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.

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

At the risk of sounding like a traveling germ-phobic nutjob, I’ll admit I rarely get anywhere near an airport, bus or means of public transportation without fishing my trusty hand sanitizer out of my bag. And while I sometimes find myself wondering what happened to the free-spirited traveling self who would most certainly scoff at the more uptight version that exists today, I can say this: once you hit 30, getting sick starts to suck more. Way more.

While most hand sanitizers kill germs right when you apply them to your skin, SkinWear claims to continue killing pesky germs for hours and moisturize your skin at the same time (good for use during flights, when my skin starts to feel nigh on reptilian). The product is also non-toxic, biodegradable and vegetable-based. Once applied correctly, which requires rubbing the product into the skin for 60 seconds, SkinWear will do its thing through four rinses at the sink.

Not being scary germs ourselves, we can’t personally vouch for the product’s effectiveness. But not getting sick is good enough for me.

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.)

Carnival season in New Orleans officially kicked off on Sunday. And as of today, Mardi Gras 2008 is officially 28 days away. If you’re planning to hit the Big Easy for all the fun leading up to Feb. 5th, now’s the time to lock in hotel reservations. We’ve done some checking around to find the best hotels for different tastes and budgets. Note that many require full payment upfront for stays the weekend prior to Mardi Gras.

Where to stay for Mardi Gras 2008 if you want…

Bourbon Street Accommodations

It ain’t cheap, but the Royal Sonesta Hotel New Orleans is one of the best options for revelers who want to be right in the middle of the French Quarter action and want a moderately upscale place to rest their heads at night (hint, bring some earplugs…staying here means lodging in the part of the city that never sleeps). Double and King rooms are still available for the weekend prior to Mardi Gras. When we checked, rates were $339/night.

A Taste of the Traditional

For lodging that features a dose of classic New Orleans, Hotel Monteleone is hard to beat. The hotel offers many of the amenities you’d find at a similarly-priced chain (fitness center, rooftop pool, on site dining), but ups the ante with rooms outfitted in grand window treatments, ornamental moldings, prim sitting areas and marble bathrooms. Spa junkies can escape the rabble rousers in the French Quarter with a trip to Spa Aria, which offers luxe treatments like the signature Caviar Facial. Ready to splurge? Try one of the decadent suites, named after Southern literary heroes like Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Eudora Welty. When we checked rates for the weekend before Mardi Gras, we found a variety of guest rooms and suites available with rates starting at $279/night.

A Party Pad

With nightly rates for the weekend starting at $129 and a location near the French Quarter, the Baronne Plaza Hotel is our pick for budget-minded travelers who care more about having a convenient home base than top-notch service, flashy interiors or high-end amenities.

A Full-Service, Business-Class Hotel

Even if you’re hitting N’awlins mainly to party, you may still want all the creature comforts of a business-class hotel. Bed down at either the The Renaissance Pere Marquette Hotel or the JW Marriott New Orleans Hotel, and you won’t be disappointed. Both hotels are located a few blocks from the action, but the real draw to these picks is knowing your room will be comfortable, clean, attractive (good design, marble bathrooms) and that amenities like high-speed Internet, room service, fitness facilities and concierge assistance are there when you need ‘em. When we checked, available Double and King rooms for the weekend were $279/night at both hotels. Note: you’ll have to prepay in full for accommodations during Mardi Gras weekend.

Jetsetter Digs

For travelers who put aesthetics on par with practicalities like location and amenities, the W Hotel New Orleans is the way to go. With touches like the outdoor courtyard area, pictured here, plush in-room furnishings, private poolside cabanas and sleek interiors befitting urban sophisticates, this destination won’t disappoint those willing to pay for looks. A recent check showed rooms for the weekend before Mardi Gras starting at $339/night.

Read the Los Angeles Times story No Plane Ticket for the Holidays? Good Luck, and travelers who have yet to buy their holiday plane tickets are likely to panic. The story makes it sound like anyone who’s waited until now to purchase an airline ticket is doomed to exorbitant prices and crappy schedules. While the latter is, in many cases, a correct conclusion, there are plenty of options for reaching your destination for a reasonable price - maybe not a bargain, but something that’s not going to completely break the bank. That said, the longer you wait, the fewer options you’ll have. When you do start your search, keep these tips in mind:

A Few Tips for Buying Tickets

- Check meta-search engines like SideStep, which gives you search results culled from thousands of travel retailers in a simple format that shows fare differences for multiple airports, flight schedules, number of stops and airlines. It’s easy to scan the results quickly and determine how different travel choices result in increased or decreased fares. For example, I found that New Yorkers on a budget may very well be better off driving to Philadelphia International Airport instead of the airports around Manhattan.

- Visit the individual sites of airlines that don’t offer tickets through online ticket outlets like Orbitz, Priceline, Travelocity and Expedia. For example, Southwest and Virgin America don’t sell through any of these, so you’ll only know what is available if you check with these airlines directly.

- Consider itineraries you wouldn’t ordinarily. Flying early in the morning or choosing different departure and return airports on the same itinerary can sometimes result in cheaper fares.

- Don’t have time to hunt or monitor fares? Let a travel agent do the work for you. Here’s a link for finding a travel agent in your area.

Ask George: I was bumped off a flight recently and the airline said I wasn’t due any compensation because of the size of the plane (it was a small regional carrier). Is this accurate? What exactly are the rules, and any advice on preventing this from happening again? Are all passengers treated equally in an “oversell” situation?

Answer: For starters, if you’re involuntarily bumped off your flight and the airline can’t get you to your destination within an hour of the original arrival time, federal law requires that you be paid the equivalent of your one-way fare up to $200 or $400, depending on the length of the delay.

According to David Stempler of the Air Travelers Association, passengers should insist on a check instead of a travel voucher since they come with restrictions and can be difficult to redeem.

Instead of waiting in line with other disgruntled bumpees for a gate agent, try sneaking off to call the airline 800 number directly (or call while you’re waiting in line). Speaking immediately to an agent on the phone can help you skirt any airport computer systems that give priority to frequent fliers or those who paid top dollar for their fare. So it’s a good idea to call in for first crack at seats.

One way to avoid getting bumped altogether is to fly JetBlue Airways, which refuses to overbook and consequently has the best track bumping record among all major US carriers, followed by Airtran. And flying to or within the Hawaiian Islands should be a breeze, since both Hawaiian and Aloha Airlines always score in the top five carriers with the least involuntary denied boardings. And if you really can’t afford to take any chances, you should know that Atlantic Southeast Airlines, Comair, and Delta Airlines consistently score the worst. You can find these and other rankings on the Department of Transportation website at http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov.

And you should also know that the folks in the cheap seats have lower priority on some airlines than the ones who paid full fare. If you’re a very frequent flyer at the highest tier of your airline’s program and/or paid a full fare (or are a business or first class passenger) you’re more likely to get on board than the poor chap who paid next to nothing for his coach ticket.

Of course, the easiest thing you can do to prevent getting bumped is arrive early. On overbooked flights, the last passengers to check in are among the first to get kicked off. And for those days when time is most definitely not on your side, call the airline in advance to let them know you’ll be late and reserve a seat on the next flight.

There are, however, a few exceptions to the bumping rule, as you discovered. For example, if the airline must substitute a smaller plane for the one it originally planned to use, the carrier isn’t required to compensate people who are bumped as a result. Compensation also does not apply to charter flights, or scheduled flights with 60 or fewer passengers. Also remember that these rules vary for international flights, even if they’re on US-based carriers. Not sure where you stand with your airline? Check their contract of carriage. In fact, it’s a good idea to print this out and have it with you for reference incase of such an emergency. Sure, it may sound unnecessarily nerdy now, but hey, it just may save you from sleeping on the airport floor.

George Hobica is a travel writer living in New York City.

Do you have a question to ask George? Send us your question, and George may feature it in an upcoming column.

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

Ask George: I recently traveled on Amtrak’s Acela train from Boston Back Bay to New York, and found it to be a much more pleasant experience than flying, even though we departed 45 minutes late (the crew never explained why). But here’s my question: somehow, we managed to arrive in New York just 5 minutes late, which makes me think that Amtrak could easily operate a much faster schedule, perhaps traveling Boston to New York in far less than the current 3 hours and 25 minutes or so. Any idea why they don’t go faster? It would certainly increase their ridership if they did.

Answer: As do the airlines, Amtrak builds in extra travel time to compensate for delays. That way, they can boast a higher on-time performance record. In fact, were it to operate nonstop, and not run into other rail traffic along the way, the Acela could easily travel from Boston to New York in far less time than its current schedule. The real question is why, if the Acela can travel 150 miles per hour, it can’t make the approximately 250 mile trip from Boston to New York in under a scheduled two hours, and there are two main reasons:

1) Amtrak doesn’t own the tracks between New Haven and New Rochelle, NY. The Metro North Railroad, part of New York City’s MTA, owns and operates this part of the route, and because the overhead electrical wires are so antiquated on this stretch, trains are limited to 80 MPH (any faster, and the trains pull down the wires, especially in warm weather when they tend to sag). Also, Metro North gives priority to its own trains along this heavily traveled portion if there’s a delay or heavy traffic.

2) Amtrak had hoped to eliminate all grade crossings, straighten some especially curvy stretches of track, and replace antiquated bridges (which mandate slower speeds) along the part of the route it owns, but they ran out of money, in part because they faced legal challenges from property owners and environmental groups. This litigation dragged on for years, and by the time it was settled, costs had skyrocketed and legal bills drained Amtrak’s budget for the reconstruction of the route. You’ll notice that in some of the more wealthy communities along the route in Rhode Island and Connecticut there are still old-fashioned (and potentially dangerous) grade crossings (that’s where a gate comes down to block vehicular traffic). A representative from the Acela’s manufacturer explained to me that these communities sued Amtrak to force the railroad to maintain these crossings, which requires the trains to slow down when passing through them.

George Hobica is a travel writer living in New York City.

Do you have a question to ask George? Send us your question, and George may feature it in an upcoming column.

According to the Telegraph (UK), the Ritz-Carlton Central Park, the Four Seasons New York and Hotel Gansevoort are New York’s best business hotels. One of the draws at the Four Seasons? The swanky hotel bar pictured here - taken by TravelPoster jill03.

New York’s Best Business Hotels