Results tagged “London” from Intelligent Travel Blog

Former Traveler staffer Christina Stockamore gets the inside scoop on One & Other, an imaginative art installation in London's Trafalgar Square.

If you've visited London in the last few months, chances are that you've stumbled across the unique art installation on display in Trafalgar Square. The project, called One & Other, was created by the British artist Antony Gormley, who was commissioned by the Mayor of London to create a sculpture atop the vacant fourth plinth in the northwest corner of London's Trafalgar Square. Instead of sculpting a statue out of bronze or marble, Gormley was moved by the idea to place real people on the plinth. The idea was to feature one performer or "Plinther" every hour for 100 days straight, and the last day of the project is October 19.

My aunt, Adrianne Foglia, was one of the 2,400 artists selected out of 34,224 applicants to perform on the plinth. At midnight one night late last month, she climbed up to the top and unfurled a huge banner that said "In Your Life, Who Do You Remember? Who Would You Thank?" I watched online as she began to recount in personal detail the long list of people who had touched her life. As she spoke, she scribbled their names on a canvas in colored markers to create an abstract mosaic next to the words: "People are the colors of our lives. Each one of us is a canvas." After she took to the plinth, I asked her to share her experience. Check our Q&A after the jump.

IT contributing writer Andrew Evans sends along this interview with his 97-year-old grandfather who vividly recalls his first transatlantic flight in 1949.
Not to boast, but in the last year I've crossed the Atlantic twelve times. In fact, I've done the 8-hour trip so many times, it's become rather routine: I doze during taxi and take-off, read until dinner, watch some movie I didn't want to pay for at home, then fall into fitful sleep before Greenland. Hopefully, I wake up somewhere over the English Channel. It's all so easy and yet still so amazing to me how every night, thousands of people pile into big metal pipes and wake up on the other side of the ocean.

In 1492, it took Christopher Columbus exactly 70 days to cross the same ocean and there was no SkyMall to pass the time. In 1776, tall sailing ships crossed the Atlantic in about 54 days and by the turn of the last century, steam-powered ocean liners crossed in about a week.

In 1912, just two months after the Titanic slipped beneath the icy North Atlantic waves, my grandfather Robert Brown Evans was born. Airplanes were just getting off the ground but by the time my grandfather was a teenager, Charles Lindbergh had made his famous flight from New York to Paris in thirty-three and a half hours.

As a paperboy supporting his widowed mother and three sisters, my grandfather never expected to travel outside his native Salt Lake City. But in 1929, when he was just 17 years old, he won an award for signing up the most new subscribers. His prize was a train trip to Seattle and a quick spin in a World War I biplane: "There was a single passenger seat in the front and a seat in back for the pilot, so they squeezed me and another boy up front. Right before we took off, the mechanics came and switched the propeller on the front of the plane, which of course, made me feel uneasy."

One of the world's most famous street crossings celebrated a milestone last Saturday -- the 40th anniversary of when the Beatles stepped outside their Abbey Road studio to shoot the legendary photograph of the Fab Four crossing the street.

Though tourists frequently stop traffic at this intersection in London's Paddington neighborhood for a quick photo op, you can safely revisit the iconic album cover virtually from the comfort of your own computer. See the zebra stripes via Google Street View, or check out the Abbey Road Studio Webcam for a live view.

-Tim Greenleaf

Need some music to inspire your next trip? In our April issue, writer Tom Pryor put together a list of some of the best songs that will transport you to London: from Britpop to The Clash. And now you can download the entire list on iTunes.

'Ello city-lovers! Today's city is London, England, and Louise Heal shows us the must-sees of the U.K.'s capital.

Want to see your city on IT? Copy and paste our list of fill-in-the-blank questions into an e-mail, fill in your answers, and send your responses to IntelligentTravel@ngs.org. And if you're still waiting for us to feature yours, fear not! We're going to keep posting as long as we keep getting them (please include photos and links!).

London, England is My City

The first place I take a visitor from out of town is Waterloo Bridge. This is far and away the best view of London. Any London taxi driver will say so, and what they say goes. Just so as you know.

When I crave Indian food I always go to Brick Lane, the spiritual home of curry in London. This is the heart of London's Bangladeshi community and is also within walking distance of the City of London.

To escape Oxford Street I head to Marylebone High Street. Daunt Bookshop is a treasure trove, there are plenty of nice little boutiques and some really great coffee places. What more does a girl need?

If I want to have a really good steak and chips I go to Chez Gerard. As they say - the best steak frites this side of Paris. And the champagne list isn't bad either!

For complete quiet, I can hide away at the British Library You need a reader's card to use the Reading Rooms, but anybody can use the restaurants, public areas and the courtyard. During the summer, there are free lunchtime concerts.
 
If you come to my city, get your picture taken on a Trafalgar Square lion. Then pose with a Guard at the Horse Guards Parade. Then hover about in front of Big Ben. Then stand on Westminster Bridge with the London Eye behind you. Strike a pose, why don't you?
 
If you have to order one thing off the menu from Simpson's in the Strand, it absolutely has to be the roast beef with Yorkshire pudding. You don't eat meat? Maybe just the Yorkshire pudding then.

Stanfords is my one-stop shop for all things travel-related. There are travel books, guides, maps, nautical charts, globes and Inspiration galore. I think I actually lived here in a former life.
 
Locals know to skip Leicester Square and check out Lower Regent Street instead. There are cinemas, restaurants and bars here, without the tourists or the touts.

When I'm feeling cash-strapped I go to the National Gallery and then walk down Whitehall to the London Eye. Depending on my mood, I'll either go to see Holbein's "Ambassadors," the Leonardo "cartoon" or Seurat's "Bathers at Asnieres." If you're feeling peckish, the Whitehall Sandwich Bar and the Lord Moon of the Mall pub opposite both serve good, cheap food and drink.

With Easter just around the corner, there's only one thing on my mind - chocolate. While I won't be traipsing around London tasting some of the world's finest chocolate anytime soon, I hope to live vicariously through my fellow chocoholics who find the time to do so.

For the Easter holiday, the four-star Mandeville Hotel is pulling out all the stops. You're welcomed with a chocolate gift, and the one-night stay for two includes a traditional English breakfast (sans chocolate), chocolate tea in the afternoon, and a chocolate martini in the Mandeville's bar. 

If you haven't had enough chocolate by the time you check out, head over to Fortnum & Mason, a 300-year-old shop located a mile from the hotel. The store is famous for its Easter egg collection, especially the Ultimate Easter Egg. The outermost milk chocolate shell opens to reveal three more shells of different types of chocolate.  And, at the center of this three-pound treat is a 100-percent dark chocolate egg.

Friend of IT and National Geographic visual communications coordinator Megan Seldon has the latest news on what's happening at our London store.

The recent opening of the National Geographic flagship store on London's famed Regent Street has the town abuzz with excitement. Spread across 19,375 square feet and set on three different levels, the store celebrates the Society's rich history and embraces all aspects of global culture.

One of the first things you'll notice when you step inside is that the walls throughout the store are bathed in black to capture the vibrant colors of the prints and products featured inside. The Marketplace features a large scope of National Geographic Society products, from the magazines and books to unique handcrafted items from global artisans, like original artifacts from indigenous tribes or hand-stitched camel-hide bags from Kenya.

For avid travelers, the store also offers a travel line that ranges from casual apparel to adventurous expedition gear. Shoppers can give the merchandise a try in the store's product-testing area, featuring wind gusts and extreme temperature changes--all of which are just part of a typical day in the life of a National Geographic explorer.

A few quick links from our travel radar this week...

- Now on display at the Testori UK Gallery in London: several works of art made from chewing gum. Artist Maurizio Sauvini used "American gum," as it's called in Rome, to shape a buffalo, bear, and a man. [Telegraph]

- Unleash your inner Viking at the Up Helly Aa Festival in Scotland's Shetland Islands, held the last weekend in January. [The Circumference]

- Treehugger points out that throwing trash out your car window creates the "finest All You Can Eat Buffet that Bambi has ever seen," which unfortunately is why so many animals are hit by cars. Stop roadkill by cleaning up your act. [Treehugger]

- Seattle Airport announces that it will begin using mobile air conditioning and heating units to keep planes cool while they're on the tarmac - reducing the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the planes. [USA Today]

- We're all for safe cycling, so when we came across the Light Lane, which projects a laser bike lane on the ground surrounding the rider, we couldn't help think it brilliant. [Boing Boing]

Photo: via the Telegraph

Over the next few weeks we'll be showcasing the best of the holiday season in cities around the world. Today we're taking you to London, and we've asked local experts for the essential ways to enjoy the winter's best. In London, whether you take in a choir performance at Westminster Abbey or join carolers at Trafalgar Square, visitors and locals alike come together to celebrate the holidays and the New Year. We encourage you to share your own favorites with us as well.


Guillaume Couchou-Meillot, Concierge
Sofitel London St. James