Podcasts are the new way to study up on travel destinations from city walks and dining hot spots to museum tours and historical background. With so many options, how do you know which one to download? This month’s Conde Nast Traveler has a great article that breaks down the different audio guides and what they’re best for. Here’s a condensed version:

- Lonely Planet: 7-20 minute interviews with Lonely Planet authors who reveal their favorite spots and experiences. Destinations include New Zealand, Souteast Asia and numerous others. Free.

- Audiosteps: One to two hour guided walks for major US cites like San Francisco and Washington DC as well as Bath, Bristol and London. $14.

- iToors: Themed tours, like Glasgow’s music scene or Hemingway’s Paris, that take you off the beaten path. Free.

- iJourneys: Relaxed one-hour tours that hit the big spots and provide a bit of history for cities like Florence, Rome and Paris. $15 includes a printable map.

- Art Mobs: Brief unofficial guides to specific works at New York’s MoMA by Marymount Manhattan College art professors and students. Free.

Before it made James Cameron king of the world and Celine Dion a globally-loved (and hated) diva, the Titanic was an actual ship that suffered a real tragedy. History and movie buffs alike will want to head to the Tropicana Resort and Casino in Las Vegas where Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition is set to open May 26, 2006. The exhibition will include more than 300 artifacts and fully constructed replicas of Titanic’s famed Grand Staircase and Promenade Deck. See the real thing without getting My Heart Will Go On stuck in your head.

Las Vegas Tropicana Resort and Casino official site

press release

Ahoy matey. Thanks to Johnny Depp and the impending release of summer blockbuster Pirate’s of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, these scoundrels of the sea are the hot ticket right now. Which means it’s the perfect time to visit the Crystal Coast on the southern outer banks of North Carolina, otherwise known as the pirate destination of the Atlantic. Hear tales of pillage and plunder on a kayak tour, view relics from Blackbeard’s ship at the maritime museum, experience ghostly pirate tales at old burying grounds and recover from the fright by taking a relaxing ferry ride to the Cape Lookout Lighthouse. Summer accommodations start as low as $50 a night.

Official Crystal Coast website

Iconic children’s book Goodnight Moon (1947) forms the centerpiece of an exhibit at the Rhode Island School of Design museum. The show highlights the illustrative work of Clement Hurd, his wife and son, as well as works in which all three artists collaborate. But the piece de resistance is the three-dimensional replica of Goodnight Moon’s “great green room.”

Museum Brings Goodnight Moon to Life

RISD Museum Goodnight Moon Exhibit official site

I don’t usually post about content from the New York Times because I figure many people are already reading it on their own, but this past weekend’s Affordable Europe feature is just too good to ignore. It’s a must-read for anyone headed to Europe this summer - a time when prices are up and the cities are packed with everyone from college backpackers to retirees on group tours. The features are broken down by city, and include tips and advice on lodging, dining, recreation and entertainment in cities from Barcelona to Prague, Paris to Venice.

A few nuggets of wisdom I drew from these stories:

- You’ll usually have to ask for your check at restaurants in Italy, France and Spain. It may seem like the staff is ignoring you, but it’s just normal.

- Museum nuts should either buy multi-venue passes for different cities or research the free admission days/hours at city museums before going.

- In Paris, skip the expensive city tour and hop on the No. 69 public bus for 1.40 euro. The bookends of the bus route are the Eiffel Tower and the Pere Lachaise Cemetary. As you ride, you’ll pass the Louvre, the Marais and Place de la Bastille, among other places.

- In Copenhagen, get around with one of the 2,000 free bikes the city provides from April to November. You put a coin in to release the bikes and get the coin back when you return. I shudder to think what would happen if we had this sort of thing going in a major U.S. city.

NYT’s Affordable Europe

The National Museum of American History - part of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC - announced yesterday that it will be closing down for two years in order to build a new gallery. The museum, which is the largest history museum in the U.S., will remain open until Labor Day 2006.

American History Museum to Close for Nearly Two Years

National Museum of American History official site

Each May, Bank of America offers its credit and debit card holders free admission to over 50 museums and cultural institutions in the Northeast. The list of museums for this year’s promo hasn’t been released yet, but BofA members may want to bookmark this and check back in the coming weeks.

Bank of America Museums On Us promotion

Okay, not Americana, but American art, which it affectionately refers to as “New World” art. Under the leadership of Henri Loyrette since 2001, the Louvre (pictured with TravelPoster carlysherwood) has taken its exhibits and projects in directions that would have previously seemed too daring or controversial. This year the museum, which attracts 7.3 million visitors annually, is reaching out to Americans in three ways:

The venerable French museum will embrace all things American this year, mounting an exhibit of New World painters, featuring author Toni Morrison for three weeks and loaning hundreds of treasures to Atlanta’s High Museum of Art in an ambitious three-year partnership.

Devoting an entire exhibit to American art, inviting a celebrated American writer to participate in a three-week program and entering a lengthy agreement with an American museum are big steps for the Louvre, which counts just three American works of art in its entire permanent collection.

Louvre Museum Going American

The Louvre official site

A cartoon museum (ahem, we had it first in San Fran) is now in the works for New York.

Newsday’s Cartoon Museum Planned for New York

The British Museum’s exhibit Michelangelo Drawings: Closer to the Master will open tomorrow in London to record-breaking crowds. The museum sold 11,000 advance tickets - three times more than the previous record. The exhibit is the museum’s first on Michelangelo in 30 years. The exhibit runs through June. From the British Museum web site:

The exhibition traces sixty years of Michelangelo’s stormy life, from intimate studies made when he was in his early twenties to the visionary Crucifixion scenes carried out shortly before his death.

It reunites material not seen together since the dispersal of the artist’s studio more than 400 years ago, offering a wholly different perspective on the defining genius of the Italian Renaissance.

The British Museum official site