Posts in the “Countries” category...
There’s A Plane In Richmond Park
by Continental Club on June 16, 2012 | One comment
It seems that something’s afoot with the next British Airways ad campaign:
CC has no idea where this particular flight was heading to!
Hilton Garden Inn Offers 1000 Bonus HHonors Points At New UK Hotels
by Continental Club on February 29, 2012 | Leave a comment
The Mint (nee City Inn) portfolio of hotels in the UK has recently been sold to the owners of Hilton Hotels, and already three have been rebranded as Hilton Garden Inns.
To celebrate the raising of the new flag above the doors at Glasgow City Center [sic], Birmingham Bridleyplace and Bristol City Centre, HHonors members can earn a bonus 1,000 HHonors points per night when staying for a minimum of two consecutive nights on HHonors eligible rates at those hotels.
No registration is required for this promotion and stays completed by 30 April 2012 qualify. Hilton say that the bonus points should post to your HHonors account automatically with 8 weeks of check-out – though in practice these kinds of promotions do seem to post more swiftly than the Ts&Cs allow for.
City Inns have long been well-regarded in the UK, so the change to HGI brings with it some quality additional HHonors-earning opportunities – further improved in the short term by this useful bonus offer.
To book, click here.
Resting On The Rock – InterContinental Hotel Malta
by Continental Club on August 27, 2011 | Leave a comment
With a population of 400,000, the Mediterranean island of Malta is barely bigger than Bristol.
And yet, in less than thirty years, this dusty rock between Sicily and North Africa has gone from being something of a premium hotel no-go zone, to offering choices from a fairly extraordinary range of major global chains.
Today, Starwood present their Westin and Le Meridien properties, and now Radisson BLU, Corinthia, Hilton, Kempinski, Golden Tulip, Maritim, RIU and even Relais & Chateaux are also to be found clinging to the cliffs of this largely beach-bereft former British colony.
Cool in Catalunya – W Barcelona Hotel
by Continental Club on August 10, 2011 | 2 comments
It has been noted on several occasions that Continental Club gets about. Glamour, quite obviously, is our constant companion as we flit hither and thither through the skies.
Or not, as is sometimes the case.
All too often come those ‘It’s Wednesday; It must be Wolverhampton’ moments. So when the opportunity presents itself to break free from the banal and cast off the cookie-cutter, CC has resolved to snatch it with a grip hitherto reserved only for carousel case-catching.
Of course, staying off-piste can be fraught with the possibility of rocking-up at your icon of individuality to discover that it’s actually a festering stack of squalid dormitory.
Where, one wonders, will wow we weary wanderers without worry? Well, what about a W?
Midnight To The Mediterranean – Air Malta Economy
by Continental Club on June 2, 2011 | 2 comments
To be honest it has got midlife crisis written all over it.
For in the past few months, Continental Club seems to have been reprising travels of yore with some regularity.
On this occasion then, our mind is cast back to the middle of a sultry 1981 night; a night further laden with excitement and expectation, as CC took to the skies for the very first time.
Destination: Malta. Airline: Air Malta. ETD: 02:00hrs.
Glitterballs & Glamour – W London Leicester Square
by Continental Club on March 5, 2011 | Leave a comment
Continental Club’s capital excursions tend to be bound at both ends by swift rides aboard the iron horse, or else brief blasts skywards in pressurised aluminium tubes, with nary a sunset ‘twixt travels. It’s something rather out-of-the-ordinary, then, for CC’s head to rest on a London bed.
W Hotel London Leicester Square, which opened on Valentine’s Day 2011 barely an arrow’s flight from the bow of Eros in Piccadilly Circus is, according to parent Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Inc., something out-of-the-ordinary too. So, in the manner of a latter-day Dick Whittington, CC struck out for the metropolis with Samsonite and iPad in place of spotted hanky and stick, to test whether this third Euro-outpost of design-pioneers W Hotels brings woeful or wonderful to the West End.
The Flights of The Toblerone Two
by Continental Club on May 28, 2009 | Leave a comment
Much like the proverbial buses, and following a relatively extended period of inactivity, all of a sudden a veritable feast of reviews arrived but days ago in this quiet backwater of the World Wide Web.
Some have already digested them, some are suffering from indigestion, some are still chewing and a few have proceeded little further than the first taste of bmi, having been overcome by a wave of narrative nausea.
And now, just when you thought that the last of the travelling tales to quake you for a while had shuddered past and on into the distance, here comes a little aftershock to keep you on your toes. I should warn the chocoholics amongst you, however, that the Tobleronic title exists merely to catch your alliterative attention. This is an entirely Lindt-less, sans-Suchard and Ferrero-Rocher-free report.
Nevertheless, it’s probably time to kick things off with…..
British Airways Welcomes The Boeing 787 Dreamliner To Heathrow
by Continental Club on May 16, 2012 | Leave a comment
April 30th 2012 saw the Boeing 787 Dream Tour land at London’s Heathrow Airport, and aircraft number N787BX was formally welcomed into one of British Airways‘ gargantuan hangars at the Eastern end of the airfield.
The event also marked the official re-opening of the hangar following its conversion to handle all the aircraft types in British Airways future fleet programme, including the Airbus A380.
The hangar, built in the 1950s and now Grade II listed by English Heritage, features unsupported internal arches specially-designed by the late Sir Evan Owen Williams, whose other projects included London’s original Wembley Stadium and The Dorchester Hotel, the Daily Express buildings in London and Manchester and even the M1 Motorway.
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