When it comes to hip and happening London destinations, Dalston isn’t the most obvious choice. But a trip to the East London suburb proves otherwise; in the build up to the London 2012 Olympic Games and with the extension of the London Overground to Dalston due to open later this month, it’s all happening in E8

London comes alive in the summer; there is so much to see and do. However if you’re lacking the imagination to find something to keep you entertained, fret no longer. The CD Traveller team has come up with some suggestions to see you through the summer months…

Some may find this hard to believe but the Banksy exhibition last year in Bristol’s City Museum and Art Gallery made it into the top 30 exhibitions visited anywhere in the world.
That isn’t to belittle Bristol but to show what an achievement it was. It was up against capital cities with vastly bigger populations from which to draw visitors. In fact only one other exhibition in the UK drew more visitors, one on Chinese new art which was held at the Saatchi Gallery in London. Greater London’s population is about twenty times more than that of Bristol yet the Chinese exhibition attracted only about 280 more visitors per day than the Banksy one. And because of the nature of Banksy’s work, the exhibition couldn’t be publicised in advance.

CD Traveller unleashes their inner rock star at The Sanctum Soho

According to ABTA, about 2 million of us will leave the country to enjoy Easter abroad. And maybe some decent weather after the returning wintry conditions of this week.
It won’t come as a great surprise to many of you that Spanish resorts are doing well with Tenerife and the Canaries leading the way. You could also guess that Egypt and Turkey are doing well and so they are but Tunisia has also picked up a lot of bookings. Going slightly further afield, Florida is attracting the usual school age groups and booking seem to be up despite the fact that the biggest new attraction, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter doesn’t open until June 18th.
The usual places seem to fill the top spots each year for overseas citybreak destinations. Paris, Amsterdam and Dublin lead the pack with Milan and New York not far behind and this is despite the weakness of the pound against the euro and the dollar.
So who is going away?

I was quite surprised to find yesterday that the first local school had just broken up for Easter. In my mind it was still weeks away but in fact Good Friday is only 2 weeks tomorrow.
After the winter we have had it wouldn’t surprise any of us if bookings to the Spanish resorts and warmer areas was the main appeal but personal finances being what they are, some of us will think of taking no breaks at all. And for those that do go, there could be quite a few handicaps to going away. First there are the railways. The RMT union is considering scheduling a nationwide strike because of what it says are safety issues that may occur when Network Rail lays off staff. . You probably need to be an expert to know if safety was an issue. Needless to say, Network Rail says there is no problem and you have to wonder whether if safety was the issue, the union wouldn’t have called the strike as soon as it legally could. By striking at Easter, the cynical amongst us begin to wonder.

The hotel chain, Jurys, has polled 4,000 Britons to see what they thought were the most unwelcoming cities in the UK. It will probably come as no surprise to you that London was considered to have the worst customer service. People also thought that the locals were ruder than other places. A third regularly didn’t say thank you and over half failed to smile at passers-by. Jurys concluded that this didn’t augur well for us when tourists visit us en masse for the Olympics in 2012.
Is all this a fair accusation at London or indeed, the next most unwelcoming cities of Glasgow, Bradford, Birmingham or Liverpool

The phrase above is the slogan that Visit Britain us using as part of its advertising campaign to encourage Americans to come and see us. The slogan thought up by Californian, Jay Masunaga, in a competition designed to publicise Britain as a holiday destination for the gay community.
To complement the promotion, Visit Britain has also come up with categories of people to whom Britain would appeal. These are Foodies, Night Owls, Event-Goers, Culturati, Chillers and Fashionistas. You can guess what most of these are but how about Chillers

It is hard to believe that there has been no new railway route for a century. Yes, the occasional new station has opened but a new route? Chiltern Railways operates lines out of Marylebone in London to the commuter suburbs of north west London and on into Oxfordshire and Birmingham. For the first time they are going to operate a line to Oxford from Marylebone via High Wycombe and Bicester which will take just over the hour.
But, you will say, there are trains already linking Oxford and London using First Great Western out of Paddington via Reading which also take about an hour. What’s different?

Those of us brought up on Fawlty Towers might find it hard to believe that a Torquay hotel has been named as best for service in the UK and that it has also been listed in the top 25 hotels in the world. Obviously there are no Basil’s, Manuel’s or Sybil’s at the Charterhouse Hotel which has won this accolade.
This award is for service, the most important feature of what we buy after the product itself. Even then you can cope with a product that is not perfect if the service is special. I have stayed in hotels that were not the best. The service, the attention and the fact that nothing seems too much trouble has made ordinary hotels into splendid ones. In those I have stayed in again and again. And recommended