AP - When the economy was booming, many hotel companies began building new properties. Some of those are opening now, resulting in a 2.5 percent increase in hotel room supply this year, just as demand is dropping by around 1 percent or more, according to Jan Freitag of Smith Travel Research.
AP - The film camera sweeps across the landscape, taking in flat plains, gushing waterfalls and a dusty country town. The color is brilliant, the emptiness palpable, and the soundtrack soars dramatically as warplanes bomb a city.
AP - On a recent morning, Jeffrey Scott stood before Marie Laveau's tomb in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, shaking a cigarette out of a pack to leave as an offering for the famous voodoo queen.
AP - Feeling bad that you can't afford a vacation? Travel books with titles like "Don't Go There!" and "I Should Have Stayed Home" may make you feel better. For $15 or so, you'll get a laugh out of vacation horrors that you'll be happy to miss.
AP - A world financial center packed with investment bankers sounds like a tough place to do on a budget, but even the Manhattan of continental Europe has secrets aplenty for the thrifty.
AP - If you show up in Berlin strapped for cash, you're in good company. The German capital's sizable student population, high unemployment rate and swelling starving artist contingent makes penny-pinching a citywide obsession.
AP - Places that presidents call home often become major tourist attractions, from estates at Mount Vernon and Monticello, to Hodgenville, Ky., where Abe Lincoln's log cabin once stood, to Bill Clinton's boyhood home in Hope, Ark.
AP - The resort of Les Arcs in the French Alps is renowned for having 125 miles of runs, a lift system that can take you all the way up to 10,500 feet, and a cable car that connects to the neighboring valley of La Plagne.
AP - Stuck at home Thanksgiving weekend? You don't have to travel to New York's Rockefeller Center to enjoy ice skating or see the Rockettes. Holiday train rides, Christmas shows, lighting displays and outdoor winter fun like ice skating and skiing all begin in late November in many localities. Here are some details.
AP - Chicago's tourism Web site beckons visitors to "experience the city the Obamas enjoy." The Illinois Bureau of Tourism plans to launch a three-day getaway promotion featuring Barack Obama sites. And tour guides at the Old State Capitol in Springfield may get new scripts to stress two important speeches the president-elect made as a candidate.
AP - Home to the world's most famous soda and largest aquarium, Atlanta is also known for its rich Southern history. The sprawling city offers many attractions and museums, but the best of Atlanta is tucked away in neighborhoods that can be enjoyed for little to no cost.
AP - Far from the crowds and traffic snarl-ups on South Africa's much-vaunted coastal Garden Route is a stunning inland alternative that showcases some of the country's most fabulous scenery but passes unnoticed by most visitors.
AP - Mike and Pam Mathe have taken their two kids skiing at Beaver Creek over Christmas break each of the past five years. It's their one big vacation for the year, a luxurious respite from Mike's traveling, the kids' classes.
AP - The curtain rises in a quaint theater in Prague's tourist hub to reveal a sly libertine nobleman, Don Giovanni, trying to carry off Donna Anna, the Commandant's daughter.
AP - For waves of immigrants to America, the Lower East Side was a place of first settlement. Today it's one of the city's trendiest neighborhoods. But it's easy to find history amid the hipsters.
AP - The Texas Hill Country, where tiny towns dot a landscape of wildflowers and cedar trees, is the kind of place where cowboys and sommeliers meet. Sometimes literally.
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