This weekend, a retrospective exploring the work of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami opens at the Brooklyn Museum. Anime, manga and pop-culture fans will no doubt turn out in droves to see Murakami’s iconic works, which include murals, sculptures and a host of giant, action figure-esque characters (check out Hiropon, a little lady with enormous, milk-spurting breasts). One unusual aspect of the show is a full-size Luis Vuitton store contained within the museum, an artistic extension of Murakami’s collaboration with the company and its creative force Marc Jacobs.

This is one of those rare exhibits that holds equal appeal for fashion addicts, art lovers, anime fans and pop-culture aficionados. Runs through July 13, 2008.

Traveling techies take note: W Hotels are trying to woo you. Case in point: the W Hotels Wired Package. Through May 30th, the hotel brand is offering a package geared at business travelers willing to pay a premium for hip accommodations paired with some geek-tastic perks:

- Unlimited broadband Internet access

- Unlimited local and toll-free calls

- One-year subscription to Wired magazine

- Trial membership to VONGO, a movie download service, good for 30 days

Rates for the package vary depending the location. The lowest starts at $139/night at the W Atlanta Perimeter. But expect to pay rates starting at $369/night if you book the package at the W New York Union Square.

Further proving that all-business class flights are as popular as ever (despite the demise of MaxJet), Singapore Airlines has announced plans to convert its Airbus A340-500 planes into all-business class flights outfitted with 30-inch-wide seats that double as flat beds. When they take to the skies in between June and September of this year, the newly configured planes will fly the airline’s Singapore to New York and Singapore to LAX routes.

Singapore Airlines to Launch First All-Business Class Flights From USA to Asia

Yo, New Yorkers. Need a last minute getaway? There is still a week left to take advantage of the New York State Tourism department’s weekend getaway promotion good at a plethora of the state’s independent inns. Through March 7th, over 160 participating inns are offering travelers a free Sunday night stay when they book Friday and Saturday night accommodations, and many are offering the same deal (stay two nights, get the third night free ) for mid-week stays, as well. You can search for deals at participating inns using the web site’s interactive map.

Book a Winter Getaway and Get 1 Night Free!

If ever a hotel were an icon, the Plaza New York is one. And with tomorrow’s reopening after two years and $400 million in renovations, the famed hotel will once again take a prominent spot on any list of Manhattan’s most luxurious lodging options. Featured in films from Arthur to Almost Famous, the Fifth Avenue landmark has downsized to just 282 hotel rooms from its former 805. Much of the building, which was given a roof-down overhaul, is now devoted to condo hotel units and private residences.

For nightly rates of $795 and up, guests may indulge in luxury perks like private butlers on each floor, bathroom fixtures plated in 24-karat gold and centralized room control panels that do everything from dim the lights to change the television channels.

Luckily, travelers who choose to stay elsewhere can enjoy the hotel’s lavish atmosphere with afternoon tea in the opulent surroundings of the Palm Court. By late spring or early summer, the hotel plans to open a high-end retail shopping area, a Caudalie Spa, a renovated Oak Room and Oak Bar, a Champagne bar and a Warren Tricomi Salon.

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.

More often than not, articles that purport to offer travel tips are really just filler stories offering up a bunch of common sense knowledge. But Heather Eng’s Budget Travel story Psst! Broadway Tickets For Cheap had some advice I’d never heard before. Granted, I’m no theater buff, so maybe this is the most obvious tip in the world for a regular Broadway show-goer, but I’m copying it here because I think it’s a really worthwhile piece of travel advice for anyone headed to NYC who wants to catch a Broadway show:

Crack the codes

When you’re buying tickets online, the major agencies — Telecharge and Ticketmaster — ask for a promotional code, which can shave between 25 and 50 percent off the face-value price. You can find one of these codes by visiting Playbill, TheaterMania, and BroadwayBox.com. These sites list promotional codes for many shows, including blockbuster productions like “Hairspray.” Playbill and TheaterMania are more comprehensive but require registration. BroadwayBox.com posts a more limited number of codes, but you won’t have to cough up any personal information.

Insider’s tip: If you buy directly from a theater box office, where you can also use a code for savings, you will avoid the fees that Telecharge and Ticketmaster slap on the tickets they sell online.

If you spy a scary looking dude with a semi-automatic weapon pacing around the platform the next time you hop an East Coast Amtrak train, don’t be alarmed. The company announced a series of new security initiatives today, but not in response to any specific threat.

Rather, Amtrak hopes armed officers patrolling train platforms, bomb-sniffing dogs and random checks of carry-on luggage will be the preemptive strike necessary to thwart terrorist activity and other acts of violence. While trains have been prime targets for terrorist activity abroad, we statesiders have been lucky to escape any similar incidents thus far. Knock. On. Wood.

The new Amtrak security measures will be put in place along the Boston to Washington corridor.

Amtrak Beefs Up Security

Amtrak Launches New Security Procedures

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.)

Our weak, lame dollar has reportedly prompted some New York retailers to start accepting the Euro instead:

‘Euros Accepted’ Signs Pop Up in New York City