This weekend: Have an "accidental encounter" at Luminato

Now that I've (barely) recovered from macaron withdrawal, I wanted to thank you again for all of the advice you gave me before I left! Your comments were a great resource as I scouted the city. I made it to almost every macaron establishment mentioned in the comments, so stay tuned for a slide show about my discoveries and preferences. I'd particularly like to thank Melissa Whitlock, Kate, Anne Buchanan, and Melissa for their suggestions. Thanks also to Elizabeth and Margaret for their recommendations of Studio 28 and all the movie houses along rue Champollion. When I stopped by the Art Deco movie palace Grand Rex, though, I learned it has the unfortunate habit of dubbing all its international films into French. I'll be compiling all my research into an article about destination-worthy cinemas throughout the city. Carla in Canada suggested a great falafel place in the Marais—thank you! L'As du Fallafel was fantastic. Let me follow that up by saying that if you continue along rue des Rosiers towards the Pompidou center and make a right at Rue Vielle du Temple, you'll spot a park lined with benches a little bit up on your left; it's an ideal falafel-eating location. I'll be posting more Paris articles and hotel reviews in the coming weeks—plus, if all goes well, a somewhat-humorous video about trying to crack the Velib bike system. As always, your feedback is welcome!

United will stop accepting cash for passenger purchases of cocktails or other items on flights, relying on credit and debit cards instead It joins other plastic-only airlines, such as Frontier Airlines, US Airways, and Southwest Airlines. [Chicago Tribune] US Airways says soda, juice and coffee will be free again for domestic coach passengers Thanks to protests by travelers like you. [Chicago Tribune] New fees might mark the end of free airport shuttle service by hotels Officials in Washington, D.C. are proposing that "area hotels pay a $2.50 fee every time a hotel shuttle picks up passengers at Ronald Reagan National or Washington Dulles International airports." If successful, other airports around the country might force hotels to charge for shuttle service. [The Fairfax Times via Upgrade: Travel Better, republished at 4:24 p.m. with a clarified attribution] First train to Laos A new bridge across the Mekong means that you'll be able to take a train to Laos from Thailand—a 2-mile trip. [Guardian] Machu Picchu: See it before it's gone [The Expeditioner] TripAdvisor's Dirtiest Hotels "Motels of horror" and others. Mapping L.A. It takes a village to figure out the city's neighborhoods. [L.A. Times]

Enterprise, Alamo, and National rental car brands today announced that they've added 5,000 hybrid rental cars to their fleets. Enterprise now has 7,000 nationwide, while Alamo and National now have 2,000 between them. Enterprise now owns more of the green rides than any other rental car brand, offering them at 80 locations nationwide. Locations include, per the press release: California (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and Fresno); Colorado (Denver); Florida (Orlando, Tampa); New York (Albany, Ithaca, New York City, Rochester); Oregon (Eugene, Portland); Texas (Austin, Dallas, Houston); Atlanta; Boston; Detroit; Minneapolis; Philadelphia; St. Louis; Seattle; and Washington, D.C. The company deserves kudos. But there are a few caveats to note. Search wisely. The best ways to find hybrid rentals from Enterprise or another car rental company is directly on its own reservations site (such as enterprise.com). Of all the travel booking sites we tested, Kayak has the most comprehensive listings, but you’ll only see an option to filter your results for hybrids if the cars are in stock at that specific location. No hybrids? No link. Expedia only promotes hybrids from Fox Rent-a-Car, which has a couple hundred hybrids in the western U.S. (see expedia.com/gogreen). Travelocity doesn't have "hybrids" as a "car type" option on a drop-down menu. Orbitz does offer the option to request "hybrids" as a "car type" from its drop-down menu, but it doesn't include hybrids from Enterprise, the company with the largest inventory. Book way early. Since most rental-car locations have only a few hybrids if any, it helps to make a reservation at least a month in advance. In California, which is flush with the eco-cars—and we hope a harbinger of the future—a couple of weeks should suffice. Expect to pay a premium. An average $20 per day more cost is typical. To quote Kermit the Frog, "It's not easy being green." While Enterprise has boosted its hybrid inventory, overall the green vehicles make up a skimpy 1 percent of its total fleet—though that small percentage is typical for the industry as a whole. Why are there so few hybrid rentals? I posed that question to Neil Abrams, president of the rental car consulting and research firm Abrams Consulting. He explained that rental car companies do not have an advantage with volume pricing buying power. Hybrids are so popular that car dealerships can get bigger margins selling directly to retail customers instead of rental car companies. Meanwhile, automakers are willing to offload lots of standard engine cars and below-market prices to rental car companies— to clear their inventories. So a rental car company can buy (to pick a random example) a Mercury Sable for, say, roughly $12,000. They can rent it for a year. Then they can re-sell it as a used car, and make money off the resale. This is far more profitable to them than buying a hybrid car, which might cost $20,000. They'll have to charge far higher daily rates to customers to try to recoup the cost. But in an era of under-$2-a-gallon gas, not enough customers may rent the hybrids at the premium prices.

A price war on transcontinental flights out of Los Angeles Airport may be brewing between JetBlue, American, United, and Virgin America. This morning JetBlue Airways announced that it will begin daily non-stop service to Boston and New York's Kennedy airports in late spring out of LAX's terminal 6. Virgin America says it will start nonstop flights between LAX and Boston next month, with round-trip fares starting at $300 plus taxes and fees—the expected introductory price for JetBlue's tickets. Tickets will go on sale on Feb. 4, for flights on the 150-seat Airbus A320 jets, at jetblue.com and travel agencies.