Last month, JetBlue garnered attention when it offered a unique travel deal. Unlimited flights for a month, to the tune of $599. That’s an amazing bargain, so it’s no surprise that many people took advantage of it. What’s interesting is how this opportunity has evolved into something of a challenge for some travelers. CNN.com ran an article today profiling Clark Dever and Joe Dinardo, who are stretching their travel dollar as far as it will possibly go and testing their endurance on a month-long JetBlue jaunt.

Dever and Dinardo, friends since their freshman year of college at SUNY Buffalo, will be crisscrossing the country, spending only 12 hours in each city before heading back to the airport and jetting to their next destination.

They plan to make the most of the deal, hitting at least 29 cities in the 31 days by taking about 49 one-way flights.

They’ll sleep during their flights, take showers in gyms, and have friends work as runners to swap out bags of clothes when they fly into New York’s JFK airport about every three days.

Groups have sprung up on Twitter , Facebook and other social networking sites so that “Club 599″ can share itineraries and even plan to meet in certain locations. If you weren’t able to take advantage of the JetBlue deal, it’s fun to follow along online and see what others have planned. A quick look at the Club 599 page on Facebook turns up some ambitious plans.

Going from Oakland to DC the 10th-13th. Then from Oakland to NYC to Jamacia to NYC to St Maarten to JFK to Oak, 18th-27th. And hopefully squeeze in a trip to New Orleans in the end, and anything else we can fit. I’m looking forward to wearing my Club 599 shirt.

Anyone flying with a bike? I plan on biking in every city that I visit. My itinerary currently includes Raleigh-Durham, Washington DC, Portland ME, Las Vegas, NYC, Chicago, Boston. Seeing if anyone else wants to ride.

In addition to domestic destinations, JetBlue also flies to the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and South America. This provides quite the getaway opportunity for those who had the time and inclination to book this deal. Enjoy your trips, Club 599!

I love TripAdvisor. I think it’s an invaluable resource for travelers. Prior to booking a hotel or B&B, I always check feedback from other travelers at TripAdvisor. It’s important to me to determine what kind of experiences other people have had at a particular property, since glossy hotel websites don’t tell the whole story. I also occasionally like to read recent reviews of hotels where I have stayed in the past. I like to know if hotels have improved certain aspects of their service, renovated their rooms, changed their restaurant menus, or offered new rates and packages. It’s also interesting to see what others experienced at the same place I stayed. The degree to which reviews vary is really incredible. One person may wax poetic about a hotel, calling it the most romantic and lovely place they’ve ever stayed, while another thought it was bug-infested and noisy. If you cancel out the five star reviews and the one star reviews, the truth generally lies somewhere in the middle.

I also find great humor in some of the reviews. People are willing to forgive almost anything if you give them a good meal or a view of a body of water. For instance:

Other than just the asbestos and mustiness and [bad] mattresses, I really did love the place.

Their pancakes with honey and lemon for breakfast were to die for, so we forgave them for charging the entire bill (room + dinner) in dollars without asking.

I don’t think that being inappropriately billed or being assigned a room filled with asbestos and mold is acceptable, no matter what kind of breakfast or view I get. So, while TripAdvisor is a great resource and has always been helpful to me in determining where I stay, take some of those reviews with a grain of salt.  Booking a hotel is always something of a gamble. What’s great about TripAdvisor is that it helps increase your odds of finding a place that is truly welcoming and special. Take the time to read through the feedback carefully and you’re more likely to have a great experience on your next trip.

I can see you shaking your head in disagreement. What’s so interesting about a Four Seasons hotel, you ask. Why would I pay that kind of money for a hotel room, you ask. The answer is simple. The Four Seasons Tented Camp Golden Triangle (FSTCGT) is not merely a hotel. It’s an experience.

When your flight arrives at the airport in Chiang Rai, you’ll be met in baggage claim by a Four Seasons representative, who will whisk you and your luggage into a waiting Land Rover. You’ll be offered cold towels and chilled drinks. An hour later, you’ll reach the Ruak River, where you’ll board a long tail boat and take a 20-minute ride to the FSTCGT main entrance, lounging on cushions and listening to a host tell stories about your surroundings. Staff members will greet you at the boathouse, where you’ll be presented with fresh coconut and given a tour of the grounds. As you step inside your luxurious accommodations you’ll marvel at the simple yet elegant decor and attention to detail. You’ll gaze out the window at the jungle, the river and the mountains of Laos in the distance and wonder at the beauty of your surroundings. At night, you’ll sink into the hammered copper bathtub in your tent and sigh with total contentment. No, this is not simply a hotel. It’s like taking a journey to a different world.

There is no shortage of activities at FSTCGT. The most notable is the opportunity to interact with the elephants that live on the grounds. These elephants are at FSTCGT in the care of the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation. This foundation rescues abused, abandoned, and overworked elephants from all over Thailand and rehabilitates them. Mahouts, who are specially trained in the art of elephant care, will teach you to bathe, feed and ride the elephants. You’ll learn simple commands to guide the elephants and take a trek through the jungle on the back of one of these gentle creatures, definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Guests can also take boat trips on the Mekong River and go on jungle treks. The FSTCGT staff will arrange riverbank picnics, Thai cooking classes, fishing trips, excursions to local villages and just about anything else your heart desires. Back at camp, you might find that dinner has been moved from the dining room to a nearby campfire ring so that you may enjoy superb cuisine under the stars. You can end your day with an in-room massage, private yoga class or a trip to the pool for a rejuvenating dip.

A trip to FSTCGT does not come cheap. It’s a trip you’ll have to save your pennies to take. While you may initially balk at the price tag, once you’re ensconced in your tent you’ll know that this experience is worth every last cent. It’s the perfect blend of luxury and service in a rustic environment, a secluded getaway in the midst of Thailand’s natural beauty. It’s not just a hotel. It’s an adventure you’ll remember for the rest of your life.

Google representatives are currently in France capturing photos of Paris and Versailles for their Google Maps “street view” feature. If you’re not already familiar with this, it allows anyone viewing a street map of Paris to also see an actual image of that location. This should come in handy for anyone traveling to Paris later this year. It’ll also provide endless voyeurism opportunities for those of us who want to revisit Paris on our computers any time of year.

If you’re heading to Paris soon, The Boston Globe has a great article about how to experience the city on a budget. It offers tips on how to stay and eat on the cheap and features a number of different restaurants where you can get food and wine for a bargain. While some things in the city are certainly worth splurging on, I’m a big believer in the idea that some of the best things in Paris are free. Personally, I love to check out the wonderful bookstores, walk along the Seine and picnic in any of city’s the lovely parks. It’s a memorable way to spend time in Paris, and it won’t set you back many Euros.

Air France is currently offering airfare specials to Paris if you travel during the months of September or October. Los Angeles to Paris starts at $341 (one way), Boston to Paris is $332 and Washington, D.C. to Paris is $278. So, now just a few keystrokes stand between you and gorgeous Fall days in the City of Light. Get going!

I had an interesting conversation with a friend this morning about flying. She does not enjoy flying and prefers to travel by car or train when possible. She said that in our social group, she sometimes feels like she’s the only one who thinks twice about winging off to some distant destination. I assured her this wasn’t the case and ‘fessed up: I don’t like flying, either.

I’m not one of those unlucky folks who needs medication to get anywhere near an airport and spends the entire flight white-knuckled with fear. It’s simply more of an anxiousness that’s probably familiar to many of you. I love to travel. I anticipate my trips for months and spend endless time planning itineraries and researching destinations online. However, the night before a trip, it sinks in that I’m going to have to fly the next day and all sorts of scary thoughts fill my brain. It usually makes for a sleepless night. Airports don’t bother me more than they bother anyone else. At least I have the injustice of interminable security lines and horrifyingly unhealthy food options to distract me there. I’m usually fine once the plane is actually in the air, it’s the anticipation that I find nerve-wracking. Sitting on the tarmac, waiting out a departure delay is particularly unpleasant.

As I told my friend this morning, longer flights on intercontinental trips are preferable to me. I find that there’s usually less turbulence when you’re up higher on a larger jet. It’s those shorter flights in smaller planes with all their jostling and shaking that make me nervous. Every time I take a quick, 45-minute flight to Las Vegas or Phoenix I end up having a conversation with God while the plane dips and weaves. With the exception of one memorable landing in London during a rough storm, I’ve never had a difficult flight to an overseas city. Will I continue to fly? Absolutely. I love traveling too much to let the fear of flying deter me and the destination is always worth the anxiety of getting there.

Those of us who don’t enjoy flying tend to find a way to cope with the experience.  A glass of wine and a good book usually put me at ease.  Ambien is a good friend to many skittish fliers.  Others put together calming iPod playlists or do breathing exercises.  I also find it helpful to focus on the end goal: exploring someplace new and exciting.  Flying makes this possible, so this is why I fly.

Monterey, California

I’ve just returned from a week in Northern California. My husband, son and I spent a couple of days in Monterey followed by several more days in Healdsburg, on the Russian River. This was not a far-flung trip for us as both destinations can easily be reached in a day’s driving (although perhaps I should not call seven hours in a car with a toddler easy). However, it was a vacation that was much needed and we were all looking forward to a change of scenery.

My husband and I both spend a lot of time online, both for personal and professional purposes. We have Blackberries, Twitter accounts and endless Facebook contacts. Normally, we spend our trips blogging, emailing and constantly keeping in touch with family, friends and co-workers. On this vacation, we decided to try something a little radical for us and unplug. As much as possible, I wanted to stay off the internet and the phone. I wanted to live in the present, read some books and really engage with my son. I actually left my computer at home, a decision that gave me heart palpitations for the first hour of the drive north. While we weren’t entirely successful in our quest (I did go online to get directions to a restaurant and briefly check Facebook status updates) we did a pretty good job of avoiding our technology for a time. I have to say, it was nice. Instead of blogging while the baby napped, I took walks around town, read a couple of novels I’ve been meaning to get to, and had some good conversations with my husband.

There’s been a lot of talk about whether live blogging your trips is actually conducive to meaningful travel. My opinion is that it really depends on the circumstance. When I travel alone, I completely enjoy blogging or journaling. I find that it helps me to absorb the experience and pass along something substantial about that experience to others. However, when traveling with a group of family or friends, I sense that blogging prevents me from taking part in some essential activities, be they social or individual. This hit home for me on a trip to Ireland a few years back, when I was sitting in in our room with my computer while my husband relaxed downstairs in front of a peat fire. By spending all that time on the computer, I was missing the opportunity to have another, more memorable experience. Now, I try to ask myself whether it’s really necessary to turn on the laptop. More often than not, I find that it isn’t.

I went to Positano, on Italy’s stunning Amafi Coast, in 2003 to attend a wedding. This is one of my favorite photos from that trip.

It’s no easy feat getting to Positano. After arriving in Rome, I took a train two hours south to Naples, then transferred to the Circumvesuviana, the local train that runs between Naples and Sorrento. This took about forty-five minutes. In Sorrento, you can catch a public bus or hire a taxi to take you over the hill and along tiny, winding roads clinging to the edge of a cliff. A taxi will take approximately thirty minutes and a bus anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour, depending on how often it stops. By the time I actually arrived in Positano, I felt as though I’d come an extraordinarily long way.

Positano is a small community, overrun with foreign tourists in the summer, their Fiats and hired taxis jamming the one road in and out of town. In the spring and fall, it’s a little quieter, although still a very popular destination. The city is completely vertical, rising from the smooth stone beach to the top of the cliffs above. If you want to go somewhere, you have to climb. I’m pretty fit, but after a few days in Positano my knees were killing me and my calves begging for mercy. You can always spot the locals when in Positano. They’re the ones with the incredible quadriceps, bounding around you and up the stairs like it was a simple Sunday stroll. Even the little old ladies boast the legs of career athletes.

One of the fun things about exploring a city connected by stairways is that you’re always discovering some new nook or cranny. Each day, when I descended from my hotel to the beach, I would find a new set of stairs tucked away between buildings. Each passage seemed to eventually lead to the shore, but via a completely different route. Walking down unfamiliar stairwells, it was a delight to come upon a potted olive tree, a cat sleeping on a sunny windowsill or a mysterious red door leading someplace unknown. Each turn in the descent would reveal some new sight. One set of steps cuts behind the city’s large drainage pipe at the spot where it spills out into a small stream below, so you feel as though you’re walking behind a waterfall. Another expels you onto the front steps of a little church, allowing you to peek in and see services in progress. While Positano’s postcards invariably feature its gorgeous waterfront, its tile-domed cathedral and the views from its many balconies, my most enduring images of the city are of the stairs leading up, down and all around the town.

In short, a musician named Dave Carroll was traveling with his band, Sons of Maxwell, on United Airlines last year. Baggage handlers at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport damaged Carroll’s beloved and expensive Taylor guitar. Carroll spent nine months communicating with United Airlines about the damage to his guitar, but they denied responsibility and offered him no compensation for his loss. In frustration, Carroll wrote a song called “United Breaks Guitars” and released a video on YouTube. Within days, the video had been watched more than three million times. News outlets and blogs took up the cause and United Airlines took notice. Perhaps suspecting that they had a PR nightmare on their hands, United got in touch with Carroll and finally offered to reimburse him. Carroll has declined their offer and says he plans to make two more videos about his experience with United.

My first thought upon learning about this story was that it’s sad that one would have to write a song, make a video and get millions of people to watch it in order to get a little respect from an airline. As most of us who travel frequently know, customer service at domestic airlines is not up to par. They will get you there in one piece (although perhaps not your luggage) but they do not expect that you’ll enjoy the experience.   Didn’t have a great time on their airline?  They really don’t care.  Unless you write a hit song and get three million people to watch it and forward it to their friends.

However, upon closer inspection of the story and a perusal of United Airlines’ “delayed and damaged luggage” policy, it appears that Carroll would have been eligible for at least some reimbursement after the incident were it not for one important factor.  He did not report the damage to the airline with 24 hours.  It very clearly states on United’s website that the damage must be reported within 24 hours and a written claim must be submitted within 45 days.  This is where we all can take a lesson from this story.  When you are traveling, you need to be aware of the policies of the airline on which you’re flying.  If you have a problem en route, whether it be a canceled flight or lost luggage, make sure that you follow the airline’s instructions to the letter.  This is the surest way to positively resolve your situation.

The economy sucks. We could all use a getaway to take our minds off our shrunken 401k accounts. But nothing too expensive, please.

Take advantage of a fare war going on right now and book discounted airline tickets for Fall travel. Southwest Airlines has domestic flights starting at $49 (one way) listed on their website, including tickets from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and Seattle to Oakland. Boston to Chicago is $89 each way. Flights must be booked by July 30. Looking for some sun as the weather cools off? Discount carrier Air Tran features airfare specials starting at $39, but they must be booked by July 28. A flight from Baltimore to Miami will cost just $69 each way. Newark to Cancun is $87 each way. Order up a mojito or margarita and extend your summer by a precious week or two.

Look for other airlines to drop fares in response to these sales. If you prefer to fly a particular carrier, make sure that you’ve signed up to receive their email announcements. That way, you’ll be able to act quickly when they announce sales. Another great way to keep abreast of airfare specials is to follow hotels and airlines on Twitter. They often mention upcoming sales there even before they list them on their websites. All the major airlines have a presence on Twitter these days, including Southwest, United, American, and Jet Blue. Now, I know plenty of people who are mightily resisting the rise of Twitter, but if it helps you take an inexpensive, much-needed vacation this Fall, do not resist and allow yourself to be assimilated!

“Staycation” is a word that’s gotten a lot of use lately. It assumes that, given the dismal state of the economy, people are choosing not to travel and will stay home instead. While I certainly relate to the belt-tightening that’s going on all around the country right now, I think there are many ways to travel cheaply without literally staying in your own backyard. For example, instead of going to Europe or Hawaii this summer, my family is driving to Northern California and renting a house in wine country. It’s a real getaway with plenty of recreational and sightseeing possibilities for a quarter of what we’d have spent for a far-flung vacation. However, many people are not traveling at all right now. What to do when you’re stuck at home all summer?

Check out your local Chamber of Commerce. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce has recently announced that many local attractions will be offering 50% off deals for Los Angeles-area residents. If you live in Los Angeles, Ventura, Riverside, San Bernardino or Orange counties, you will pay half of what it usually costs to visit the Hollywood Wax Museum, the Ripley’s Believe it or Not! Museum or take a tour of the Kodak Theatre, among other options. Now, most locals are reading this and shaking their heads. You’d never be caught dead at a wax museum, right? But how many times do you actually get out and see the tourist sights in your city? Have you ever looked at your city the way tourists from all over the world view it? It could actually be pretty educational. Also, with these new discounts, you could ride a Starline double-decker “hop-on, hop-off” bus all around town, then have a spa treatment at the Renaissance Hotel and then go see a movie at the Egyptian Theatre for half price. That doesn’t sound so bad.

Keep in mind that most cities have attractions that are free or offered at reduced rates on a regular basis. For example, here in Los Angeles, admission to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is free after 5:00pm and on the second Tuesday of each month. The Huntington Library and Gardens has a “free day” on the first Thursday of each month. Admission to the Griffith Observatory and Getty Museum is always free. You’ll just have to pay for parking. There are also plenty of parks, canyons and beaches nearby where you will pay no admission fee. So, if you’re staying home this summer it doesn’t mean you have to sit around at home. Get out and explore your own backyard. Find out what your city has to offer and get to know the place where you live.