If you didn’t drink yourself silly over the weekend in the name of the Irish, then you’ve still got today to pull it off. When you’re enjoying your first Guinness of the day (which any self-respecting St. Patty’s Day reveler clearly should be doing, like, right about now), pay eagle eye attention to the bartender’s two-part pour technique. Does his or her performance at the tap offer you ample opportunity to observe the “marvelous surge,” domed crown or “perfect, velvety head?” If not, you might want to refer said bartender to the simple Guinness Perfect Pint Pour tutorial below. Bartenders always love it when random drunks correct their technique. Trust us. And enjoy your last excuse to get rip-roaring stupid intoxicated until, well, the weekend.

When the Queen of England personally sees to your opening ceremony, you know you’ve arrived. The monarch’s presence at today’s opening of the much-anticipated Terminal 5 at London Heathrow International Airport shows just how important the new structure is in the eyes of the British, as well as harried travelers everywhere.

To be sure, it’s an opening peppered with superlatives. Part of the busiest international airport in the world, the $9 billion terminal is the largest free-standing structure in all of the UK. In addition to being the first terminal to subject domestic travelers to fingerprinting, it will also house the world’s first Tiffany & Co. airport boutique and the Gordan Ramsey’s first airport restaurant (Plane Food).

For the time being, the terminal is the exclusive territory of British Airways. The airline has high hopes for the new terminal. It expects 30 million passengers to pass through its gates each year. And it’s even gone so far as to estimate a mere 10 minutes as the average time for passengers to move from the terminal’s entrance through check-in and security to reach the departure gates.

Terminal 5 officially opens to the public on March 27, 2008.

How’s this sound for a good time: pack your bags, say your goodbyes and prepare yourself for a hop across the pond without knowing whether you’ll be allowed to board your departing flight or whether you’ll have to schlep yourself and the aforementioned luggage all the way back home before the night is through? It’s something no one in their right mind would do - unless, of course, you’re one of those people who likes a good challenge, a little suspense and a free trip to London.

Such is the premise behind the United Airlines Suitcase Party, to be held on March 30th in Denver at Pints Pub in celebration of the airline’s inaugural flight from Denver to London. But you can’t win the two-day trip to London (we hear they tuck a nice little piece of jet lag under your pillow each night) just by showing up and looking pretty. Oh, no. You’ve got to put your creative skills to work decorating your suitcase. A panel of judges will pick a winning suitcase (and the human attached to it) to board a plane to London that very night. The winner will be allowed to bring one travel companion along for the ride.

Hectic as a two-day trip to London may be in reality, they sure do make it sound like a good time in the press release:

“We are asking Denver to show off its creativity and civic pride at our Suitcase Party, and one lucky winner will hop on that evening’s flight to London,” says Mike Scanlan, United’s general manager at Denver International Airport. “Nothing more than a passport, a decorated suitcase, and an understanding boss will be needed to enjoy a trip to London.”

We predict that you will also need underwear, a toothbrush and twice the amount of money you’d spend over a weekend in the U.S.

May the best suitcase decorator win!

Pack Creatively and Bring Your Passport to Pints Pub

Forbes recently published a list of the Top 30 Most-Wired Airports. Problem is, you have to sit through a while slide show to figure out which airports around the world made the list. Yeah, you could be a responsible media consumer and actually read the entire story. But if you want to just consume the list, here it is:

1. Atlanta Hartsfield

2. Denver International Airport

3. Las Vegas McCarran International Airport

4. Hong Kong International Airport

5. (tie) Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport

6. (tie) Singapore Changi Airport

7. London Heathrow

8. Tokyo Haneda Airport

9. Orlando International Airport

10. Tokyo Narita International Airport

11. Dallas Fort Worth International Airport

12. Paris Charles De Gualle International Airport

13. Los Angeles International Airport

14. Amsterdam Airport Schipol

15. Bangkok International Airport

16. Chicago O’Hare International Airport

17. Frankfurt Airport

18. Sydney Airport

19. Munich Airport

20. Charlotte Douglass International

21. Dubai International Airport

22. Seoul Incheon International Airport

23. Toronto Pearson International Airport

24. Madrid Barajas International Airport

25. London Gatwick Airport

26. Paris Orly Airport

27. (tie) Rome Fiumicino

28. (tie) Kuala Lumpur International

29. Barcelona Airport

30. Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport

Speaking of the United Arab Emirates (see previous post), I’m tres, tres intrigued by this carbon neutral city I hear the country has in the works. Construction on Masdar City broke ground early last month, but the $22 billion initiative is not slated for completion until 2016.

Ultimately, the world’s first carbon-neutral city will house 50,000 residents and 1,500 businesses. It will not allow cars, but will require residents and visitors to reply on public transportation. The entirety of the city’s power will come from solar and wind energy sources, and the local water supply will be provided through a combination of desalinization and waste water purification.

The development may not be finished for another eight years, but it will be inhabitable by sometime next year.

The first non-stop flight from LAX to the Middle East touches down this September, when Emirates airlines plans to launch daily flights between the West Coast city and Dubai. The 16-hour flight will include a stop for plane changes, but will otherwise be direct.

At the moment, judging from a look this morning for flights from San Francisco and Dubai, a traveler would need to spend between 20 and 33 hours flying to reach Dubai from the West Coast, with connections in either Atlanta, Paris, Amsterdam, Zurich, Hong Kong, etc.

The addition of this new route certainly makes reach this part of the world faster and more convenient for travelers based on the West Coast.

Emirates to Make LAX its Third US Gateway

How can a museum tell the story of a subject that is, by definition, top secret? In its recent special section on the state of museums, The New York Times examines that very question as it tells the curious story of the National Cryptologic Museum, which went so far as to forgo an official opening party when it debuted in 1993 for fear media would snap images of clandestine operatives working for the National Security Agency located in the adjacent building. The answer, for now at least, seems to be: slowly and carefully.

Not surprisingly, the museum keeps its exhibits historical in nature, as exploring current topics and events would encroach upon national security initiatives. But breaking Japanese naval codes during WWII, revealing once-secret techniques used in jungle listening stations during Vietnam and Civil War-era code books? All fair game.

Psst! Follow Me and I’ll Show You the Exhibition

Upon perusing new-ish mapping site MapJack for the first time, I was pretty much blown away. Sure, the site only covers a bizarre coupling of cities right now - San Francisco and Chiang Mai, Thailand - but its imaging technology allows you to enter addresses or points of interest, locate them on high-resolution photographic maps and maneuver right up to the front of buildings, pan left and right, turn in circles, zoom in and out and easily switch to nearby vantage points marked on the maps by blue dots.

I was able to easily read building numbers, street signs and even the friggin’ credit card stickers on the doors of several local businesses. Not bad. It’s a cool tool on so many levels, but for travelers, it offers an easy way to view the area a particular hotel is in or the kinds of shops in a certain neighborhood you’re planning to visit on your next trip. It can also give armchair travelers a candid view of popular tourist destinations like Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco or Three Kings Square in Chiang Mai.

I’m not sure how often they update the images, but looking at several spots in San Francisco that I know well, they’re quite current despite not being in real time.

The company is working to make maps of the following destinations available soon:

* Lake Tahoe

* Yosemite National Park

* Pacifica

* Palo Alto

* San Jose

* Las Vegas

One word of caution: make sure you have a few minutes to spare before you start playing around with MapJack. I got sucked in and - bam - there went the morning.

And now for the winner in the strangest vacation souvenir category…. A traveler spooked Munich airport security yesterday when she arrived fresh from her Brazilian vacation en route to Naples with none other than her own brother’s skeletal remains stuffed in her luggage. But this was no sicko crime gone awry. The woman, an Italian, was simply fulfilling her dead brother’s last wish, to be taken from the place of his death, Sao Paulo, and buried in his homeland’s soil. And she had the documentation from the Brazilian government to prove it - a very important point, as authorities are not known for relying solely on verbal explanations where skeletal remains are concerned.

Woman Stopped Over Skeleton in Luggage

And you thought your last trip to London was expensive. Try going to Bath, home to hot springs and ruins of Roman Baths some 2,000 years old. One TravelPoster’s photograph of the popular ruins is shown here. The Guardian reports that the town in the English countryside is the UK’s most expensive destination when it comes to average nightly hotel rates. The same story reports that average nightly rates in the UK exceed those found anywhere else in Europe.

UK Hotels are the most Expensive in Europe