Now if you like to drink (and by that we mean draaaannnnk), have we got the travel experience for you: The World’s Biggest Pub Crawl. The 25-day around the world tour led by Thirsty Swagman departs in March 2008 from London and hits 60 watering holes in 12 countries on four continents. Here’s the route:

- London, UK

- Düsseldorf, Germany

- Prague, Czech Republic

- Maria Alm, Austria

- Munich, Germany

- Reykjavik, Iceland

- Phuket, Thailand

- Auckland, New Zealand

- Queenstown, New Zealand

- Honolulu, USA

- Cancun, Mexico

Here’s a detailed itinerary. The tour starts at $9,990 per person and includes crazy Australian guides who’ll ferry you too and from some of the world’s best bars and drinking establishments, as well as all airfare and transfers, land transportation, three-star hotel accommodations and drink discounts. Funny, it seems like a bottle of pain killers and box of condoms should be included in the price.

You can check out the World’s Biggest Pub Crawl YouTube video below:

Happy Halloween. It’s that fabulous day of the year when you can get dressed up like a freak, wear clothes far sluttier than you’d ever dare in real life and get totally smashed without remorse. Unless, of course, you’re a kid. In that case, it’s really all about the candy.

Today we check in with some of our favorite travel experts to get into the Halloween, uh, spirit. Instead of blithely regurgitating tales of haunted hotels, ghost towns and places of supposed supernatural import, Concierge.com editor-in-chief Peter Frank (that’s him in the picture) and his team at Conde Nast decided to put their heads together to create a different kind of Halloween story for the web site this year.

Says Frank, “I’ve seen my share of haunted hotels, but we wanted places that will actually creep you out a little bit, places that send chills down your spine.”

And so they have. The World’s Creepiest Places, written by Ralph Martin, follows the axiom that reality is always more frightening than fiction as it roves through 13 (yes, 13) destinations pretty much guaranteed to leave you feeling like you’re on a tour of Rod Serling’s favorite vacation spots.

At the TravelPost.com Insider, we’re constantly fascinated with how travel publications compile their round-ups and select editorial content, so we decided to check in with Frank to get some firsthand information on this seasonal feature from Concierge.com, a.k.a. the home of Conde Nast Traveler.

So why do travelers specifically seek out scary places?

“There are people out there who are just drawn to the slightly macabre…. [Places] where famous events from history happened – there’s just an inherent fascination,” Frank says.

Among the places deemed creepiest by Concierge.com are familiar tourist destinations like the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, Calif., a mysterious mansion built by the wealthy and, by all accounts, disturbed heiress to the Winchester gun fortune and known for features like fake doors and staircases with no destinations.

“Once you’ve heard the story, you go there and get this window into this woman’s mind,” Frank says.

Pause for a brief tangent: The home’s bizarre past becomes all the more intriguing if you imagine our favorite modern-day heiress, Paris Hilton, similarly plagued by voices that instructed her to build and modify the same hotel over and over again until her death. Now that would be cool. And really weird.

And with digital artist Jeremy Blake’s reported devolution into paranoia and subsequent suicide this year, the Winchester House has attained even more creepy cache by association. One of the late artist’s most famous works is entitled Winchester and involves a series of unearthly images based on the mansion’s gothic interiors.

There are other places near and dear to tourists’ hearts, like, say, the stomach-turning displays of anatomical oddities at the Philadelphia Mütter museum and Romania’s Bran Castle, once home to the legendary Vlad the Impaler (upon which the film Bram Stoker’s Dracula was based).

But many of the spots included in the list are remote destinations many travelers will never see. For example, the site of the infamous 1986 Chernobyl power plant explosion that ended the short, sweet life of Pripyat, Ukraine.

“You go there, and it’s a real ghost town. It’s deserted. And things are exactly as they were 20 years ago,” Frank recalls.

And then there is the remote Easter Island (a five+ hour flight from Chile), where heavy-browed moai sculptures are the only remains of the now-extinct Rapa Nui people who once inhabited the island. If that’s not ultra creepy, we don’t know what is. Just looking at the landscape gives us chills:

What you won’t find in this list are sites where crimes against humanity and gross human atrocities have occurred.

“We didn’t do anything that was too sensitive. We wanted to have places that were distant enough in the past,” Frank says of the few locations with devastating histories attached.

One ultra-creepy spot that didn’t make the list for that very reason?

According to Frank, “We almost did the Jonestown massacre, but we decided it was just too gruesome.”

Yup. And on top of that, in the years since the Jonestown Massacre, the nearby town of Port Kaituma, Guyana has not exactly rebounded into the next vacation hotspot. Today, in fact, it’s largely home to transient workers who come to the nearby jungles to hunt for gold.

And with that, we bid you adieu. It’s time to go put our face paint on. Be sure to check out all 13 of the World’s Creepiest Places on Concierge.com.

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.

Tourists who chuck their soda cans, waggle toes in the City’s canals and abandon t-shirts for the bare-chested look (we’re talking men here) may be intercepted and fined by Venice’s newly created Office of Decorum. But perhaps just as humorous is the way the government’s Decorum office has decided to go about breaking the bad news. Instead of tasking regular police with the job, the City has hired legions of multi-lingual female “hostesses” to patrol St. Mark’s Square and dole out penalties ranging from 50 to 500 euro. I guess it’s just easier to take a reprimand from a pretty young woman, and the government knows it. Interestingly, slovenly Americans are not the chief targets, but rather European day-tripper tourists who often bring their own food and picnic outside.

Venice Slaps Fines on Sloppy, Shirtless Tourists

Want to be one of the first to stay in Zurich’s five-star Dolder Grand when it reopens next spring after nearly four years of renovations? Well, now’s the time to hop to it. The 173-room hotel and resort began accepting reservations for its April 2008 reopening yesterday.

London architects Foster & Partners restored the hotel’s with attention to its original architectural detailing while adding a new spa complete with fitness facilities and 21 treatment rooms. Originally opened in 1899 as a hotel and spa retreat, the restored landmark now features an innovative geothermal energy technology that draws and stores heat from probes drilled deep into the earth underneath the resort. This energy-efficient alternative to traditional power is able to generate and store 1 million kilowatt hours of energy annually. When the resort reopens next April, its on-the-grid energy use will have been cut in half thanks to the new system.

But while the earth-friendly aspects of the new Dolder Grand are enticing, what will really hook you are the views with views of Lake Zurich and the Alps from the terrace dining room and suites outfitted with whirlpools, steam showers and saunas.

Geothermal heating system cuts energy consumption

Yesterday the Eurostar train making its inaugural test trip between London’s soon-to-open St. Pancras station and Paris broke the record for its fastest rail journey, arriving at its destination in two hours and three minutes. I can remember the days when the Eurostar took much longer than that - it had to have been at least three hours when I rode it last in 2000. The route officially opens Nov. 14, 2007 and will run between the new Eurostar terminal at London’s St. Pancras station and the Paris Eurostar terminal. The move from London’s Waterloo station to St. Pancras means faster journeys (the trains will run on newly laid tracks), more tube lines (six) serving the station and access to all the good stuff (Europe’s longest Champagne bar will be in the new station) in the St. Pancras-King’s Cross area of London before or after you board the train.

Eurostar Sets London Paris Record

In what could be prove a major boon for Utah tourism, direct flights from Salt Lake City Airport to Paris and other European cities are in the works now that the state of Utah has granted Delta Airlines $250,000 to, um, get the new routes off the ground.

Utah approves $250,000 for Delta flights to Europe

Since opening in July, Qbic Hotels have been getting a lot of hype. The pre-fab hotel rooms come literally in a box for easy set up inside existing buildings and feature tricked-out interiors boasting Philippe Starck bathroom fixtures, LCD TVs, high-speed Internet access and even changeable mood lighting (which seems to be a trend in and of itself - Virgin America also offers it). But perhaps the biggest perk of a Qbic Hotel room is the price — between $80 and $120 USD for stylish, high-tech accommodations in Amsterdam, Antwerp and Maastricht. Expect more locations soon as the company expands.

A Hotel in a Box

Starting with Riga on Aug. 25, a select number of European cities will be celebrating Notte Bianca (White Night), an event started in Paris in 2002 that turns a city into an all-night party space, arts exhibition and cultural experience. Many museums, shops and other venues stay open all night and feature special performances, screenings and exhibits in celebration of their city’s White Night. If you’re traveling Europe this September, head to a White Nights celebration and pull an all-nighter crash course in the city’s arts and cultural institutions. Here’s the schedule for this year’s celebrations:

Aug. 25 - Riga, Latvia

Sept. 8 - Rome

Sept. 22 - Madrid

Sept 29 - Brussels, Belgium

Oct. 6 - Paris

White Nights Europe

Since the liquid ban turned air travel upside down about a year ago, passengers connecting through European Union countries have had to discard large bottles of alcohol, perfume or other liquids purchased in duty free shops at their departure airports - even though the purchases were made after passing through the origin airport’s security checkpoints. Luckily for international travelers with a penchant for duty free shopping, the rules may be changing in the coming months. The EU announced today that it would begin examining security procedures at non-EU airports. If the airports in question display security that’s up to snuff, the EU will then allow passengers to bring their duty-free goods with them on their connecting flights from EU airports.

European Union to Ease Duty-Free Rules on Planes