london1967 | Entries tagged with travelling

Last night I went back to India for a couple of hours. We went to see "Slumdog Millionaire" and it brought back many recent memories: seeing the slums from the plane, driving through them, the maimed child beggars, the sea of people, the confusion.

It is a wonderful film. I loved its fast pace, the story and the setting. It's a mix of love and violence, with some humour also thrown in for good measure.

Adrian and Lynne loved it too. Although Adrian said that somehow is even less keen on visiting India now. I can understand that.

Talking about travels, last week I briefly toyed with the idea of a trip to NYC in spring, but I had to put my Mr. Sensible hat on and a have a hard look at our finances. We really need to get the windows and the eaves decorated this year or they'll just rot away, and that's not going to be cheap.

So it's no to NYC and also to Slovenia and Croatia (sorry

paterson_si !) for the time being.

We quite fancy a week by the sea maybe in September - and we were thinking Sitges. The airfare is cheap at the moment but the accommodation way too expensive (blasted Euro! blasted British pride in not joining!)

Still, it's not all doom and gloom, as we have a week in Madeira to look forward to.

And if we won't manage to come to a town near you, come to see us. Your $, €, CHF, R$ should go a long way now!

Current Mood: disappointed
Current Location: London, WC1A

When I am bored at work, I often daydream about places I've visited.

Here's the "summary" of my European and American trips:

create your personalized map of europe

create your own personalized map of the USA

Time to go East perhaps?

Outside of Europe and the USA, I've only been to Israel and Turkey (and, of course, the UK - after all here they always talk of Europe as if they were not part of it).

Current Mood: bored
Current Location: London, WC1A

When we got back from Spain over 2 weeks ago, there was a very long queue at passport control at Gatwick; while we were more or less patiently waiting in the queue, we saw a guy walking past all of us and going to an automatic barrier, and getting through in seconds.
I wondered if it was an eye recognition system like the one they have at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, and was determined to find out.
And the net provided an answer.

It is indeed an iris recognition system (called, brace yourselves, IRIS) that is being implemented by the Border and Immigration Agency, and, unlike the one in Amsterdam, it is free of charge (so far).
At present it is only available in 4 British airports (Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham).
As we were flying from Gatwick last Thursday and we had some time before the flight, we went to the enrolment room and signed up to the scheme. They took our passport details, then a picture of us and finally we stared into a screen until our eyes matched the dots on the display. It took about 5 minutes to register.

The same evening on the way back from Dublin, we tried the automatic barrier at passport control, and it worked!! We were welcomed back into the country in a matter of seconds!

More information on the Home Office website and in this Telegraph article. (I know I shouldn't really advertise it as once it is well known, the queues will get longer, but hey I'm a generous soul!)

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: London, WC1A

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From 'La Mole' to Penge

Not always a smooth journey

Entries tagged with travelling

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