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England

LONDON – I don’t know this city as well as I’d like, but I found a great new spot in the eastern-central part of town. The Montcalm at Brewery City is a fun, polished and unique property near the Barbican and Moorgate tube stops. It’s in what functioned as the Whitbread Brewery for more than 200 years, and it’s got a lot of charm. You walk into the facility through a giant archway that once formed the entrance to the brewery, past iron gates with a polished gold sign. The lobby isn’t large but there are beautiful, fresh flowers (they’ve Read more

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LONDON – It’s an impressive world in here. You can chat with a 10-foot-tall penguin from the Falkland Islands, relax in the first-class suite of an Emirates Airline A380 and pretend to sit behind the wheel of a tuk-tuk in Thailand. You also can get a massage in Indonesia, chat about trips to Montreal and get all weepy looking at giant posters of perfect, white sand beaches in Maui, Mauritius and the Maldives. The annual World Travel Market in London is a crazy, wild, impossible scene with tourism boards from around the globe meeting with buyers and journalists to nail Read more

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LONDON – A sunny November day in this city is a glorious thing. I had the good fortune to be out and about the other day and explored a bit of south London for the first time, wandering the glorious south bank of the Thames from Westminster Bridge to Tower Bridge and back again. I knew they had done some work down this way but wasn’t prepared for the fabulous light I had for photos or for the joys of one of the great urban walks on the planet. Not only are the views amazing of Westminster and Big Ben Read more

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We don’t hear a lot about Como Hotels hear in North America. But that could change. Soon. There are nine hotels currently in the portfolio and three more are planned, including on at 24th and Collins in Miami Beach; close to the South Beach insanity but far enough away at the same time. The group was started by a woman from Singapore who had stayed in many hotels in London but didn’t find one to her liking. The emphasis is on stylish design and service, but they don’t aim to be a youthful, exuberant place. “It’s for people who have Read more

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We haven’t heard as much about it as you might think, given that Canada and the U.S. are playing on Saturday in Toronto for a berth, but the Rugby World Cup will be in England and Wales in two years time. And it promises to be a massive show. Sure, the Super Bowl is big. Ditto for the Stanley Cup and the Pan Am Games, which will be in Toronto in 2015 in case you forgot and will have more athletes than a Winter Olympics. But the Rugby World Cup is said to have the third largest global audience of Read more

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