Field. A five-minute shuttle ride to the airport to the airport. Board the big bird and ten hours later…cheerio!

It was especially great when those non-stops landed at London Heathrow (LHR) instead of London Gatwick (LGW).

I know, I know. A lot of travelers, especially Londoners, absolutely abhor LHR (do a search on the terms “hate” and “Heathrow” and you’ll find at least a half-dozen pages on Facebook alone), and they can give you plenty of good reasons why.

But I have one reason for loving it.

At Heathrow, you could go straight the arrival hall down to a subway train in the London Underground, the Piccadilly Line, would take you and your bags into London’s South Kensington area in about an hour for about six bucks.

A lovely ride, especially on a weekend afternoon, when it’s not crowded.

One of those famous black cabs woild be faster and the cabbie infinitely more enterytaining, but the ride could set you back about a hundred dollars.

The flights themselves were relatively comfortable — if long — even in Coach. The cabin staff was friendly and attentive. And when you landed, you were in arguably the most happening city in the world.

Of course, direct flight to London also mean direct flights from London, and the tourism folks here are hoping that a lot of Londoners will take note of San Diego’s beaches and bay and perpetual summers — especially in the winter months, when London’s weather can be largely wet and woefully cold.

So it’s a two-way trans-continental street. Here’s hoping it stays open a little longer this time.

the SUNDAY TRAVEL DIGEST

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The good, the bad and the bizarre from the world’s best travel media

Dorsoduro, Venice, ital;y | © Greg Gross

A NEW YEAR IN TRAVEL
Hello and welcome to 2011. What will the New Year bring us? I don’t have a crystal ball, but based on what we saw coming out of 2010, there are some things we can expect.

Right off the bat, higher airfares. Two reasons.

The nightmarish weather of the last Christmas season cost the airlines a lot of money that they’ll be looking to recoup. The other reason is the airline industry f-word.

No, not “fees.” That’s our f-word. I’m talking about fuel.

Back in Jan. 2009, the price of crude oil — from which our gasoline and their jet fuel derives — was right around $33 a barrel. Two years later, it’s threatening to hit $100bbl. Which means the cost of filling up those jumbo jets is about to hit the stratosphere.

The airlines have to find a way to absorb that financial hit. And with many of them having made a point in recent years of reducing their number of available seats and cutting back on flight and cabin crews, there’s only one way they can do it.

That’s right: hijack your wallet.

All this makes it more important than ever for you to stay alert for bargain fares and airline sales, and be prepared to pounce when you see a good deal. Don’t hem and haw in the hope that it make go down if you wait. For the first half of this year, at least, that probably won’t happen.

Make use of good travel sites that help you track fares, give you timely warnings on airfare sales and let you check as many airlines as possible. Be sure to check individual airline sites, as well.

Two of my favorite Web sites for scoping out airfare sales and airline trends are Smarter Travel and Airfarewatchdog. ST is more general, while AFW can be tailored to monitor fares from your home airport, but both are helpful.

If you use other sites that you think do this well, share them with the rest of the IBIT family.

PASSPORT TO TRAVEL
If you aren’t already a member of The 25 Percent Travel Solution — the roughly quarter of the American population that owns a valid U.S. passport, this would be a great year for you to join the club.

For one thing, we have one of the lower percentages of passport holders in the developed world, which partly explains why so much of the world seems to know more about us than we know about them.

For another, the government increased passport costs last year and there’s no guarantee they won’t do it again in the near future.

So get that little blue book and start collecting stamps.

Visa stamps, that is.

And now, here’s this week’s Digest:

AIR
from AirTrends.com
Want to know how an airport enhances its repution? Always be looking to make life easier for travelers. that’s what Amsterdam’s Schiphol International Airport does, and they’re doing it again with a fresh take on to airport waiting lounge.

LAND
from Lonely Planet
Global recession aside, there are still some eye-candy destinations out there that won’t make your wallet quiver in fear, and the LP folks have a list of ten, and they literally are all over the map.

from the New York Times
Vacation rentals are starting to throw in some nice extras in their attempts to compete with high-end hotels. Bad for the hotels, good for you.

from USA Today
Honeymoon travel has long been a staple of resorts around the world. Now, they’re doubling up on the romance. Prepare to embrace the “engagementcation.”

SEA
from TNOOZ.com
Cruise ships are all about getting you and keeping you out of your cabin. The Tnooz folks have some ideas for using technology to make your cabin a better place.

from the Jamaica Observer
What does the new Falmouth cruise ship port in Jamaica have in common with the Boeing 787 Dreamliner? Both are state of the art. Both promise a great new experience for travelers. And both are way behind schedule.

AFRICA
from Marrakech Loisirs
Feel like “raising sand?” This Morocco tour operator offers some eye-catching options, especially if you’re into horses or 4x4s.

from Agence France Presse
The ill wind that crippled holiday air travel in both Europe and the eastern United States created a ripple effect that reached all the way to Africa.

AMERICAS/CARIBBEAN
from the New York Times
An enjoyable weekend in one of the priciest cities on Earth, on no more than a hundred bucks? This, I gotta see.

from the Guardian (London UK)
Reliving the rum-saturated days of Hunter S. Thompson in Old San Juan.

ASIA
from Lonely Planet via BBC Travel
If you’re a foodie, you already have Hong Kong in your sights. The LP folks have some tips to refine your aim.

EUROPE
from Bootsnall.com
Almost every museum and art gallery of consequence in London is free to the public. That and plenty of other no-charge activities in one of the world’s priciest capitals.

from Lonely Planet
The LPs hit you with their list of the best ways to see Europe. Among them — a train (naturally), a ferry, a bike, a kayak, a…mail bus?

from the Guardian (London UK)
A lot of cool new hotels are opening in London this year in anticipation of the 2012 Olympics. You might want to check them out now, before they rates do a pole vault.

Food fights on the road

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No, not those kind of food fights. I’m talking about the simultaneous struggles to keep your waistline slim and your wallet fat while you travel. A little planning can help you win on both fronts.

Food and drink are major reasons why people travel abroad, but for health-conscious eaters, travel can be a minefield. What to do?

Well, if you do your homework, you may end up saving both coins and calories.

Before you go, find out what the locals eat that you can eat. Several regions have traditional diets healthier than ours, especially in the Mediterranean and Asia.

You might pick up on some tasty dishes and recipes that could lead you to have a better diet when you return home.

Eating in joints that cater to foreigners marks you as a tourist, which derives from the Latin word tourip, meaning “He who must be fleeced.” Go where the locals get their grub on. You’ll get some real “flavor,” and in more ways than one.

If you think the pasta in Rome, Italy tastes no different than it does in Rome, GA, you’d better brace yourself.

Still, you probably shouldn’t take all your meals in restaurants, especially in world capitals. A steady diet of big-city dining can leave your wallet on life support. Look for lodging whose location includes a decent grocery store or supermarket nearby, ideally within walking distance.

Healthy eats and exercise at the same time. Not bad.

When I first visited London, we stayed with friends in a couple of short-stay apartments in South Kensington that came with small but very functional kitchens.

With two supermarkets within a four-block walk — including a 24-hour Sainbury’s practically across the street from us — keeping provisioned was never a problem.

It soon became a routine. Breakfast and dinner “at home,” with lunch — always cheaper than dinner — while we were out walking around London.

Not renting a vacation apartment? These days, a lot of hotels and motels, especially the major chains, will put a small refrigerator and/or microwave oven in your room if you ask.

But it’s not just about your destination(s). Most airport food courts are a Murderers Row of overpriced fast-food joints.

Check the Web. Major airports have Web sites nowadays, and most list the eateries installed there. You can figure out if you can safely snack in the airport while you wait for your plane.

Speaking of planes, consider taking advantage of those special airline meals.

On long international flights, airlines offer a long list of special meals to meet passengers’ dietary or religious requirements. What’s more, the different religious meals may also fall within your diet, all of which gives you a lot more choices than the standard “beef or chicken?”

Not only do the airlines provide these meals at no extra charge, but passengers getting special meals get served first. The catch: You have to give the airline your order ahead of time, usually at least three days in advance.

But really, how hard is that?

With a little foresight, both your bank account and your bathroom scale may be a lot happier when you get home.

LONDON — A fever in the blood

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That’s how fast this city gets into your system.

It might happen the first time you walk along the Thames and catch a glimpse of the world-renowned silhouette of the Houses of Westminster and its clock tower, Big Ben, or the Tower Bridge or the Tower of London. It might happen when you first pull up to a pint in a warm, wood–paneled pub, or catch yourself looking the wrong way before crossing the street. It almost surely will happen the first time you board an Underground train and hear the stern, automated admonishment to “mind the gap!”

But it will happen. You will get caught up in the sights and rhythms of London…and that’s a good thing.

Aside from being one of the world’s great urban attractions in its own right, London is a great starting point for your first venture into international travel. Since the British speak English — at least in theory — you’ve got no language issues to jolt you out of your comfort zone on your very first venture away from American soil, as opposed to Tokyo or Cairo or Moscow.

At the same time, London — indeed, all of the United Kingdom — is just “foreign” enough to give you the sense that, like Toto, you are now a long way from Kansas.

London has five major airports. Your flight is likely to take you into either Heathrow or Gatwick. Getting out of the airport and into central London is the first place you’ll encounter the most important reality of visiting Britain: Their pound is worth a lot more than our dollar.

Unless you either own a bank or recently robbed one, do NOT plan on taking one of London’s famed black taxis into the city. The fare may send you into cardiac arrest.

It’s worth repeating: Everything is more expensive in London, but that’s doesn’t put it out of your reach. Save your coins, budget carefully and you’ll be fine.

Both Heathrow and Gatwick have express trains which will get into into one of central London’s train stations, from which you can make easy — and much cheaper — connections to where you’re staying. But Heathrow has an extra advantage for travelers, its own subway connection.

The Piccadilly line on the London Underground — also known to Londoners as “The Tube” — takes you straight from Heathrow airport into London’s South Kensington, just north of the Thames near the West End. Not as fast as a taxi, but almost as convenient and infinitely cheaper.

No one will mind if you get on the subway with your luggage; travelers do it all the time.

South Kensington is custom-made for first-time visitors to London, or first-time travelers in general. It’s got everything you need, and I do mean everything! It’s now my de facto London neighborhood. There are plenty of hotels, but I prefer short-stay apartments like the Oxbridge Apartments, right around the corner from Cromwell Road, sandwiched in an easy 10-minute walk between the Gloucester Road and Earls Court stations, and directly across the street from our favorite supermarket in all the world, Sainsbury’s.

Lemon curd, Irish oatmeal and clotted cream (don’t let the name trip you out; it’s actually quite good) for breakfast, Twinings teas any time of day, biscuits and Seriously Strong–brand cheddar cheese for late–night snacks while watching the BBC (it’s Scottish, delicious and totally lives up its name), and chicken tikka masala 24/7 from the deli.

You have to bag your own groceries in Europe, but who cares?

In the three blocks between the Gloucester Road subway stop and the apartment, i found:
* four hotels
* two supermarkets, Sainbury’s and Waitrose, and a small Tesco market
* a half-dozen great Italian, Indian and Thai restaurants
* a coin laundry
* an Internet cafe
* a bank with four ATMs outside
* a Post Office
* A tourist shop selling memory cards, camera batteries, phone cards, umbrellas, luggage and anything else you’re likely to have lost, forgot to pack or broke.

A turn up or down Gloucester Road will take you to more restos, pubs, bookstores and shops, not to mention Kensington Gardens, a beautiful, serenely green park that was home to Princess Diana until her death in 1997. The mountain of bouquets you saw on TV, piled up at the Kensington Palace gate by thousands of mourning Londoners, was here.

Three blocks to the east and you’re at the Gloucester Road stop for “The Tube.” Three blocks the other way and you’re Earl’s Court, with its own handy Tube stop. Between the two, navigating the whole of London is “easy-peasy!”

Interested in history? London is one of the European capitals that’s practically buried under it. At the feet of Edwardian and Elizabethan palaces and cathedrals are the foundations of buildings erected by the Romans. But this is the same city with ultra-modern architecture reaching to the sky, including the London Eye and a city hall that looks like a giant, precariously balanced glass egg.

It’s almost as if antiquity and modernity are forever jostling each other for elbow room.

A vibrant theater scene. A restaurant scene in constant motion that is busily erasing the memory of British food as the horror of Europe. A music scene more diverse than anything you will hear on American radio or MTV, and a club scene to match. If you’re fascinated by fashion, you’ll find yourself in one of its world capitals. And every race, nationality, culture and language is represented here…in abundance.

The British writer Samuel Johnson knew of what he spoke when he said, “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.” One way or another, London gets into your system and refuses to let go. Resistance is futile.

Plan on returning.