If you’ve got a layover at Heathrow, even one of those diabolical short overnight layovers where it’s not economical or practical to get a hotel, consider yourself lucky — it could be Gatwick. Or worse, it could be a train station and you’ll be standing outside waiting for it to open or tramping up and […]
Obsolete Serendipity
Part of the great romantic appeal about hitchhiking, particularly across Europe and borders and linguistic and political and cultural divides, is the possibility of getting splendidly and serendipitously lost. Mind you, this fanciful prospect is the flip side of getting hopelessly and desperately lost and not liking it one bit. I propose a compromise — […]
Not a Craigslist Endorsement
This is most emphatically not an endorsement of Craigslist. I hear enough stories of people getting ripped off or having unsatisfactory anonymous sex to know better than to associate my good name with the world’s largest classified ads website. It’s purely anecdotal that I’ve had several exceptional addresses in Amsterdam entirely owing to Craigslist and […]
Couchsurfing
A few weeks ago I updated hitchhiking for the internet age and introduced, particularly, www.carpooling.co.uk. So now you know how to get where you’re going and share the experience with someone who has a car and knows how to drive it someplace you want to go. Consider this part two. You still need somewhere to […]
Hitchhiking 2.0
Try this at home There’s no arguing that today travel is more economical and enjoyable and democratic than it’s ever been but I confess to just a sliver of nostalgia for some of the romance made obsolete by the internet age. I kind of miss waiting in line with fellow travelers to buy tickets and […]