Read a menu, book a table online
If you plan to dine out in your next city destination, you can see menus of all levels of restaurants at Menu Pages, www.menupages.com, which covers more than 25,000 restaurants in eight major cities.
While you can search for your favorite menu item, such as lamb shanks or steak tartare, you can't book a reservation. For that, go to Open Table, www.opentable.com, where you can enter a date and time and get a free, confirmed reservation instantly online.
Bike Riders, www.bikeriderstours.com/home, is a Boston-based bike tour operator that offers luxury bike tours with interesting themes. It has won awards such as one for Best European Island Adventure given by Island Magazine in April this year for its Cucina Rustica in Sicily tour.
For more than 15 years the company has given guided bike tours of New England, Canada and Europe, culinary guest chef trips in France and Italy and self-guided tours in Europe. In the last few years, it has added walking and hiking tours and family biking adventures.
The tours focus on food and an out-of-the-bustle ambience, whether it's a hiking trip to Maine or a self-guided biking trip to Ireland.
Checking the Cybercruises site often, www.cybercruises.com, will make you an expert and go-to person on cruising among your friends. It tells when and where the latest ships will be launched, what new itineraries various cruise lines will be offering, and reveals special cruise offers long before you'll read about them elsewhere.
Sign up for its e-zine and you'll find articles such as Low Carb Cruises; Five Things to Know About Cruises (If You've Never Cruised Before); and Cruise Lines Go Overboard for Holidays on the High Seas (What to Expect If You Cruise Over Christmas or Other Holidays).
If you are planning a city trip and need help booking a hotel room at a good value, try Quikbook, www.quikbook.com. Enter the city, neighborhood and dates you want and selections will come up, or go to the Short Cuts section and select from Green Hotels, Smoke Free and Spa Retreats, among other options.
Rates are excellent: The Best Western President in New York City is listed as starting at $139, and there are other cities, with Orlando rates starting at $38, San Francisco hotels starting at $85 and Boston's rooms starting at $90. Sign up for its E-mail Deal Alerts if you want to keep track of good values in various cities. All the major travel magazines have praised Quikbook's rates and service.
In print
"Best Food in Town: The Restaurant Lover's Guide to Comfort Food in the Midwest," by Dawn Simonds, is published by Emmis Books at $14.99. Each chapter features approximately 30 restaurants serving some style of Midwest comfort food. It is not a recent book, as it was published in 2004, but it offers a chapter for each town, with the best restaurants for your taste in each, so it's worth taking the time to check the restaurants' Web sties for updates.