From Dutch News. Paper train tickets are being phased out this summer. Time to look into the alternatives. The chipkaart sounds similar to NYC’s Metro Cards and London’s Oyster card and should be easy to get. The tricky part may be if they’re only available from a machine rather than from a human – but that’s only an issue if you lack a credit or debit card that’s incompatible with the machine. Chip-and-PIN cards will be fine, but our old-fashioned US magnetic strip cards may be a problem.

And this from the NY Times – an article on the new Terminal 2 at Heathrow and the (continuing) struggle between LHR and Gatwick for an additional runway. Where do these goofballs expect to stick another runway at Heathrow? It seems to me that Gatwick makes much more sense, especially if there could be a Gatwick Express rail connection to central London similar to the one from Heathrow. What they’ve got now is a poky, one-stopper running on the same rails as the regular trains (zzzzzz!) If both those improvements came to Gatwick, I’d be more than happy to fly Virgin or Icelandair into Gatwick, instead of the grim scrum of Heathrow – even if the new terminal arrangement at LHR puts Virgin’s gates closer to the customs and immigration hall, as is claimed in the article.