(Note to self: file this under favorite travel-related simile of the day.)

According to traveling celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, Romania’s House of Dracula hotel looks “as if a Motel 6 had sex with a Renaissance faire.”

You can read more about how much he loved his recent visit to Romania on his blog (trust me, it’s worth it). Love him or hate him, one thing you can say about Bourdain is that he’s never boring. Another good story about Bourdain is below:

Bad Boy Bourdain Makes Culinary Arts an Adventure

This weekend marks the start of the annual National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, DC. Each year, the two-week festival, which began in 1985 and celebrates Japan’s 1912 gift of cherry trees to the United States, brings numerous free public events to the nation’s capitol just as the cherry trees bloom. I was on the East Coast last week and noticed many Virginia cherry trees starting to show their pale pink blossoms - it’s truly a sign of spring and beautiful sight to behold when you have the chance to walk among large numbers of these trees at once.

With the festival taking place in citywide venues through April 13, it’s a prime time to hit up Washington, DC. If you go, don’t miss a stroll through one of the National Park Service’s designated cherry tree locations. Fun festival events abound. Here are a few of my favorites this year:

Smithsonian Kite Festival - On Saturday, head to the Washington Monument. The grounds will be filled with kite flyers showing off their airborne creations.

Daily Cultural Performances - At the Tidal Basin stage, an array of performers will show their stuff each day. Some highlights: martial arts demonstrations, urban break dancing, yoga meditation and lots of live jazz performances.

Fireworks - On April 5, fireworks light up the sky in the evening after a three-hour family-oriented festival with crafts, music and food from local restaurants.

National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade - If you’re in town on the 12th, take the kids to this event, which features stars from the Disney Channel, American Idol and Ugly Betty performing. Plus, you can use grandstand seating parade ticket stubs ($15) for free admission to Madame Tussauds Wax Museum anytime through July 31.

Not content to simply be the first airline to introduce in-flight cell phone usage, Emirates Airlines has announced another aviation first: showers at 37,000 feet.

Beginning Oct. 1, Emirates will offer shower facilities in its Airbus A380 first class cabins on its New York to Dubai route. Of course, getting squeaky clean seven miles above the earth’s surface ain’t cheap (nor environmentally prudent). Passengers wishing to experience the benefits of the airline’s luxe first class setup (which, when completed, will reportedly also feature double beds) will need to cough up around $18,000 USD for the privilege.

It sounds like a ritzy experience, until you start thinking about the in-flight shenanigans likely to take place when a shower and double beds become standard first class amenities.

Considering that the vast majority of Americans no longer stalk animals for their food on a daily basis, it’s not really all that surprising that another food-related sport has risen to replace the thrill of the hunt. We’re talking about the adrenaline rush that comes with scoring some of the most coveted restaurant reservations in the country. And when it comes to sheer difficulty, Talula’s Table in Kennett Square, Penn. has beaten out top dogs like the French Laundry, Per Se and the Inn at Little Washington to become the current prize-holder.

According to Portfolio’s Franz Lidz (The Toughest Table in America), foodies are falling all over themselves (or dispatching their teenage sons out in the early morning cold) to bag reservations at this one-table restaurant, which is booked up through March 26, 2009. The restaurant accepts reservations a year to the day in advance. There are, apparently, two strategies for procuring reservations. Number one: call the minute the restaurant opens at 7 a.m. The second option? Overnight a set of bootleg Dead CDs to the owners with your request. Hilarious.

In the mean time, it might just be easier to go to the French Laundry instead. In my experience, getting a table isn’t that difficult - as long as you’re flexible on your dates and willing to stay up until 12 a.m. PST to make them online. Here’s how:

How to Get French Laundry Reservations 

Here’s some travel news that will make you want to grab an extra bottle of water and pee before you get on an airplane: A federal court yesterday struck down New York State’s Airline Passenger Bill of Rights, a first-of-its-kind law that took effect on Jan. 1. Essentially, the law allowed the state to levy fines (up to $1,000 per passenger) against airlines who failed to provide fresh water, working toilets, fresh air and electricity to passengers trapped on planes during lengthy runway delays.

Here’s the court’s reasoning:

“If New York’s view regarding the scope of its regulatory authority carried the day, another state could be free to enact a law prohibiting the service of soda on flights departing from its airports, while another could require allergen-free food options on its outbound flights, unraveling the centralized federal framework for air travel,” the court said in its decision.

Far be it from me to argue with a federal judge, but this does seem like a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Maybe states shouldn’t have the right to regulate every little thing an airline can and can’t do, but someone should have the power to prevent airlines from forcing passengers to endure inhumane conditions. And in a climate where passengers can get tossed from aircraft for wearing short skirts and arrested for talking back to flight attendants, it seems absurd to place the onus for passenger protection and safety on the individuals inside the plane.

For the time being, it looks like it’s back to the wild west of airline travel, as this law is likely to discourage other states considering legislation similar to New York’s.

There’s nothing quite like grabbing a few bags of chips and hitting the highway for a good old-fashioned road trip. Think “Thelma and Louise” without the final pothole. Think “Smokey and the Bandit” without Sheriff Buford T. Justice. If your passengers sing like they’d be booed off the Karaoke stages, you’ll be especially grateful for views that take their breath away.

Ozark National Forest flights | hotels | cars
Drive the Ozark Highlands Byway along the ridge tops where the rivers start. You can drive the Sylamore Scenic Byway, skirting the bluffs at the eastern edge of the Ozarks on the way to Blanchard Springs Caverns…

Oregon flights | hotels | cars
California sure has marketed its Coast Highway, but it’s not the only state with thrilling views. Oregon’s Pacific Coast Byway is over 300 miles of lighthouses, seals, huge trees and laid-back towns. Even though you could try to do it in a day, take your time and savor the rocky coast….

Daytona flights | hotels | cars
If you’re new to the Daytona Beach area and Florida’s unique, natural beauty, The Loop is a definite must-see. This leisurely ride features many surprises, including wild boar and deer, old sugar mill ruins, Ormond Park and the Fairchild Oak, one of Florida’s oldest living Oak trees….

Wisconsin flights | hotels | cars
Forget the cheese for a minute and think mighty Mississippi: The Great River Road runs all along central and southern Wisconsin’s western border, along the waterway that has carried Native American canoes, steamboats and anything else you can imagine!…

Iceland flights | hotels | cars
Don’t be fooled with the icy name — start your own Viking saga in Reykjavik, home of the Icelandic Phallological Museum, a comprehensive collection of mammal parts that could be described as members only…

(more…)

Straight from the Pittsburgh International Airport and via the Consumerist comes our comic relief for the day. The price of oil may be skyrocketing, air fares may be rising by the minute, but thankfully for travelers everywhere, some things in life are still free.

It seems Bangkok’s Lebua Hotel has a thing for negative press. Earlier today, we blogged about the Thai luxury hotel’s controversial, $300,000 poverty tour (see below). Then, minutes later, we read that the hotel is involved in a curious defamation suit involving management from rival luxury destination The Oriental Hotel.

At the heart of the matter is the Lebua’s alleged attempt to poach staff members from The Peninsula Hotel and a subsequent memo reportedly sent to nine other Bangkok luxury hotels by The Oriental Hotel’s general manager, who worried that his hotel could be Lebua’s next victim. Now Lebua is suing The Oriental for defamatory comments allegedly made in the memo, which announced Lebua’s unscrupulous hiring practices and effectively banned its employees from The Oriental’s premises. The resulting lawsuit is a first for Thailand’s hotel industry and an indicator of the venom that exists among the city’s competing 5-star properties.

We certainly hope that one of the Lebua’s new employees is a PR person. ‘Cause the hotel seems to be lacking in that department.

Hmm. I just can’t imagine why travelers around the world would be offended by the $300,000, invitation-only poverty tour offering from Bangkok’s luxurious Lebua Hotel. I mean, what’s so offensive about a hotel plunking down $300,000 in order to whisk 50 of its deep-pocketed guests away for a spirited afternoon of gawking at residents of a poverty-stricken Thai village and then transporting them via private jet back to the hotel for a gut-busting 10-course meal prepared by three top-ranked, Michelin-starred celebrity chefs? Baffling. What is the world coming to?

Over the weekend, three students on spring break took it upon themselves to have a dynamite time in Daytona Beach. Quite literally. And we’re not talking about JJ Walker-style dy-NO-mite, either. No, in this case, the story involves real explosives.

According to news reports, the three male students procured a quarter stick of dynamite from some randoms on the beach (riiiighht) and decided to use their book smarts to detonate the explosive at 2:30 a.m. while standing on a sun deck at the Oceanside Inn. The blast sent glass, metal and debris flying 100 feet in the air, pissed off police and generally freaked out the guests at the hotel.

Whatever happened to old school spring break pastimes like getting tanked, talking trash and making out with strangers?