European Adventures

My big, fat racing adventure
Euro adventures
and misadventures

Big Ben is the epicenter of prime London tourism.

Jim had been to Europe already, while the other four of us traveling on this adventure were European neophytes. Using London as a
hub for all activities, we got to play tourist a few times in between racing adventures. Arthur and Bob arrived after the other three of us had
done our track day at Spa, so we all walked around London, splitting off to this or the other attraction. Most everything is centrally located not far from
Big Ben, so you can see lots without walking huge amounts of distance.

One is immediately struck by the gorgeous architecture of London, both new and old. I believe that if you turned Buckingham Palace on its side and added the House of Commons in the same way, you just might have the world’s tallest building. The scale and size of most older buildings is something that even this lifelong New Yorker is simply amazed at. The newer buildings are wonderful too (the Fabergé Egg-like building
was way cool).

Students of chaos will want to walk on over to Trafalgar Square. What seems like a dozen sidestreets all empty into this roundabout in front of the National Gallery. No vehicle seems to stop at any time. In the 6 days in we spent some time in London, we never saw one traffic accident. In a city where the street signs are on the corners of buildings (if at all), the roads follow serpentine paths that originate in the earliest of times (pre-1900 for you post-millennial babies), you never see an accident. Considering that cars are also parked on both sides of the road (parked in no particular direction), this is simply amazing.

Click on photos for larger view

London's districts blend almost seamlessly into the next. The area with Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, etc. move right into a museum district witht he National Gallery, into the Italian district, the Book district, Theater district, Chinatown, the Red Light district. Stay out of the Red Light district. Trust me.

We were going to see the world's largest F1 collection at the Donington Museum. Sadly, they decided that very morning not to open without any notice, due to the Download concert at the track for goth metalheads. There was a scary amount of tattoos and piercing going on. And that was just on the pets the fans brought. So we went indoor karting instead. See note about karting at right.

continued>>

Planes, trains, karts
and automobiles

• Frank and I flew on British Airways, with a free flight that was easy to get. Sign up for a BA Visa, get half a flight to Europe right away. You can combine Amex points with BA points one for one. Click here
to sign up.
• We dodged the volcano eruption cloud delays, just.
• We karted in London, at the indoor Playscape track. Very wide and fast. We ran for 50 minutes straight on this sprint track. Nobody had a heart attack. Great track. My helmet-mounted GoPro was pointed
at my feet, so sorry, no video.
• The London subways run pretty well and go all over the place. However, the system is very old. Escalators are in very short supply, and air conditioning is non-existent.
• Took high-speed trains through "The Chunnel" under the English Channel to Belgium. Light years ahead of American trains. The trains have their own right-of-way so the trains are not impeded by local traffic. Super-smooth trains and track belie the high-speed nature of the trains. By comparison, The Acela I took down to DC from NY was a glorified subway car that didn't go nearly as fast, and competed with local trains for track, slowing it down. The Euro train stations are glorious old, huge open spaces topped by glass and iron, or really new structures that compete with airline terminals for architectural bling.
• Do not be confused! The traffic lights work backwards: red, then yellow, then green. Light switches work backwards: push down for light. The cars drive on the wrong side: when crossing the street, look right! Or you will end up as the hood ornament of a London bus.
• Rental cars in Europe suck
as much as anywhere else.
The Vauxhalls and Opels we rented were typical fleet cars with no soul.
• There is the most dizzying number of small or even tiny cars in Europe. Some are cool things, most are not. But, oh how i"d kill for some of the hot hatches we saw running around.VW ought to bring the Scirroco to the States ASAP.