Sherman's Travel

Global travel exposes us to all sorts of cheap eats from roadside vendors, whether it’s dim sum in Hong Kong (pictured) or a hot dog with relish in New York City. New this spring, Peninsula Hotels gives a nod to this kind of street food with room service menu items called “Snacks & the City.” I’d like to know what street cart is selling Kobe beef sliders and fries with truffle aioli, like the Peninsula Chicago, or filet mignon hoagies, like the Peninsula Beverly Hills. Also, buying “street food” on the street is kind of half the fun. However, as room-service options these new menu items really spice up the old stand-bys, and they’re available 24 hours a day (unlike food trucks or street vendors). Though prices may start at street fare levels of around $3, expect to pay a bit more for many of the upscale delights. Participating Peninsula locations also include Shanghai, Beijing, Tokyo, Bangkok, and Manila. www.peninsula.com

Use our Travel Search price comparison tool to find the lowest rates and travel deals on hotels, flights, vacation packages, and more.

Techies, rejoice: Staying in Silicon Valley just got even more geek-friendly. Palo Alto’s 4-star Garden Court Hotel is offering a deluxe experience for the visiting entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and inventors amongst you – or for those who just want to pretend to be for a weekend.

For a mere $1,229 (chump change, after your start-up’s IPO), book the Geek Chic Package and receive first-class treatment including a stay in a deluxe king room, access to the most high-tech products in the market, an aerial tour of the city, and – really – a massage for your tired text-messaging thumbs.

Enjoy a $50 credit for a power lunch at an upscale Italian restaurant, then use the hotel’s custom GPS route offering a day of geekdom saturation, including visits to HP, Google, Apple, and Facebook. You’ll also receive a 45-minute aerial tour over Silicon Valley in a 246-foot-long Zeppelin, one of the largest commercial blimps in the world. To top off the tech-filled day, enjoy two complimentary tickets to the Computer History Museum, and receive two free museum t-shirts to fully elevate your geek swagger.

If you have any time left to actually spend in your room, you could use it to play on your in-room iPad 2 (so 2011) – but you probably already have the new iPad anyway.

Book the Geek Chic Package online with the Garden Court Hotel, or call 650-322-9000 for more information.

Use our Travel Search price comparison tool to find the lowest rates on flights to the Palo Alto and Silicon Valley area. For even more trip-planning information, see our California destination guide.

As the weather heats up here in New York, we’re all eager to get outside and enjoy the sunshine. Since camping isn’t exactly a safe idea in Manhattan (and now that Zuccotti Park is no longer an option), glamping – or glamorous camping – might be your best bet for sleeping under the stars. And now the Hyatt 48 Lex is the most recent hotel to latch onto the glamping trend.

Starting Memorial Day Weekend, when most people will flee the city in favor of Long Island beaches or the Catskills, the boutique hotel is offering intrepid urban campers one of eight terrace accommodations, complete with bedding, pillows, and blankets.

The Suite Glamping Package also comes with books, lanterns, a bottle of wine, a picnic backpack from Dean & Deluca, and a skyline view. And if you get too cold (or the car horns and sirens prohibit you from catching some shut-eye, it rains, or you realize you can’t see the stars because of the bright city lights), your empty suite or penthouse room awaits your return.

The package starts at $509 per night in a Terrace Studio, or $2,500 per night for the penthouse suite.

See our New York City destination guide for more trip-planning information, then use our Travel Search price comparison tool to find the lowest rates on flights.

Pillow butlers and pet whisperers may be the “essential” hotel amenities of the day, but we just discovered an even more indispensible service. With the April 17th tax deadline looming, the Andaz Wall Street hotel in Manhattan is providing accounting services from April 8-15, when an Accountant in Residence will help file taxes for the hotel’s most procrastinating guests, free of charge.

The Andaz Wall Street, located in the heart of the financial district, will host CPA Marc Albaum in their spacious Buttonwood Suite, which has a separate working area. “Only two things are certain in life,” stated Albuam in a press release. “I can help you with the other one.” Albaum has appeared as a tax expert on The Late Show with David Letterman and has been quoted in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

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Napa Valley isn’t just known for its wine. While most people are diving into a bottle of merlot, guests at Calistoga Ranch are invited to dive into the blue-green water of California’s Bodega Bay and search for Abalone mollusks while snorkeling alongside seals and seabirds. Abalone, a species of marine gastropod mollusk, populate the quiet bays and coves of Northern California and have a beautiful, mother-of-pearl interior.

The diving trip begins at 9am with a beachside lecture about the equipment, how to identify the shellfish, techniques used to reach them, and proper methods to remove them from the rocks. After diving for a couple of hours – in a group of no more than 10 people, led by an experienced diver – there is an instructional session about how to clean and cook the Abalone. Following the dive, guests can either take home the Abalone or cook them during the Abalone feast, where you can cook up your bounty by the beach following the dive. It should be noted that there are legal restrictions on harvesting Abalone based on their size, so you may not be able to cook up everything that is gathered.

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Every so often, an email will pass through our inboxes that makes us question, is this real? We have encountered romantic proposal packages, ‘round the world jaunts aboard private jets, hotel stays in swanky penthouses, and more, all worth your offspring’s college tuition. Or a second mortgage. We rounded up a few of the most expensive, over-the-top packages because sometimes it is fun to imagine, what if? Or maybe you have a thick stack of G’s burning a hole in your wallet waiting to be spent.

Take, for instance, this luxury cruise from Six Star Cruises: Coming in at a whopping 1 million pounds (that’s $1,581,000), this trip cruises around the world for 124 days (which breaks down to 8,000 pounds a day). For UK residents, the voyage begins with a helicopter transport from your home to a London airport (in transit, enjoy caviar worth 4,000 pounds per kilogram and sip on 1,000-year-old tea leaves) before you board a private charter to Los Angeles. The ship stops in 28 locales, including French Polynesia, New Zealand, Tasmania, Australia, and South Africa.

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Pet-owners often opt to leave their beloved furry friends at home while traveling – most hotels and restaurants just aren’t interested in the potential for extra mess and noise complaints, and it can make traveling with pets more difficult and at times much more expensive. Some hotels, though, are making an effort to be not only pet-friendly, but to make your pet’s stay as comfortable as yours, with amenities ranging from doggie yoga to pet room service menus. Most recently, we’ve found great new pet amenities at the Pierre in New York City, the W Hotel Los Angeles-Westwood, and the W Scottsdale.

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Now that we’re all trying to avoid that dreaded checked-bag fee, the maximum three-ounce allowance for carry-on liquids means that favorite perfumes and colognes might stay at home during quick trips and getaways. Rosewood Hotels & Resorts has solved this particular problem, however, with another niche butler service. After checking in at any participating Rosewood location, call up the Fragrance Butler, who will bring ten fragrances on a silver platter, free for your use.

The fragrance menu varies by location, as the scents are meant to reflect the area in which the hotel is located. You can use Tom Ford Black Orchid at the Hotel Georgia in Vancouver, Hermes Eau des Mervailles at New York’s The Carlyle, or Givenchy Dahlia Noir at The Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas. Fragrance Butlers are also available at Crescent Hotel in Dallas, The Mansion on Peachtree in Atlanta, the Inn of the Anasazi in Santa Fe, Rosewood Sand Hill and CordeValle in California, and Al Faisaliah Hotel and Rosewood Corniche in Saudi Arabia. With Rosewood having your olfactory needs covered, you can let your three-ounce worries waft away.

Use our Travel Search price comparison tool to the lowest rates on flights, hotels, cruises, and other travel deals.

Having a hard time scoring tickets to the hottest runway shows this season? The Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel, on the Upper East Side is there to help you get behind the curtain to see the designers, models, and celebrities this season. From February 15 – 18, the “Inside Haute” experience teams up with Kathleen Beckett, former fashion magazine guru who has worked at Vogue, Glamour, and Elle, to name a few, to take guests on a whirlwind tour of NYFW, dining with designers and attending much-anticipated shows.

For $6,000 per person, fashion mavens can sip on cocktails with Zac Posen at his studio, lunch with Donna Karen, take tea with Nadja Swarovski, enjoy some bubbly with Sophie Theallet at her atelier, go backstage after two top-secret shows to meet the designers, get a private look at the fashion archives at the Met (after the Alexander McQueen exhibit, we know the archives will be full of exquisite pieces), and enjoy lots of champagne, fashion, and glamour.

To book this package, contact Jamie Beck at The Carlyle Hotel, at 212-570-7127. Rooms are not included in the package; rates start at $795 per night.

Be sure to check out our New York City guide, and then use our Travel Search price comparison tool to plan your trip.

Two hip hotels in Vancouver and New York City are offering guests special access to romance-dedicated staff this February. With Valentine’s Day around the corner, look to OPUS Vancouver’s Cupid Concierge, who’s tasked with bringing customized romantic experiences to guests on request – primed for those who could use a little help ramping up the romance department. Or, bunk down in NYC’s 70 park avenue, where an on-site Romance Sommelier is encouraging ladies to borrow from the British tradition of proposing to their fellas on Leap Day (February 29), with special month-long planning services available to help women pop the question in style. Read more