Invest, establish or purchase a business in Australia!
Australia welcomes experienced business people who can bring their expertise and investment to Australia. There has never been a better opportunity to benefit from Australia's Business Skills Program, with a booming economy and record low unemployment.
What are the requirements for a business visa?
Australian Business Visa RequirementsTo be eligible for one of the provisional business visas, you must have:
a successful business or investment career and,
a genuine commitment to engage in business activities in Australia.
To be eligible, there are certain basic criteria you must satisfy, but there is no points test. The entry threshold, particularly concerning age, English language ability, business turnover or assets is lower for applicants who secure sponsorship from an Australian State or Territory Government. Sponsored applicants will be given priority processing
AN OFFICIAL PROGRAM BY USA CONGRESS
The Diversity Immigrant Visa Lottery has been established in the 1996 Immigration Act in order to give immigration opportunity to natives from countries other than the main source of immigration to the U.S.A. This official U.S. government program aims to diversify the American population by creating an immigration opportunity to under-represented ethnic groups.
Immigration to Australia increasing amongst UK pensioners wanting better weather and lifestyle.
Australia has been announced as the most popular retirement destination for Scottish Pensioners with almost 95,000 now claiming their pensions abroad, up by a third in the past decade. The second and third most popular destinations for retiring abroad being Ireland and Spain.
The big increase in the number of Scottish pensioners looking to move abroad is expected to continue to rise, and is expected to reach 300,000 by 2050
A recent poll found that a third of those reaching retirement age planned to move abroad. With financial worries being the main reason. With the main benefits of moving abroad seen as the better weather, lifestyle and cost of living. One immigration consultant was quoted as saying “Many people who contact us are fed up with Scotland. They say the country is going down the tubes and that they don’t see any future here.”
A recent report published by the Public Policy Research found that there are more Britons living abroad than foreign migrants moving to the UK. The report also showed that the number of Britons buying property overseas has increased by a staggering fifty percent in just three years. The study concluded that British are one of the most footloose people in the world, with more Britons living abroad in the greatest number of different countries than any other nationality. There are now 41 countries with more than 10,000 British people living there, and a further 71 countries with over 1000 British people living there.
The increase in immigration now means that more people are emigrating than at the height of the last immigration peak, just before the First World War, when 300,000 people per annum where leaving their country.
And it’s just not the pensioners looking to retire in the sun and making the most of a lower cost of living, it’s also the young and highly skilled. Four out of 10 emigrating in 2004 were managerial or professional occupations.
The increasing number of people looking to immigrate to Australia compounded with the limited number of immigration places available has meant there is competition amongst applicants for Australian visas. It is now probably more important than ever to have a good understanding of how the Australian immigration officials assess visa applications in order that applicants can maximise their chance of gaining an Australian Visa
Showing posts with label Visa Lottery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Visa Lottery. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Studying in Canada
More than 130,000 students come to study in Canada every year and even more come to Canada to learn English or French. Foreign students bring a rich culture to our classrooms. Your knowledge and skills are welcome in our schools.
The provinces regulate education and schools in Canada. For more detailed information on living and studying in a specific province or territory, contact the school where you wish to study
Studying in Canada: Study permits
To study in Canada, you may need a study permit or a temporary resident visa, though not everyone must have these documents
Studying in Canada: Study permits
To study in Canada, you may need a study permit or a temporary resident visa, though not everyone must have these documents.
Studying in Canada: Work permits for students
It is possible to work in Canada while you are here as a student, and there are opportunities for jobs on and off campus. You will need to apply.
Visiting Canada
Canada welcomes you as a tourist, student or temporary worker. Every year, more than 35 million people visit Canada to enjoy the many opportunities our country has to offer.
Depending on where you live, and the reason for your visit, you will need to meet certain entry requirements. In some cases, if you plan to stay in Canada for a certain period of time, you will need a Temporary Resident Visa
The provinces regulate education and schools in Canada. For more detailed information on living and studying in a specific province or territory, contact the school where you wish to study
Studying in Canada: Study permits
To study in Canada, you may need a study permit or a temporary resident visa, though not everyone must have these documents
Studying in Canada: Study permits
To study in Canada, you may need a study permit or a temporary resident visa, though not everyone must have these documents.
Studying in Canada: Work permits for students
It is possible to work in Canada while you are here as a student, and there are opportunities for jobs on and off campus. You will need to apply.
Visiting Canada
Canada welcomes you as a tourist, student or temporary worker. Every year, more than 35 million people visit Canada to enjoy the many opportunities our country has to offer.
Depending on where you live, and the reason for your visit, you will need to meet certain entry requirements. In some cases, if you plan to stay in Canada for a certain period of time, you will need a Temporary Resident Visa
Working in Canada
Every year, over 90,000 foreign workers enter Canada to work temporarily in jobs that help Canadian employers address skill shortages, or as live-in caregivers.
A work permit is needed for most temporary jobs in Canada, though for some positions and business people it is not necessary. More information on work permits for temporary jobs can be found in this section of the website.Investors, entrepreneurs and self-employed persons
The Business Immigration Program seeks to attract experienced business people to Canada who will support the development of a strong and prosperous Canadian economy
Working temporarily in Canada: Who can apply
Some temporary workers require a work permit and some do not. Some workers fall into categories where permits are approved more quickly.
The requirements and processing times depend on what sort of work you will be doing when you come to CanadaEvery year, over 90,000 foreign workers enter Canada to work temporarily in jobs that help Canadian employers address skill shortages, or as live-in caregivers.
A work permit is needed for most temporary jobs in Canada, though for some positions and business people it is not necessary. More information on work permits for temporary jobs can be found in this section of the website.Investors, entrepreneurs and self-employed persons
The Business Immigration Program seeks to attract experienced business people to Canada who will support the development of a strong and prosperous Canadian economy.
Business immigrants are expected to make a $400,000 investment or to own and manage businesses in Canada.
Canada has three classes of business immigrants:
* investors
* entrepreneurs and
* self-employed persons.
Each application can be made for only one class and cannot be changed once the application is submitted. The criteria you must meet to qualify are different for
each class.
MORE HERE
A work permit is needed for most temporary jobs in Canada, though for some positions and business people it is not necessary. More information on work permits for temporary jobs can be found in this section of the website.Investors, entrepreneurs and self-employed persons
The Business Immigration Program seeks to attract experienced business people to Canada who will support the development of a strong and prosperous Canadian economy
Working temporarily in Canada: Who can apply
Some temporary workers require a work permit and some do not. Some workers fall into categories where permits are approved more quickly.
The requirements and processing times depend on what sort of work you will be doing when you come to CanadaEvery year, over 90,000 foreign workers enter Canada to work temporarily in jobs that help Canadian employers address skill shortages, or as live-in caregivers.
A work permit is needed for most temporary jobs in Canada, though for some positions and business people it is not necessary. More information on work permits for temporary jobs can be found in this section of the website.Investors, entrepreneurs and self-employed persons
The Business Immigration Program seeks to attract experienced business people to Canada who will support the development of a strong and prosperous Canadian economy.
Business immigrants are expected to make a $400,000 investment or to own and manage businesses in Canada.
Canada has three classes of business immigrants:
* investors
* entrepreneurs and
* self-employed persons.
Each application can be made for only one class and cannot be changed once the application is submitted. The criteria you must meet to qualify are different for
each class.
MORE HERE
Is Queensland the new New Zealand?
recent years New Zealand has cornered the market for Antipodean thrill-seeking and self-drive touring holidays.
But over the past week I have been in Queensland discovering that at least one Aussie state is mounting a challenge to the Kiwis on both counts. I suppose the Sunshine State has always had an adventurous feel about it, what with the reef to dive on and the rainforest to play in. But it has also been traditionally associated with lazy beachside holidays.
I reckon that image is about to change. There are now many more imaginative ways of experiencing the rainforest and I've been here I have tried a few. The most thrilling was jungle surfing in the Daintree rainforest, which involved gliding (upside down) through the canopy on flying foxes. But my favourite adventure was a serene drift snorkelling tour along the Mossman river, negotiating occasional rapids and spotting turtles and eels along the way. I am too old to have tried other possibilities like swinging, but anybody who's prepared to get off their loungers will find thrills aplenty in Tropical North Queensland.
On a more sedate note, the state is also redefining itself as a driving holiday destination. I followed part of the Great Tropical Drive, motoring gradually down through rainforest and past huge sugar cane and banana plantations from Cape Tribulation to Townsville. The route is particularly spectacular between Cape Trib and the Daintree River, the skinny road twisting and turning through deep-green jungle and from Port Douglas to Cairns where it hugs the coast. A self-drive holiday like this is another memorable alternative to a traditional Queensland holiday.
Is Queensland the next Antipodean adventure capital or will New Zealand continue to rule the roost? Which Aussie state is the best for a self-drive or thrill-seeking holiday?
read more
But over the past week I have been in Queensland discovering that at least one Aussie state is mounting a challenge to the Kiwis on both counts. I suppose the Sunshine State has always had an adventurous feel about it, what with the reef to dive on and the rainforest to play in. But it has also been traditionally associated with lazy beachside holidays.
I reckon that image is about to change. There are now many more imaginative ways of experiencing the rainforest and I've been here I have tried a few. The most thrilling was jungle surfing in the Daintree rainforest, which involved gliding (upside down) through the canopy on flying foxes. But my favourite adventure was a serene drift snorkelling tour along the Mossman river, negotiating occasional rapids and spotting turtles and eels along the way. I am too old to have tried other possibilities like swinging, but anybody who's prepared to get off their loungers will find thrills aplenty in Tropical North Queensland.
On a more sedate note, the state is also redefining itself as a driving holiday destination. I followed part of the Great Tropical Drive, motoring gradually down through rainforest and past huge sugar cane and banana plantations from Cape Tribulation to Townsville. The route is particularly spectacular between Cape Trib and the Daintree River, the skinny road twisting and turning through deep-green jungle and from Port Douglas to Cairns where it hugs the coast. A self-drive holiday like this is another memorable alternative to a traditional Queensland holiday.
Is Queensland the next Antipodean adventure capital or will New Zealand continue to rule the roost? Which Aussie state is the best for a self-drive or thrill-seeking holiday?
read more
Off-beat London
Article by: Abigail Hole, April 2008
Buckingham, Schmuckingham: go off-piste and explore London's eccentric secrets. Here are 10 of the best.
1 Go on a Bat Walk
Places are sought after on the St James's Park Bat Walks, which take place at dusk and start at Horseguards Parade (tube: Charing Cross); book ahead.
Almost as interesting as the bat spotting itself are your fellow spotters, who range from flappy-eared fanatics to quintessential English gentlemen, all sporting crackly bat detectors. The tension mounts as you circle the lake without spotting a single flying mammal, but as evening falls, the bats oblige by whirring above the trees, provoking a moment of pure wonder.
2 Find gods in Neasden
BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir (tube: Neasden), the first Hindu temple in Europe, would be amazing anywhere. But in a northwest London suburb, off the North Circular motorway, it's otherworldly. The lace-like marble carving, delicate as flowers, was made by Indian sculptors and then shipped to the UK, where volunteers worked to build the temple from 26,300 carved pieces. Built from 1992 to 1995 and funded entirely by donations, it's a focus for the area's Indian community, but everyone is welcome.
3 Visit Sir John Soane's Museum by candlelight
Sir John Soane's Museum (Lincoln's Inn Fields; tube: Holborn), the 18th-century architect's former home, is a peculiarly British Aladdin's cave. It's at its most magical by candlelight (6-9pm, first Tuesday of the month).
From outside, the museum is a graceful townhouse. Within you'll find a treasure trove, lit by hidden skylights, reflected by mirrors, and topped by a glass dome. Highlights of Soane's crammed-in collection of art, sculpture and antiques include the Egyptian sarcophagus of Seti l and a bevy of Hogarth paintings.
4 Tango at a tea dance
Don your glad rags and get down to the magnificent Old Finsbury Town Hall for Art of the Dog's fabulous tea dance (artofthedog@hotmail.com; 2-5pm, monthly on a Sunday; Rosebery Avenue; tube: Angel). This traditional affair is a dazzling mixture of ages and types, with 40s-styled nouveau sirens outdanced by old ladies in sequins. It's a chance to dust off your waltz, foxtrot and quickstep in gorgeous yet unintimidating surroundings. Don't panic if you've never done it before - lessons are included. Tea, cake, and G&Ts will help put twinkle in your toes.
5 Get kinky at the Torture Garden
'Did they come on the bus? Or even by cab?' you can't help wondering, as another spiked PVC corset or fishnet bodystocking struts past. There aren't many places where you can spot thong-wearing bank managers and people tied up in corners (who always go home early). Wear too many clothes and you'll feel distinctly prudish at the Torture Garden. The world's leading fetish club takes place regularly at Mass, a club in a converted Brixton church (tube: Brixton). Shows to make you go ‘ouch' (such as on-stage piercing) add to the all-round freakiness.
6 Take a bracing dip
Swimming in the Serpentine Lido at Hyde Park is as civilised as cucumber sandwiches. For most, it's a summer activity (open daily, 5 June-11 September), but join the Serpentine Swimming Club and you can swim every day of the year. When the lake is frozen, swimmers break the ice for what must be a brisk dip.
Another top swimming spot is Hampstead Bathing Ponds (Hampstead Heath; open May to September). This rural idyll of a pond is surrounded by London's loveliest woodlands. If you want to swim year round, stiffen your sinews and join Hampstead Swimming Club.
7 Take a Duck Tour
A Duck Tour is a remarkable sightseeing tour in canary-yellow vehicles that drive on the road and float on water. Formerly military vehicles used in the D-Day landings, these Chitty Chitty Bang Bang truck-boat hybrids are each pushing 70 years old. The 75-minute tour trundles around central London, then lurches alarmingly into the Thames to chug low in the water alongside the Houses of Parliament. The entertaining guides combine interesting facts, stand-up comedy and stream-of-consciousness commentary.
8 Join the circus
Nothing builds a six pack like working out on a trapeze, and you no longer have to run away with the circus to get one. The Generating Company (0207 0933 204; Buoy Wharf, E14; DLR: East India) offers courses in trapeze, acrobatics, rope/silks and Chinese pole (tricks on a vertical steel pole), and allows you to sign up for a two-lesson taster.
9 Experience Westminster live
Want to witness all the turmoil and torpor of parliamentary politics? Attend a debate in the Houses of Commons or Lords. Join the queue outside St Stephen's Gate; proceedings are open to both UK and overseas residents. You'll need to apply for a free ticket in advance (UK residents only) for Question Time, when politicians are at their friskiest.
Not many people know that you can visit Big Ben by applying in writing to your MP (UK residents only). You climb 334 vertiginous steps to the bell's hidden lair. After the hour strikes, your ears will be humming for days - but it's a small price to pay for such an adventure.
10 Go boho at the Horse Hospital
This Bloomsbury arts venue (Colonnade; tube: Russell Square) was once - surprise! - a horse hospital. You enter up the slope where the horses once clip-clopped into the building. It might feel like a spooky squat party, but this is London's most avant garde arts centre, with underground art and photography exhibitions and out-there films. Tickets are £7; films are obscure.
read more
Buckingham, Schmuckingham: go off-piste and explore London's eccentric secrets. Here are 10 of the best.
1 Go on a Bat Walk
Places are sought after on the St James's Park Bat Walks, which take place at dusk and start at Horseguards Parade (tube: Charing Cross); book ahead.
Almost as interesting as the bat spotting itself are your fellow spotters, who range from flappy-eared fanatics to quintessential English gentlemen, all sporting crackly bat detectors. The tension mounts as you circle the lake without spotting a single flying mammal, but as evening falls, the bats oblige by whirring above the trees, provoking a moment of pure wonder.
2 Find gods in Neasden
BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir (tube: Neasden), the first Hindu temple in Europe, would be amazing anywhere. But in a northwest London suburb, off the North Circular motorway, it's otherworldly. The lace-like marble carving, delicate as flowers, was made by Indian sculptors and then shipped to the UK, where volunteers worked to build the temple from 26,300 carved pieces. Built from 1992 to 1995 and funded entirely by donations, it's a focus for the area's Indian community, but everyone is welcome.
3 Visit Sir John Soane's Museum by candlelight
Sir John Soane's Museum (Lincoln's Inn Fields; tube: Holborn), the 18th-century architect's former home, is a peculiarly British Aladdin's cave. It's at its most magical by candlelight (6-9pm, first Tuesday of the month).
From outside, the museum is a graceful townhouse. Within you'll find a treasure trove, lit by hidden skylights, reflected by mirrors, and topped by a glass dome. Highlights of Soane's crammed-in collection of art, sculpture and antiques include the Egyptian sarcophagus of Seti l and a bevy of Hogarth paintings.
4 Tango at a tea dance
Don your glad rags and get down to the magnificent Old Finsbury Town Hall for Art of the Dog's fabulous tea dance (artofthedog@hotmail.com; 2-5pm, monthly on a Sunday; Rosebery Avenue; tube: Angel). This traditional affair is a dazzling mixture of ages and types, with 40s-styled nouveau sirens outdanced by old ladies in sequins. It's a chance to dust off your waltz, foxtrot and quickstep in gorgeous yet unintimidating surroundings. Don't panic if you've never done it before - lessons are included. Tea, cake, and G&Ts will help put twinkle in your toes.
5 Get kinky at the Torture Garden
'Did they come on the bus? Or even by cab?' you can't help wondering, as another spiked PVC corset or fishnet bodystocking struts past. There aren't many places where you can spot thong-wearing bank managers and people tied up in corners (who always go home early). Wear too many clothes and you'll feel distinctly prudish at the Torture Garden. The world's leading fetish club takes place regularly at Mass, a club in a converted Brixton church (tube: Brixton). Shows to make you go ‘ouch' (such as on-stage piercing) add to the all-round freakiness.
6 Take a bracing dip
Swimming in the Serpentine Lido at Hyde Park is as civilised as cucumber sandwiches. For most, it's a summer activity (open daily, 5 June-11 September), but join the Serpentine Swimming Club and you can swim every day of the year. When the lake is frozen, swimmers break the ice for what must be a brisk dip.
Another top swimming spot is Hampstead Bathing Ponds (Hampstead Heath; open May to September). This rural idyll of a pond is surrounded by London's loveliest woodlands. If you want to swim year round, stiffen your sinews and join Hampstead Swimming Club.
7 Take a Duck Tour
A Duck Tour is a remarkable sightseeing tour in canary-yellow vehicles that drive on the road and float on water. Formerly military vehicles used in the D-Day landings, these Chitty Chitty Bang Bang truck-boat hybrids are each pushing 70 years old. The 75-minute tour trundles around central London, then lurches alarmingly into the Thames to chug low in the water alongside the Houses of Parliament. The entertaining guides combine interesting facts, stand-up comedy and stream-of-consciousness commentary.
8 Join the circus
Nothing builds a six pack like working out on a trapeze, and you no longer have to run away with the circus to get one. The Generating Company (0207 0933 204; Buoy Wharf, E14; DLR: East India) offers courses in trapeze, acrobatics, rope/silks and Chinese pole (tricks on a vertical steel pole), and allows you to sign up for a two-lesson taster.
9 Experience Westminster live
Want to witness all the turmoil and torpor of parliamentary politics? Attend a debate in the Houses of Commons or Lords. Join the queue outside St Stephen's Gate; proceedings are open to both UK and overseas residents. You'll need to apply for a free ticket in advance (UK residents only) for Question Time, when politicians are at their friskiest.
Not many people know that you can visit Big Ben by applying in writing to your MP (UK residents only). You climb 334 vertiginous steps to the bell's hidden lair. After the hour strikes, your ears will be humming for days - but it's a small price to pay for such an adventure.
10 Go boho at the Horse Hospital
This Bloomsbury arts venue (Colonnade; tube: Russell Square) was once - surprise! - a horse hospital. You enter up the slope where the horses once clip-clopped into the building. It might feel like a spooky squat party, but this is London's most avant garde arts centre, with underground art and photography exhibitions and out-there films. Tickets are £7; films are obscure.
read more
Win a trip to Disneyland!
Expedia.com.au and ninemsn Travel are offering you the chance to win a family holiday to Disneyland! A must do for every family; a trip to Disneyland brings you together like no other holiday experience. And with everything covered, your only job is to have fun!
The prize, valued at more than $12,000, includes:
Return economy airfares to Los Angeles for a family of four (two adults, two children)
Five nights' accommodation at a Disneyland Resort hotel for the family
Three-day Disneyland Resort Park Hopper tickets for the family
Six-day car hire so you can easily shuttle the family around!
To enter, simply click the "enter competition" button at the bottom of the page.
enter here
The prize, valued at more than $12,000, includes:
Return economy airfares to Los Angeles for a family of four (two adults, two children)
Five nights' accommodation at a Disneyland Resort hotel for the family
Three-day Disneyland Resort Park Hopper tickets for the family
Six-day car hire so you can easily shuttle the family around!
To enter, simply click the "enter competition" button at the bottom of the page.
enter here
Monday, April 21, 2008
From London to Rome on a MetroCard
By SETH KUGEL
Published: April 20, 2008
Correction Appended
SURE, you could visit Europe, but it’s just so darn inconvenient. The exchange rate turns you into a pauper, portions are minuscule, people smoke a lot, good bagels are practically nonexistent. Neither Greyhound nor Amtrak stop there. What kind of a tourist attraction is that?
So consider the advantages of a European weekend in New York. The city is more European than you think: where else could you dine on Bosnian sausage in (the Cevabdzinica) Sarajevo (restaurant), then take a 20-minute train ride to (the) Paris (Theater) for French film? A MetroCard costs a tiny fraction of what a Eurail pass does, but lets you visit most major tourist destinations in Europe (O.K., places named after them) without leaving the city.
First, a hotel: At the London NYC on West 54th Street, where the formal restaurant is called Gordon Ramsay at the London, the London suites start at $399 a night and the London atrium suite is $3,999 a night. Are those prices London enough for you?
Staying there for the Travel section last year, the Times’s restaurant critic Frank Bruni was impressed by the size of the rooms and the “smartly and indulgently up-to-the-minute space” (and the mirrored French doors — a bonus country!). In a separate review, he gave the restaurant two stars.
It’s only a short walk from the London to the Paris, where French movies attract a French and Francophile crowd that knows how to throw around a “formidable” or two and is clearly no stranger to the accent aigu. Now playing is “Flight of the Red Balloon,” which won a gleaming review from the Times’s Manohla Dargis. If you disagree and get bored, slip into the lobby and try to name the French actors (Bardot, Depardieu and the like) pictured there.
From the theater, it’s a pleasant walk along Parque Central to the Shops at Columbus Circle, where you’ll find Face Stockholm, the Swedish cosmetics store, and Davidoff of Geneva, which hawks cigars and even provides a minilounge to smoke them in.
Though it might be tempting to stop by a frankfurter salesman on the street corner, just head down 10th Avenue a few blocks for dinner at Hallo Berlin, an informal beer-guzzling place where the pork chops are tender, the tablecloths are gingham and the beer garden is open. If you don’t like their great beer selection, you can always order from their fun-to-pronounce list of brandies: Kirschwasser, Himbeergeist, Pflumi.
To loosen your tongue after this polysyllabic meal, it’s a quick walk to the Barcelona Bar, an otherwise ordinary watering hole that offers over 100 specialty shots, something like what you might find in Barcelona itself. If you are willing to sacrifice taste to keep the European theme going, try las Ramblas (grenadine, lime and tequila) or the Mussolini (Southern Comfort and Amaretto). Or just have a Peroni beer.
There’s lots more downtown. Cafe de Bruxelles on (bonus) Greenwich Avenue is a mussels-and-fries-with-no-ketchup kind of place in the West Village that attracts a crowd of regulars, including a high ratio of adorable elderly couples who look as if they’d have grown plump on the mayonnaisey dip and the crème brûlée tart.
You’ll no longer be able to visit Provence in Greenwich Village, which is closing Sunday (the owners plan to reopen the restaurant in May as Hundred Acres, serving rustic, farm-focused food). But you can try Régate, a little bistro on the Lower East Side named for France’s Île de Ré. You can try the mouclade de la couarde (mussels with saffron and cream) or the bourride rétaise à la lotte (monkfish), near replicas of the traditional dishes you’d find on the real island. (Or maybe not, but if you make a comment like that, few will be qualified to call you on it.)
If Italy’s more to your taste, you might head to Old Venice, actually Antica Venezia, a restaurant in the far West Village, or Firenze on the Upper East Side.
Afterward, you could check out Dublin 6, a West Village bar with a nice beer selection (little of which is Irish). But for those hankering for the Swiss Alps, there’s Gstaad, where skiers zoom down treacherous slopes (on a video projected on a wall in Chelsea), and the good-looking crowd lounges on minimalist ski-resort furniture.
Finally, for that classic combination of rock music and kielbasa, head to Warsaw, a cavernous club in the Polish National Home in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
If you’re still around on Monday morning, how about one more touch of Italy. The Rome Fastener Corporation showroom on West 25th Street may be short on the farfalle, but you won’t find grommets and eyelets like these on the Adriatic. And you won’t pay in euros, either.
NO EUROS NEEDED (OR ACCEPTED)
Cevabdzinica Sarajevo, 37-18 34th Avenue, Astoria, Queens; (718) 752-9528.
London NYC, 151 West 54th Street; (866) 690-2029; www.londonnyc.com.
Paris Theater, 4 West 58th Street; (212) 688-3800; www.theparistheatre.com; tickets $11.
Face Stockholm, 10 Columbus Circle, Ground Floor; (212) 823-9415; www.facestockholm.com.
Davidoff of Geneva, 10 Columbus Circle, Ground Floor; (212) 823-6383; www.davidoff.com.
Hallo Berlin, 624 10th Avenue at 44th Street; (212) 977-1944; www.halloberlinrestaurant.com.
Barcelona Bar, 923 Eighth Avenue near 55th Street; (212) 245-3212; www.barcelonabarnyc.com.
Cafe de Bruxelles, 118 Greenwich Avenue at 13th Street; (212) 206-1830; www.cafedebruxelles.com.
Régate, 198 Orchard Street at East Houston; (212) 228-8555; www.regate-bistro.com.
Antica Venezia, 396 West Street at 10th Street, (212) 229-0606; www.avnyc.com.
Firenze, 1594 Second Avenue at 82nd Street; (212) 861-9368.
Dublin 6, 575 Hudson Street near West 11th Street; (646) 638-2900; www.dublin6nyc.com.
Gstaad, 43 West 26th; (212) 683-1440; www.gstaadnyc.com.
Warsaw Bar and Bistro, 261 Driggs Avenue, Greenpoint, Brooklyn; (718) 387-0505; www.warsawconcerts.com.
The Rome Fastener Corporation, 24 West 25th Street; (212) 741-9779; www.romefast.com.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: April 20, 2008
The Weekend in New York column on Page 11 of the Travel section this weekend, about finding places in the city that evoke Europe, carries an outdated reference to the restaurant Provence in Greenwich Village. After the article went to press on Monday, the restaurant announced that it is closing today. (The owners will reopen the restaurant in May as Hundred Acres, with a rustic, farm-focused menu.)
read more here
Published: April 20, 2008
Correction Appended
SURE, you could visit Europe, but it’s just so darn inconvenient. The exchange rate turns you into a pauper, portions are minuscule, people smoke a lot, good bagels are practically nonexistent. Neither Greyhound nor Amtrak stop there. What kind of a tourist attraction is that?
So consider the advantages of a European weekend in New York. The city is more European than you think: where else could you dine on Bosnian sausage in (the Cevabdzinica) Sarajevo (restaurant), then take a 20-minute train ride to (the) Paris (Theater) for French film? A MetroCard costs a tiny fraction of what a Eurail pass does, but lets you visit most major tourist destinations in Europe (O.K., places named after them) without leaving the city.
First, a hotel: At the London NYC on West 54th Street, where the formal restaurant is called Gordon Ramsay at the London, the London suites start at $399 a night and the London atrium suite is $3,999 a night. Are those prices London enough for you?
Staying there for the Travel section last year, the Times’s restaurant critic Frank Bruni was impressed by the size of the rooms and the “smartly and indulgently up-to-the-minute space” (and the mirrored French doors — a bonus country!). In a separate review, he gave the restaurant two stars.
It’s only a short walk from the London to the Paris, where French movies attract a French and Francophile crowd that knows how to throw around a “formidable” or two and is clearly no stranger to the accent aigu. Now playing is “Flight of the Red Balloon,” which won a gleaming review from the Times’s Manohla Dargis. If you disagree and get bored, slip into the lobby and try to name the French actors (Bardot, Depardieu and the like) pictured there.
From the theater, it’s a pleasant walk along Parque Central to the Shops at Columbus Circle, where you’ll find Face Stockholm, the Swedish cosmetics store, and Davidoff of Geneva, which hawks cigars and even provides a minilounge to smoke them in.
Though it might be tempting to stop by a frankfurter salesman on the street corner, just head down 10th Avenue a few blocks for dinner at Hallo Berlin, an informal beer-guzzling place where the pork chops are tender, the tablecloths are gingham and the beer garden is open. If you don’t like their great beer selection, you can always order from their fun-to-pronounce list of brandies: Kirschwasser, Himbeergeist, Pflumi.
To loosen your tongue after this polysyllabic meal, it’s a quick walk to the Barcelona Bar, an otherwise ordinary watering hole that offers over 100 specialty shots, something like what you might find in Barcelona itself. If you are willing to sacrifice taste to keep the European theme going, try las Ramblas (grenadine, lime and tequila) or the Mussolini (Southern Comfort and Amaretto). Or just have a Peroni beer.
There’s lots more downtown. Cafe de Bruxelles on (bonus) Greenwich Avenue is a mussels-and-fries-with-no-ketchup kind of place in the West Village that attracts a crowd of regulars, including a high ratio of adorable elderly couples who look as if they’d have grown plump on the mayonnaisey dip and the crème brûlée tart.
You’ll no longer be able to visit Provence in Greenwich Village, which is closing Sunday (the owners plan to reopen the restaurant in May as Hundred Acres, serving rustic, farm-focused food). But you can try Régate, a little bistro on the Lower East Side named for France’s Île de Ré. You can try the mouclade de la couarde (mussels with saffron and cream) or the bourride rétaise à la lotte (monkfish), near replicas of the traditional dishes you’d find on the real island. (Or maybe not, but if you make a comment like that, few will be qualified to call you on it.)
If Italy’s more to your taste, you might head to Old Venice, actually Antica Venezia, a restaurant in the far West Village, or Firenze on the Upper East Side.
Afterward, you could check out Dublin 6, a West Village bar with a nice beer selection (little of which is Irish). But for those hankering for the Swiss Alps, there’s Gstaad, where skiers zoom down treacherous slopes (on a video projected on a wall in Chelsea), and the good-looking crowd lounges on minimalist ski-resort furniture.
Finally, for that classic combination of rock music and kielbasa, head to Warsaw, a cavernous club in the Polish National Home in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
If you’re still around on Monday morning, how about one more touch of Italy. The Rome Fastener Corporation showroom on West 25th Street may be short on the farfalle, but you won’t find grommets and eyelets like these on the Adriatic. And you won’t pay in euros, either.
NO EUROS NEEDED (OR ACCEPTED)
Cevabdzinica Sarajevo, 37-18 34th Avenue, Astoria, Queens; (718) 752-9528.
London NYC, 151 West 54th Street; (866) 690-2029; www.londonnyc.com.
Paris Theater, 4 West 58th Street; (212) 688-3800; www.theparistheatre.com; tickets $11.
Face Stockholm, 10 Columbus Circle, Ground Floor; (212) 823-9415; www.facestockholm.com.
Davidoff of Geneva, 10 Columbus Circle, Ground Floor; (212) 823-6383; www.davidoff.com.
Hallo Berlin, 624 10th Avenue at 44th Street; (212) 977-1944; www.halloberlinrestaurant.com.
Barcelona Bar, 923 Eighth Avenue near 55th Street; (212) 245-3212; www.barcelonabarnyc.com.
Cafe de Bruxelles, 118 Greenwich Avenue at 13th Street; (212) 206-1830; www.cafedebruxelles.com.
Régate, 198 Orchard Street at East Houston; (212) 228-8555; www.regate-bistro.com.
Antica Venezia, 396 West Street at 10th Street, (212) 229-0606; www.avnyc.com.
Firenze, 1594 Second Avenue at 82nd Street; (212) 861-9368.
Dublin 6, 575 Hudson Street near West 11th Street; (646) 638-2900; www.dublin6nyc.com.
Gstaad, 43 West 26th; (212) 683-1440; www.gstaadnyc.com.
Warsaw Bar and Bistro, 261 Driggs Avenue, Greenpoint, Brooklyn; (718) 387-0505; www.warsawconcerts.com.
The Rome Fastener Corporation, 24 West 25th Street; (212) 741-9779; www.romefast.com.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: April 20, 2008
The Weekend in New York column on Page 11 of the Travel section this weekend, about finding places in the city that evoke Europe, carries an outdated reference to the restaurant Provence in Greenwich Village. After the article went to press on Monday, the restaurant announced that it is closing today. (The owners will reopen the restaurant in May as Hundred Acres, with a rustic, farm-focused menu.)
read more here
36 Hours: 36 Hours in London
By SARAH LYALL
Published: April 20, 2008
Correction Appended
THERE are many different Londons, and they appeal to people with many different passions: museum lovers, theatergoers, opera buffs, devotees of royalty, students of history, people who like to walk in the rain. But richest of all, perhaps, is the London for book lovers.
Because the city is the star and the backdrop of so much great literature, it is possible to believe you know it intimately — how it looks, how it feels — without ever leaving your home country, or indeed your home. But it is better to visit, if only for the joy of seeing the landscape of your imagination come to life. How thrilling to happen upon Pudding Lane, where a bakery mishap led to the Great Fire of 1666, after reading Pepys’s account in his diaries. Or to wander along Baker Street, where Sherlock Holmes once fictionally solved the unsolvable. Walk across London Bridge and gaze down, toward Southwark Bridge: this is the stretch of the Thames where Dickens’s sinister characters dredged up corpses in “Our Mutual Friend.”
The city is not so foggy as it was in 1952, when Margery Allingham published “The Tiger in the Smoke,” or as socially stratified as it when Marianne Dashwood waited in “Sense afnd Sensibility” for a suitor who never called; or as greedy as it was in the thrusting 1980s of Martin Amis’s “Money.” But it is all of those Londons, an accrual of different descriptions and eras. It is a city made for description — reread the first passages of “Bleak House,” also on the subject of fog, for a moody introduction — and one that so reveres its authors that it buried a number of the best ones in style, in Westminster Abbey.
There are plenty of organized literary-themed excursions around the city, easily found on the Internet. Or you can ramble idiosyncratically on your own, which is more fun. If you take the Tube or the bus, make sure to carry a book.
Friday
6 p.m.
1) WILDE NIGHTS
Check into the Cadogan Hotel (75 Sloane Street SW1; 44-207-235-7141; www.cadogan.com), where Oscar Wilde was arrested and charged with “committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons” in 1895 over his liaison with young Lord Alfred Douglas. Elegant, quiet and also a favorite spot of the actress Lillie Langtry, the hotel is in the heart of Knightsbridge, where there is plenty of shopping to leaven even the most serious intellectual pursuit. Poems to read at the bar: John Betjeman’s “Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel,” which dramatically lays out the scene, and Wilde’s heartbreaking work “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” written after he served the prison sentence that broke and ultimately killed him. A double room is £295, or $581 at $2.01 to the pound.
8 p.m.
2) ELEMENTARY, DEAR HOLMES
The Sherlock Holmes pub (10-11 Northumberland Street WC2; 44-207-930-2644; www.sherlockholmespub.com) may be slightly kitschy, but it has an authentically musty-without-being-dingy ambience, enthusiastic service and generous portions of traditional pub food. Enjoy dishes with names plucked from the works of Holmes’s creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — “The Sign of Four,” for instance, signifies the soup of the day, while “Hounds of the Baskerville” refers to toad in the hole, or sausages in Yorkshire pudding — in an upstairs dining room decorated with pictures of the masterful fictional detective. A three-course meal for two is about £46. The pièce de résistance is a meticulously reconstructed study decorated à la Holmes. It looks as if he has just stepped out for a second, laying down his cup of tea and his violin.
Saturday
10 a.m.
3) LAZY MORNINGS
Have breakfast in bed while reading Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth,” an exuberant hymn to a vibrantly multiracial modern-day London. Or, if you’re motivated, head to the fifth-floor cafe at Harvey Nichols (109-125 Knightsbridge SW1; 44-207-235-5250; www.harveynichols.com) for eggs Benedict and interesting hot chocolate (£12.50).
Noon
4) BOOKS FOR ALL SEASONS
Authors wailed and gnashed their teeth when the history-laden old British Library Reading Room was uprooted from the British Museum and plunked down in a modern brick building on a busy road near St. Pancras and King’s Cross railroad stations (96 Euston Road NW1; 44-870-444-1500). But what the library might lack in atmosphere it more than makes up with the Sir John Ritblat Gallery, where some of the greatest treasures of the written word in fiction and nonfiction are exhibited.
The collection includes much-scribbled-on first drafts of works by authors like James Joyce, and treasures like a 600-or-so-years-old manuscript of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” one of the first illustrated works of literature in the English language. There is also an original copy of Magna Carta, one of four in existence; the crumpled piece of paper on which John Lennon scrawled the first lyrics to the song “Help” (here you learn that the line “I do appreciate your being ‘round” was first written as “I would appreciate your being ‘round”); and the 11th-century will of Aethelstan the Atheling, son of Aethelred the Unready. (He left his worldly goods to, among other people, his friends Aethelweard the Stammerer and Godwine the Driveller.)
3 p.m.
5) A LEXICOGRAPHER’S DELIGHT
As you walk around, you can spot all the blue plaques telling you which writer lived where (there were William Makepeace Thackeray, Ezra Pound, James Joyce and T. S. Eliot, for instance, all living at some point in west London). For a peek inside a writer’s home, go to Dr. Johnson’s house (17 Gough Square EC4; 44-207-353-3745; www.drjohnsonshouse.org), a little gem of a place tucked in a quiet spot near to, but worlds away from, the bustle of Fleet Street. Here Samuel Johnson, critic, essayist and aphorist, worked in the mid-1700s on his famous English dictionary — an effort, he explained in his comma-heavy introduction, to regularize a language that had been “hitherto neglected, suffered to spread, under the direction of chance, into wild exuberance, resigned to the tyranny of time and fashion, and exposed to the corruptions of ignorance, and caprices of innovation.”
How Johnson went about such an imposing undertaking is explained in easy-to-digest room-by-room exhibits, culminating in the attic, where a team of clerks sorted through potential words and their sharp, opinionated meanings. Visitors are allowed to leaf through one of the original dictionaries, published in two volumes in 1755, and find for themselves Johnson’s wry definition of a lexicographer as a “harmless drudge.” (Further investigation shows the truth in the story that Johnson really did define oats as “a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”)
5 p.m.
6) A WALK OF ONE’S OWN
In Virginia Woolf’s novel “Mrs. Dalloway,” the well-heeled heroine takes a long, contemplative walk through central London, pondering everything from flowers to life itself. Follow along and take in the changing of the seasons — you can tell what time of year it is not only by the blossoms (or lack of them) on the trees in St. James’s Park, but also by the migratory ducks, and the number of ducklings, on hand at any time. Bring a book — maybe “The Hours,” Michael Cunningham’s reinterpretation of the novel — to read quietly on a bench in the park, near the pelicans.
8 p.m.
7) VANITY FAIR
Treat yourself to dinner at the Wolseley (160 Piccadilly W1; 44-207-499-6996; www.thewolseley.com), a glamorous restaurant near the Ritz Hotel beloved by more social members of the London literati. Housed in a large, high-ceilinged space whose previous incarnations include a bank and car showroom, the restaurant has been meticulously refitted to evoke a sophisticated old-word Viennese cafe. The layout gives a feeling of tête-à-tête intimacy while also providing lots of people-watching opportunities. The menu is impeccable — leave room for the rich, beautiful desserts — and its old-fashioned tenor perfectly suits the setting. A three-course dinner is £50 to £100. Alert diners might well catch a glimpse of, among others, the authors Lady Antonia Fraser and Harold Pinter.
Sunday
10 a.m.
8) ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE
Go south to Shakespeare’s Globe (22 New Globe Walk SE1; 44-207-902-1400; www.shakespeares-globe.org), a loving reconstruction of a real-life Elizabethan theater. The season runs only during the warmer months, but the theater houses a permanent exhibition devoted to the playwright’s life and times that includes a rotating case of archival material, like the famous will in which “Shakespeare” was spelled three different ways, leaving to posterity a permanent spelling conundrum.
12:30 p.m.
9) ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
It’s only a short walk to lunch at the George Inn (77 Borough High Street; 44-207-407-2056) a 17th-century coaching inn that is now the only galleried pub — meaning that it has balconies — left in the city. The menu is modern; the ambience is noisy in the downstairs bar, and quieter in the upstairs dining room. Dinner for two is about £45. It’s hard to resist the urge to stand on one of the balconies and shout things — lines from “Romeo and Juliet,” perhaps? — at the people below. Dickens was an enthusiastic patron of the George and mentions it in “Little Dorrit,” which would be a fine choice of reading material, either to read to yourself or aloud to your companion over lunch.
THE BASICS
A number of airlines, including American Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and British Airways, fly nonstop between Kennedy or Newark airports and London’s two main international hubs, Heathrow and Gatwick. Fares for travel in late May were around $580 in a recent Internet search.
Express trains run from both airports to the center of town. The Heathrow Express to Paddington is £14.50, or $28.70 at $2.01 to the pound, and from Gatwick to Victoria it’s £16.90. A nonexpress train from Gatwick to Victoria is £8.90, and the Underground from Heathrow is £5.
London is expensive, and one way to save money is to use taxis sparingly. A cab from Heathrow to the city, for example, is between £45 and £70, and from Gatwick, it’s about £85.
If it is not raining, try to walk as much as you can — wear comfortable shoes and invest in a London A-Z map to help navigate the complicated layout. Or else take the Tube. Buy an Oyster Card for discounted fares.
Correction: April 27, 2008
The 36 Hours column last Sunday about London misidentified the member of the Beatles who scrawled on a piece of paper the first lyrics to the song “Help!,” part of the collection at the British Library Reading Room. It was John Lennon, not Paul McCartney. The column also misstated the years during which Samuel Johnson worked on his famous English dictionary. It was published in 1755; he did not work on it in the mid-1800s.
read more here
Published: April 20, 2008
Correction Appended
THERE are many different Londons, and they appeal to people with many different passions: museum lovers, theatergoers, opera buffs, devotees of royalty, students of history, people who like to walk in the rain. But richest of all, perhaps, is the London for book lovers.
Because the city is the star and the backdrop of so much great literature, it is possible to believe you know it intimately — how it looks, how it feels — without ever leaving your home country, or indeed your home. But it is better to visit, if only for the joy of seeing the landscape of your imagination come to life. How thrilling to happen upon Pudding Lane, where a bakery mishap led to the Great Fire of 1666, after reading Pepys’s account in his diaries. Or to wander along Baker Street, where Sherlock Holmes once fictionally solved the unsolvable. Walk across London Bridge and gaze down, toward Southwark Bridge: this is the stretch of the Thames where Dickens’s sinister characters dredged up corpses in “Our Mutual Friend.”
The city is not so foggy as it was in 1952, when Margery Allingham published “The Tiger in the Smoke,” or as socially stratified as it when Marianne Dashwood waited in “Sense afnd Sensibility” for a suitor who never called; or as greedy as it was in the thrusting 1980s of Martin Amis’s “Money.” But it is all of those Londons, an accrual of different descriptions and eras. It is a city made for description — reread the first passages of “Bleak House,” also on the subject of fog, for a moody introduction — and one that so reveres its authors that it buried a number of the best ones in style, in Westminster Abbey.
There are plenty of organized literary-themed excursions around the city, easily found on the Internet. Or you can ramble idiosyncratically on your own, which is more fun. If you take the Tube or the bus, make sure to carry a book.
Friday
6 p.m.
1) WILDE NIGHTS
Check into the Cadogan Hotel (75 Sloane Street SW1; 44-207-235-7141; www.cadogan.com), where Oscar Wilde was arrested and charged with “committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons” in 1895 over his liaison with young Lord Alfred Douglas. Elegant, quiet and also a favorite spot of the actress Lillie Langtry, the hotel is in the heart of Knightsbridge, where there is plenty of shopping to leaven even the most serious intellectual pursuit. Poems to read at the bar: John Betjeman’s “Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel,” which dramatically lays out the scene, and Wilde’s heartbreaking work “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” written after he served the prison sentence that broke and ultimately killed him. A double room is £295, or $581 at $2.01 to the pound.
8 p.m.
2) ELEMENTARY, DEAR HOLMES
The Sherlock Holmes pub (10-11 Northumberland Street WC2; 44-207-930-2644; www.sherlockholmespub.com) may be slightly kitschy, but it has an authentically musty-without-being-dingy ambience, enthusiastic service and generous portions of traditional pub food. Enjoy dishes with names plucked from the works of Holmes’s creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — “The Sign of Four,” for instance, signifies the soup of the day, while “Hounds of the Baskerville” refers to toad in the hole, or sausages in Yorkshire pudding — in an upstairs dining room decorated with pictures of the masterful fictional detective. A three-course meal for two is about £46. The pièce de résistance is a meticulously reconstructed study decorated à la Holmes. It looks as if he has just stepped out for a second, laying down his cup of tea and his violin.
Saturday
10 a.m.
3) LAZY MORNINGS
Have breakfast in bed while reading Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth,” an exuberant hymn to a vibrantly multiracial modern-day London. Or, if you’re motivated, head to the fifth-floor cafe at Harvey Nichols (109-125 Knightsbridge SW1; 44-207-235-5250; www.harveynichols.com) for eggs Benedict and interesting hot chocolate (£12.50).
Noon
4) BOOKS FOR ALL SEASONS
Authors wailed and gnashed their teeth when the history-laden old British Library Reading Room was uprooted from the British Museum and plunked down in a modern brick building on a busy road near St. Pancras and King’s Cross railroad stations (96 Euston Road NW1; 44-870-444-1500). But what the library might lack in atmosphere it more than makes up with the Sir John Ritblat Gallery, where some of the greatest treasures of the written word in fiction and nonfiction are exhibited.
The collection includes much-scribbled-on first drafts of works by authors like James Joyce, and treasures like a 600-or-so-years-old manuscript of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” one of the first illustrated works of literature in the English language. There is also an original copy of Magna Carta, one of four in existence; the crumpled piece of paper on which John Lennon scrawled the first lyrics to the song “Help” (here you learn that the line “I do appreciate your being ‘round” was first written as “I would appreciate your being ‘round”); and the 11th-century will of Aethelstan the Atheling, son of Aethelred the Unready. (He left his worldly goods to, among other people, his friends Aethelweard the Stammerer and Godwine the Driveller.)
3 p.m.
5) A LEXICOGRAPHER’S DELIGHT
As you walk around, you can spot all the blue plaques telling you which writer lived where (there were William Makepeace Thackeray, Ezra Pound, James Joyce and T. S. Eliot, for instance, all living at some point in west London). For a peek inside a writer’s home, go to Dr. Johnson’s house (17 Gough Square EC4; 44-207-353-3745; www.drjohnsonshouse.org), a little gem of a place tucked in a quiet spot near to, but worlds away from, the bustle of Fleet Street. Here Samuel Johnson, critic, essayist and aphorist, worked in the mid-1700s on his famous English dictionary — an effort, he explained in his comma-heavy introduction, to regularize a language that had been “hitherto neglected, suffered to spread, under the direction of chance, into wild exuberance, resigned to the tyranny of time and fashion, and exposed to the corruptions of ignorance, and caprices of innovation.”
How Johnson went about such an imposing undertaking is explained in easy-to-digest room-by-room exhibits, culminating in the attic, where a team of clerks sorted through potential words and their sharp, opinionated meanings. Visitors are allowed to leaf through one of the original dictionaries, published in two volumes in 1755, and find for themselves Johnson’s wry definition of a lexicographer as a “harmless drudge.” (Further investigation shows the truth in the story that Johnson really did define oats as “a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”)
5 p.m.
6) A WALK OF ONE’S OWN
In Virginia Woolf’s novel “Mrs. Dalloway,” the well-heeled heroine takes a long, contemplative walk through central London, pondering everything from flowers to life itself. Follow along and take in the changing of the seasons — you can tell what time of year it is not only by the blossoms (or lack of them) on the trees in St. James’s Park, but also by the migratory ducks, and the number of ducklings, on hand at any time. Bring a book — maybe “The Hours,” Michael Cunningham’s reinterpretation of the novel — to read quietly on a bench in the park, near the pelicans.
8 p.m.
7) VANITY FAIR
Treat yourself to dinner at the Wolseley (160 Piccadilly W1; 44-207-499-6996; www.thewolseley.com), a glamorous restaurant near the Ritz Hotel beloved by more social members of the London literati. Housed in a large, high-ceilinged space whose previous incarnations include a bank and car showroom, the restaurant has been meticulously refitted to evoke a sophisticated old-word Viennese cafe. The layout gives a feeling of tête-à-tête intimacy while also providing lots of people-watching opportunities. The menu is impeccable — leave room for the rich, beautiful desserts — and its old-fashioned tenor perfectly suits the setting. A three-course dinner is £50 to £100. Alert diners might well catch a glimpse of, among others, the authors Lady Antonia Fraser and Harold Pinter.
Sunday
10 a.m.
8) ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE
Go south to Shakespeare’s Globe (22 New Globe Walk SE1; 44-207-902-1400; www.shakespeares-globe.org), a loving reconstruction of a real-life Elizabethan theater. The season runs only during the warmer months, but the theater houses a permanent exhibition devoted to the playwright’s life and times that includes a rotating case of archival material, like the famous will in which “Shakespeare” was spelled three different ways, leaving to posterity a permanent spelling conundrum.
12:30 p.m.
9) ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
It’s only a short walk to lunch at the George Inn (77 Borough High Street; 44-207-407-2056) a 17th-century coaching inn that is now the only galleried pub — meaning that it has balconies — left in the city. The menu is modern; the ambience is noisy in the downstairs bar, and quieter in the upstairs dining room. Dinner for two is about £45. It’s hard to resist the urge to stand on one of the balconies and shout things — lines from “Romeo and Juliet,” perhaps? — at the people below. Dickens was an enthusiastic patron of the George and mentions it in “Little Dorrit,” which would be a fine choice of reading material, either to read to yourself or aloud to your companion over lunch.
THE BASICS
A number of airlines, including American Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and British Airways, fly nonstop between Kennedy or Newark airports and London’s two main international hubs, Heathrow and Gatwick. Fares for travel in late May were around $580 in a recent Internet search.
Express trains run from both airports to the center of town. The Heathrow Express to Paddington is £14.50, or $28.70 at $2.01 to the pound, and from Gatwick to Victoria it’s £16.90. A nonexpress train from Gatwick to Victoria is £8.90, and the Underground from Heathrow is £5.
London is expensive, and one way to save money is to use taxis sparingly. A cab from Heathrow to the city, for example, is between £45 and £70, and from Gatwick, it’s about £85.
If it is not raining, try to walk as much as you can — wear comfortable shoes and invest in a London A-Z map to help navigate the complicated layout. Or else take the Tube. Buy an Oyster Card for discounted fares.
Correction: April 27, 2008
The 36 Hours column last Sunday about London misidentified the member of the Beatles who scrawled on a piece of paper the first lyrics to the song “Help!,” part of the collection at the British Library Reading Room. It was John Lennon, not Paul McCartney. The column also misstated the years during which Samuel Johnson worked on his famous English dictionary. It was published in 1755; he did not work on it in the mid-1800s.
read more here
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