Heathrow

Heathrow Airport is so large and I spend enough time connecting there that I am tempted to treat it as its own travel location. Certainly on this trip, when I had seven hours there, I felt myself inclined to buy postcards and send them out. Only the unexpected appearance of an available power plug for the laptop held me back.

British Airways
I have to say that for in-flight magazines, it is hard to beat the British Airways one, called High Life. BA.com is their site, which I hope contains half the interesting articles and useful advice I found in their print version. I was particularly struck by the travel tips, which included suggested itineraries for a two or three day trip, as well as details of good places to stay and eat in various cities, including the kinds of prices you could expect to pay at the places they recommended. They had articles on Paris (Hotel des Grandes Ecoles at 100 Euros/night), St Petersburg (one of the mini-hotels: Sonata, Nevsky Inn, Kristoff, Pyaty Ugol, the Rakhmaninov, for 50-100 Euros), and New York (Hotel Belleclaire at $130 US). I almost feel now like I could stand to go to St Petersburg, despite my earlier reservations about needing three weeks to get a visa. Oh--and I almost forgot, Tobago (the Blue Haven hotel).

Radio Interference
Pilots and flight attendants and people like that are forever asking everyone to turn off their cell phones during flights. I’ve always felt a bit like Toby Ziegler in the pilot episode of West Wing, when he expresses incredulity that a $30 purchase from Radio Shack could compromise the electronics on a brand new aircraft worth millions of dollars. But our British Airways pilot came on the intercom as we lifted off from Prague, to say that someone was using a cell phone onboard and it was screwing up the transmissions from Air Traffic Control. Luckily it wasn’t me. I have no idea if Aaron Sorkin was on board.

Fire for Lunch
My one regret about BA is that they allowed Lister from Red Dwarf to choose the sandwiches. You will recall that he subsisted, unlike the Cat, on a diet of chicken vindaloo. I thought I was lucky when it turned out that only half my sandwich was curry-based, but then I ate the other half, which was canned tuna infused with what I now believe to be essence of hell. Maybe I shouldn’t have made so much fun of those 12th century Benedictine monks.

A Decent Cappuccino
Terminal 1 at Heathrow, on the other hand, has been undergoing a facelift. I had heard rumours, but hadn’t gotten the ocular proof until this afternoon. There are a number of very good stores, and the quality of the food is much improved since my last visit. I stopped and got a respectable club sandwich and a decent cappuccino at Pret a Manger, who you will remember has the slogan “Eat with your head.” Susan and I lived on their food a few years ago when we took an apartment for ten days in Soho. The coffee alone has enough moral fibre for three travelers, since it is not only free trade, but also a couple of other commendable things that I forget now but appreciated at the time. Having just watched Babel with Stefan, Milena, and Piotr, I am particularly conscious of the many opportunities for international miscommunication. Give your rifle as a gift to your fine native guide, and next thing you know Cate Blanchett is bleeding all over the handwoven carpets.

Dorling Kindersley
The Eyewitness Travel guides were first recommended to me by Susan Hockey, whose advice I have tended to take. They not only describe everything you want described, but they also have instructions on how to get there, and cutaways of the buildings once you do. We kept saying we’d look for them in Cracow and Prague, but we never did. Here in Heathrow they have both, and they are lovely. They don’t, unfortunately, have one in stock for Hong Kong, although I did finally, for the first time in my life, buy a Berlitz phrase book. I saw how Milena used hers in Peru, which is a method I think I can manage. It consisted of finding a relevant phrase, and rather than stammering it out in amusing tourist gibberish, simply pointing at the text for the local person to read. I also noticed that they have an Eyewitness Guide to Canada, and couldn’t resist seeing what it said. All of western Canada, which they called central Canada, filled 20 pages in the middle of a 340 page book. The cities where I’ve spent most of my life were each accorded two columns on a three-column page. I’m seriously thinking of moving to Cracow.