Celebrity Hookup Hotels

by Annie Scott on

Celebrities, they’re just like us: they go to hotel bars to hook up.

The question, of course, is which hotels, so we can watch them and take cell phone pictures. Well, MSNBC has decided to feed your obsession by publishing a list of known celeb hangouts called Busted! Hotels where celebs go to hook up.

On the list?
The Soho Grand (right)
The Beverly Hills Hotel
The Palms Casino Resort
and more.

Shocking? Not really; the hotels they mention tend to be the trendiest, as well as the ones you always see in the tabloids. Why are celebrities hooking up there? Because they want to be seen.

Those hotels are awesome. Check out these *weird* hotels:

Time Magazine’s top travel related websites 2008

by Abha Malpani on

Lists are great. Especially website lists that have been selected by a reliable body after combing through the abundant clutter on the world wide web.

Undoubtedly, Time Magazine’s list of 50 top websites is one such great list and here are their travel-related website selections for 2008: (no particular order)

  • Wikitravel & Wikisky: After much contradiction on the value of Wikitravel, it’s interesting to see it on here. Wikisky is new for me; it allows you to Wiki the Universe’s sky!
  • Tripkick: Launched in May 2008, Trip Kick reviews hotel floors and rooms of 250 hotels in 12 US cities, to help you avoid getting a crappy room in a good hotel.
  • Gasbuddy: Particularly useful if you are taking a road-trip in the US or Canada, GasBuddy helps you find the cheapest gas prices in your city.
  • Serious Eats: Is a food blog based on sharing your food enthusiasm with others.
  • MapJack: According to Time, it is an alternative to Google Street View and Live Search Map, with brighter/sharper photos and better navigation tools.
  • Carbon Rally: Specially for those who want to be green, Carbon Rally posts challenges (example: line-drying your laundry for a month) to motivate you to reduce your carbon footprint. (Hmmm…why is this site blocked in Dubai!?)
  • Free Rice: Where you get to learn a word and feed the hungry in exchange, reviewed before on Gadling here.

You can check out the full list of Time Magazine’s top websites for 2008 here.

10 Worst Cities to Visit/10 Best Cities to Visit

by Willy Volk on

Of course, no one wants to waste their time and money traveling to a crummy destination. In an effort to help you steer clear of those crummy destinations, Road Junky put together a list of what they consider to be the 10 worst cities in the world to visit. In no particular order, they are:

  • Mumbai
  • Dubai
  • Liverpool & Manchester
  • Any American Suburb
  • Guatemala City
  • Sao Paulo
  • Beijing
  • Singapore
  • Milan
  • Cancun

Weird. I always wanted to visit Bombay (or Mumbai, as it’s now called). And Ember seems to be having a great time in Beijing, so I guess the list is colored by Road Junky’s perceptions — which is, of course, totally acceptable. Personally, I hope I never make it back to Harare. Or Bulawayo. So depressing.

Rather than simply mention the dregs and not point out the shining stars of world travel, here’s Travel + Leisure’s list of what they consider to be the 10 best cities in the world to visit. In no particular order, they are:

  • Florence
  • Rome
  • Bangkok
  • Sydney
  • Chiang Mai, Thailand
  • Cape Town
  • Buenos Aires
  • New York
  • Beirut*
  • San Francisco

I’ve spent several weeks in Cape Town, and if I could retire this weekend, I’d move there and start a weekly “What’s Going On About Town” newspaper. I love that place. In my opinion, other great cities to travel to include Amsterdam (easy to navigate); Cairo (Culture! History!); and Key West (F-U-N).

Nevertheless, if you think T+L’s list stinks, check out Cool Town Studios for their regional run-down of the world’s best cities to visit or peep National Geographic Traveler’s Top Urban Places.

* T+L’s list was selected prior to the war in Lebanon.

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2007’s 10 Hottest Destinations?

by Willy Volk on

By “hottest,” we don’t mean the places that will literally be the warmest, thermostatically-speaking. Rather, we’re talking about the places that’ll generate the most buzz, grab the most headlines, or be on the most tongues.

Previously, we’ve suggested Greenland, Culver City, and even New Zealand as some pretty smokin’ destinations, but Concierge has a different take. According to them, the 10 sizzling-est destinations for 2007 are:

  1. Beijing, China
  2. Itacaré, Brazil
  3. Puebla, Mexico
  4. Gabon
  5. Istanbul, Turkey
  6. Argentina’s Estancias
  7. Macau, China
  8. Dominican Republic
  9. Ljubljana, Slovenia
  10. Miami

I’ve only ever hit one of the destinations — Miami — and I loved it. If I could choose any of the remaining destinations for my next adventure, I’d go with Gabon.