A roundup of the good, bad and bizarre from the world of travel

THE WORLD ON YOUR SHOULDERS
Every year, travelers in the know save tons of money by ignoring the major holidays and doing their traveling during the so-called “shoulder seasons.” Maybe you could be one of them.

The upcoming Labor Day weekend marks the official end of the summer vacation season and the start of what the travel industry people call the “shoulder season,” those months just before and after a major holiday, when business falls like a bungee jumper for airlines, hotels, resorts, cruise ships.

To compensate, they all start offering deals, sometimes outrageously good deals, in the hope of drawing business. An airline seat or a hotel room sold at a loss, they figure, is still better than letting it go empty.

Want to see some destinations where going off-season can save you some bucks this fall? The folks at Smarter Travel offer up a set of five.

Some locales have their own shoulder seasons, dictated by climate. Take New Orleans. Summer is actually a time when tourism falls off in the NOLA. A daily regimen of searing heat and thick humidity will do that to a place.

Which explains how you can find four-star New Orleans hotels offering room rates in the dead of summer for less than $100 a night. Heat, humidity? That’s what snowballs, beer and frozen daiquiris are for.

Or what about Buenos Aires, Argentina or New Zealand, both well below the Equator. Their winter is our summer, their spring our fall. A little careful shopping could yield some great trips.

Spring and fall also are when cruise lines move their ships to and from warmer waters on one-way sails called “repositioning cruises.” They can last from a week to a month, like the traditional transoceanic liners, but at a fraction of the cost.

Work and school schedules are the biggest obstacles to shoulder-season travel, but if you can manage it, you can nail down some serious travel bargains.

And when your friends ask how you did it, you can just smile — and shrug your shoulders.

And now, here’s this week’s Digest:

from the New York Times
People are starting to travel again, but they’re doing it cheaper.

from the New York Times
Our old-fashioned credit and debit cards, with their magnetic stripes, are running into problems overseas, where many countries are shifting to cards embedded with digital chips and require a PIN to use.

from Smarter Travel
The attack on vacation rentals continues. It’s spreading now to San Francisco. More and more, you can expect to see cities cracking down on private renters and trying to force travelers into pricier hotels.

from Smarter Travel
You paid for those frequent flier miles you haven’t used yet. Don’t let them expire.

AFRICA
from The Standard (Nairobi, Kenya)
Freretown is a Kenyan community with a unique and bittersweet legacy. The usual African tribal rivalries don’t exist here. Why? Because its inhabitants are all the descendants of freed slaves.

AMERICAS
from the Los Angeles Times
Are you a fiend for chocolate? Do you love great cities? Leave your heart — and your diet — in San Francisco next month.

from the Guardian (London, UK)
Easy rider in Central America: Simon Gandolfi takes you around Guatemala by motorcycle.

ASIA
from the Guardian (London UK)
Looking to do a little shopping for electronics, or just see what happens when geeks take over an entire neighborhood? Bargain + bizarre = the Akihabara district of Tokyo. They call it Electric Town for more than one reason.

EUROPE
from the Daily Mail (London, UK)
Did you hear the one about the Mile High Pickpocket? No joke. Wonder why all those little padlocks are dangling on my carry-on backpack? Now you know!

from the Guardian (London, UK)
Ever play in a treehouse when you were a kid? In Sweden, they have treehouses from grown-ups — and they are nothing like your childhood.

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