Triathlon? Ironman? Fergeddaboutit. A stroll in the park compared to this: the Arch to Arc, a 289-mile run, swim and cycle from London's Marble Arch to Paris' Arc De Triomphe. Only five mortals have ever completed the gruelling course, and on Saturday hedge fund manager Nino Baglione set off on his own attempt to break the current record of 81 hours and 5 minutes. Sadly, having jogged the 89 miles to Dover, his plans were......

What if god was one of us... Grow up. A letter written by Einstein, dismissing the idea of god and the bible as "pretty childish" has sold for $400,000 at a Bloomsbury auction. We are living in a material world... and Posh and Paris are competing through a tabloid pout marathon to flog their wares across the West End C'mon feel the noise... and map it for DEFRA Keep on movin':Jazzie B gets OBE......

We've spent enough time wading through the flytipped rubbish on our street or struggling to blast the grime off our bodies following a grubby commute home to realise that London's not exactly the cleanest of places. But is it really the dirtiest city in Europe? In a shameless promotion, travel experts Trip Advisor commissioned a survey asking tourists to rank their likes and dislikes across a number of continental destinations, and London cleaned up......

Yesterday, Ken announced that London will have a city bike hire scheme, a la Vélib' in Paris, with up to 6,000 bikes located across docking stations every 300m. Hooray! This major investment in cycling - £500 million over a decade - will transform the way we get around the capital although it's unlikely we'll see the bikes on our streets until 2010. Better commuter cycle routes are also planned. The programme will improve pedestrian......

Thanks to a concerned reader, we were alerted today to a potential tragedy in the making. It seems that the folks over in Monopoly Land are holding an online vote to choose the world’s top twenty cities (in addition to two wild cards) for its Here & Now: World Edition version of the classic game. Winners will be awarded prime real estate slots in the world edition board game – leading us to wonder......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 21st January 1976: Concorde’s first commercial service, from London to Bahrain (and Paris to Rio de Janeiro) commences. Tuesday – 22nd January 1876: The Royal Aquarium opens in Westminster. It would be demolished just 26 years later and replaced by the Methodist Central Hall. Wednesday – 23rd January 1571: The Royal Exchange in the City of London is officially opened by Elizabeth I. Over the next few hundred......

Us and Paris have won an award for "visionary achievements in sustainable transportation and urban livability". Yes, such an award could only come from the US of A and it is courtesy of their Institute for Transportation and Development Policy that we are sharing such an honour. Ken's C-Charge scheme and best efforts to get us all on our bikes impressed the judges whilst we imagine our Parisian pals' fabulous Velib scheme won them......

Tell us something we don't know! At last, here's the third-party (well, ish) endorsement for us as the best city on the planet. Deep down we all knew this anyway, but it's nice to be told it. The Independent carried out a huge survey over months that looked at everything from culture and finance through to population, tourism and transport. They published the results (and a heap of commentary) on their front page, just......

The Christmas turkey is cold and in sandwiches. A few of us have struggled back to work, carrying surplus chocolate to the office in a desperate attempt to stop our expanding waistlines. Which must mean it's about time to start panicking about what to do on New Year's Eve. Aside from rammed pubs, pricey nightclubs and awkward parties in someone's frontroom, the main focus for London will be squarely on the London Eye. Since......

The fashion world has been in a glitzy hooha this week as Karl Lagerfeld, AKA The Count (cue: one, one supermodel; AH HA HA HA HA!") jetted in to much celebrity fawning for a posh nosh ding dong at Nobu and the first ever Chanel show in London. Those who know are hailing the Brit chic collection as beautiful, sumptuous and decadent and intimating design influences from the original Duke of Westminster, the Tudor......

Reginald Perrin rides again. A canoeist who vanished 5 years ago has surfaced alive and well. Car free London = care free. And popular apparently. Sporty Londonist readers should check out the London Sports Awards. Dial-a-parking-space out of order. Temporarily. Celebrities are worried about Camden Market. The internet is a wonderful thing, but apparently not for matters of the heart. Rail IS getting exciting. Now they are planning trains from Heathrow to Paris. Singers......

It seems Ken Livingstone isn't content with the new, faster Eurostar, but wants to make London actually resemble Paris. He is proposing pedestrianised, tree-lined streets a la the French capital and even wants to get us our own version of the famous Paris Plage, the artificial beach that takes over the Right Bank of the Seine. For this, the Mayor wants to shut a section of the Victoria Embankment's four lanes from traffic. Other......

Unless there were leaves on the line, not enough station staff, delays at Paris holding everything up or industrial action on either side of the Channel, the first Eurostar train should be pulling into its new station at St Pancras this morning. We've had a sneak preview of what it's like and have been terribly excited about it so far, and at last, today, we get to see it in its full glory. We......

Forget supping champagne as you hurtle from shiny new St Pancras to Gare de Nord by Eurostar, soon we'll be considering a picturesque pedal to Paris. No doubt inspired by this summer's Tour de France prologue in England which took an ultra scenic route to the French capital, three County Councils have signed an agreement with Transport for London to back the development of a cycle route to span both sides of the Channel......

Updates from a Londonista at today's Integrated Volume Testing at St Pancras International, the new Eurostar terminal. (A sneak preview of the new station before it opens on 14th November, with Eurostar moving from Waterloo overnight.) 7.15am. Early start, ugh. 8.00. It's quite a privilege to be here and get a sneak preview of the place. But they'd better have coffee. 8.30. The first queue of many - most of the participants (300 of......

That’s the creative process used by artist Paul Day to produce his landmark sculpture for the station. Or so we choose to believe. Sadly, the facts tell us that it’s really made from conventional modelling techniques, and shows the sculptor in a clinch with his half-French wife, Catherine. The nuzzling pair were today installed on the concourse beneath St Panc’s famous clock. According to Day, the 30ft group ‘reflects the romance that train travel......

It may be up there with "dog bites man" as a redundant headline, but it's true: traffic in London is slow. Four years of congestion charging may have swelled the coffers of TfL, but it hasn't done much to relieve the blood pressure of motorists. Despite a 20% reduction in traffic since 2003, snaking jams of snarling drivers are common, and things are slower than in the days of horse and cart. So we......

As we noted yesterday, art fair season is upon us in full force this weekend. With so many events happening around the capital, it would be hard work to take it all in, and the best advice one can offer is to try to see as much as you can without making it all a rushed annoyance of cab rides. Possibly even better advice, however, would be to make a point to check out......

"Control" seems to be getting excellent reviews from everyone we know who has seen it, and if you're a fan or the film has piqued your interest in Joy Division and Ian Curtis then you're in for a treat. French fashion designer Agnes B is currently hosting a collection of photographs of the band at her Covent Garden shop. Formerly on display in her Parisian base, the 40 odd photos are taken by Pierre......

Paris thinks it can take us on as a financial hub. Quand les cochons volent. Rare Faberge egg up for sale. Now, don't know about you, but we've never been able to take such things seriously since Viz's Tony Hadley Faberge pineapple. Anyone else remember that? Prince Harry is dead! In bronze at least. Alexandra Palace: nobody's ever really known what to do with it, and the pattern continues. Image courtesy of Homemade via......

Yee-hah! Woo-hoo! Yippy-kayay! And other such celebratory noises. After umpteen years (actually 20 or so) and countless debates and immeasurable lengths of newspaper footage, Crossrail has today been given the funding green light. Londonist can only join the chorus of approval on this. To quote the Man in Seat 61: Like the RER in Paris, this will bring suburban trains right through the centre of the city and out the other side, relieving the Underground......

For those of you who are still dubious about London’s public transport system, you may be interested to hear it’s just been rated as the third best in the world. Although station cleanliness and comfy seats may not initially strike you, it is, apparently, one of the most luxurious transportation systems in the world. Carrying 3 million people a day, and featuring a whole host of options from the iconic double decker buses to......

And so to our final rugby watching venue post with just 4 teams remaining to accommodate. Italy play Portugal tonight in Paris, 7pm Bar Italia - where else? Japan crunch with Wales tomorrow in Cardiff at 8pm. We didn't think Japan would be the hardest nut to crack but our badgering and internetting and random contacting of Japanese people hasn't turned up a definitive option. So, we'll give you a unconfirmed one. Sirocco London......

One of Londonist’s fave websites is seat61.com. Now this is not because we are closet anoraks, or are forever secretly planning our escape from the capital – it is just a damn fine website. Everything that you ever wanted to know about trains but were afraid to ask. Not just London, but worldwide. Journey to plan? We bet your travelling conundrums are already addressed on the man in seat 61’s site. It is a mammoth......

Last month when we carried the news about London having entered a “golden age for the London restaurant-goer,” we didn’t realize said restaurant-goer would require access to the Bank of England’s gold reserves just to enjoy this apparent new age in dining out. But it looks like that might be the case now that London has “leapfrogged Tokyo and Paris” to become the world’s most expensive city for dining out. Of course, with London......

There was very little else for Londonist to be concerned with when the threat of a Tube strike became a very unpleasant reality. The inconvenience was extreme: there aren't many alternatives to the Tube in London despite the best efforts of the Londonist team to get everyone from A to B. Brighter news came in the form of the first ever female Yeoman Warder, or Beefeater as the position is more commonly known, and......

Long dead man gets parking fine. Paris Hilton wants to call her first-born 'London'...after her cat? "I want kids next year, so I have got to get my body ready." Big Scottish party tomorrow Have a happy weekend: Tube strike called off! Image of Hammersmith Bridge courtesy of Lu¡s' via the Londonist flickr group.......

Hot on the heels of the pay as you go pups comes brilliant news that Ken Livingstone has ordered a feasibility study into a pay as you go bike scheme for London. We were in Paris the other week and saw the excellent Vélib' (freedom bike) set up. Specially designed, heavy grey cycles are stationed at bike stands all over the city, available for hire for as little as 1 Euro for half an......

Jedi masters are best known for warding off evil forces of the Dark Side on the silver screen, but to 5-year-old Drew James of Hextable, Kent, they are warding off illness in his everyday life. Diagnosed with leukaemia in April this year, Drew’s father used the best analogy his little boy could understand and described the leukaemia as Darth Vader or Darth Maul and the necessary-but-horrendous chemotherapy treatments as the Jedi sent to destroy......

Sometimes it feels a bit like London is our very own playground. This is never more true than when Street Wars comes to town. Grab a water pistol, don a rather cool disguise and let's play! Allow us to explain. Street Wars is a three week event/game/festival of assassination silliness that you can get involved in too. It's already taken over New York and Paris and it's about to hit London. The concept is......