1. Hotel shower bottles are designed to be enough for exactly 0.8 showers.

2. You will always get the seat behind the compulsive recliner.

3. Your bag will be first off the conveyor belt on the one occasion you have several hours to waste before your connecting flight.

4. The length of the hotel check-in process is directly proportional to how desperately you need the loo.

5. The wifi signal is at its strongest when you sit on the floor in the bathroom with your laptop.

6. If you pack a raincoat you won’t need it. On the one occasion you leave it at home, it will rain on almost every day of your trip.

7. Don’t bother asking how far. Everywhere is about an hour away.

8. You’ll rarely see a local at an authentic local experience.

9. Your mobile phone company will wait until you’re overseas to call and offer you an amazing new deal.

10. The museum you plan to visit is closed on Monday and also closes early on the afternoon you turn up.

11. No two taxi drivers will take the same route between the city centre and your hotel.

12. Souvenirs always look better in a shop display than they do in your living room.

13. You will always have too much foreign currency left over, except for the time when there’s a surprise airport tax to pay on your way home.

13 universal truths of travel is a post from: 501 Places

Many British cities look on with envy at places such as York, Bath and Canterbury. These tourist honey pots attract thousands of visitors every day, pouring into town to snap a few photos, eat an expensive meal at a chain restaurant and buy something from a shop they have in their own local high street.

The same situation applies across Europe, with a few cities attracting the lion’s share of the tourists’ Euros. Yet the reality is that anywhere can be a tourist town, even if it has nothing of interest to visitors. If you are in charge of your local tourism efforts, here are a few simple steps that will guarantee your town will become the next must-visit place:

1. Buy a Toy Train

These delightful contraptions will carry your visitors on a comprehensive 1/2 mile circuit that takes in your town’s unmissable highlights. Local commuters will smile and toot a friendly greeting as the 15 empty carriages of your train make their way at 4mph across your high street.  Remember to call it something alluring, such as Le Petit Train (unless you’re in France) or the Happy Train.

2. Create a dodgy past for one of your hotels

Everyone loves to stay in a former prison or brothel. Pick a hotel at random (preferably one that’s been around longer than most people can remember) and bestow on it a seedy past, involving highwaymen, prostitutes and/or murderers.

3. Stock up on cats. Lots of cats

Go to the local rescue shelter and engineer a mass escape if you have to. Nothing says ‘Serious Tourist Destination’ better than a few thousand stray cats. Make sure they breed regularly, as cute kittens will ensure you have a fabulous calendar for people to buy and remember your town for the following year.

4. Put your name to an airport 

Every serious destination needs an airport; just ask the folks in Cluj or Bydgoszcz. It doesn’t matter if it’s a strip of badly-maintained concrete 100 km away with nothing connecting it to your town. As long as you attach your name to the airport there is an airline out there who will send big blue and yellow planes full of money-spenders your way.

5. Get hold of a few Segways

Do not despair if your town is too boring to walk around and can’t accommodate a toy train. The thrill of riding a Segway will have visitors whooping with delight and forgetting about the disappointment of their immediate surroundings.

6. Create a walking tour

A walking tour is essential for those people who are too tight or too proud to ride on the Happy Train. It doesn’t take much to mark out a few points of mild interest on a map and employ someone who enjoys dressing up to take eager tourists on a Highlights Tour. If there’s really nothing of interest in your town, start the walk in the evening and make it a Ghost Tour.

7. Open a torture chamber

Torture chambers in medieval times were as commonplace as frozen yoghurt shops are today. Beheadings, vampires, plagues and mass murders are essential ingredients for a good family day out so get creative and celebrate your town’s most illustrious criminals. It’s probably best to limit your attentions to those criminals who are no longer alive.

8. Have a World Famous restaurant

Pick a restaurant at random and attach the words ‘World Famous’ to its name, or at the very least to the dish that brings in the highest profit margin. Nobody looks at a menu and ignores something that’s world famous.

9. Become a stag night venue

If all the above steps fail and you really have nothing to offer, market yourself as the best place for stag parties. Change your licensing laws to allow 24 hour drinking, build a historic red light district and set up a line of kebab vans to service the fun-loving visitors who will be filling your coffers.

How to make a tourist town is a post from: 501 Places

I don’t like to use this blog to air my own dirty washing, but couldn’t resist this topic. It’s something that has led to many awkward and embarrassing moments for me in the past and I’m curious to find out if others have the same problem or whether it is indeed just me.

I’m rubbish at remembering faces. I don’t just mean I occasionally fail to recognise someone I’ve met briefly at a social event; I mean I’m really useless at putting a name to a face. The other day someone stopped me in the supermarket and said hi – I looked at him and for the life of me couldn’t work out where I’d seen him before. He didn’t look remotely familiar to me, yet he was asking me how my writing is going and what I’ve been up to. Of course I did what anyone would do and continued the conversation, asking neutral questions such as ‘what have you been up to?’ hoping to work out who it was. After a minute that shed no light on this man’s identity I made my excuses and escaped with my trolley behind the breakfast cereal aisle.

My most embarrassing moment was back in my days as an optometrist when I’d spent around half an hour with a patient before putting drops in their eyes and telling them to come back in 20 minutes. They went out to do some shopping and when they came back as directed and walked up to me, I greeted them as newcomers with a cheery “Good morning, how can I help you?” – hardly the best way to make a good impression.

It happens on our travels too, but thankfully my wife usually comes to the rescue. When I stare cluelessly at the couple waving towards us (I even look behind me to check if they are waving to someone else) Sam will prod me and point out that we spent an hour the previous evening chatting with the people who I am now snubbing. Perhaps it would be easier to carry a thick pair of glasses around and make out that it’s my eye sight and not my brain that’s faulty.

Sometimes I can recognise people surprisingly quickly. I might remember a brightly coloured shirt or a strange hat. It could be a distinctive voice that has me picking out ‘that man from the shuttle bus who wouldn’t shut up’. But for much of the time I have to accept that in any crowd I might easily walk past someone who has a right to expect some acknowledgement.

So if you see me at a social event or walking through the streets of London or St Albans, please don’t leave me guessing at who you are. Even we know each other well I might walk right past you. If that happens please don’t take it personally; you’re not the first person I’ve failed to notice and you certainly won’t be the last.

Does any of this sound familiar to you? If so please share your stories here – it would make me feel a whole lot better to know that others suffer the same embarrassments.

Who are you? Why putting a name to a face is a regular headache is a post from: 501 Places

Stay-cation, day-cation, car-cation – when will we see the end of the urge to create these awful PR buzz words, created in an attempt to make the mundane seem a little more exciting?

Given that it’s highly unlikely that we’ll see this ridiculous trend finish anytime soon, I thought I’d take a sneaky look at the possible horrors that might appear in future press release and adverts. Here are a few ‘-cations’ that you shouldn’t be surprised to encounter:

Publi-cation – where every part of the trip is posted on your Facebook wall

Syndi-cation – a girly holiday

Allo-cation – a singles holiday for people who like to make many new friends

Medi-cation – a short post-event programme at the end of a doctors’ conference

Vindi-cation – a weekend break in the Scottish Western Isles

Domesti-cation – a special holiday for couples who enjoy a good argument

Notifi-cation – the opposite of the domesti-cation. This is a break where couples refrain from having a row for the duration of the holiday

Forni-cation – a holiday for people born with an extra pair of legs

Magnifi-cation – a break that’s guaranteed to have you singing its praises

Pacifi-cation – a holiday in Hawaii

Modifi-cation – a break for old men in slightly dodgy Parkas

Bifur-cation – a culinary break for the indecisive carnivore

Certifi-cation – a holiday for the insane

Vo-cation – an orienteering trip for Germans

14 likely new PR buzz words for 2012 is a post from: 501 Places

It’s not unusual in an English bed and breakfast to wake up to the smell of frying bacon. Whether you’re staying away from home on business or pleasure and whatever the day holds in store for you, there are few better ways to kick off proceedings than with a no-holds barred full English breakfast.

Yet travel around the country and you’ll find there is no set format for a ‘full English’, with ingredients depending on regional variation as much as on the whim of the resident cook.

There are a few items that are considered an essential part of any self-respecting breakfast:

Eggs – can be served fried, scrambled, hard-boiled or poached. Given the other ingredients on your plate and the ability of the egg to absorb and mop up the residual juice (fat), I would argue that scrambled eggs (note the plural) work best.

Bacon – done in the British way. In other words, soft and leaving you in no doubt that if you let it go cold you’ll find it covered with a thick layer of solidifying grease: de-licious. Not for us those North American crispy strips; oh no. This bacon oozes (quite literally) intense flavour.

Sausage – can be pork or beef, but either way should be cooked until the skin is crispy yet succulent. Sausages should be juicy when cut open and should never be left for too long in the frying pan. There is no surer way to ruin a good breakfast than with a poorly prepared sausage. Oh, and with a full breakfast you should never be restricted to a solitary sausage.

Tomato – a fried tomato (cooked in the same pan as the meat) can be a delicious part of the breakfast experience. Must never come from a tin (I’ve seen it done and it’s quite frankly shocking).

Toast – no English breakfast is complete without toast. It should be brought at the same time as the main plate and an extra round should be available as required. White toast seems to do a better job of mopping up the sauce from baked beans; something to bear in mind when making your choice of bread.

Other items may or may not be included on your plate:

Baked beans – too often omitted, these are to me an essential ingredient in a good full English. Not only do the beans go well with the bacon and sausage, but the sauce provides a vehicle for the various juices and fats remaining on your plate to be gathered up onto your buttered slices of toast.

Mushrooms – I’ve never really understood why they are part of the breakfast and I don’t fret too much if they have been omitted. If mushrooms must be part of your breakfast offering they should be fried almost to a crisp and served immediately.

Fried bread – a personal favourite, this can serve the same function as the toast but tastes a whole lot better. It is advisable to seek a doctor’s opinion before eating more than one of these heart-stoppers.

Black pudding – this one sorts the men from the boys. It’s best not to think too much about the components and just enjoy the taste, which admittedly isn’t to everyone’s liking. Goes quite well with a fork full of beans.

Hash browns – an American influence that has permeated this most English of traditions, yet I have to admit to always adding one or two to my plate when they are available. Another good juice soaking candidate.

I’ve probably missed a few other local options from the fried breakfast plate – feel free to add them below. Of course such a breakfast should be eaten as the exception rather than the rule – more than a couple of these bad boys in a week and I suspect your cholesterol level will start rising as fast as your weight does. In moderation however, I have yet to find a breakfast offering anywhere in the world that says “Good Morning!” in quite the same style as a fully laden English breakfast.

Why nothing beats a full English Breakfast is a post from: 501 Places

We were in Budapest for barely 48 hours, yet on four occasions we watched in despair as a bus pulled away in front of us and left us waiting in the cold. Every connection was missed by a whisker, each time we stood and stared as our bus disappeared into the December gloom.

It’s not always like this of course. Sometimes lady luck shines on us and we barely wait a minute for our connections. We’ve arrived in places where only one service a day was operating yet that bus was standing there as if waiting for us to wander up. We’ve also been completely lost in a town with multiple bus stations and lost all hope of catching the only bus of the day, only to see it coming towards us as we sat slumped and dejected on the roadside.

On other occasions we’ve been thankful for the generosity of the bus driver who has gone out of his way to help. We had walked across the border from Guatemala into El Salvador at Anguiatu and the border official had pointed us toward the main road. No sooner had we spied the colourful chicken bus at the bus stop around 100 metres ahead than it gave out a belch of black smoke and began to chug away uphill. With no idea when the next bus would arrive in this quiet frontier crossing, we looked in frustration and cursed our bad luck as we realised a long wait lay ahead. Just then the engine noise from the bus changed its pitch and we looked up to see it reversing. The back door swung open and the conductor gave us a wave, waiting patiently as we gratefully clambered aboard.

Of course it is those bad moments that stand out. The connection in Puerto Natales in Chile that would take us up to Torres del Paine National Park was definitely our most expensive missed connection. Delays at the border meant that we arrived in town 15 minutes after the only Torres del Paine bus of the day had left. We had already pre-paid our overnight accommodation in the park and were not prepared to let a $200 room go to waste. The only solution was a three hour taxi ride which, even with a bit of negotiation was the most expensive taxi ride I’ve ever taken.

Like them or loathe them, buses seem to play a critical part in the daily life of any traveller. Unlike at home when we have a rough idea of when buses and trains depart, in many parts of the world even the latest technology doesn’t provide much of an insight into the vagaries of the local transport system. The only sensible approach when it comes to bus travel is to turn up early and bring plenty of patience with you.

Stop the Bus: highs and lows of bus travel in strange lands is a post from: 501 Places

Let’s face it: for most of us a five star hotel is an elusive treat. With travel budgets becoming increasingly tight most people would pay less for a week’s worth of accommodation than some of the most exclusive places charge for a night.

But just because staying a night in a top hotel may be out of reach it doesn’t mean that these grand establishments should be avoided. Posh hotels provide many useful amenities for the budget conscious traveller, none of which they make a point of advertising. So here is a simple list of useful things you can do for free in almost any five star hotel.

1. Enjoying the view

The most prestigious hotels are often high-rise affairs with the upper floors commanding some of the finest views of your immediate surroundings. Why not take the lift up to the top floor and soak up the views from the windows in the hallways? You’ll have the place to yourself and you won’t be paying through the nose for the privilege.

2. Catching your breath

Walking the streets of a big city can be hard work and the time will come when you need to rest your weary feet. Of course you can use the park bench, providing you don’t mind sharing it with an occasional drunk or lunatic on a day’s release from the asylum. A far better option is to wander into the finest hotel in town and plonk yourself down on the most comfortable sofa you can find. With people constantly passing through the lobby you’re unlikely to attract anyone’s attention and you can enjoy your rest in style.

3. People watching

There are few better places to watch the world go by than from the comfort of a seat in a hotel lobby. Observe in bewilderment as guest come down with mountains of luggage, shopping bags from every boutique in town or perhaps even a menagerie of small dogs in fluffy baskets. Wait a while and you’re bound to witness a scene that will have you scratching your head and questioning the sanity of those involved.

4. Celebrity spotting

Choose the right hotel in the right city and you have a good chance of recognising the odd famous face breezing through the hotel entrance and on their way to the presidential suite. Look out for the staff standing to attention and fawning over any of the guests. It’s a good sign that there is a celebrity in the house even if you have no idea who they are.

5. Best free toilets in town

Perhaps the best reason you’ll ever have to visit a 5 star hotel. If you need to go in the city centre, do you really want to go to the nearest public toilets? More often than not they are in a disgusting state and yet you still pay good money for the privilege of holding your breath for as long it takes.

Yet luxury is close at hand and free of charge to those who choose to use it. Breeze in through the doors (always greet the doorman with a smile) and make your way with purpose across the lobby, avoiding the gaze of the reception staff as you head for the loos which are usually easy to find. Once inside you can enjoy piped music, fancy towels and of course immaculate cleanliness.

5 things to do for free in a five star hotel is a post from: 501 Places

Travelling to faraway places will always provide us with exhilarating moments. These are the ones that we use to make our friends and family green with envy on our return home. But a trip of any reasonable length will rarely pass without those times when our happy disposition has a day off (or at the very least takes a nap for a few hours).

We’ve all been there, whether it’s feeling nauseous on a long bus journey, getting annoyed at the selfishness of another traveller or just sick and tired of an absence of anything vaguely familiar. Sadly there is usually nothing we can do other than grit our teeth and ride out the bad times.

Have you ever stopped to think however that evolution could have given us a helping hand by now? Surely with all the changes that the human body has undergone to adapt to our environment, we could have undergone some anatomical adaptations that would make our travel experience a more pleasant one?

Here are five suggestions on how our lives could be so much easier with a little evolutionary assistance:

1. Retractable legs

Having long legs is generally great. You can reach the top of cupboards with no need to stand on a chair and you can see what’s going when there’s a big crowd in front of you. But on a plane it’s miserable. What if we were able to just pull a lever and shorten our legs by twelve inches? It would make a long flight far more comfortable and perhaps we would even be more tolerant of those selfish folks who insist on reclining at any opportunity.

2. Instant translation capabilities

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want everyone speaking English; what a dull world that would be. No, it would be far better if whenever people spoke to us in their native language, we were instantly able to understand them and reply back in their tongue. Surely all that’s required to make this relatively simple adaptation is a minor tweak somewhere in the brain?

3. Iron gut

One of the greatest pleasures of travel is without doubt the opportunity to try weird and wonderful food to which we’ve never been previously exposed. On the other hand the low point of many a trip is the time when we don’t dare venture more than three steps from the bathroom. Wouldn’t it be great if we were able to instantly adapt our digestive and immune systems to match those of the locals? We would be able to drink the local water, eat anything we see in the markets and never have to worry about the repercussions.

4. In-built deodorant

On many a trip we have those times when we don’t wash for days. It’s usually while camping, either on a long hike or when visiting very remote places. Sometimes a stream offers us the chance to wash and freshen up, at other times in very cold places getting undressed becomes such an ordeal that we avoid it at all costs. How useful would it be if we could have deodorising armpits, or sweat glands that released a pleasant pot pourri odour when required to do so?

5. An on/off switch

I would swap all of the above for this one. On a long flight or bus journey, imagine if we could just flick a switch and go into ‘hibernate mode’, where we drop into a comfortable sleep for 12 hours or however long we need to and then wake up again fully refreshed when we need to get back on our feet. All those tortuous night buses and red-eye flights would become easy in an instant.

What would you add to the list of anatomical changes that could ease your travel experience?

5 anatomical changes to make travel easier is a post from: 501 Places

Today I completed an email interview for another site. One of the questions required me to give a piece of advice to new inexperienced travellers. Instinctively I wrote that we shouldn’t be shy in talking to strangers; the encounters that result will almost always provide us with our most cherished travel memories. I absolutely believe this to be true; yet talking to strangers is something I really struggle with.

I gather from talking to others (not strangers obviously) that I’m not alone in my social unease. With this in mind I thought I would share a few suggestions for those who are keen but anxious to ignore their parents and teachers and start talking to strangers (taking sweets from strangers is another matter entirely).

Some places are better than others for sparking those random introductions. Hotel or guest house breakfasts, notoriously quiet affairs at the best of times, often involve us sitting next to strange people and munching away in silence. A simple opening gambit of ‘Are you planning anything nice today?’ can break the tension and start a lengthy conversation that may even provide some valuable tourist tips. This question does not work so well with someone travelling on business who is about to spend 10 hours in an office, so choose your target with care.

Another excellent place to talk to strangers is in a park. Sit on a bench and sooner or later someone will plonk themselves next to you. Depending on where you are in the world and the age/sex/appearance of your newly acquired bench-mate, a conversation about the weather, sport or teenage fashion may be appropriate. The big advantage of this location for meeting strangers is that you are most likely to encounter local people who can provide a precious insight into life in Tirana/Lima/Middlesborough. Be careful though: depending on the age gap, your choice of overcoat and the proximity of the nearest public toilets, your attempts at engaging with your new local friend might be mistaken for something different.

There are places where speaking to strangers is never a good idea. Nowhere is this more clear cut than on the London Underground. Eye contact alone will mark you out as something of a loose cannon; if you dare to speak to a stranger the suspicions of all around you will be instantly confirmed. Expect many awkward shuffles away from you and heads buried deep inside quickly opened newspapers.

I suspect opening a conversation with a stranger is much like sky-diving (I find neither activity comfortable but have successfully managed to avoid at least one). As with leaping out of a plane, you need to just let go of your inhibitions. Start a conversation with a mild, neutral opening and the chances are that the other person will happily join in. After all, they are probably just as shy and only too happy that you came forward to break the ice.

The fear of talking to strangers is a post from: 501 Places

Anyone can take part. We can indulge in any public place wherever we are in the world. Best of all it’s free to do it. I challenge anyone to deny that they enjoy sometimes just sitting back and watching people go about their daily lives.

People watching is of course a very easy thing to do and most of us do it without realising (sometimes we have to try hard NOT to get wrapped up in someone else’s conversation or public disagreement).

So what should we bear in mind if we want to enjoy this innocent form of stalking? Perhaps the single most important thing is to choose a good location. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Street café – perhaps the most clichéd of places, to complete the picture you should be reading a broadsheet newspaper while discreetly sipping your espresso. From your table you are able to observe both your fellow coffee drinkers/diners and also the passers-by on the street.

2. Park bench – here you can watch the local people indulging in their various forms of recreation; families taking a stroll, runners or cyclists whizzing by and others just catching up on the gossip are all fair game. A city park is good place to observe how local people dress and the way families and friends interact.

3. Major tourist attraction – I enjoy sitting on the steps of  Trafalgar Square or under the statue of Eros at Piccadilly Circus and just taking in the surrounding crowd. Tourists may have a great opportunity to watch other people, but they also provide some of the best entertainment to the casual observer. I’ve watched many a group of Japanese people trying to line up the perfect photo and smiled knowingly as foreign visitors struggle to open a sorry looking triangular cardboard sandwich box only to look at each other in disgust as they take the first disappointing bite.

4. Public transport – I always enjoy riding the New York subway. You can watch as the flow of people enter and leave your carriage, the profile of the passengers changing as you move between districts and corresponding strictly to the demographics above ground. On a Mexico City metro ride every other stop brings a new entertainer, entrepreneur or storyteller into the carriage.  A short trip on the Skytrain in Bangkok on the other hand stood out for for its mixture of brightly dressed young Thais and more than a few old western men with their young local ‘girlfriends’.

The London tube seems very reserved in comparison although I do enjoy hearing a rich mix of strange words being spoken and trying to work out which languages they belong to.

People watching (is it stalking?) can be a lot of fun and is also a good way of gaining a brief insight into a place that you’re passing through. Put down the guide book, pack away the smartphone and just observe. The chances are that you’ll see people walking, talking and dressing in ways that tell you plenty about the destination you’re visiting; more even than the ‘must-see’ attractions listed in your travel guide.

There’s one final thing you should bear in mind: while you are busy observing the locals go about their normal activities, some of the locals are no doubt curiously watching you, the strange tourist, watching them. People watching usually works in both directions.

A beginner’s guide to people watching is a post from: 501 Places