If the December holiday crazies are settling in for you, take a moment to grab a cup of your favorite comfort and surf around for some travel tips with PT….

**  We’ll start with some goodies from Europe:  there’s an instant weekend in Liverpool UK (where there’s more than Beatles nostalgia,)  top ice hotels in Sweden, Finland and Norway,  plans for a Berlin version of the London Eye giant sightseeing Ferris wheel (plus 10 wacky things to do in Berlin right now,)  surprises in Antwerp, Belgium,  getting to European ski resorts by train,  Frommer’s take on Wroclaw, Poland (pronounced “vrotts-wawff” and try to say that 5 times!) and a great beer tour in Brussels.

**  Is overseas travel too insanely expensive for Americans, with the current exchange rate?  It may be time to stop turning up noses at package tours, because you probably can’t beat them. That’s how I got my daughter and nephew to Hong Kong and Tokyo a couple of years ago without completely flattening my bank account (thanks Go-Today.com.)  I just sorted through hotel and airfare combos, then declined available tours since I could handle that on my own.

**  The Mayan ruins at Tikal, Guatemala was one of the most magical, “Indiana Jones”-ish places that I’ve ever visited.  I wish I could have written this article about Tikal in the New York Times.  There are also good things going on for travelers in Medellín, Colombia.  Really.  

**  I’m seeing more coverage of Africa in the mainstream media, like this encouraging BusinessWeek article about African entrepreneurship and this piece on a trip to Kampala, Uganda.

**  Check out Miami, Florida’s Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden for a new exhibit of Roy Lichtenstein sculptures and Dale Chihuly glass inside the gardens.  Also in Florida, quiet and solitude on Florida’s forgotten coast (and I can vouch for the Old Florida charms of the coastal town of Apalachicola.)  Did you know that inventor Thomas Edison had a laboratory in Fort Myers, Florida?  This is a nice time of year to see the holiday decorations at the Edison and Ford winter estates in southwest Florida.

**  The New York Times suggests 53 places to go in 2008, but then Arthur Frommer’s blog gives the list a real tongue-lashing for its elitist tendency to drool over luxury lodging. Budget Travel has 10 places to discover that are a lot more down-to-earth, including, yes, Wroclaw, Poland.

**  Hurray for big-city winter hotel deals in Chicago and San Francisco, from TravelZoo. If you’re a biker, there’s always the Iron Horse Hotel opening in summer 2008 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin;  how about an on-site bike wash, in-room gear storage racks and just steps to the Harley-Davidson Museum?

**  Speaking of big U.S. cities, here’s what’s going on right now in Los Angeles, according to Fodor’s.  Or you could stay small and enjoy a New England Christmas in pretty Mystic, Connecticut.

**  Thanks to the Fly Away Cafe blog for featuring our Round the world with music post in the December Carnival of Travelers.  The Carnival also had posts about salsa in Puerto Rico and music in the Blue Ridge mountains.  Art is the theme for the January Carnival.

**  Finally, some Web help for travel: a brief guide on how to use social networks to stay in touch while vagabonding, Matador’s top 10 Web sites for finding a cheap place to stay and the Web Worker Daily blog’s Web-savvy ways to make travel easier and cheaper.  Of course, even social networking news site Mashable gets sick of this Web stuff sometimes; here are the top 5 Websites of 2007 that they’re tired of.

Technorati tags:  travel, travel blogging, holiday travel

Related posts:

1. The PT Travel Linkfest 12.3.2007
2. PT Travel Linkfest 12.31.2007
3. PT Travel Linkfest 01.28.2008
4. PT Travel Linkfest 02.12.2008

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 1:32 pm and is filed under Sheila projects, travel blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.