Stranded at the Airport

If you get don´t get on the flight, take a look at this site:
The Guide to Sleeping in Airports

It might help you situation and budget! According to this site, many airports are actually better than local lodging.
www.sleepinginairports.net

Tokyo - one of iD Traveller favourite cities

When ever we visit Tokyo it has the power of make you us go "Wow"!

The sense that nothing here is permanent has produced a city that renews itself at an unimaginable speed. From the futuristic new cityscapes of Odaiba or Roppongi Hills to the bustling shopping and entertainment centres of Shibuya and Shinjuku, all are fully functioning self-contained areas where the first-time visitor runs the risk of neck-ache from craning up to see the neon signs, or the summit of a skyscraper.

A way from the trophy architecture, bright lights and bustling streets, Tokyo offers smaller scale attractions, too. Ueno Park is home to the world’s highest concentrations of top-class museums, and dotted throughout the city are scores of smaller independent ones. Galleries, too, are thriving, with new spaces opening regularly.

View some of iD Travellers images from Tokyo

Interline news

Now is definitely a good time to head for the Caribbean.

At Divi Resorts, the Caribbean is not just a destination, it’s the destination. They invite you to explore their collection of colorful Caribbean resorts located on the magnificent islands of Aruba, Barbados, Bonaire, St Croix, and St Maarten. Each resort offers spacious vacation suites and hotel rooms along some of the islands best beaches- all with your choice of amenities.

Travel Industry discount: 50% discount off rack rates

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World's Weirdest Hotels

The digs at these hotels are every bit as strange as the dreams you'll have when you lay your head on their pillows......


Das Park Hotel in Ottensheim, Austria, offers three 10-ton segments of drainage pipe, each 6.5 feet in diameter. You get a lamp, a mattress, a few sleeping bags, and a lockable door.


Inside the Harbour Crane, you'll find that the lighting system is touch-screen operated, the chairs are Eames Lounges, and the structural steel has a certain sculptural elegance.


Dog Bark Park Inn is a two-story, beagle-shaped B&B in Cottonwood, Idaho. And, yes, pets are allowed.


The Hobbit Motel consists of two hillside burrows that are faithful replicas of the hobbit dwellings in J.R.R. Tolkien's books—right down to the circular windows and doorways, red-and-beige walls, and camouflaged exteriors.

See more unsual hotels at www.uhotw.com

Interline news

Cosmopolitan Hotel, a boutique Hotel in Hong Kong, offers guests convenience and the ultimate accommodation experience during their stay with its distinguished location, discreet service and the very latest in hospitality concepts and facilities.

Travel Industry rate: HK$850
Normal rate: HK$1 520
Benefits:
50% discount on buffet breakfast at HK$128 + 10% svc p.p.
Free hotel shuttle bus to mega shopping malls on Hong Kong
Island, including Times Square in Causeway Bay, Pacific Place in Admiralty and IFC in Central

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Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?

We’ve been traveling for hundreds of thousands of years, but we’ve only been buying books that tell us where to go for about two. Pausanias’ Description of Greece, published around A.D. 160, is the world’s oldest surviving guidebook, a 10-volume treatise on where to stay, what to eat, and which gods and goddesses to check out when you’re in that neck of the woods.

These days, travelers can buy a guidebook to every single country recognized by the U.N.—192 at last count—and the shelves of Amazon.com are chock-full of thousands of titles marketed toward independent travelers. But how “independent” can we be when we’re buying someone else’s opinions on where to go?

Thomas Kohnstamm’s memoir,
Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?, asks just that question.

The book is a chronicle of Kohnstamm’s time spent as a writer for Lonely Planet. In it, he narrates a number of personal traveling shenanigans, including a sexual encounter with a waitress (allegedly resulting in a good review for her restaurant) and an episode of impromptu drug dealing to supplement his meager author advance. It also includes less titillating complaints against the company’s unrealistic deadlines, low fees, and lack of support when he was on the road.

Kohnstamm’s argument is not that guidebooks are useless, of course—just that they are flawed. What purpose, then, should these books serve? Kohnstamm wants us to remember to use them as helpful tools and not as a “paint-by-the-numbers approach to following the rutted backpacker trail through x developing country.” Perhaps guidebooks should be used less to guide us around than to prod or nudge us along, providing just enough ammunition to get there, get settled, and then get out to explore the world on our own. Traveling with a book in your hand means you might miss out on the simple, enlightening experience of discovering something for yourself—which is the whole reason many of us board a plane, ship, or bus in the first place.

Buy the book at Amazon