Fancy a panini on Rome’s Spanish Steps? Through October, locals and residents alike who loiter on the iconic stairway with snacks and beverages will be targets for Italian police, who are under orders to fine anyone littering or otherwise destroying the beauty of the city’s famous landmark. The ban also applies at other tourist hotspots like the Trevi Fountain, this CNN story reports.

Commercial air travel being what it is today makes this 120-pound personal jet suit by daring Swiss pilot Yves Rossy look like an attractive - though somewhat scary - alternative to conventional puddle jumping. Too bad it only carries enough fuel to stay airborne for 12 minutes, a record Rossy hopes to break when he attempts to cross the English Channel while wearing this homemade contraption later this year.

While the world’s top athletes are sweating it out during the Summer Olympics in Beijing (Aug. 8-24), China’s dog population has reason to breathe easy, now that Chinese authorities have reportedly removed dog meat from certain restaurant menus and asked other restaurants to limit or discourage customers from ordering dishes made with the animal considered in many other parts of the world to be man’s best friend.

The move follows a similar ban in South Korea during the 1988 Olympics, though it apparently has not been strictly enforced.

Other places travelers might encounter rover on the menu? Vietnam, the Philippines and Laos.

Come fall, those of us willing to spend between $35 and $150 will be able to cease the laptop shuffle, you know, the little dance we all do while hustling through airport security, trying to get our laptops out of our bags, into their own bins, while removing our shoes, displaying our liquids in clear plastic bags and keeping our boarding passes readily available at all times?

Travelers (myself very much included) who dislike removing their laptops during the security process may soon find relief, according to a New York Times story published today, thanks to new “checkpoint-friendly” bags now in production that will reportedly hit the market in September or October.

What’s so special about these T.S.A.-sanctioned accessories? They’ll be outfitted with fold-down flaps or clear compartments that make it possible for security agents to easily X-Ray them inside the bags. The slightly fishy part is that the T.S.A., despite requesting checkpoint-friendly design proposals from manufacturers earlier in the year and generally being involved in the process, will not certify the bags. So consumers will be left to test the bags at the security gate - where, ultimately, the agents have the final say in what gets through. While the T.S.A.’s Kip Hawley says this won’t be a problem, “since security officers would be well informed about them,” I’m sure there will be plenty of confused travelers wondering why they can’t just send their laptops on through when the person right in front of them was allowed to.

Potential confusion in the security lanes, I’d be more than happy to chance it if it meant saying goodbye to the laptop shuffle.

Have you ever been on a trip, found yourself in a public restroom and thought, wow, that’s some restroom? It happened to me once, at the top of the John Hancock Center on a particularly c-c-c-cold night in February. I was having drinks with some friends at the Signature Room on the 95th floor, ducked out to the bathroom and found that I didn’t have to leave the view behind during my absence. With their huge windows overlooking the cityscape, the Signature Room bathrooms are pretty memorable and amazing (not to mention slightly vertigo-inducing), so it didn’t surprise me a bit to find them listed as finalists for the America’s Best Bathroom Award 2008. Among the other contenders for this year’s award are bathrooms in New York’s Grand Central Station, Nashville’s Hermitage Hotel and the Iowa 80 Truck Stop in Walcott, Iowa. Quite a diverse list of candidates! Through July 31, you can vote online for your favorite. Now let the potty talk begin.

There is a column in USA Today that Beatrice Muller, a 89-year-old widow, has lived on the Cunard’s QE2 for the last nine years. She has booked back-to-back cruises since before the millennium! Apparetnly after her husband died, she decided she would travel, and as she aged it became more reasonable to just sail than move to a retirement home. Think about it… all her meals are cooked for her, her room is cleaned, her laundry taken care of, there are daily activities, new people coming and going all the time…. I can certainly think of a worse way to retire (if you have the means, that is).

The issue is the QE2 is about to be retired, and she will have to ‘move’. Shall she move to the new Queen Mary 2? The massive Freedom of the Seas? I’ll let you know when I find out.

Could air travel be going the way of a Weight Watchers weigh-in? Stick skinnies paying less than those of us with, uh, more prominent posteriors? Airlines are said to be mulling the idea, according to this Bloomberg story.

While sending passengers to the scales at check-in is a solution fraught with so many potential problems that we won’t even go into them here (the most important of which, of course, would be real celebrity weights getting leaked to the tabloids), it seems airlines are looking at ever-more creative ways to cut costs by any means possible. Japan Airlines, for example, has started using lighter dishes in its first and business class cabins. Southwest Airlines is gobbling less fuel by flying slower, and Singapore Airlines is talking about cutting excess water (like the ice used to cool drinks) to drop weight.

What do you think? Would you be willing to hop on a scale at the airport and pay per pound? How would human weigh-ins change air travel?

…with one of the most offbeat travel promotions I’ve encountered in my three+ years of blogging. Nevada’s Moonlite Bunny Ranch, a “world famous” Nevada brothel owned by Dennis Hof of HBO’s Cathouse, is offering to give travelers $15 when they visit the 53-year-old Carson City destination and show their American Airlines baggage claim tickets (well, to be fair, the press release doesn’t specifically mention the airline, but it is the only one charging $15 for the first checked bag). Now what you choose to do with that $15 reimbursement is up to you. A nice bag of carrots for the bunnies, perhaps?

Every week, I run across a handful of news stories, features and blog posts that stand out from the pack. What hit my mental dashboard and stuck this week:

Recession-Proof Travel: How to Save Money When it Matters

Naked Pilot, Flight Attendant Charged After Romp in Woods

Tales from ‘Fareland’

Not that Kind of Crystal

The True Adventures of Marital Bliss Inside the Golden Nugget’s Spa Suite

Urine Collecting Underwear for Pilots

5 Common Airline Ticket Errors and How to Avoid Them

Kinda says something about our cultures, no? Today, Japan’s tourism ministry tapped snow-white, uber cutie Hello Kitty as its official tourism ambassador to China and Hong Kong. With the iconic cartoon character’s help, Japan hopes to boost annual international visitors numbers to 10 million, up from a record high 8.35 million last year.

And while her lack of vocal chords (or, for that matter, mouth) may hinder her ability to expound upon Japan’s many virtues, cultural sites and rich history, her ability to bridge economic and social barriers may make up for this. I mean, the girl is just as happy appearing on the side of an airplane as she is on a toaster.

But we do have other concerns about Hello Kitty’s ability to do her job. As this AP story points out, Hello Kitty may hail from Japan, but the button-nosed icon, in fact, lives in London. That may make her new job a little difficult. And as we learned in Hello Kitty’s official Sanrio profile, so might her enrollment in primary school and her habit of eating lots of yummy cookies baked by her sister Mimmy (you know how public figures need to, um, keep an eye on their very public figures).

These might be hurdles for Japan’s latest tourism ambassador, but at least her cartoon existence means she won’t cause an uproar every time she goes through a McDonald’s drive-through. Nor will she, we hope, be allowed to adopt orphaned kittens from less fortunate countries encountered during her travels around the world. She is, after all, still just a kitten herself.

(I was always a Badtz-Maru fan, myself. I mean, come on, the kid has a pet alligator. How cool is that?).