Bus firm offers travel lying down
A California company is applying the sleeper-car concept of the railways to the humble bus.
A San Francisco startup is offering a lie-flat service on journeys between San Francisco and Los Angeles, complete with attendant, free Wi-Fi, in-seat power sockets, coffee and on-board bathrooms.
Passengers on board the “Sleepbus” will be given bunks with privacy screens and clean sheets for the 61/2-hour overnight trip.
Seats swiftly sold out for the initial runs last month and a company spokesman said there are plans to switch to double-decker buses with upstairs bunks and a downstairs lounge.
Fares start at US$65 each way.
Restaurant takes food buff to another level
More than 20,000 people are on a waiting list to eat in the buff at London’s newest pop-up restaurant.
The Bunyadi, which is opening in June for a three-month run, will be split into “naked and pure” and “non-naked” sections, with staff also semi-clothed.
The naked theme will extend to the menu, with meals served on handmade clay plates and featuring all-natural ingredients. Even the cutlery will be edible. The stripped-down motif is picked up in the decor, which leans to earthy wooden furniture and wicker partitions lit up by soft candle light.
“Everything patrons interact with is bare and naked,” said Seb Lyall, the founder of pop-up specialists Lollipop.
Lost in translation? There’s T-shirt for that
Three Swiss entrepreneurs have devised the perfect tool for travellers tired of lugging around translation guides — a T-shirt that will speak for you.
The Iconspeak tees are plastered with 40 icons showing everything from beds to coffee to jets to Wi-Fi hot spots.
Based on the notion of a universal sign language, flustered tourists need only point to the appropriate icon to bemused locals.
The company was set up by tourists Florian Nast, George Horn and Stefan Streit after a 2013 motorbike journey around Vietnam that was marred by mechanical troubles, forcing them to draw pictures on scrap paper.
Their Iconspeak concept has now been expanded to tote bags, undershirts and hats.
U.K. hedging its bets over high-speed rail
A small group of hedgehogs is threatening to derail a high-speed rail scheme that would link London with Birmingham, Britain’s secondbiggest city.
Animal experts at London Zoo say about a dozen of the wild animals, resembling small porcupines, are threatened with extinction from London parkland if the HS2 line goes through.
The London Zoological Society, which runs the zoo in Regent’s Park, has now joined hundreds of petitioners objecting to the rail project.
Fay Vass, of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, told the Mail on Sunday: “It’s the only Royal Park with a hedgehog population.”