Travel site Hotwire.com has teamed up with TerraPass and will start selling carbon offsets to its customers, offering them 50% off what TerraPass usually charges (Hotwire will cover the other half of the cost).

It’s a greener Disneyland these days with both Railroad steam trains and Mark Twain riverboat powered by recycled cooking oil. Meanwhile, it’s guest trams are fuelled by compressed natural gas.

If you can read german, you can find out about green partying and dining in berlin with these two guys who check out all the green cafes and restaurants in the city and write comments on the places they visit.

New York City has plans to turn the 172 acre Governor’s Island into a eco tourist island

Minnesota has launched a new Travel Green Minnesota website aimed at helping tourism businesses and communities implement green practices.

This week’s green city guides: Brisbane, Las Vegas, and Copenhagen.

When I was a kid, I liked to buy those bags of multicolored marbles at the toy store.

I knew that there was some sort of a game involved, but I never actually learned how to shoot marbles. I just wanted to look at the variety of patterns and colors in the small glass balls (even today, I’m drawn to glass pieces at decorative arts museums.)

That’s why the Marble Games and Gallery at the Toy and Miniature Museum of Kansas City is such a treat; there are cases filled with all kinds of marbles that are beautifully displayed, along with many of the original boxes and packaging.  There’s a marble maze in the middle of the room that entrances adults and kids alike.

See the little card behind the pretty orbs? It’s Disney’s Seven Dwarfs (of Snow White fame) gathered around in a circle for a game of shooting marbles.

If this gets you in the mood for some games, then head down to the seashore at Wildwood, New Jersey every June for the National Marbles Tournament, scheduled this year on June 21-25, 2009.

Answer? More than you think, no matter what their age. That’s my humble, totally biased opinion. I don’t think you have to force them to be interested, or even to focus on pointing out the unique cultural aspects of where you’re traveling, unless they ask or they need to know in order not to cause offense.

All of you Perceptive Traveling families out there, you know kids have insatiable curiosity. They really are like sponges, and will soak up anything. There are lots of websites that will give you tons of tips about how to travel with kids, how to make the most out of the experience, and how to deal with the inevitable trials. Some of them are favorites with us here at the PT blog, like the DeliciousBaby Journal, Cookie magazine’s Going Places blog (which I like for the way the blog posts automatically integrate children into the travel mix rather than assuming parenthood is some sort of travel disability), and of course our own Sheila’s fabulous and famous Family Travel.

I’m a firm believer in kids learning by absorption, from music to languages to cultural mores and manners. The simple act of traveling will expand their horizons far beyond what we adults can imagine.

But I have to admit, I’m also a student junkie. If I could stay in college forever, taking classes in everything, and still feed my family, I’d do it. So despite my absorption principle when dealing with my son, I still look out for educational programs that will feed his voracious and ever-expanding imagination and worldview. After all, I might think of myself as a natural wanderlustian, but the fact that my childhood home was covered in decor, knickknacks, food, and books from Russia and Helsinki might have given me an early taste for seeing things differently.

My newest kick? In the most recent National Geographic Traveler, Thomas Friedman describes a once-a-week class his wife used to teach called World Class. Neighbors and friends would drop their kids off with her, and every week she would use maps, books, and pictures to immerse them in a different part of the world.

That’s an idea I’m stealing. As soon as my son can, you know, read. Or at least sit still. Until then, he’ll have to rely on taking in whatever he can through his very own eyes, wherever we are.

Where to stay in eco-friendly Portland, Oregon is simplified with this travelmuse article on Portland’s Many Eco Hotels. Portland, by the way, will be hosting the 2009 Ecotourism and Sustainable Tourism Conference, an annual bi-national conference that focuses on greening the tourism industry in the U.S. and Canada, between November 1 – 3, 2009.

Further north, the Seattle-Tacoma Airport Gets OK for Green Air Project. It’s going to cost around $33 million but will apparently save the airport at least $400,000 a year with an annual reduction of emissions of over 69,000 metric tons.

Travelocity has launched a eco-friendly directory that aims to help travelers determine what’s green and what’s “green-washed.”

Travel bloggers and writers should check out The Untold Travel Story, A travel writer’s guide to Sustainable Tourism and Destination Stewardship that’s been put together by National Geographic. It’s full of useful tips and ways to determine how green a place, attraction, hotel, etc really is.

National Geographic’s Center of Sustainable Destinations also have useful Geotourism MapGuides to a number of places and they are currently working on create a MapGuide to capturing the spectacular beauty and abundant recreational opportunities of the Central Cascades of Oregon and Washington. If you know somewhere in the Central Cascades that deserves to be included, you can put in a nomination here.

This week’s Green City Guides…

Planet Green has a green city guide to Paris, Jamble Magazine offers a green city guide to London, and Traveler’s Notebook as the Green Guide to Mexico City.

I just made the mistake of reading The Long Emergency, by James Kunstler, cover to cover. This isn’t a book review, so I’ll just stick with the bare outline. If you’re even mildly concerned about peak oil (that is, the abrupt end of cheap fossil fuel energy), climate change, financial market meltdowns, and people’s inability to cope intelligently with mass crises, then don’t read this book. Just don’t. Kunstler’s reportage is deeply researched, rationally presented, scientifically sound, and well written — it’ll scare the pants off you.

For anyone who, as Thomas Swick has put it, “came of age under the weight of a backpack,” it’s also depressing as hell. Because in a post-cheap oil future, there won’t be any bargain tickets to Europe, or flying back from South America when you’re tired of busing it.

The news this week (oddly overlooked in headline reports) that Antarctica’s Wilkins ice shelf is set to collapse any day or week brings home some of the dire and sad situations we face as travelers. First, as I’ve spoken about before, the loss of the world’s icy regions, will have a detrimental impact on the quality and depth of travel writing and experiences. Second, the Wilkins shelf collapse won’t raise sea levels, but it throws the gates wide open to glaciers that most certainly will. If you believe any of the climate change predictions, we could soon have urgent issues close to home that will keep us occupied and our weighty backpacks stored away.

But hell, I’m an optimist. Assuming Kunstler’s predictions don’t all come to pass (like the breakdown of the US government), even if and when travel becomes too expensive to be democratic, both it and travel writing will become even more important. It’s at times of crisis and shrinking imaginations that we most need to widen our worldview. Just don’t read that book.