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

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

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.

Ah, we love Amy Winehouse hotel updates. For some strange reason (cough…crack), wild things seem to happen whenever the British songstress enters a hotel room. While bunking in at London’s Park Plaza Riverbank Hotel last week, Winehouse reportedly caused over $6,000 damage to her executive suite. The damage was discovered only after Winehouse had refused housekeeping services for several days. When the hotel staff finally got into her room, they are said to have found ciggies everywhere, evidence of alcoholic bevs, dirty bedsheets, drains clogged with black hair, hair dye staining the bathroom and a mirror suspiciously laid out on the floor. And that’s a week after getting out of rehab.

Amy Winehouse, Showered With Pity, Lives Like Pig In Hotel

Everyone’s buzzing about Virgin Atlantic’s newsworthy flight yesterday - it was the first commercial plane to take to the skies with biofuel powering its engines. But as with anything related to the environment these days, the story is a wee bit more complicated than it may seem at first glance. For starters, the fuel used was only partially biofuel, and that biofuel is arguably more damaging to the environment to produce than conventional fuel. The video below does a good job of slicing and dicing the many viewpoints on this historic flight into a one-minute summary that even folks with raging Oscar party hangovers will be able to digest. Plus, you get to see Sir Richard Branson drinking fuel from a coconut. What a rockstar.

Here’s a new one: airlines giving back to passengers? Okay, they’re being forced to. But still. After being found guilty of fixing fuel surcharges associated with airline fares, the two airlines have been ordered to refund passengers who paid the illegal charges on long-haul flights over seven hours. If you flew on a British Airways or Virgin flight that departed from the UK between Aug. 11, 2004 and March 23, 2006, you are entitled to a refund of up to 20 GBP for each flight. You can read all the details at the story linked below.

BA and Virgin Launch Refund Site

You think you’ve had to sit around at the airport for a lengthy stretch? Try living there. Actually, on second though, don’t. You might end up a police target like “homeless chef” Anthony Delaney, a Brit who reportedly lived, ate, slept and showered in London’s Gatwick Airport for three whole years. Airport authorities were none to pleased with their guest, who now faces charges for violating the court order banning him from the airport.

Homeless Chef Lived in London Airport for Years

Today, Gadling pointed us to UK company PHD Mountain Software and its new Design Your Own Sleeping Bag Service, a D.I.Y. approach to securing the perfect sleep sack for your outdoor adventures.

Okay, it’s not D.I.Y. in the strictest sense of the word(s). A computer does the work, but you get the joy and satisfaction of knowing your powerful little brain sat in the captain’s chair (mwuh-ha-ha-hah). You can choose bag length, width, minimum temperature (-58F to 50F), fabric, color, fill weight and comfort features like mummy hoods, collars, cords, draft tubes, etc. Great for gear nerds and outdoorsy travelers with a penchant for extreme activities (like those nutty ice climbers), as well as people who happen to be taller or otherwise larger than average (NBA players, you can finally camp comfortably). Cost depends each bag’s specifications, but expect to drop upwards of $500.

Design Your Own Sleeping Bag

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.)