trips

Europe by Eurail is the best way to travel

PARADISO, Italy--I'm sitting in a comfortable seat, looking out at the foothills of the Italian Alps. High on the hilltops the houses are grand, and below them, small terraced vineyards offer the promise of a leisurely glass of wine and some terrific linguine al vongole.

Not long before, Lake Como had sparkled out the window, and though George Clooney is said to have sold his villa there, it's hard not to go by and imagine him and his Hollywood friends getting the best out of life amid one waterside mansion after another and more glamor than most people … Read more

Aboard the ship that launched a thousand ocean liners

BRISTOL, England--Imagine being a wealthy traveler in the early 1840s and thinking about whether to buy a ticket aboard the brand-new SS Great Britain, an iron-hull giant of an ocean liner. It promised a speedy crossing from the U.K. to New York, but to your skeptical eyes, it probably also promised a speedy split in half and an agonizing drowning on the high seas.

That was the dynamic that awaited Isambard Kingdom Brunel's great new ship when it was launched in 1843 by England's Prince Albert. Brunel, a famous engineer responsible for, among other things, the Great … Read more

At Bletchley Park, breaking Enigma codes and winning WW II

BLETCHLEY, England--The list of important sites is endless: Omaha Beach, Dunkirk, London, Paris, Toulon. But if you're a real World War II aficionado, you may think of Bletchley Park with special fondness.

This nondescript town about 45 minutes outside London is where famed mathematician Alan Turing led a group of master code breakers in a successful battle against Germany and its once-unbreakable cipher codes.

Over the course of several years, the British government assembled a team and sequestered it here, working on various devices intended to break the codes. In the days prior to the war, the Germans rarely … Read more

Behind the scenes at Abbey Road Studios

LONDON--After spending a day on a behind-the-scenes tour of Abbey Road Studios, it's hard to know which great anecdote to start a story with.

It could be hearing about how, just a few days ago, a studio rehearsal session was interrupted by the sound from another studio of someone pounding out The Beatles' "Lady Madonna" on the very piano used in the original song and that person turning out to be Paul McCartney. Or perhaps it was walking through a random hallway and having my host point out how a four-track recorder placed unceremoniously against a wall … Read more

The Chunnel is far more than Eurostar

CALAIS, France--I'm sitting in a train doing something more than 265 million people have done before--enter the Chunnel for a crossing between France and England. But I've got a seat very few of them have ever had: in the cab, next to the driver of the train, and we're looking directly at the mouth of the world-famous tunnel.

This is a spot I didn't expect to ever be in, but I've come here as part of Road Trip 2011, and I'm getting a behind-the-scenes look at Eurotunnel, the under-the English Channel crossing, putting me … Read more

The guns of D-Day remain powerful

OMAHA BEACH, France--When you study the liberation of France in school, you get a basic primer in D-Day history. You hear about the famous beaches: Omaha and Utah. But you don't learn much more.

As part of Road Trip 2011, I had a chance to come to Normandy this week and visit some of the most important sites of the Allied invasion of 1944 that freed the French people and helped lead eventually to the defeat of the German army.

What I didn't know prior to coming here was just how many important sites there were--and how many … Read more

Inside the Eiffel Tower's 'secret' bunker

PARIS--If the Eiffel Tower makes you think of a direction, I'm willing to bet it's up. But for some people, the iconic French landmark can also mean down.

Down, as into a "secret" military bunker that has an entrance just feet from the south pillar, or leg, of the tower, and which then goes underground and which is full of Eiffel Tower history and even legend.

Secret of course, is a marketing term when it comes to this bunker, since it is open for a small number of weekly public visits. But because it belonged to … Read more

A visit to the heart of European space research

NOORDWIJK, The Netherlands--I'm inside Columbus, one of the modules of the International Space Station, trying to decide whether I'm more interested in the glovebox that allows scientists to work on experiments in a vacuum or in the exercise bike.

Actually, I'm not really in space--I'm about an hour south of Amsterdam. But I am inside Columbus, at least a full-size mockup of it that's located here, inside ESTEC--the European Space Research and Technology Center--part of the European Space Agency (ESA).

I've come as part of Road Trip 2011, and as someone interested in the … Read more

In Paris, Raytheon sells high-tech situational awareness

PARIS--As a major contractor to the U.S. Department of Defense, giving American soldiers a competitive advantage is a big part of what Raytheon does.

At the Paris Air Show here this week, the giant company is demonstrating a number of its newly developed technologies, including several intended to give the U.S. military that competitive edge. Among them is an overarching system that provides what's known as Global ISR--intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance--and a technology that's a key part of that known as Distributed Common Ground System, or DCGS.

I got a chance to see this technology demonstrated … Read more