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Florence With the Experts: A New Program Italy-Bound Travelers Should Know About

Florence (photo by PapaPiper/Flickr)Italia Rail, the company that has been, for the last decade, the largest international vendor of Italian rail tickets, is taking that…

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Celebrate New Year's Eve in a Free Hotel Room

And we're not talking the Motel 6 in Akron.CitizenM Hotels, a growing chain that has made a name for itself with stylish pod hotels (read: the digs are tiny, but very high…

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Innovative New In-flight Safety Video Animated with 1,000 Delft Tiles

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is the latest entrant in the battle to come up with the least boring in-flight safety video. The novel concept: Create an animated version of the pre-flight…

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The Way of Wanderlust: A Delightful New Book of Travel Essays

By their very definition, travel memoirs introduce readers to corners of the planet they may never get to themselves. But The Way of Wanderlust, a collection of travel essays by…

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New App Deletes Photobombers From Snapshots

Software giant Adobe recently unveiled a new smartphone application that should appeal to amateur photographers on vacation. Called Monument Mode, it eliminates photobombers and…

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Everglades Airboats To Be Eliminated

For most of the twentieth century, airboats have been a staple of touring the Florida Everglades. New rules, though, are about the silence them once and for all.When the National…

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Foreign SIM Cards Come with Censorship

Bringing an unlocked, out-of-contract smartphone on vacation and buying a temporary local phone number remains far and away the cheapest way to use a mobile phone in Europe. Just be…

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Et tu, Amtrak? Baggage Fees Coming to Rail

Amtrak is taking a page from the airlines.No, make that two pages. Starting today it will start charging for bags. And it's telling us this is for our own good.According to the…

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The Vatican Gets More Liberal...With Visitor Hours

I'm assuming we can thank Pope Francis, though this wasn't one of his bigger announcements. But quite quiety, several months ago, the Vatican extended its hours for half the year, on…

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HopStop Stops for Good

One of the greats is gone. I feel like I've lost a friend.No, I have lost a friend.Because unlike college buddies and work colleagues, Hopstop—the superb public transportation…

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Paris Extends Shopping Hours in 12 Major Neighborhoods

Thanks to a recently passed bill, Parisian stores in such popular neighborhoods as the Marais, the Champs Elysees, and Montmartre will have the option to stay open on Sundays and up…

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A Camera that Won't Work at Tourist Sights

Instagram is bigger than you thought. This morning, Facebook (which owns it) announced there are now 400 million active users—that's up 100 million since the start of 2015. Soon,…

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Kids Stay and Eat Free in San Diego

Once again, as it has done annually for a while, the city of San Diego, California, has worked with some of its biggest hotels, restaurants, and attractions to offer a slew of deals…

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Miss a Connecting Flight? This Airport Will Pay

Would you pay $42 if it meant you didn't have to worry about missing a connecting flight?Gatwick, London's second-busiest airport (out of the city's six), has launched a new…

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TSA's Luggage Lock Skeleton Keys Leaked

Consumerist and Wired report the design of the master skeleton keys used by the TSA to open and inspect your luggage has been leaked on the Web. Now anyone can use a 3-D printer to…

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#1 in #2: Japan Opens First Toilet Museum

I don't know if you've ever sat on one of those futuristic Japanese toilets, but they will change your life. In North America and Europe, toilets plug into the plumbing, but in…

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An Icon of Modernist Architecture Turns 50: Happy Birthday to St. Louis’ Gateway Arch

St. Louis’ Gateway Arch may well be the most bittersweet of the world’s iconic monuments. The planned focal point of a park built in the 1930’s to celebrate Thomas Jefferson, and…

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Hilton Yanks Adult Movies

Not like you ever rented one, but porn movies are being eliminated from all Hilton hotels' in-demand movie selection.Said Hilton in a statement, as if it was something you might…

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Airline Complaints Soar! Whose Fault Is It?

It's not your imagination: Airfares may be down (as we reported last week), but complaints about U.S. airlines soared more than 20 percent during the first half of this…

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Entrancing Video Follows Luggage After It's Checked

Amsterdam's Schiphol airport wants to show you that it has put a lot of cash into building the ultimate baggage delivery system. So it produced this astonishing video by attaching a…

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All National Parks are Free (On These Days)

The National Park System is extending another gift to the American people in the form of fee-free days.And lucky us—there are two in a month, right when the weather is…

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Snapchat Becomes More Traveler-Friendly

"You and your selfies!" I kidded to my teenage daughter as she struck a pose for what seemed like the tenth time in an hour and then clicked away on her smartphone. "Mom I'm not…

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Q-tips: The Weirdest Flat Stanley Ever

Among product promotions, this is one of the strangest.Q-tip—yes, that thing you're not supposed to stick deep in your ears, but you do—has launched a campaign featuring the…

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Pieces of Lost Space Shuttles Go On Display

The $100 million home of the space shuttle Atlantis, which opened last year, has put Florida's Kennedy Space Center back on the tourism maps. Without giving too much away, the way in…

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Hurry! Everything in Canada is 25% Off!

On Tuesday, August 4, the Canadian dollar cratered, suffering its lowest value in 11 years. The loonie, which a few years ago had parity with the U.S. dollar, is now worth only 76¢.…