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  Travelwise

  Matchmaking: the right luggage for your trip

  Need new luggage? For a time, the only criteria in choosing a bag was business or pleasure trip. Now it’s all about where you are going and why. Schuss off on a ski trip lugging a 27-inch upright, even with beefy wheels? Don’t think so. And a petite duffel, no matter how stylish, just won’t do for that two-week cruise. How to find the perfect match between traveler and suitcase? We asked travel goods experts to give us their recommendations.
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  Travel Q&A

  Keeping up with Anthony Bourdain

  Though he has built a career on his steely, iconoclastic worldview, Anthony Bourdain always follows one rule wherever he travels: Never reject a host’s hospitality.
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  Las Vegas

  Casino bosses transform Sin City into Club City

  To step into club XS at the Wynn Las Vegas is to enter the dreamscape of a modern artist with fetishes for gold and bronze and bodies in motion.
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  Travelwise

  New apps and websites are helping travelers cut hotel costs

  When Amy Eisen originally booked a weeklong vacation to celebrate her 30th anniversary, she was looking at a $3,749 hotel bill.
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  What’s new

  Swept up in a Toronto summer

  Streetcars, sharks, pandas and parasols.
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  Showtime: Virginia

  Battle flags are centerpiece of Gettysburg show

  Among the swords, the wrenching letters home and the haunting photographs in the Museum of the Confederacy’s new exhibit on Gettysburg, few artifacts embody the ferocious battle more than the eight battle flags recovered from the bloodied fields where Pickett’s Charge was fought.

• Travelwise

  6 things to ask before booking a summer vacation

  It’s mid-May. Memorial Day and the end of the school year are in sight. Suddenly, you’re thinking about a summer vacation. A little advance planning — and some insider tips — can save you a lot of money. Whether you’re booking airfare, a car rental or a hotel room, there are questions you should ask first.
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  Maryland

  Harriet Tubman and the road to freedom

  Thorns pierced my slacks as I traipsed through the swamp, dodging deep, inky pools and thanking my lucky stars that it wasn’t mosquito season. The sign at the start of the two-mile Tubman Road Trail, in Maryland’s Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, had warned us that the “trail may be wet” — but that was an understatement. As my boyfriend and I finally reached higher ground, I marveled at how Harriet Tubman had negotiated such a challenging landscape in the dark of night while shuttling people out of slavery on the Underground Railroad in the 1800s.

• Switzerland

  Creativity flows along a rugged river

  Tourists have long flocked to the big-name designer stores along Zurich’s ritzy shopping street Bahnhofstrasse, situated on the left bank of the postcard-pretty Limmat River. But another river flows through the city — the rough and rugged Sihl, once a spectacle for its bouts of heavy flooding that lasted until the early 20th century. Today, it’s a lure for nature-loving residents thanks to the paved Sihlpromenade walking path lined with magnificent plane trees.
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  Family travel

  Her favorite travel companion: Mom

  When I was young, I learned a lot about travel from my mother. She taught me how and what to pack. She taught me to keep a travel diary to record my memories. And most importantly, she taught me how to power-sightsee.
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  5 Free Things: Chicago

  Plenty to do on a budget in Windy City

  It may be known as the Windy City, but cash need not go flying from your pockets when you visit Chicago. From the shores of Lake Michigan to the sidewalks along the Magnificent Mile, you can find outdoor family fun along with history and culture without spending a cent. Here are five free things to do.
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  The Gatsby era

  Top 5 places to relive the 1920s

  With Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby opening, there’s no better time to celebrate the spirit of the Roaring 20’s. From speakeasies to grande dame hotels, the members and editors of VirtualTourist.com have chosen the “Top 5 Places to relive the 1920s.”
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  Shopping trips

  Vintage fashion comes out of the closet in Singapore

  Past the coffee-shop uncles having a good smoke with their afternoon beers, past the giant table of pungent durians, past the provision shop shelves crammed with sponges, incense and other household necessities, my friend Jeanette and I strolled, keeping our eyes peeled for signs of fashion.
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  Bed check: Philadelphia

  A stately hotel, at your service

  Good service at a hotel takes effort, teamwork, savvy — and no small amount of intuition. Sometimes it’s a matter of having so many things taken care of in advance, a guest hardly knows what he’s missing. Sometimes, if all those things aren’t quite in place, or there are hiccups, it can mean listening well, rolling with the punches and responding quickly to make amends, no matter what.
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  Tokyo

  Artist’s Tower of the Sun to open permanently in 2014

  The interior of the late artist Taro Okamoto’s Tower of the Sun, a rarely seen part of the symbol of the 1970 Japan World Exposition held in Osaka Prefecture, is to be permanently opened to the public as early as fiscal 2014.
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  Shopping trips

  I left my cash in San Francisco (but I brought home a lot of clothes)

  Can you call it a pencil skirt if the person wearing it is shaped more like an eraser? Shopping really isn’t my strong suit.
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  Greenland beckons

  Ilulissat, with 4,600 residents and one extremely active glacier, is a UNESCO World Heritage site
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  Travel dilemmas

  Expedited passports are available

  A reader recently expressed concern about having her passport at the ready. Called away for business travel, often at a moment’s notice, she couldn’t risk having that document out of her control for the four to six weeks that regular passport processing would take. Further, a passport with less than six months until its expiration could present a problem in some countries that insist on a document that has at least three and sometimes six months until it’s out of date. The solution: an expedited passport.
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  Thailand

  On Ko Phangan, the party goes on

  It’s the night after the big one, and the moonlit lanes are full of zombies. Clutching half-empty water bottles, shuffling through the puddles with muddy flip-flop feet, the rain-soaked backpackers of Hat Rin look pale beneath their suntans. From the gray bags beneath their eyes, it’s clear that they haven’t slept. And neither, it seems, have the locals.

• Travelwise

  How to protect yourself on the road

  In Paris, employees at the Louvre museum walked off the job earlier this month because so many pickpockets were preying on visitors and staff.

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