The Travel Week: Doubledecker Busses, Latte Art, and Popeye's Village

Another Travel Icon bites the dust. Vagablond laments the withdrawal from service of London's Red Doubledecker Routemaster Busses, except along "heritage routes" devised for tourists. To me, it's just not the same. It's a shift in philosophy, from, "Wow, don't the Brits have some neat public transport?" to "wanna hop on the tourist bus so that the folks here can have something to jeer at besides out-of-town soccer teams?"

Maybe the busses will end up in fascinating Malta, like they traditionally have. Then they'll be used for real transportation. Maybe you can take one out to Popeye Village, for example.

Of course, the big busses are not so efficient, and people often got hurt thinking it's be a piece of cake to jump off the bus while it's still in motion. Just like the clueless who try the same thing on San Francisco cable cars, they frequently pay with torn body parts. So, the moral of the story is, we should have seen the writing on the cappuccino, which the Dutch have turned into "Latte Art," wouldn't you know.

Travel Resources: Guide to Malta (and the incredible archeology of the islands) | London Pictures