Pick a winner on bed-and-breakfast site

Bed and Breakfast.com, www.BedandBreakfast.com, has announced its latest award winner bed-and-breakfast in several categories.

The Best Overall category is awarded by region. Winners included A Storybook Inn in Versailles, Ky.; High Pointe Inn, West Barnstable, Mass.; Inn at Harbour Osage Beach, Mo.; and Garden Gate Getaway in Millersburg, Ohio.

Other categories had single winners, including Best Breakfast: Kingsley House, Fennville, Mich.; Best Hospitality: Jackson House, Railroad, Pa.; Best Value: Avenue Inn, New Orleans, La.; and Best Gardens: Greystone Manor, Bird in Hand, Pa.

Other categories included Most Romantic, which was won by Mount Victoria, Eureka Springs, Ark.

Do you need to get away but only have a weekend to spend? All Getaways.com, www.allgetaways.com, offers help in choosing and planning weekend getaways as well as family vacations, adventure tours and other options. Each getaway it describes makes up a travel guidebook chapter with all you need to know, from how to get there, to lodging, to where to eat and what to see and do. The site has 10,000 travel guides with detailed itineraries for the U.S., Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean.

The weekend getaways include adventures, such as Mountaineering in Alaska, Alaska Bear Viewing and Safari, Country Inn Weekend Biking Trips and Colorado Rafting, Mild to Wild. Other getaway options are not as adventurous. To find yours, click on the state you prefer, then on the Getaways and Day Trips section. One example the site offered when I chose Indiana: Elkhart and Amish Country.

For cooking, sipping and tasting tours of Italy, go to Savory Adventures.com, www.savoryadventures.com, which offers tours such as Wine and Truffles in Italy in the Piedmont region famous for its white truffles, and a culinary experience on the Amalfi Coast, renowned for baroque villas and local sweet lemons.

Gourmet Safari, www.gourmetsafari.com, offers culinary tours in Italy, including a six-day experience entitled Farmhouse Cooking in Tuscany, as well as cooking programs in Morocco, Spain and New Zealand.

In print

If you are planning a safari, get a copy of "Botswana: Okavango Delta, Chobe, Northern Kalahari," by Chris McIntyre, a UK tour company operator who specializes in Southern Africa. It is now out in a second edition, in paperback. It is in the Bradt Travel Guide series, and priced at $24.95.

Many of the best safari and game-viewing sites are in the northern part of Botswana, where the Okavango Delta wetlands spread water over the land at certain times of year when waters to the north rise. This book covers this and other areas and explains what you will see and where, from hippos and their families in the Delta, to elephants near Chobe, to impala in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and bushman rock art at Tsodilo Hills. The text is quite detailed on how to spot and identify various plants and animals, how to choose from the various safari camps and lodges, how to understand the culture and background of the local people and where to enter the country for a safari tour.

There also are critical safety and health cautions and advice, such as the best precautions against malaria.