World's scariest airport landings

In 2008, there are several ways for culture hunters to sample Europe's fine arts without spending a eurocent. Austria: Mostly Mozart Amadeus aficionados should head to Salzburg for the free Mozart Sound and Film Museum, featuring set designs, costume samples, and a film loop of scenes from Amadeus. It's the free part of the International Mozarteum Foundation. mozarteum.at Brussels, Riga, Rome, Madrid, and Paris: White Nights These capitals have become famous for their annual White Nights festivals. Between the end of August and early September, each city hosts an all-nighter with free admission to museums, theaters, and various concerts. Berlin, Prague, and Zürich host similar Museum Nights. Info available from each city's tourist office and tourism websites. Denmark: Strokes of Genius A brilliant intersection of old and new, the Statens Museum for Kunst is the best source for free art in Copenhagen. Through August, you can watch restorers touch up a masterpiece by Jacob Jordaens, if you beeline for Room 272. smk.dk England: The Royal Treatment London's Royal Academy of Music offers free concerts by its students nearly every day. You may earn bragging rights years from now when you can say that you saw the next Yo Yo Ma or Callas when he or she was still in school. ram.ac.uk/events France: Très Chic! Paris has many free museums, such as the Museum of the Romantic Life and the Paris Fashion Museum. Recently, the Museum of the Middle Ages (musee-moyenage.fr) and Museum of Arts and Sciences (arts-et-metiers.net) also became free—through at least June 2008. Germany: Support the Opera—Have a Beer In Munich, beer was taxed to fund the Bavarian State Opera, and now the opera company is giving back to the community with outdoor "Opera For All" concerts. On July 12, the company will perform works by Charles Ives and Franz Schubert on the Marstallplatz, which is a secluded square behind the opera house. The next day, you can watch a live simulcast of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin on the house's façade. bayerische.staatsoper.de The Netherlands: Going Dutch In Amsterdam, take a lunch break with the national orchestra, which plays free Wednesday concerts of (primarily) classical music September through June, from 12:30 to 1:00, at the concert hall Het Concertgebouw. concertgebouw.nl Portugal: Dollar Power Lisbon is one of the cheapest capitals of Western Europe, relatively speaking. While most of Lisbon's museums are free on Sundays, the Berardo Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art is free seven days a week through 2008. museuberardo.com —Olivia Giovetti, who runs the fabulous blog, High Culture on a Low Budget. MORE TIPS Read Budget Travel's April article "10 Tricks to Beat the High Cost of Europe", which goes beyond common sense advice for truly creative solutions. The article's by Tim Leffel, who runs the blog Cheapest Destinations. PHOTO Courtesy of SantaRosa Old Skool's via Flickr and Creative Commons

We've learned that the Southern California CityPass will go on sale at West Coast supermarkets in June. The news made us wonder: Is the Southern California CityPass worth buying? And what would be the cheapest way to buy it? The CityPass covers three days at Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure Park as well as one day each at Universal Studios Hollywood and SeaWorld San Diego. You can also spend a day at either the San Diego Zoo or San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park. The CityPass costs $247 per adult and $199 per child ages 3 to 9, at participating theme parks. (That's a slight increase from last year's prices.) You can also buy it at citypass.com, but you'll have to add at least $10 for shipping. Budget Travel Tip: Members of Costco can buy the CityPass for $217 per adult and $174 per child at Costco.com. If you’re ambitious enough to visit all the parks within 14 days, the CityPass can save you up to $99 per adult or up to $87 per child as compared to buying tickets at a main gate to a participating park. Even if you buy tickets online, you’ll save up to $79 per adult or $67 per child. Buying through Costco.com and occasional sales on coupon-code sites such as FatWallet.com, can save you even more. But back to the news: Folks in Northern California will see the pass for sale at full price many Safeway grocery stores, starting in June. Residents of Las Vegas, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, and Seattle will also start seeing the pass for sale in many local grocery stores, such as Albertsons, Bashas’, Fry’s, and Kroger.* Southern Californians should still look for resident-only promotions (available at Disney Stores and at disneyland.disney.go.com) that can tack on an extra day in the price of a single-day ticket to either Disneyland or California Adventure. CityPass should be in select supermarkets shortly after the new Simpsons Ride debuts at Universal Studios Hollywood. Opening in mid-May, the six-minute virtual ride will feature Homer, Bart and 27 other Springfield characters—including Krusty the Clown—projected on an 80-foot domed screen. Woo-hoo! *CLARIFICATION 3/24: Due to an editing error, this post originally said that Albertsons, Bashas’, Fry’s, and Kroger can be found in Northern California, when, in fact, they are located elsewhere.

Debuting this month, Ideo Eyes Open dispenses with the trappings of the standard city guidebook. Its New York City edition, for instance, doesn't have a subway map or info on the city's most famous museums. Similarly, its London edition points you to the city's hottest cupcake shop rather than Big Ben. What the guidebooks do offer is plenty of captioned photos of spots where you rub shoulders with locals, not tourists—as this slide show illustrates. In a surprise move, the photos are cross-indexed by theme and activity, somewhat like a children's Choose Your Own Adventure book. You're encouraged to flip back and forth through different pages, discovering boutique shops, foodie havens, and similar venues. The Wapping Project is a "former hydraulic power plant turned gallery/restaurant/bar hybrid." thewappingproject.com. Another tip from the book: Instead of taking high tea at a hotel lounge, go to Coffee@157. The light fixtures in this coffeehouse, as you can see, are made of to-go cups. Outside, a yellow vending machine dispenses artworks for less than 5 pounds each. (011-44/20-7729-2666). The Ideo guidebooks will amuse some travelers and irritate others. The only way to find out how you'll react is to take a peek for yourself. We've collected a bunch of images and tips from the London edition in our slide show. Images courtesy of Ideo Eyes Open: London by Fred Dust and Ideo (Chronicle Books), recently $16 at Amazon. EARLIER Paris through a photographer's eyes.