Beijing's new rail and subway lines

Seems like every time I listen to the news or read a paper, there's a story about how kids never get outside anymore. My first reaction is to wax nostalgic. When I was a kid, my friends and I were always running around outside, only coming in when our parents called us for dinner—and dashing back out the second we were excused from the table. Of course, kids have about as much interest in hearing those stories as they do in imagining life without the wii game console. Fortunately, there are people out there who are much better than I am when it comes to motivating kids to get off the couch. In Stephanie Rach-Wilson's DVD set Into the Great Outdoors, kids can follow the adventures of Chipper, a suburban squirrel who goes on a camping trip and learns all about banana slugs and bears, how to stay safe in the woods, and why it's important to respect nature. Travelocity is doing its part, too. After conducting a family-travel poll and finding that families with children are visiting national parks and other nature sites much less frequently than previous generations, the company created a microsite with tips about how to incorporate nature into family vacations. The site offers nature-oriented trip ideas, itineraries for road trips through scenic parts of the country, national park suggestions, and tips from Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods and father of the term "Nature Deficit Disorder." What I like about both Into the Woods and the Travelocity's microsite is that they’re not overly structured. They encourage kids to get outside, but after that, the kids are on their own to explore, invent games, dig in the dirt, whatever—which just seems refreshingly old-school. Will getting outside get kids to drop wii forever? Doubtful. But playing virtual bowling won’t be their main source of exercise anymore, and that's a good start.

Carnival Cruise Lines has announced a couple of notable changes. Carnival now plans to sail cruises year-round from Baltimore, says Travel Weekly. This is part of a years-long trend in changing ship itineraries so that more cruises depart from ports you can drive up to instead of have to fly to. Here are the details for five of these "drive-up ports" (Seattle, San Diego, Galveston, Norfolk, and Bayonne, N.J.) Carnival has also begun experimenting with an open-seating dining program. Part of the dining hall on the Legend will allow passengers to eat whenever they want within a range of hours without having to make reservations, sit with a group at an assigned time, or be assigned to a specific table. If the program is popular, open-seating will become standard within roughly a year's time.

Inter-city bus travel has risen 13 percent in the past couple of years, says a study by DePaul University. Our nation is witnessing its first increase in inter-city and inter-state bus travel since the 1960s. Plusher seats, cleaner bathrooms, free WiFi service, and more consistent schedules are all helping to improve the tarnished image of bus travel. In previous blog posts, our readers have applauded this trend. Leading the low-fare bus revolution has been Megabus, a sister company of Gray Line New York Sightseeing. At the end of May, Megabus launched service between New York and Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Buffalo, Atlantic City, and Toronto. It uses double-decker buses on some of its routes. NeOn, a new twice-daily bus service operated by Greyhound between New York and Toronto, recently launched with fares as low as $1 each way. BoltBus, a new discount express service operated by Greyhound, recently launched with fares as low as $1 each way between New York City and D.C. (We tested the service and liked it.) Even Greyhound's traditional service is seeing a rise in ridership after a couple of years of declines. Greyhound now lets passengers pay $5 each way for priority seating on bus rides departing from more than 30 cities. LUXURY BUSES: NOT A CONTRADICTION For more of a splurge (while still saving money on alternate transportation options), try LimoLiner between Boston and New York City. We recently blogged about our test drive of the service.

Every travel organization seems to release an annual list of up-and-coming destinations. But the survey by the World Travel & Tourism Council, an association of top travel executives, may be the most authoritative because it answers the all-important question: Where’s the money going? Each year, the association ranks the spots with the fastest growing travel and tourism earnings, factoring in various economic trends from immediate visitor spending to government investment. This year, WTTC researchers have their money on Macau—a Chinese territory west of Hong Kong. Tourism to this small peninsula could jump by 22 percent this year, thanks largely to its gambling industry. Here's the full list of up-and-comers: 1. Macau 2. Angola 3. Montenegro 4. Seychelles 5. Libya 6. China 7. Azerbaijan 8. Romania 9. United Arab Emirates 10. Chile The researchers say you should keep your eye on a slightly different set of countries for sustained tourism growth predicts between now and 2018 (in order of the most promising growth prospects for tourism): India China Libya Vietnam Montenegro Romania Macau Namibia Croatia Czech Republic EARLIER Americans will visit China and India in record numbers this year