Attention, coach fliers:  Delta's new "Cozy Suite" seats, from Thompson Solutions, are on the way.

by Wendy Perrin

For your weekend reading pleasure, here are five nifty posts that I stumbled upon in the blogosphere this week:

(1) Wired's Autopia blog on The Cozy Suite -- Building a Better Airplane Seat. These seats, to be introduced in 2010 on Delta 767s and 777s, will provide more legroom, a place to rest your head, and two armrests for each passenger. They won't recline but, personally, I consider that a huge plus.  (By the way, it's amazing to me what the airline, cruise, and hotel industries get away with calling a "suite" these days.)

(2) Delicious Baby on Easy Hack for Getting a Refund From Your Credit Card. Attention, digital-camera shutterbugs who traveled abroad between 1996 and 2006: Here's a surprisingly easy and fun way to get money back for the foreign transaction fees you were unfairly charged by your credit card.

(3) HowStuffWorks on What happens to weapons confiscated at the airport? Collecting and reselling the thousands of items confiscated daily turns out to be a profitable business. The article even explains how to "become a millionaire! Sell confiscated weapons on eBay!"

(4) The Juggle, The Wall Street Journal's blog about the choices and tradeoffs people make as they juggle work and family, on Breastfeeding on the Move and Other '"Bad Parent" Shortcuts.  Any mom who's taken a road trip with an infant can relate and will probably find the thread of passionate comments riveting.

(5) Eileen Ogintz's Taking the Kids on How to Find the Perfect Beach Getaway because her post introduced me to a nifty Orbitz tool for finding your ideal beach vacation. Love it!

Enjoy your weekend, everyone.

My family sometimes has trouble following the "rules of in-flight etiquette."  :)

by Wendy Perrin

For your weekend reading pleasure, here are my five favorite recent posts from around the blogosphere:

1. Lost Weekend on The Unwritten Rules of In-flight Etiquette. I'm still laughing. My favorite: "If I'm in the middle seat, I own both armrests."

2. The Cranky Flier on the Playmobil Security Checkpoint -- a miniature version of those airport X-ray stations we all know and love  --  and the hilarious customer reviews that the toy has elicited on Amazon. e.g., "I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item because the functionality is limited. My 5-year-old son pointed out that the passenger's shoes cannot be removed."  And "There's no brown figure for little Josh to profile, taser, and detain . . . . And shouldn't someone be forcing a mother figure to drink her own breast milk?"

3. Paul Brady on Jaunted's Guide to NYC Shopping For Brits, which recommends stores for the legions of Europeans who are taking advantage of the weak dollar by going on Manhattan shopping sprees. Paul even lists prices in pounds sterling.

4. On a more serious note, Chris Elliott on 6 Secrets Car Rental Companies Don't Want You To Know. Love the fact that it's a former car rental agent who spills the beans. Hate the fact that this scoops my upcoming June Perrin Report which, thanks to print magazine lead times, I wrote back in February yet can't be read till June.  Aaarrgh.

5. Politico on Congress Has History of Travel Woes. We (at least, I) tend to think that people in positions of power don't face the same air travel nightmares that we plebs are forced to suffer, so it's refreshing to read about what various senators et al. have had to contend with.

Happy weekend, everyone!

by Wendy Perrin

Where's Brook?  Where's Guy?  Where's Barbara?  They and the Perrin Post's other sometime contributors have a new home called Daily Traveler. Yes, Conde Nast Traveler has finally launched its editors' blog (it's about f***ing time!) where, hopefully, more and more of the magazine's editors will eventually be posting their news and views as they travel the world. For now you'll find Brook's weekly Responsible Traveler posts there, as well as Guy's and Barbara's airport and airline coverage. As for Stephan, he's currently too busy trying to fix his Porsche, but maybe once he gets the car to start he'll want to come back and contribute. The Perrin Post will return to being written solo, as often as I can swing it.

That's me, blogging from baggage claim at the Fort Lauderdale Airport. At right are my bags, at left my kids.

by Wendy Perrin

Where he gets the time, I don't know, but Mark Ashley over at Upgrade: Travel Better is running the Travvies again this year. Nominations for these awards, which honor the best in travel blogging, are now being accepted. You have until the end of this week to nominate up to 3 blogs in each of 8 different categories. Every blog that's nominated, even if only once, will be in contention -- which is great because this frees everyone up to nominate some of the underdogs and lesser-knowns that may have little chance of winning but deserve props.

In the category of Best Single-Author Blog, for instance, instead of nominating great but already wildly popular blogs such as Cheapest Destinations or View From The Wing, I nominated Rick Seaney, Don George, and Musings of the Global Traveller.  Their blogs may not be the coolest thing out there, but I trust their advice. Trusting the writer is what dictated my choices for Best Informative/Practical Travel Blog too: Seat 2B from Joe Brancatelli, Flight Bliss from Matthew Bennett, and -- because of the blood, sweat, and tears I've poured into it, not to mention the huge amounts of my own money I've spent, and freebies I've turned away, so I can report to you free of conflicts of interest -- The Perrin Post.

For Best Big Media Blog (isn't that an oxymoron?), I nominated three from USA Today: Gene Sloan's The Cruise Log, Ben Mutzabaugh's Today In The Sky, and Kitty Bean Yancey's Hotel Hotsheet. Gene's the one I'm in awe of: How he manages to balance his full-time print-journalism job, travel schedule, and three kids is beyond me. Every minute I spend blogging is a minute I'm not spending with my two sons who already don't see me enough because of my full-time print-journalism job and travel schedule (which is why I'm blogging less often and have given up hope of winning the Big Media slot.)

It ain't easy blogging with six- and four-year-old sons in tow.

As for the overall award for Best Travel Blog, I nominated Seat 2B (which technically may not even be a blog, but who cares? Joe Brancatelli's the best), The Gate (because any tool that points you quickly and easily to the best wisdom in FlyerTalk is doing the world an important service), and Girl Solo In Arabia (because what Carolyn McIntyre has accomplished is nothing short of amazing).

So who will YOU be nominating?  Even if you don't care to vote, it's interesting to check out the lists of nominations and introduce yourself to all the travel blogs you never knew existed.

Visitors to Auckland, above, and other cities can get insider tips from a network of city-based bloggers around the world.
Photo: Jon Arnold Images, Alamy

by Brook Wilkinson

Avid Perrin Post reader Seafarer just hosted the latest Carnival of Cities over at Home Turf Media, a network of city-based blogs with in-the-know advice from locals living around the world. In addition to mentioning Wendy's post on Burma/Myanmar, she also highlighted a number of other helpful travel blogs that you should all check out. I particularly liked The Seattle Traveler's route recommendation -- Route 11 to Bellingham, a great little town I visited last spring -- and wholeheartedly agree with Doris Chua over at Life, Travel, Passion, & More that Ponsonby is Auckland's chicest, most interesting neighborhood.

Are you itching for a weekend away, but don't want to drop a ton of cash? Kayak now lets users search for airfares between the same cities over multiple weekends, all at once. If you don't specify certain weekends or days of the week, Kayak will search for the lowest fares leaving Thursday or Friday and returning Sunday for the next five weekends. Not surprisingly, the lowest fares are typically on the weekends furthest out, but I found that having all the information on one page is really helpful. If I wanted to go visit my grandmother in Naples, Florida, for instance, Kayak showed me that I'd get the lowest fare into Fort Meyers by leaving San Francisco on Friday, October 5th, and that I'd pay almost $100 more to leave just one week earlier.

Kayak won't help you find a destination with a great deal, but if you already know where you want to go and are flexible about the dates, it's a quick way to see the lowest weekend airfares.

by Brook Wilkinson

I was a Googlephile long before I realized how many tools the search engine has for travelers. For instance, only recently did I learn that you can use Google to quickly find out about the status of a flight or an airport, or to calculate a currency conversion. Sure, you don't need to use Google to get this info, but it'll save you a bunch of steps. Here's how:

Flight status: Say you're picking up a friend and want to know if their flight is getting in on time. Type the airline and flight number into Google's homepage (Delta 1860, say), and the top links will be to flight status updates on Travelocity, Expedia, and fboweb.com.

Read on for more travel-friendly Google tips.

New and old cross paths outside the Colosseum in Rome, Italy, which was recently voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.
Photo: Rob Kavanagh, Alamy

by Brook Wilkinson

The New Seven Wonders of the World contest that I blogged about a few weeks ago is over, and the winners were announced this past weekend (on 7/7/07, natch -- a date that Conde Nast Traveler's celeb guru Beata Loyfman deemed blogworthy for some very different reasons). Out of the more than 100 million votes cast, the top new wonders are:

The Great Wall of China
Petra, Jordan
Chichen Itza
The Statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro
The Colosseum in Rome
Machu Picchu
The Taj Mahal

Stars as wide-ranging as Jennifer Lopez and Neil Armstrong attended the ceremony to honor the New Wonders in Lisbon, but representatives from the U.N. -- which officially designates World Heritage sites -- were noticeably absent. Said UNESCO in a statement released last month, "The [new] list . . . cannot contribute in any significant or lasting way to the preservation of the elected sites."

Frankly, I don't think this new honor will noticeably increase attendance at any of these sites -- how large a rock would you have to be living under to not already have known that Rome's Colosseum is worth a stop? -- but I do appreciate UNESCO's sentiment. If we travelers aren't gentle with these treasures, the New Seven Wonders will disappear as quickly as the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, only one of which (the Great Pyramid of Giza) is still standing. Here's our chance to be better caretakers than previous generations were.

by Wendy Perrin

Until this morning I had totally neglected all my RSS feeds (cyberspeak for the blogs I subscribe to) for the past week or so. (As I'm sure you've noticed, these days my magazine workload leaves me barely any time to write my own blog, much less read other people's.)  Then, this morning, I shoved my husband and sons off to their annual week of lakeside dirt-camping -- a treat which, this year, I slyly managed to extricate myself from, pleading a WHERE'S WENDY? contest -- and I finally had a few hours to catch up with what's happening in the blogosphere.  Of course, catching up with my reading meant totally neglecting the September-issue Perrin Report that I was supposed to spend today writing.  Before retreating back into my cave to write it, I might as well put all that blog reading to good use and share with you my five favorite posts of the past week or so:

1. Five Things to Pack For Travel (via Lifehack)
What I love best are the comments from readers with their suggestions for must-have travel items.  In fact, there are two I'm planning to get myself: the portable power strip and the Travel Smart plug adapter that works in every country. I added my two cents and posted comment #45.

2. Strange But True Airport News (via Towers and Tarmacs)
I can relate to this one.  The next time you read about two overly curious, helicopter-obsessed little boys sneaking off at an airport, it'll probably be my three- and five-year-old sons.

3. 30 Surefire Ways To Stretch Your Travel Dollar (via TheEcuaTraveler)
Some are obvious, and some I wouldn't recommend, but a few are inspired. #1 is my fave.

4. What's the Top Tourist Attraction in America? (via Arthur Frommer's blog)
Talk about inspired. If this isn't smart advice, I don't know what is.  I added my two cents there too.

5. The Malta chill-factor (via Killing Batteries)
Leif Petterson just cracks me up, no matter where he's writing about.

Enjoy!

"Postcard Row" in Alamo Square, San Francisco -- a city that Tripbase.com correctly predicted would be one of my favorites.
Photo: San Francisco Convention & Visitors' Bureau

by Brook Wilkinson

I don't believe in psychics. I never look at my horoscope. But I think Tripbase.com might be able to read my mind. I decided to check out this new "travel generator" after Willy Volk over at Gadling recommended it. I rated my travel preferences -- a little bit of nightlife, a fair amount of dining, a ton of nature and attractions, and no shopping interest whatsoever -- and it told me where I should go. And you know what? San Francisco, the VERY CITY that I just moved to, came in at number one. Okay, so maybe it's not perfect at picking a travel destination (though I could have prevented that confusion by inputting my point of departure), but it sure figured out my style. After San Fran came Sydney, Australia and Portland, Oregon, the other two places I considered moving to.

My mother and me at the Sun Gate on the Inca Trail, above potential "New 7 Wonder" Machu Picchu in Peru, October 2006.

by Brook Wilkinson

Pop quiz: Bet you can't name all Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. (Answers are given on the second page of this post.) Now how about the New Seven Wonders? That one's a trick question, because the votes are still being cast. You have until July 6th to help narrow down the following list: (Thinking about visiting any of these candidates? Click on the links for
Conde Nast Traveler's advice on how to see them best.)

* The Acropolis, Athens
* Alhambra, Granada, Spain
* Angkor Wat, Cambodia
* The Pyramid at Chichen Itza, Mexico
* Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro
* Colosseum, Rome
* Easter Island statues
* Eiffel Tower, Paris
* Great Wall, China
* Hagia Sophia, Istanbul
* Kiyomizu Temple, Kyoto, Japan
* Kremlin/St. Basil's Cathedral, Moscow
* Machu Picchu, Peru
* Neuschwanstein Castle, Schwangau, Germany
* Petra, Jordan
* Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
* Statue of Liberty, New York
* Stonehenge, England
* Sydney Opera House, Australia
* Taj Mahal, Agra, India
* Timbuktu, Mali

The "winners" will be announced on June 7th (7/7/07) -- but some environmentalists (not to mention AmandaK over at Jaunted) warn that the so-called prize will be hordes of tourists descending on and degrading these famous sights, just as has happened when places earn UNESCO
World Heritage status. When I visited Machu Picchu last October, for instance, a guard there told me that the ruins used to be open after dark, but that vandalism had forced the site to now be closed at dusk. Many of the millions of tourists who have already visited Angkor Wat have scrawled their names in the rocks. And several pieces of Stonehenge have already been toppled over by climbing visitors. Earning a place among the New Seven Wonders just might spell disaster for these and other precious sites.

Aer Lingus has just lowered fares on several routes between the U.S. and Ireland -- including Dublin, where lies St. Patrick's Cathedral.
Photo: Olivier Cirendini, Lonely Planet Images/Conde Nast Traveler

by Brook Wilkinson

George Hobica of airfarewatchdog.com just posted the coming week's airfare deals over on the Frommer's blog. If you've been thinking about the Emerald Isle, listen up: Aer Lingus is having a sale on fares in August and September from several U.S. cities to Ireland -- like Los Angeles to Dublin for just $735, including taxes.

Airfarewatchdog.com employs human beings, not computer programs, to scan the Web and pick out the best available deals, so chances are higher that you'll actually find seats at the fares shown. The downside is that the site has no specific search function, just a listing of sales from your chosen point of departure, so it's more useful to someone who's flexible about both dates and destination. A search that I just did for deals out of San Francisco, for example, generated a fare of $98 to Cleveland on United and $818 to Bangkok on Cathay Pacific (the third-favorite airline among Conde Nast Traveler readers, according to our 2006 Readers' Choice Awards), among others.

I did a triple take when I passed this cement-and-tile "tree" -- it's the only foliage you'll see for most of the drive along Interstate 80 in Utah.
Photo: Jerry Kendrick, RoadTrip America

If my recent cross-country road trip and WHERE'S BROOK? Contest inspired you to hit the road yourself this summer, check out RoadTrip America (thanks for the tip, Johnny Jet!). You can wander around the site gathering advice about solo road tripping, traveling with pets, and the like, but the best feature is the RoadTrip Forum. An impressive crew of editors is quick to answer questions about the best route between any two points in the U.S. And for a chuckle, check out the Funny Sign Gallery.

What's your scariest travel moment? Mine was driving in India, where this scene is completely normal.
Photo: Iconotec, Alamy/Conde Nast Traveler

By Brook Wilkinson

I've had no shortage of friends and acquaintances say to me, "How on earth do I get your job?" as if the hard part is nailing the position, and then it's all taking five-star trips and writing a quick report when you get back. How hard can it be to go on vacation for a living, right?

Well, why don't you give it a try, then. Roadjunky.com is sponsoring a Gonzo Travel Writing Contest, and this year's theme is "Traveling through Fear." Submit 1,000-1,500 words on the time you stared fear in the eye in a foreign land, and you could win $100 and a copy of the upcoming Roadjunky Survival Handbook. (Thanks, Gadling, for the tip, but why oh why did you have to dis a story by our pals at Concierge?)

I'm gonna leave this one to the amateurs, but all of my top travel near-death experiences have involved motor vehicles -- most recently in India . . .

What's the best time to visit Jamaica? Read on for the answer.
Photo: Conde Nast Traveler/Richard Broadwell, Alamy

By Brook Wilkinson

Whether you're trying to figure out where to go for the kids' spring break, or don't want to end up in your dream destination during the rainy season -- timing a trip correctly is always essential. That's why I was excited when fellow travel blogger Johnny Jet pointed me to whentotravel.net. Last year I headed up a team of 10 Conde Nast Traveler writers and editors who came up with a list of the best islands to visit for every month of the year. It took us months of research and meetings, so I was impressed to think that a computer programmer had done the same thing for the entire world.

But whentotravel.net doesn't tell you the whole story.

Sadly, you'll need a chartered plane to give your dog this level of comfort. If Spot has to settle for coach, check out the great tips at PetFlight. 
Photo: Roman Fleysher at PetFlight

By Tara Kyle

Question from Conde Nast Traveler reader Nina A. in Manhattan:

"I need to fly with my dog to Milan this summer. Can you tell me which airlines allow pets in the passenger cabins or point me toward a comprehensive source of info?"

I'm afraid your dog may have to fly in cargo.  American, Continental, and Delta -- all of which serve Milan and have pet-friendly policies on domestic flights -- do not allow dogs as carry-ons on transatlantic flights. Furthermore, pets brought into the European Union require a Veterinary Certificate.

A good source of info is  PetFlight's index, but be careful: The Pet Incidents section could leave you a little paranoid.  DogFriendly -- which has loads of advice about hotels, dining, beaches and hiking -- offers a basic guide to pet-friendly airlines.

Flamenco Beach on Culebra Island, off Puerto Rico.
Photo: culebra-island.com

By Brook Wilkinson

Haven't had enough of the Conde Nast Traveler Dream Trip Contest and WHERE'S BROOK? puzzlers? Our buddies over at Concierge are holding an Island Popularity Contest. You can submit your favorite island, give a short explanation of why you love it so much, and then watch as other readers vote for it to "sink" or "swim." I just nominated Culebra, a tiny speck I discovered while reporting an article on "Caribbean dots" for the magazine. You can read my review of Culebra online, but the handy annotated map is pretty small, so subscribers should dust off their April 2006 issue for the real deal. But I don't expect you all to agree that Culebra is the best island on earth. Go to the contest homepage now to vote for your own favorite!

The welcome screen at Cool Capitals, which lets you digitally explore European cities.

By Tara Kyle

I just discovered Cool Capitals, a trip-planning site with interactive guides to Amsterdam, Antwerp, Vienna, and Zurich (thanks to Gadling for the Cool Capitals tip). Once you select a destination from the departures board, Cool Capitals lets you explore options in areas such as art, shopping, architecture, and nightlife. There are tips in each section, and you can add sights and events to your "travel bucket" -- a planning resource for the next time your feet actually hit the pavement abroad.

Cool Capitals' design is maybe a little too snazzy for its own good -- I got a bit confused navigating back and forth between sections. And I'm assuming that the animated pedestrians, buses, and cars moving in circles within the maps are meant to convey the bustle of each city, but I couldn't shake a weird sensation that ants were crawling around my screen.

FlightMemory will sell you a 3-foot-wide poster, like this one, showing your flight history.
Photo: flightmemory.com

By Brook Wilkinson

I happened upon FlightMemory the other day, a handy tool for calculating just how much of your life you've spent zooming through the air in an aluminum tube. (No word on when they'll start calculating time spent waiting on line at security checkpoints, too.)

I input the 10 trips I took last year into FlightMemory, and here's what it told me: In 2006, I traveled 96,009 miles by plane, or 3.86 times around the earth. I spent nearly 185 hours in flight, which is just over a week. (Funny, it felt more like a month.) What do I have to show for all that? For one thing, no elite frequent flier status, since my destinations were so scattered that I had to fly on a number of different carriers.

The Cranky Flier, who must have far more patience (or free time!?) than I do, managed to input every single flight he's taken since July 1994, which adds up to 522,907 miles, or exactly 21 times around the earth.

FlightMemory is a fun timesuck for road...er, sky...warriors, and it doesn't take too long to enter your data, but I do have a few complaints. For one, I was robbed of several hours of flight time, because the system apparently uses average flight durations even if you input the actual dates of your trip. For example, my flight from Rome to New York last November took over 10 hours thanks to monster headwinds common at that time of year, but I only got credit for 8 hours. The site also won't let you enter round-trips, so you have to input each leg of a trip one by one. But I do love knowing that instead of touching down on 6 continents last year, I could have made it 4/10 of the way to the moon...

Video locator feature at Lonely Planet TV
Picture: Lonely Planet TV

By Tara Kyle

Sit at your desk, lean back, and watch a shaky hand-held camera guide you through clubbing in Berlin, parking a car in Delhi, watching the waves crest in Kuwait City, or stalking a sheep desperate for a back rub in County Kerry. 

Such travel voyeurism is possible with Lonely's Planet travel video channel launch this week.  You can watch clips from Lonely Planet staffers, as well as independent travelers, and post your own by subscribing - for free - and then uploading as much as 5.00 GBs of your own travel videos. Cool bonus feature: After uploading your video, Virtual Tourism points out, Lonely Planet TV will help you show it to friends on a Google Map.