In Dorset, England, visitors can stay in a restored Victorian train car, the High Cross Camping Coach (Whitecross, Netherbury, Bridport, Dorset; phone +44 1308 488701, campingcoach.co.uk), located in the garden of High Cross Cottage.
At The City of Manchester Distillery (21 Red Bank Parade, Manchester, England; cityofmanchesterdistillery.com), visitors can join a 3-hour “Gin Experience.”
After being provided with bespoke cocktails, guests will hear about the history of gin and the distillery before taking a tour of the production facility and learning the art of crafting high-quality gin. Guests then craft their own gin to take home, using any of 50-plus botanicals for flavoring.
More than 130 pinball machines that visitors can play, some dating back to the 1930s, stand in the Flipper Museum (Radnóti Miklós utca 18, Budapest; www.flippermuzeum.hu/en), housed in the basement of a 19th-century building in central Budapest, Hungary. It is the largest such collection in Europe.
The entry fee of HUF3,500 (near $11.50) grants a visitor unlimited play time on any available machine. Open 4 p.m.-12 a.m. Wed.-Fri., 2-12 Sat. and 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Sun.
With multiple tiny cityscapes — real and fictional — across 8,000 square meters on four floors, Small Worlds Tokyo (Ariake Butsuryu Center, 1-3-33; smallworlds.jp), the world’s largest miniatures “theme park,” opens April 25. Open daily, 9 a.m.-9:30 p.m. ¥2,700 (near $25). Buy a ticket and book a time slot in advance.
The London Metropolitan Police announced on Jan. 24 that parts of the city would be outfitted with facial-recognition cameras, with rollout expected to be completed by the end of February.
According to the police, signs will be posted at all cameras indicating that they are facial-recognition cameras, and they will be operated five to six hours at a time. The software used compares the faces on camera only with faces of wanted criminals; it does not identify all individuals scanned.
The city of Rome banned souvenir booths and food carts at historic sites, including the Colosseum, Pantheon, Trevi Fountain and Spanish Steps. The ban went into effect on Jan. 1. Some vendors were given the option of permanent locations away from the monuments where they had been set up.
In 2020, the annual Bachfest in Leipzig, Germany, will be held June 11-21. During the festival, works from Johann Sebastian Bach’s children and grandchildren, many of whom grew up to become composers like their progenitor, will be performed, as this year’s theme is “We Are Family.” Citywide, more than 150 events are scheduled, with choirs, recitals, orchestras, etc.
In order to help meet the needs of people with autism and other sensory sensitivities, Carnival Cruise Line (800/764-7419, www.carnival.com) worked with the nonprofit organization KultureCity (www.kulturecity.org), which advocates for people with sensory disabilities, and became the first cruise line to be certified by the group as “sensory inclusive.”
Viking Cruises (Los Angeles, CA; 855/338-4546, www.vikingcruises.com) has changed its name to simply “Viking,” introducing the corresponding website www.viking.com. Its divisions Viking River Cruises and Viking Ocean Cruises maintain their names, and a new division has been added, Viking Expeditions, with cruises by specially designed ships to begin in 2022.
Including narwhal, sperm, humpback and blue whales, life-sized replicas of 23 whale species that frequent Iceland’s coast are displayed at Whales of Iceland (Fiskislóð 23-25, Reykjavik, Iceland; phone +354 571 0077, www.whalesoficeland.is). In June 2019, a room with a 75-foot-long fin whale replica was added.