Just this morning, the London-based bloggers behind British Airways’ best of NY/LON guide, Metrotwin met up with the 5 transatlantic bloggers we sent over to London (and later this week, Glasgow).   Among the London reps was  Metrotwin’s Anya Driscoll,  Beauty and the Dirt, and Urban Junkies.

What happens when 10 bloggers collide at the Arch Hotel’s Martini library at 9:30am?

They exchanged notes on top travel spots and random fun facts. Here’s a sample of Anya’s takeaways:

* ‘Bubble and Squeak’ is a sort of cabbage and mashed potato concoction that is nowhere near as exciting as it sounds.

* The best place to get a Guinness in New York is probably at Molly’s.

* Park Slope is a bit like the Crouch End of New York.

*If you happen to be born on Burns Night – even if you are American and not remotely Scottish -  you will be subjected to a lifetime of haggis jokes.

For the full list of learning’s, check out Anya’s post on Metrotwin’s blog.

Of course – the question on every one’s mind really was:

“@refinery29 –  Heading to a martini bar at 9:30 am. How early is too early for a stiff one? #BloggingUK”

You can follow this blogger trip by watching out the for #BloggingUK hashtag on twitter or by following updates from Jeremy Viray on @BritainInUSA.

We’ve picked five expert travel and style bloggers to go to London and Glasgow,  from Jan 27th to Feb 1st, and report on some of the in-the-know things shops, destinations, hotels.  This isn’t just a stodgy bus tour press trip, we’ve given them time to discover their own interests and let us know, and you, what’s worth visiting.

Plus, we’ve organized a meet’n'greet tip off with 5 London based bloggers that are currently powering the New York meets London destination guide, Metrotwin.

Look out for hash tag #BloggingUK and updates from our own Jeremy Viray on @BritainInUSA in the next few days to follow these five:

Sarah Menkedick

Sarah Menkedick is a freelance writer and editor currently based in Oaxaca, Mexico. She is a contributing editor at Matador Network, a contributing writer at Change.org (she blogs about women’s rights), and she maintains a website called Postigres devoted to creative nonfiction and photography inspired by travel. Sarah has been traveling, teaching and exploring the globe for five years.  She has lived and taught in France, China, Japan and Mexico, and traveled to more than fifteen countries. She speaks fluent French and Spanish and can amaze Mexicans with her capacity to eat devastatingly spicy chilés.

Where to check Sarah out and follow her:
www.posatigres.com
matadorabroad.com
@Matadornetwork

Andrew Hickey

Andrew is a travel writer/blogger for his own Brooklyn Nomad and the Social Media guru at CheapOair.  He has visited numerous destinations around the world and never gets sick of traveling. Some of his favorite spots to hit up include Dublin, London, Zurich and San Francisco.  His work has appeared in USA Today, New York Times, MSNBC, AOL Travel, Yahoo! Travel, and more.  Andrew is also the mastermind behind the blog of CheapOair.  You can look to his blog, Brooklyn Nomad for tips on deals but also food, nightlife and music when he travels. You’ll likely find him writing about curry and pubs while on the trip.

Follow Andrew:

www.thebrooklynnomad.com
blog.cheapoair.com
@BrooklynNomad
@CheapOair

Connie Wang

Connie is the associate editor at fashion, style, and shopping website Refinery29. Refinery29 is the ultimate online destination for discovering the newest and best in style, shopping, and emerging trends from the runways to the streets. Every day, Refinery29 delivers up-to-the-minute insider reports on the designers to know and the coolest global street style, breaking fashion news from sample sales to boutique openings, along with the best local shopping reports from experts who know their cities best.  She has also been published in Teen Vogue, Vice Magazine, Radar (RIP!), Fashion Week Daily, and Chictopia.com.

Get more on Connie:
www.refinery29.com
@Refinery29
@conniewang

Annie Scott

Annie Scott is a freelance writer slash editor in New York City. Writing for AOL websites including StyleList, Gadling, Luxist, Slashfood, and Holidash, and editing for Tonic, she has traveled the globe and covered everything from New York Fashion Week to Singapore’s Grand Prix, and interviewed everyone from oceanographer and explorer Sylvia Earle to fashion world darling Tim Gunn. Annie specializes in travel, luxury, style, honest product reviews, humor, and living the good life wherever you go. She has a personal blog called The Annie Scott Experience.

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See what Annie’s up to:

www.luxist.com
www.gadling.com
@luxist
@gadling
@AnnieScott

Lee Carter

Hint Magazine

Lee is the founder and editor-in-chief of the New York fashion site Hintmag.com, a Webby Award winner and original online fashion magazine. Hint Magazine takes an edgy look at the fashion industry and the media. It features the latest reviews of fashions and emerging designers and takes a peek at the new stars in the modeling scene. He also contributes to a variety of international fashion magazines.

Read up on Lee:
Hintmag.com
@hintmag

You can track their trip, send suggestions, and and chat with us when you follow #BloggingUK and updates from our own Jeremy Viray on @BritainInUSA in the next few days to follow these five.

Think you know, Britain?  CheapOair is hosting a contest, today through Friday, where you can use your knowledge to win a trip for two to London.

Simply answer the daily question on the official CheapOair blog each day between 8am EST and 6pm EST Monday January 25, 2010 through Friday January 29, 2010 to be entered into the drawing. Two entrants will be picked each day. Then check out the CheapOair blog on Tuesday February 2, 2010 for the big announcement! A winner and their guest will be flown round-trip to London, where they will enjoy 3-nights at the hip base2stay hotel. They are even throwing in two Oyster cards so that you can see more of this great city!

Two entrants are picked each day for the final grand prize trip- so be sure to check out CheapOair daily for the next week.  Go Now >

CheapOair offers one of the largest selections of airline tickets, hotels, car rentals, vacation packages and travel deals obtained from multiple sources, including three of the most respected and widely used reservation systems.

No one can deny the fact that the recession is a bit of a bore.  You’re skinter than ever and can’t afford to live the champagne lifestyle you feel you so very much deserve; even if you can still afford to buy drinks AND dinner, chances are your friends cannot, and eating alone in public is so… brave.

The knock-on effect of all this austerity is that lots of great bars and pubs have been forced to close. Some venues however, are getting wise to the times what are a-changin’ and have created a sort of New Going Out scene.

The New Going Out bars have worked out that to lure patrons off their sofas and away from their hard earned pennies, you need more than just moderately priced drinks and a little background music. The Book Club in Shoreditch hosts a diverse range of nights, from craft fairs and philosophical lectures to club nights and art exhibitions downstairs and has a ping-pong room upstairs, while the Proud Galleries in Camden manages to be an art gallery, a bar, a gig venue and a club all at the same time. Still, our props have to go to The Victoria in Mile End. By day it is an old fashioned pub with a bizarre collection of taxidermy, a wide food menu and lovely homemade cupcakes. By night it variously transforms into an achingly cool club, a teeny cinema or a gig venue. We recommend, especially if you are a fan of dioramas featuring boxing squirrels.

- Anya Driscoll, Contributor

London can seem like an endless metropolis, impossible to navigate or even know where to start. Dig a bit deeper, though and you’ll find that London is really a collection of interrelated boroughs, a series of small towns. If you are looking to navigate your way through east London’s Shoreditch area, Urban Species is a great place to start. Owner Sarah and her son Hash, own and run the store located just off of Brick Lane, though they are just as much conduits for the creative community as they are simple shop owners.

Urban Species have their own lines of clothing and art, are DC Comics licensees, and are also an events company bringing together local artists, designers, dancers, musicians, even special effects make-up artists to produce exhibitions and club nights around town.

I recently met with Sarah to talk about the store and what’s on this year at Urban Species. Sarah tipped me off that we can expect to see a series of pop up shops being installed, the first of which is from the brand Moneypenny. Sarah is also one of the kindest and most welcoming people I’ve met in the area, which is why I would definitely suggest popping in if you get the chance and chatting with Sarah, Hash and the whole Urban Species gang for some insider tips on Shoreditch.

- Jessica Ainlay, Contributor

It is often said that Britian is a land of eccentrics – and that truth can be proven in the unusual museums that dot the island of Great Britain. From a museum in a red phone box to a museum of pickled animals – Britain is full of strange and interesting museums that will surprise you, entertain you and most imporantly – educate you.

Here a rundown of the strangest British museums that I could find.

Phone Booth Museum

Britain is dotted with the iconic red phone box. It’s one of those elements of design that’s instantly recognizable as British. In the age of the cell phone, though, they are a dying breed with many being abandoned or offered to towns to maintain as heritage icons on their own. One local authority in Wales decided to turn it’s red phone box into a museum celebrating the photography of Tom Mathias. They adopted the phone box, gave it a new lease on life, restoring and creating this unique museum dedicated to a unique photographer.

Located in Cilgerran, Pembrokeshire in Wales

Cartoon Museum

Opened a couple years ago in London, The Cartoon Museum seeks to preserve the best in British cartoons, caricatures, comics and animation. The museum features a gallery, archive and library dedicated to all things cartoons.

Located in London:

The Cartoon Museum
35 Little Russell Street
London WC1A 2HH.
Telephone 0207 580 8155.
www.cartoonmuseum.org

Photo from Loz Flowers

Museum of Tea and Coffee

If I had to pick one thing that defined Britain – that would be tea. So, of course there is an entire museum dedicated to it! Not only does the museum tell you everything you need to know about the 400 year history of tea in Europe – they also have a tea room!

Located in London: (rumor has it that this museum may now be closed)

Bramah Museum of Tea and Coffee
40 Southwark Street
London SE1 1UN
www.teaandcoffeemuseum.co.uk/

Hunterian Museum

This museum is not for the faint of heart! The Hunterian Museum in London is a collection of thousands of animal specimens, pickled in jars in an incredible steel and glass gallery. They have everything from the smallest creatures to actual human beings. Would not recommend a visit after you’ve eaten!

Located in London:

35-43 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London
www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums

Photo from phatcontroller

The Fan Museum

An entire museum dedicated to fans. Not electric fans, mind you (which would be cool as well!) – we’re talking the old school fans that women used to keep cool back in the day. Many of them are works of art in their own right. Boasting a collection of over 3,500 fans, they have the world’s largest collection of the interesting piece of art. They even have fans from the 1100’s!

Located in London:

12 Croom’s Hill
London
www.fan-museum.org

British Lawnmower Museum

The British love their gardens, so it only makes sense that they’d have a museum dedicated to everything to do with lawnmowers. From the very first lawnmower to modern day robotic lawnmowers, this museum has it all.

Located in Merseyside:

106-114 Shakespeare Street
Southport, Merseyside
www.lawnmowerworld.co.uk

Cumberland Pencil Museum

Here you can journey to the place where the pencil was invented which I’m sure would be a worthwhile pilgrimage for all the office supply geeks out there! Here you can learn the entire history of pencils and learn how they are made to this very day.

Located in Cumbria:
Southey Works,
Keswick,
Cumbria
www.pencilmuseum.co.uk

Photo from Dominic Torrisi

Do you have a suggestion for a strange British museum? Share it in the comments!

Contributing Editor – Jonathan Thomas

Long gone are the days of tourism when rolling a cheap suitcase into a yellowing room with flowered wallpaper and a smoking desk clerk who grunts out a room number and hands over a key a la Lampoon’s European Vacation. Both hotels owners and their guests have come of age, and this sophistication has hit its highest level at just 30 minutes outside of London in Buckinghamshire: Stoke Place, a boutique style country house retreat for city dwellers and city breakers.

The English countryhouse hotel offers top-quality stylish suites, garden events, and even a Stoke House personal trainer to whip the more active types into shape. In association with The White Blackbird, Stoke Place has started to ‘revive the Country House Party’ and throws creative events such as their first Pyjama Party last May.

This Friday night, January 22, 2010  Stoke Place will convert their glamorous hotel into a night of mystery, mysticism, and some ghoulish magic, with a Murder Mystery Treasure Hunt, a Vintage Secret’s Dress Up and Photo Studio (and styling), Whisky Tasting and Piano Singing, Literary Readings, and a Spooky Haunting re-enactment during their first ever ‘Tweed’ night.

Shuttle buses to and from London on the night make this swinging country house party accessible for even the staunchest of city dwellers and is completely open to the public: Just don your best Tweed and bring your most creative of colleagues for a night unlike anything else in London.

contributing editor – Jessica Ainlay

Question 1: Why does John Malkovich own a budget design hotel in Eastbourne?

A) Because he is neighbors with a guy who claims his family invented the chocolate bar
B) So he could get in bed with 300 Welsh Secretaries
C) Because furniture design is his hobby
D) To make some dough
E) All of the above

Please fill in your answer with a number 2 pencil on the Scantron form provided.  Be sure to fill in the circle completely, or your answer will be marked incorrect.

Question 2 (essay format): Why do we care?

And the Story goes:

Just recently, the budget yet chic Big Sleep Hotel in Eastbourne has been rated by Trip Advisor as one of the world’s top ten celebrity owned hotels.  For design and pet-friendliness evidently.

I love this part.  Malkovich  got started in the hotel business because he is friends with a Mr. Cosmo Fry, his neighbor in Provence,  France.  Mr. Fry is a chocolate heir – his family’s chocolate business was founded in 1728, and run for over century before being bought by Cadbury’s in 1936.  He also claims that his ancestor created the first chocolate bar.  Now, Mr. Fry is a hotelier and Malkovich a part owner in this enterprise.

Malkovich got involved, because he is an avid furniture designer (he designed the furniture in his home in France). The concept of the design hotel was right up his alley – so far in fact, that in 2000 Malkovich got in bed with 300 Welsh secretaries as a promotional stunt for the Cardiff branch of the hotel.

What does this mean for you? If you are in the UK and looking for what has been described as an IKEA-quirky budget hotel stay – it’s the place for you.  Depending on the location, rates are as little as 45 pounds a night.

Check it out:

The Big Sleep Hotel
www.thebigsleephotel.com

Usually, in winter I get a hankering for a dark rich porter.  But this winter, I find myself craving cocktails.  Maybe it’s the hidden bars, or rash of artisan infused liquors springing up, but I’m longing for that nostalgic bootlegger era when virtually all of the classic cocktails that we now drink are named. “I’ll take a Tennessee Williams and Gibson for the Misses, barman, and make it snappy” 

With my at home martini experiments, well… failing (pepper spiced pickle brine does not a good “artisan” martini make), I’m think it’s time to travel for my next drink.  If cocktail tourism is the next big trend – one item on my travel list would definitely be Rick’s Bar in central Edinburgh, Scotland.

This cocktail bar with rooms was voted by Conde Nast Traveler as one of the coolest hotels in the world.  I’d think their 20 page drink menu would have something to do with that.  It is inspired by some solid research and classic cocktail havens like prohibition-era Havana, Manhattan, New Orleans, and interestingly, the outposts of the British Empire (The Pegu Club cocktail was invented in the 1920s in Burma).  There’s even a fascinating section on Punch Bowls-evidently the earliest form of cocktail.

My favorite from the list has to be the Alamagoozlum Punch (try saying that three times fast after a few cocktails) or as it’s known by it’s full name, J.Pierpoint Morgan’s Alamagoozlum; the Personal Mix Credited to that Financier, Philanthropist & Banker of a Bygone Era” (or that!).

Today’s era of fast fads and quick trends in everything from fashion to food, means that companies are churning out products at unbelievable rates.  In this hyper-competitive marketplace, brand compete for our attention, but in doing so create a rich history of design that spans hundreds of years.

Robert Opie noticed that at the tender age of sixteen.  He was eating a British Munchies candy bar when the unique design of the wrapper caught his fancy.  Then it dawned on him.  He should never throw anything away.

Thank heavens. Today his collection is over 500,000 items and many of them are on display at the Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising. They hark back to a simpler time in our collective consumer history…

Like the era when Heinz canned virtually anything…including Turtles:

Photo by danielweir.esq

Before wrigley’s decided that scary gnome-like men, weren’t as inviting as doublemint twins (can’t see why):

Photo by I Like

And when Kelloggs Rice Crispy’s were called “Sugar Ricicles.”

Photo by danielweir.esq

While many of the objects in the Museum are specifically British products and might not be recognized stateside, they do lend themselves to a fascinating study of consumer history.   The collection spans over 100 years and is a must see destination for any history lover, quirky facts aficionado, or marketeer.

Star war yogurt anyone? (they’ve got that too!)

Museum of Brands Packaging and Advertising
2 Colville Mews, off Lonsdale Road, Notting Hill, London, W11 2AR
Online at www.museumofbrands.com