Nice country.

There’s not much for visiting travel writers to say that their readers can’t find already in dozens of books penned about the soggy city’s hidden delights. Instead, I offered an argument: New Orleans beats the craps out of over-hyped Las Vegas for adults planning a bachelor/bachelorette party or a weekend away from the kids. I think the piece came together well, and I also cut a video of a few highlights, embedded here.

Although you can’t book from the site directly, Matrix 2 now gives the savvy searcher yet another way to compare prices when planning flights. The results shouldn’t be that much different than, say, Kayak, but its interface is a little more flexible. The biggest advantage I can see is that it can find prices for multi-stop trips (sometimes called “open-jaw” itineraries by travel agents), which can be difficult to plan on other sites.

Looking ahead, the next big advancement from online flight booking is likely to come from a startup called Everbread that claims its search tool will access low-cost carriers that currently don’t allow online travel agencies to access their flight data. Theoretically, that would allow an American to book the cheapest transatlantic flight possible to a European city paired with a $30 Ryanair ticket to his or her final destination on the continent. I’d be interested to see how they pull that off, though, given that Easyjets of the world tend to depart from smaller airports that service fewer large carriers.

In just a week the show’s toothy celebrities, sponsors and hundreds of volunteers erected a 4,500-square-foot manse that towers over the working-class neighborhood below it. While it’s hard to thumb your nose as anyone giving free stuff to a deserving family, my editors and I wanted to know how much it will actually cost to live in a house that size once the camera crews leave. The total, including taxes maintenance and insurance, turned out to be roughly $22,000 per year.

Probably the most notable (from a name-dropping perspective, anyway) is a Q and A with Bill Maher I wrote for Houston magazine’s January issue. You can check it out here.

As you might expect from a professionally opinionated comedian, he’s a good interview. In the 15 minutes of phone time I had with him, we managed to touch on Houston nightlife, Twitter and the evils of plastic.

If you need to get in touch, my e-mail and cell number remain the same. My new business line and address are:

Peter Barnes
P.O. Box 2784
Charlottesville, VA 22902
(434) 293-7783

I’ll be sure to post some pictures of C-Ville and the Blue Ridge Mountains I now call home. Meantime, have a great afternoon.

Things I hate about backpacking dares to cast its witty scrutiny on the travel topics that don’t make it into the photos we share back home.

Don’t get me wrong – backpacking is a worthy pursuit and then some. But every so often, it’s liberating to commiserate with the author’s descriptions of insufferable bragging bunkmates, intestinal crises and drunk Australians.