Hotels.com gets a makeover

Inspired by our article about cycling through New Orleans, we list some of our favorite bike tours in Chicago, D.C., New York City, and San Francisco in this Web-exclusive roundup. Let us know about your favorite bike tours! New York's boroughs, demystifiedIt's not easy to choose between Bike the Big Apple's six standard five-to-seven-hour tours; they all take in a great range of neighborhoods often skipped by typical tourist routes. Our favorites might be the Bike and Bite Brooklyn options, one of which weaves through Manhattan's Lower East Side, across the Williamsburg Bridge into Brooklyn, and through the hipster and Hasidic Jewish sections of Williamsburg—stopping at a local brewery and a gourmet chocolate shop—before returning to Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge.Bike the Big Apple, 877/865-0078, toursbybike.com, from $65 with bike, helmet, and two guides; kids 8 and older pay the same price.Chicago north and southBike and Roll Chicago's daily three-hour tours wind through the Windy City's residential streets, alternating between routes in the city's North and South sides. The first itinerary takes you north to the mansions of the Gold Coast, through Old Town, along the tree-lined lanes of Lincoln Park, and past Wrigley Field in Lakeview. The second route ventures south to the Mies van der Rohe-designed Illinois Institute of Technology, around the Prairie District, past Clarke House (the city's oldest house), and into Chinatown. Bike and Roll Chicago, 888/245-3929, bikechicago.com, from $30, students from $25, with bike, helmet, and guide; these tours are not recommended for children younger than 13-years-old. Animal attractionsIn addition to daily tours of Capitol Hill and the national monuments, Bike the Sites offers a tour through D.C.'s leafy, residential northwest quadrant that is inspired by the picture book Wild Washington Animal Sculptures A to Z. Beginning with a walking tour of the National Zoo, the Wild Washington itinerary continues by bike along Rock Creek Park and the National Mall, while a guide explains all the animal references found in the monuments and fountains along the way. Bike the Sites, 202/842-2453, bikethesites.com, $40, with bike, helmet, snack, water, and guide; kids under 13 not recommended. Around the bayViews of San Francisco from the Golden Gate Bridge are already impossibly picturesque, but at the pace of a bike, they might be even more so. Depending on your pedaling speed—and whether you want to take a ferry back from the quaint towns of Sausalito or Tiburon—the route from Blazing Saddles' Fisherman's Wharf location, across the bay and back again, can take as little as three hours. Unlike the above tours, this one is self-guided. Blazing Saddles, 415/202-8888, blazingsaddlessanfrancisco.com, day rental $28, kids $20, with helmet and map; ferry from $7. Related Story Rolling by the River: Bike Tours of New Orleans Photo by Tim Parkinson via Flickr and Creative Commons.

I need to fly to Boston, one-way from New York, with my pug, Howard. Adam has a conference there and we're meeting him. Any guesses which airline we'll be flying? On Delta, it'd cost me $324.01 (or $218.50 if I fly through Charlotte and Atlanta), and that's not including the $75 fee to carry Howard on. The fare is $74 on JetBlue, not including the $50 pet fee. When you buy a ticket for a pet, you have to call, and normally JetBlue charges $10 for buying a ticket over the phone--but they waive it when you're buying a pet ticket, because there's no way to do it online. (That's just common sense, but I can't count the number of times airlines have charged me a fee even though I had no alternative way to avoid it. And I don't know if Delta would charge for the phone call, since I had to hang up after waiting on hold for 10 minutes.) I've never found JetBlue's loyalty program very appealing, but when the airline has service and prices like this, it doesn't have to be. My loyalty continues to grow anyway.

Make the Most of Your Time on Earth, which hits bookstores today, pools Rough Guides travel writers' favorite one-of-a-kind experiences, from punting on Cambridge's River Cam to voyaging into Antarctica's unknown. It's the latest in an increasingly crowded field of aspirational, list-like guidebooks (Patricia Schultz's 1,000 Places to See Before You Die being one of the originators). We've selected one of Rough Guides' picks--a pilgrimage to an ancient, mind-bogglingly ornate temple in Tamil Nadu, India--to whet your appetite. Read the excerpt by clicking here. Related: A New Generation of Hip Guidebooks and Trips That Can Change Your Life: Immerse Yourself in India.