Fire sales! How cheap can travel go?

Already a popular site for hotel reviews, TripAdvisor hopes to win an even broader fan base with its new airfare-search tool. What makes its tool such a welcome innovation is that when you search for plane tickets, the site fetches fares that include the estimated fees for baggage and other services in the price quoted. The site trolls the Web for fares from airlines and online travel agencies, such as Travelocity. Users are then forwarded to those sites to make their purchase. Even though its owned by Expedia, only TripAdvisor is including fees in its fare quotes. Let's hope that Expedia offers fee-inclusion as an option soon, too. Ditto, for other travel websites. Having the fee info included in fare quotes makes it easier for travelers to make apples-to-apples comparisons.

Once practically unheard of, sandwiches have become increasingly popular in France. About 5 million of them were downed last year, an annual jump of 11 percent, according to an AFP wire service report. Baguette sandwiches are favored two-to-one over hamburgers. The French are finding it increasingly difficult to justify the time and expense of a sit-down lunch. Restaurant groups say that the sit-down trade has plummeted by about 20 percent, while "le sandwich ne connait pas la crise"—the sandwich knows no crisis. A more optimistic explanation for this migration is that French sandwiches are getting better. Years ago, the offerings of the average baker included jambon beurre (ham and butter), jambon fromage (ham and cheese), and crudité (meat dressed with lettuce, tomato, hard-boiled egg and a half-gallon of mayo). These choices were sometimes salvaged by the star quality of the baguette, but on the whole they left the repeat eater uninspired. My French friend Caroline had nearly given up on the genre, finding sandwiches altogether "too depressing." She and her compatriots are beginning to come around now, seduced by a slew of interesting options. What you'll find at the average corner bakery today is much more creative than even five years ago. This is great news for travelers who only want to take a short break between monuments. While the options are much-improved across the board, some of my favorite hand-held lunches have been perfecting their craft for a few years: • Cosi (54 rue de Seine, 6th arrondissement) With its unhurried pace and opera music, this left-bank shop bears little resemblance to the American chain it inspired. Sandwiches like the "Ines" (ricotta, walnuts and Parma ham) are made outstanding by fresh hot focaccia. Need a place to nibble? The Square du Vert Galant—a triangle-shaped park just below the Pont Neuf—is a calm oasis in tourism central. • Coquelicot (24 rue Abbesses, 18th arrondissement) This bakery in Abbesses is famous for their Piccola baguette, and the pear-walnut-Roquefort sandwich makes me swoon. I take my lunch over to the lawn sloping down from the Sacré-Coeur—it's a great place to gaze out at the city. • Eric Kayser (87 rue d'Assas, 6th arrondissement) Widely regarded as one of the top bakers in the city, Kayser makes feast-worthy sammies on stellar fresh bread. Combined with a dessert from his renowned pastry kitchen, it's a steal for only €7 ($8.75). Walk your treasures over to the Jardin Marco Polo where you'll find a pretty fountain and plenty of benches. MORE Our Affordable Paris series

Two Web tools got small, but nifty, enhancements in the past few weeks. Google's Street View feature has let users of Google Maps view stitched-together, ground-level imagery of several cities worldwide since May 2007. But Google's specially equipped camera vans only capture major landmarks from a limited perspective. So beginning last week, Google began adding photos submitted by users of the photo-sharing site Panoramio (which is particularly popular among Europeans). The result is a richer way of exploring major destinations. For example, if you go to maps.google.com and search on Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, France, you'll see a Street View image of the Cathedral in the main screen. Look to the right of the screen for a subset image that's captioned "User Photos." Click, and you'll be taken to a photo gallery of images of the landmark. Alternatively, travel to Rome virtually by clicking on the photo gallery, here. Meanwhile, Flickr, Yahoo's photo-sharing service, has created a fun time-waster for people who'd like to see images of what's happening around the world in ordinary people's lives. For free, the Flickr Clock presents along a timeline a list of user-uploaded photos filmed around the world. Click on 10:10 a.m., for instance, and a window will expand to show a short video taken at that moment. I recently saw Japanese schoolkids marvel at falling snow from their perch in a skyscraper and a happy scuba diver off the coast of Fiji admire a giant sea-bass. Viewing the clock is free at flickr.com/explore/clock. Non-paying members will receive two free video uploads per month, which can be uploaded to the Clock pool of images.* *(This post was republished at 2:25 p.m to clarify Flickr upload rules.)