Travel Briefs

On a walking tour with Free Tours By Foot (www.freetoursbyfoot.com), YOU get to decide how much you pay for the experience. Free Tours By Foot’s volunteer guides lead thematic tours in eight major European cities and have partnered with other companies to offer free tours in Europe, the UAE, India and the Americas.

Available tours include an East London food tour, a tour of medieval Barcelona and a Berlin Wall tour. The “free” tour includes only the guide; any food or goods must be purchased by the participant.

On the 4½-hour, guided “Culinary Bike Tour,” offered by Foods of Copenhagen (Skraa, Baggesensgade 4C, Copenhagen; phone +45 20 16 15 19, foodsofcopenhagen.com), bikers visit five restaurants in neighborhoods such as historic Christiana, semiautonomous Freetown and hip Refshaleøen.

Leisurely paced tours, round trip from St. Andrew’s Church, begin at 11:30 a.m. and cover 6 miles (with no hills) in the Danish city. DKK1,200 (near $178) includes bike and safety equipment. Book in advance. Maximum group size, eight.

In the West End of London, England, the world’s first cheese conveyor belt restaurant, Pick & Cheese (Seven Dials Market, 35 Earlham St., London; www.thecheesebar.com), opened in September.

A conveyor belt carries glass-dome-covered plates of English cheese past seated diners, who are charged per number of plates they take, with prices, ranging from £2.95 to £5.25 (near $4-$7) per plate, based on plate color. Items also can be individually ordered off a menu.

UK-based travel company Thomas Cook went belly-up on Sept. 23, leaving more than 155,000 tourists stranded around the world. Using assistance from private airlines chartered by the UK government, the largest peacetime repatriation of British citizens was effected to return travelers booked with Thomas Cook to the UK. Citizens of other nations who were on vacations booked through Thomas Cook were not included in that repatriation.

Travelers from 52 countries, including the US, Canada and UK, now can visit Saudi Arabia on tourist visas, introduced Sept. 27, 2019, for the first time. Evisas are available in one-month single-entry and one-year multiple-entry versions.

Daxing International Airport (PKX), serving Beijing, China, opened on Sept. 25. Shaped like a 6-armed starfish, with terminals in five of the arms, it is the largest single-building airport in the world, measuring 700,000 square meters.

Twenty-nine miles south of Tiananmen Square, the airport is expected to welcome more than 170 million passengers a year. At press time, six domestic Chinese airlines were flying to and from the airport, with British Airways, Finnair and Cathay Pacific expected to begin international service shortly.

In October 2016, TripAdvisor (www.tripadvisor.com) and its subsidiary, Viator (www.viator.com), stopped selling tickets to animal experiences in which travelers interact directly with wild animals, such as elephant riding, walking with lions, etc., as part of an animal-welfare initiative (Dec. ’17, pg. 54).

The National Famine Way, a 165-kilometer walking route from County Roscommon to Dublin, was inaugurated in May 2019. Commemorating the two million people who either died or emigrated during the Great Irish Famine in the mid-19th century, the route follows the path taken by 1,490 people who were forcefully evicted from Strokestown Park estates in 1847 and walked toward Dublin to board emigration ships.

Marriott (www.marriott.com) announced on Sept. 28 that it will no longer provide single-use toiletries bottles, such as shampoo, conditioner or soap, in its rooms. They will be replaced by refillable, pump-top bottles by December 2020. Marriott estimated that it had been disposing of 500 million small plastic bottles each year.

The benefits of the French Riviera Pass, which allows free admission to more than 50 museums, parks, event venues, etc., have been expanded to cover the entire city of Nice and its metropolitan area in addition to the rest of the Côte d’Azur, already included. The card also grants holders rides on the public transportation network for €4 per day.