Pick the brains of avid travelers

VirtualTourist.com, www.virtualtourist.com, is a members-driven site where more than 900,000 avid travelers write reviews of their favorites places, hotels, restaurants and things to do.

Each member has a section where reviews and photos are featured, plus a map noting where the person has traveled. Members have posted more than 1.5 million travel tips and nearly 3 million photos. You can become a member of this virtual travel community free by registering online.

On the home page you'll find a list of Top Spots, listing favorite cities, such as New York, London, Paris and San Francisco, with a link to hotels and things to do for each. Members certainly get around beyond those well-known places, too. One of the recent reviews covered a hostel in a historic prison in Napier, New Zealand.

Site administrators poll members regularly regarding their travel preferences, and recently learned that more than half of members were planning more eco-tourism, or environmentally sensitive trips, in the next year.

The last time I checked, the site had posted 599 new tips in the previous 24 hours, on topics including restaurants in Donegal, Ireland, and Pasadena Calif., as well as things to do in Paris and warnings of dangers on Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, where member Kelly Woo says a lion fish can ruin your day.

Hundreds of Forum postings arrive each day on the site, too, including questions and answers on "Privacy in Malaysian hotels," and a note on the "Backpacker's train to Machu Picchu."

In print

Every year Lonely Planet asks its writers and editors what the hot destinations and travel experiences will be in the next year. The result is a book "Lonely Planet Blue List." The new edition is subtitled "The Best in Travel 2008."

This book is a collection of lists, with short blurbs about why you should go where and what to do for a peak life experience. Go Lists are broken into countries, cities and regions. They include such countries as Armenia and Bhutan, regions such as Northeast England and the Bolivian Amazon, and cities such as Fez, Morocco and Apia, Samoa.

Another large section includes "Bluelists" for Best-value Destinations, including the Dominican Republic and Laos; for "Now You See Them, Now You …" for disappearing treasures, such as Tuvalu and Timbuktu; a bragger's list of experiences titled "I've Been Everywhere, Man," which includes "Tram Hopping in Australia;" "Cities on the Rise," which includes Helsinki, Finland, and Palm Springs, Calif.; "Five Places to Lose Yourself," including Mumbai, India; and "Five Places to Lose Everyone Else," which includes the tiny Shetland island of Foula, Scotland.

The Bluelists don't stop here; they include such oddities as "Sleeping Behind Bars"--famous prisons as lodgings, and "Risky Pursuits," which details, among other scary places, the world's most dangerous road, in Bolivia.

This is a dream book, a wish book and an inspirational guide for passionate travelers. But armchair travelers will enjoy it, too, as they learn about the wider world in short, pithy segments.