If you were in any doubt that age takes its toll, behold the latest in celebrity travel news: While bedding down at the InterContinental Sydney Hotel on a stop during his current Aussie tour, rocker Rod Stewart reportedly complained to hotel staff when a neighboring guest’s music kept him from getting his beauty rest (which he clearly needs).

But here’s the funny part: the guest - who happened to be pumping out the jams with music by Italian crooner Eros Ramazotti - refused to turn down the volume. Instead, the guest offered a compromise. Tell Stewart to send one of his own CDs to play instead. But Stewart wasn’t having it and refused. Eventually, the story goes, the guest turned the music down of his own accord, and everyone was able to get to beddie-by on time. Phew!

Aging Rocker Rod Stewart Kept Awake By Noisy Neighbour

When I saw the Everglide Bike, a finalist in the 2007 Australian Design Award competition, it immediately snagged my traveler’s eye. The student who designed this fold-up bike describes it as, “an integrated solution for short distance travel and personal effects management.” But once you cut through the academic dork speak, you’ve got one seriously cool cycle that could - if it ever makes it from concept to reality - change the way travelers get around the urban destinations they visit. Not only is this clever invention completely collapsible and, therefore, easily transportable via airplane, but it also features a roomy backpack for stowing the rider’s gear or the bike itself. But wait, wait, there’s more. The bike has a built-in charging strip for iPods, cell phones and other handheld devices and allows users who don’t want to carry the collapsed version on their backs to wheel it around like a piece of rolling luggage. Let’s hope this one makes it to market.

If you’re going to be in New York this weekend and you love travel, consider checking out the New York Times Travel Show, a veritable smorgasbord of travel information from resorts, hotels, spas, cruise lines, tour operators, tourist agencies and adventure travel companies from around the world. Along with vendor booths and live entertainment performances representing a vast array of cultures, the show features a Taste of the World Pavilion filled with international cuisine and cooking demonstrations, a Spa Pavilion offering sample treatments and discounted packages at spa resorts, travel author appearances and special travel deals offered to folks brave enough to book their next vacation on the spot. And with travel experts Rick Steves, Arthur Frommer, Ian Wright and Stephanie Abrams - among many others - leading seminars, the show offers a rare chance for face-to-face learning from leading peeps in the industry. Cost: $15.

Yeah, last minute travel can be cool. But it can also leave you cash poor, especially when you’re talking high-season travel in major vacation destinations. But as with most things in life, a just little edumuhcation can go a long way. Case in point: Kayak.com’s Fare Alerts.

Create a Fare Alert (or 12) on Kayak.com or SideStep.com for the summer getaway(s) currently sequestered in your noggin by clicking on the “Get fare alerts for this trip” link on the top right-hand corner of the flight results page. You can track fares for specific dates, a flexible span of time (e.g. summer weekends or, say, the month of June) or an entire region (e.g. Europe). When your daily or weekly Fare Alert (you choose how often it arrives) touches down in your email inbox, you’ll be able to make informed travel decisions.

Depending on what you ask it to track (specific dates, flexible span of time or even top cities in a region), each Fare Alert can show you:

- How much the fare for specific dates has increased or decreased in dollars since the last alert

- The airfare history for your trip dates based on searches made by Kayakers over the past 90 days

- A snapshot of prices in Kayak.com’s matrix view, so you can quickly compare prices by carrier and number of stops

- The lowest fare available during a specific span of time (e.g. the next four weekends)

- The best fares available for popular destination cities in a region you want to visit (e.g. Africa)

Who knows, maybe you’ll still pay craptons to travel to the most expensive resort on the hottest island right in the middle of the high season. After all, it’s high season for a reason. But at least you’ll be pimping it out with full knowledge of your unbridled American excess. Just remember the wisdom of G.I. Joe.

(**Editor’s note: Yeah, Kayak.com owns us. You wanna make something of it? I’ll have you know I was surreptitiously using Fare Alerts to aid in making my personal travel plans long before Kayak.com bought our parent company SideStep.com in December. Nepotism, bias, blah, blah, blah. Fare Alerts just make good travel sense.)

Know some travel-savvy kids and teachers? Tell them about the National Geographic Hands-On Explorer Challenge 2008, a contest whose winners receive a 10-day trip to Australia. To enter, kids must be between the ages of 9 and 14, write a 300-word essay about a hands-on discovery they’ve made and include a photograph that illustrates their essay. Deadline for the contest is Feb. 15, 2008.

Celebrity Travel News 10.26.07

No Love for Love

The five-star Claridges Hotel in London has reportedly refused Courtney Love as a guest. It’s not a surprising move on the part of the hotel management. The last time Love bunked in at the luxury hotel in London’s Mayfair neighborhood, she started a fire (allegedly from smoking a cigarette) in her $3,000-a-night suite. Worse, Love has a reputation for ruining hotel rooms. Earlier this year, you may recall reports of Love’s raucous birthday celebration at the Covent Garden Hotel, where she wrecked her $1,000-a-night suite. In slightly less shocking news, Love is still really scary looking.

Bringing Hang-Ups Back

According to local news sources, radio personalities in Brisbane, Australia discovered the hotel where Justin Timberlake is staying while he’s in town for concerts this weekend. Giddy with their nugget of celebrity information, the radio peeps attempted to prank call Justin Timberlake and sucker him into speaking on-air by calling the Stamford Hotel where the singer is staying under an alias. They identified themselves to hotel staff as high-ranking recording executive Denis Handlin, who, as you might guess, was mighty p.o.’d when he found out lowly radio personalities were using his name to bother JT. The gullible staff put the call through to Timberlake, who hung up as soon as he realized that on-air pranksters, and not the president of Sony BMG Australia, were on the other end of the line. Still, people with too much time on their hands are listening to the recording of the incident. If you are someone with too much time on your hands, you can also listen to the recording here.

But what we’re really wondering is whether Justin is staying in the hotel’s Stamford Suite, located on the top floor of the hotel. The posh digs offer a living room outfitted with a baby grand piano, gold-plated fixtures in the bathroom and a spa area with views of the Brisbane River and Kangaroo Point Cliffs.

Britney Takes Drugs

In Britney news, a few shocking developments. First, X17 scored photographs of prescription medicine Provigil peaking from Britney’s handbag as she headed to the Beverly Hills Hotel to meet up with ex K-Fed for parenting classes the pair were ordered by the court to attend. Gasp! The girl takes medicine she got from a doctor. Really, I’m happy to hear the girl’s taking something. Better to turn to the doctor’s orders than shave your head in public again. Jesus.

But what’s more interesting is that the Britney and Kevin chose to hold their parenting classes at the Beverly Hills Hotel in the first place. For someone who looks so depressed and annoyed every time the paparazzi appear, you’d think she could have opted for a lower-profile location. Like the parenting counselor’s office.

Up in Smoke

Celebs are fleeing the California wildfires and heading to high-end hotels, reports the Associated Press (story: Fires Disrupt Hollywood Lives, Work). Hollywood bigwig David Geffen was in a charitable mood and reportedly offered rescue workers and firefighters free rooms at his stylish Malibu Beach Inn.

Luxe lodging like Shutters on the Beach, the Viceroy Santa Monica, Chateau Marmont, the Four Seasons Beverly Hills and the Peninsula Beverly Hills Hotel told reporters they are completely booked this week with evacuees.

Other Stuff We Only Sort of Care About

Speaking of the Chateau Marmont, we hear that Scarlett Johansson celebrated boyfriend Ryan Reynolds’ birthday there earlier this week by presenting him with a necklace made out of one of her wisdom teeth (that can’t possibly be true… or can it?).

In who really cares anyway news, Lindsay Lohan was photographed leaving the Beverly Hills Hotel on Tuesday. Now, if she had run into Britney and they had both fallen off the wagon together at the hotel and then gone clubbing, we would have cared.

London Calling

Far from the flames ravaging Southern California, actor Josh Hartnett was spotted attending a screening of his new film 30 Days of Night held at London’s Soho Hotel, where swanky private screening rooms can accommodate up to 100 guests and feature red leather and cow print seats by Poltona Frau. We love!

If I had to guess, I’d say the Boeing 747s of the world are sulking today. As the International Herald Tribune notes (Story: Singapore Airlines’ superjumbo A380 leaves on maiden voyage to Sydney), the inaugural commercial flight for the Airbus A380 marks the end of the jumbo jet’s 37 years of supremacy in sky.

There’s been a lot of hype about the double-decker airplane, and its first flight with paying passengers on board has been eagerly awaited by aviation enthusiasts (some of whom paid enormous sums to sit in one of the plane’s 471 seats today). But when you think about the fact that the A380 really signifies the first major innovation in air travel in the last four decades, the attention given to an otherwise normal passenger flight seems all the more understandable. Not only is the plane larger than any that has gone before it, but manufacturer Airbus SAS says it’s quieter than any other passenger jet on the market and offers better fuel efficiency, to boot.

Et Voila! Celeb News For 10.11.07

Branson Swan Dives

On Wednesday evening, Sir Richard Branson celebrated Virgin America’s inaugural flights to Las Vegas by free-falling 40 stories – harnessed to a safety wire of course. But during the fall, a gust of wind slapped the daredevil billionaire into the side of the Palms Casino Resort. Branson emerged alive, but not without some scrapes and bruises.

Gee, I can’t imagine any better way to promote your new airline than crashing into solid objects at breakneck speeds.

On the upside, Branson did apparently scatter free Virgin America tickets as he fell, though none have been claimed. So be on the lookout in you’re in Vegas this weekend.

As part of the ongoing Virgin America festivities this week, Branson threw quite a shindig at the Wynn Las Vegas nightclub TRYST, where celebs like newlyweds (ew!) Pamela Anderson and Rick Salomon (double ew!), Carmen Elektra and The Hills star Lauren Conrad showed up to take part.

Lion Sighting

Earlier this week, news broke that hot-ay environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio (could he be contributing to global warming with his hotness? I think the answer is yes) is planning a eco-friendly Caribbean hotel in conjunction with Four Seasons Resorts.

In Deep Scheetz

All we know is, the news surrounding the death of a 24-year-old Colorado resident in the Las Vegas condo of none other than former Morgans Hotel Group CEO Ed Scheetz is ultra, ultra shady and sad. Autopsy reports showed that Michelle Hatchel died on Aug. 30th from an overdose of cocaine and oxycontin, and the death was initially pegged as a suicide. Last month, Scheetz resigned from his post as CEO “for personal reasons.” Strangely, no police report was ever filed after the death, nor any official police investigation launched into the matter. And now Hatchel’s family is crying foul over the incident and demanding answers about the last hours of Hatchel’s life. Family members claim the young woman called a friend in the middle of the night preceding her death and told them she was afraid and that Scheetz was “being mean.”

And now that Hatchel’s missing cell phone has been “recovered,” text messages she sent the night before she died are adding fuel to the fire. As the New York Post reports, Hatchel wrote, “I can’t believe how much coke he does, all the time, all day long. He keeps leaving me to talk to a girl he dated.”

First reported by ABC News (Suicide? Murder? Murky Death in Vegas) Scheetz’s call to the Las Vegas police has also been circulating around the Internet. You can find a link to it in the ABC article. Trust us, it doesn’t make the guy sound like someone you’d want your daughter dating.

Charlotte’s Web

Nicole Richie and fetus daddy Joel Madden were snapped arriving at Los Angeles International Airport and then on Thursday near the Sydney Intercontinental, where they are reportedly staying during Good Charlotte’s concerts there this weekend. While other bloggers were buzzing about Richie’s tan line, we’re more interested in the hotel.

Daddy Dearest?

Angelina Jolie and estranged, scary-looking father also known as actor Jon Voight were placed at the same hotel earlier this week, which we recently discovered is the Waldorf Astoria, according to bloggers. But while the paps are dying for the father and daughter to make amends, the incident appears to be mere coincidence and not evidence of an impending reconciliation between the two.

Minor Leagues

At this point, we delve into the tedium of celebrity sightings free of freak accidents, cocaine overdoses, family feuds, fashion faux pas and major business transactions.

We read that a pregnant Christina Aguilera exited the Raffles L’Ermitage Beverly Hills with Jordan Bratman this week. Later, she reportedly went shopping for a stroller.

A bunch of people - including Bill Pullman and Ed Koch - were at Manhattan’s Bowery Hotel earlier this week for a Cinema Society premiere party. And apparently, they all think Eva Mendes is hot.

And Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn were spotted having a drink together at the Beverly Hills Hotel Bar Nineteen 12. They talked to David Beckham. They looked happy. Fascinating.

And with that, we bid you adieu….

The word on the street is that Qantas, Lufthansa and Lufthansa subsidiary Swiss airlines are in the midst of adopting carbon offset programs that offer travelers the choice to offset their carbon emissions when they purchase tickets online. Read more at: Lufthansa, Swiss & Qantas Introduce Carbon Offsetting.

Not sure what to make of all this carbon offsetting business? We break the major U.S. players down for you in a traveler-friendly format in the Traveler’s Guide to Carbon Offsets.

During his visit to Sydney, Australia this week, President Bush is lodging at the Sydney Intercontinental Hotel, as reported by the AP in the story linked below. As for the comedians trying to infiltrate the leader of the free world’s home away from home, well, they will not be privy to this five-star property’s harbor views, rooftop lounge (pictured) or 508 guest rooms, renovated in 2004. They were reportedly turned away from the hotel after making it through two security checkpoints in a fake Canadian motorcade.

P.S. Do you suppose George and Laura will have a free moment to enjoy the roof lounge like the smitten couple pictured here?

Comedian Dressed as Bin Laden Stopped at Bush’s Hotel