'Ugly' Pompidou shows its new face
The controversial Pompidou Centre in Paris has reopened after a 27-month facelift costing about $684 million.
The arts centre, which apart from its exhibits is popular with tourists because of the views it offers over the city, has been condemned as looking like a gasworks. Before its closure for alterations, visitors would ride its escalators for free, visiting only for the view. Now they will have to pay for that privilege. The renovations vastly increase the space for exhibitions, and like the building or not, it contains treasures by Picasso, Cezanne and other great artists.
Ski at the Winter Games resort A number of four-day/three-night packages are available at Yongpyong in South Korea, which will host the winter Asian Games. Yongpyong is Korea's largest ski resort and has the longest ski lift in Asia (3,700 metres).
The Korea Travel Service (KTS) packages are priced from $3,990 for adults ($3,590 for children) to $4,880 (children $4,580), depending on the day of departure, and include return air ticket to Korea, connecting return flight to Kangnung with shuttle bus transfers, and three days' skiing. Discounts on ski rental and lift passes are offered. Contact KTS at 2301 2313, fax 2368 2539.
A picnic for three million For sheer magnitude and ecological audacity, few millennium events can match La Meridienne Verte, the showcase of the Mission 2000 project planned by the French Government. Last November, tens of thousands of schoolchildren planted saplings along the Paris meridian, snaking 600 kilometres.
On July 14, the Green Meridian will provide shade for the Incredible Picnic, when more than three million people are expected to celebrate Bastille Day with their own bag lunches or with local specialties on sale at the picnic sites.
Free train connection Passengers on Alitalia and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines arriving in Milan are now able to travel free on the 'Malpensa Express' which runs between Malpensa Airport in Milan and the Cadorna station. The offer will be open until June 30.
They will only be required to present their boarding passes or air tickets to be accepted on the trains, which operate at 30-minute intervals.
On every train, there are special carriages for Alitalia and KLM passengers.
Meanwhile, Alitalia banned smoking on all of its flights from January 1.
Lunar New Year deals Thomas Cook has a number of packages available over the Lunar New Year, including four nights in Bangkok with daily breakfast from $4,730 and three nights in Langkawi, Malaysia, from $5,090.
Flights are with Cathay Pacific, and for those on the latter package, a free one-way transfer home from the airport is being offered in a Mercedes-Benz.
Thomas Cook also has several other packages which are available until March 31, including three nights in Tokyo from $4,688, three nights in Australia from $5,380 and a seven-day fly-drive holiday in Down Under, also from $5,380. Call 2853 9933 or fax 2853 9849 for details.
Bird-watching goes hi-tech Britain's first large-scale visitor centre devoted to sea-birds will open on May 6 on the Scottish coast 40 kilometres from Edinburgh at North Berwick.
The centre, built in the shape of a bird's head, will cost more than GBP2.9 million (HK$37 million). Some of the largest sea-bird colonies in Europe, around 150,000 of 12 different species including puffins and gannets, nest on islands off the coast. Visitors will be able to operate remote-controlled cameras to watch them.
Admission prices have not yet been finalised but are expected to be around GBP4.
