Homewood Suites: Going the Extra Mile

In a happy story, the AP recently reported on I Found Your Camera, a website that since February has been posting "orphan pictures" culled from lost digital cameras and memory cards in hopes of getting them back to their owners. The founder of the site, Matt Preprost, was inspired by an entry on PostSecret about a camera found at Lollapalooza. So far, I Found Your Camera has had a high success rate—out of the 60 or so lost devices whose photos have been posted, 8 have been reunited with their owners. I Found Your Camera isn't the only site that's worth visiting if you've lost (or found) a camera. The forum site Camera Found is straightforward, with more in the way of camera descriptions and less in the way of random strangers posing in front of soon-to-be-misplaced lenses (this also makes it much less entertaining). Places like Craigslist probably remain the most popular place for attempting a reunion between people and their property. (Making sure that all electronics have a cell phone number or email address on them couldn't hurt either.) Of course, when it comes to the Internet and strangers, all bets are off. Back in 2006, "Judith," a woman who had lost her camera while on vacation in Hawaii, created a (now offline) blog that tried to re-create her shots using the many Hawaii photos uploaded onto Flickr. She got lots of press, and was even contacted by the Canadian family who had found the camera. Unfortunately, when push came to shove the finders showed themselves reluctant to actually return the lost property—they said that their 9-year-old son just loved it too much to part with it. The family, dubbed "the Bad Samaritans" by the website Boing-Boing, did return the expensive camera in the end, but only after the National Park Service and border control got involved. Goes to show that blogs can't solve every problem in the world, I suppose.

Like my fellow Englishmen, I always love to see Americans visit my country. But over the years, I've seen travelers (not just Americans, admittedly) make some "mistakes." [Please note that I use the word "mistakes" lightly. I don't mean to criticize—I like you! I'm just trying to help you have a better trip.] Here are 4 "mistakes" Americans often make when visiting the United Kingdom. 1. Rushing around like a chicken with its head cut off. Americans characteristically bring with them lists of cities to visit that are greater than the number of days they have to spare. Slow down! Remember to allow enough time to chill out. Better to see three cities in 3 days each than skim the surface of nine cities, with one rushed day in each. Or if you're only here for, say, four days, consider limiting yourself to visiting a few key sites. (And really, you ought to consider staying longer than three or four days. We're a wonderful country, and there's more to see here than London.) 2. Visiting Stonehenge. By all means, call in if you're passing, or head there if prehistory is your passion. But I’m always amazed that this disappointing collection of stones next to a highway is on visitors' must-see list when it wastes a whole day from London. As a child I walked amongst the stones, but now you can only view from behind a barrier. Visit Stratford upon Avon, Bath, Oxford, Cambridge, or York instead, there's so much more to see. 3. Taking suitcases on the Tube. As a London commuter, I've regularly seen tourists struggling up steps in the Underground with bags almost bigger than they are. As a general rule for traveling in Europe, pack light, and take a tube of travel wash instead of a different set of clothes for each week. Backpacks are pretty painless on trains or Underground, and for just walking down the street. Wheeled cases, of course, regularly have to be hauled up and down steps. And to avoid utter misery, don't bring big luggage on the Underground during rush hour, which covers a broader swaths of time than you may expect. 4. Pre-booking absolutely every activity and train ride. Stay flexible. When you're there, you may not feel like that fifteenth side trip in a row, after all! For all but long distances, affordable U.K. train tickets don’t need to be booked in advance, you can buy them on the day, and go where you feel like going that day. (See my earlier blog entry.) —Mark Smith, blogging for our Affordable Europe series. Editor's Note: We originally mistitled this post "6 travel mistakes to avoid." Our apologies; there are clearly only four.

If you're looking to cut costs in Europe (and who isn't anymore?), you may have considered hostels. One resource, europeanhostels.com, has been around since 1999. The site has just been overhauled and now has 38 European city guides, editor's picks, hostel photos, user reviews, and travel forums. One thing that's really cool is the site search: Sort results by popularity, price, or user rating. Plus, you can view all locations on a Google map (also sorted by price) to find the location that fits you best. Other sites, like hostelworld.com, have maps, too, but they aren't sorted by price (and they're not nearly as user-friendly). A little leery of hostels? One comforting thing is the fact that the "editor's picks" are vetted by the guys at europeanhostels.com—unlike hostelworld.com, which is simply user generated. EARLIER Family travel: Hostels that are unhostile

With gas prices soaring, will summer road trips remain an American rite of passage? After all, a lot of gas was burned up across Route 66 in Jack Kerouac's On the Road. Steve Kark, writing for the Roanoke Times, thinks that such "journeys of self-discovery" are getting almost too pricey to be possible: "As the price of gas surpasses $4 a gallon, it's clear that a long summer road trip would be beyond the means of all but the most dedicated of today's young wanderers.... I doubt gas will ever again be so cheap that most of us won't have to think twice about whether we can afford that next long road trip." That may be true, but I'd like to think that road trips won't die out entirely. I loved (most of) the long, long drives my family took out to the Rockies when I was little. And one of my favorite college memories was piling into a car with a buddy and driving from Madison to visit a friend working on Mackinac Island, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. (By the way, the Upper Peninsula is one of Budget Travel's recently recommended road trip itineraries.) Even if you have a trunkload of gas money to re-create On the Road, it would hardly be the same. A lot has changed since 1957, when the book came out. Last summer, the LA Times came up with a list of some of the differences between America-then and America-now. For instance, back in '57, the ink on the contracts for the few first interstate roads was barely dry, and only 40 McDonald's existed. Now, there are over 45,000 miles of interstate, and thousands of McDonald's. To get a sense of what remains of Route 66, check out this Fodor's intro. Helpfully, the federal government has declared more than 100 roadways to be "Scenic Byways" because of their "outstanding archaeological, cultural, historic, natural, recreational, and scenic value." Some of the roads trace Billy the Kid's routes in New Mexico. Others tear through the Florida Everglades. Find a list at byways.org. I bet that most road trips can be both inspiring and affordable if you trim your ambitions a bit. Rather than aim to hit both coasts or a dozen states, focus on a smaller area. Plan to see it more thoroughly. A slower pace will boost the odds you actually talk to some locals—perhaps at one of the roadside eateries recommended by Roadfood.com. Many of Budget Travel's own road trips take that tack. Will your road trip plans change this year? Feel free to post a comment.