Qype: Rise Festival in london

london

If I new anything about web design and hacking I would attempt to add another couple of stars to this review. Other things I’ve given five stars are no where near as good as the Rise Festival was.
The parks in London make it a city worth living in. They are free and very well kept and I just love them. A place where the alcoholic and the athlete, the child, the gangster and the elderly can all find a bit of room and do their thing.
Summer is welcomed into London with a series of free festivals accross its parks, with perhaps the biggest being the Rise festival. The web site states that well over 100,000 people attended and I can well believe it.
Having said that it felt much more spacious than Clissold parks’ Stokefest a month of so earlier. You could move around at the Rise festival, making it much easier to sample more than one music show – or to go and get beer or food. My favourite barometer for the quality of a festivals organisation is the length of time you have to queue for the toilet. I wasn’t so pedantic as to time it, but I would have to say that the wait was always less than ten minutes. Admirable!! Especially compared to the likes of The Notting Hill Carnival (an important part of the London music scene seems to be the ability to keep drinking and dancing whilst your bladder explodes.)
Now a free concert like this is never going to attract the likes of Radiohead or Fatboy slim so direct comparisons with music between The Rise Festival and say Hyde Park the week earlier are probably unfair. None of these acts, which I list below, had appeared on my Ipod.

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Jimmy Cliff
Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings
Dub Pistols featuring Terry Hall and Rodney P
Kitty, Daisy and Lewis
Trojan Sound System
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Bassekou Kouyate
Yaaba Funk
The Aliens

But the music I heard, particularly The Aliens and some African dance music on a smaller stage, was excellent stuff.
Add to this quality music the fact that you can carry in your own drinks and food, that I was able to walk to the venue, that there were rides and food and interesting cultural things going on – AND IT WAS FREE! – this was just a spectacular day out.

Another great thing about this festival was the atmosphere and the general crowd behaviour. People were just friendly and happy. I didn’t witness any crowd misbehaviour and I felt that the police were really restrained and respectful in their presence. Unfortunately, I have to delcare that if this event happened in Australia – there would be a lot more drunken idiots. Especially teenagers.

The Rise Festival made the headlines because Boris, our Mayor, removed the specific focus of Anti – Racism, with a little last minute meddling. It was apparantly the biggest Anti Racism festival in europe. He changed it to the Celebrate Diversity festival. Now I don’t disagree with it neccessarily but I don’t see any reason why he would have done that except as a little statement that he can do whatever he wants.
First he gets rid of drinking on public transport, then he starts mucking about with festivals. I bet next he will extend areas on the streets where you can’t drink and then he will ban drinking in parks, and the free festivals and their special nature will go out with.

Londons park festivals, especially The Rise, are wonderful events that bring the community together and reinforce everything that is good about living in the capital.

Check out my review of Rise Festival - I am gotiges7 – on Qype

Qype: Amman International Airport in Amman

Amman

To be honest, I normally write reviews with the intent of entertaining or inspiring rather than providing actual useful information.
If you have a stop over of any length flying Air Jordan through this aiport though, a little information will be really useful.
The airport itself is neither good nor bad – just another mid size international venue with epensive food but the ability to order it in English.
What is useful to know is that if you have a stop over – then Air Jordan have a FREE hotel to stay in which provides FREE meals and FREE links to the airport.
However NO ONE tells you about it in English. I’m not sure how long your stop has to be but if you call the airline I guess they will tell you. I had a scheduled 6 hr stop on the way back from Thailand to London and I was eligable.
What you need to do is get a transit pass when you exit customs. Then you walk directly out the front of the airport.
The shuttle bus arrives to your right hand side facing away from the entrance. This seems to come when it wants and you will be approached by quite a few taxi drivers wanting to tax you there. The key word is TRANSIT. Just say that to everyone.
The hotel is only about 10 minutes by bus. Once there they give you a hotel room, mine was quite nice, with TV, aircon and private bathroom.
There is also a buffet room which has a huge spread of food, coffe and other drinks. No one will point this out to you at the hotel – so just go in there and start eating with the rest of them!
Be careful – they may or may not give you a wakeup call so get yourself ready to get the bus back. I received a call but my friend didn’t.
I have not doubt that they deliberatly leave westerners here so they will have to pay a huge fee to the taxi drivers to return them for their flights.
An inititaive like this should really get five stars. I don’t know anywhere else in the world where they do it. But it is handled so badly, and so rudely, that I can’t give it more than two.

Check out my review of Amman International Airport – I am gotiges7 – on Qype