"Besides your article Eight Perfect Days in Russia: Moscow and St. Petersburg, have you written anything else pertaining to these two cities? I am looking for a guide/tour/hotel in both cities in June. Is there anyone you would recommend?" 

                                                                 -- Marilyn Schiamberg

"I am planning a trip to St. Petersburg and read your article. I understand that a guide is almost a necessity to see St. Petersburg if you want to get into a lot of the sights and beat the long line-ups. You made reference to a guide by the name of Yelena Kirpitchnicova. Do you know which company she works for? I am trying to make the arrangements for this trip as soon as possible--a couple of hotels have excellent specials on now if you book a certain period in advance--but I want to make sure I get a good and trustworthy guide before doing that."                                               

                                                                 -- John Carter

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Admit it. You wish you knew the answers to all those burning mileage-award questions that didn't get answered by Randy Petersen in our FlyerTalk Challenge.  So do I.  But there were more than 100 of them. Who could possibly have the time, the patience, the sheer mileage obsession, to step up and volunteer to answer them? 
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You can get 30% off at The Mondrian in Los Angeles via this week's private sale on TabletHotels.com, for travel dates from March through May.

"If you want access to the very best hotel deals out there, you'll need to harness the power of a new set of digital tools."

Mucho apologies to all you air warriors whom I've left hanging for an embarrassing--yikes!--six weeks. As you may recall, I was in the middle of publishing frequent-flier guru and FlyerTalk founder Randy Petersen's answers to the top ten winning questions in our FlyerTalk Challenge contest. These included:

• "Top Ten Tricks for Getting the Miles You Want with the Flights You Have"
• "How to Turn Your Hodge-Podge of Miles in Different Accounts into a Free Ticket"
• "Should You Stay Loyal to Your Loyalty Program or Call It Quits?"
• "Five Ways to Snag the Mileage Award Seats You Need" and
• "Are Your USAirways Miles Safe?"

Then I dropped the ball, waylaid by a hectic travel schedule and my Condé Nast Traveler print workload. All I can say is:  Thank you for your patience, and I'm making it up to you with a special five-page Perrin Report, in Condé Nast Traveler's upcoming April issue, that's a step-by-step guide to fully harnessing the power of loyalty programs so as to snag as many free flights and upgrades as possible.

While you're waiting for that, here are the final five questions in the FlyerTalk Challenge, along with links to Randy Petersen's inimitable answers:
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Chile's famed Easter Island is safe for travel, with excursions being held normally.
Photo: vtveen / CC BY 2.0

Those of you who were planning trips to Chile before last week's earthquake hit may be wondering where it's safe to go right now and where it's not. Where will you run into logistical headaches, and where will you be unaffected? READ MORE >>

My seven-year-old had his first surfing lesson last week on Waikiki Beach at the Royal Hawaiian, the iconic pink palace where we stayed in Honolulu. The tower next door? The Sheraton Waikiki.  READ MORE >>

A Hawaiian Airlines “customer experience agent” spoiling my customer experience at Kona International Airport two days ago.

Have you ever wrongly been charged a fee at an airport check-in counter? And you had to just shut up and pay, or you'd miss your flight?

It happened to me on Monday in Kona, Hawaii. My family and I were flying back to Oahu (where we are now) after a week on the Big Island. The Hawaiian Airlines check-in agent insisted we owed $40 in luggage fees: $10 per bag times four checked bags. I insisted we did not, showing her my credit card that waives luggage fees: I had booked my family’s airline itinerary--from Newark to Honolulu to Kona to Honolulu to Newark--on Continental, and I carry a Continental Airlines Presidential Plus MasterCard that waives fees for checked luggage on flights booked through Continental.

The Kona check-in agent would not budge, even after I told her that a week earlier the Honolulu check-in agent had waived the fee because of my credit card. The Kona agent said the Honolulu agent had been flat-out wrong. I had no choice but to pay the $40 or miss my flight, so I charged it to the MasterCard in question.

Yesterday I called the number on the back of the credit card to report what had happened and, sure enough, they said that I should not have been charged the luggage fees and that the $40 charge will be removed from my bill.

There are two morals to this story:
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A few days ago I was in Mumbai (a.k.a. Bombay), India, where we stumbled upon a boat christening.
The christening ceremony involved slathering wet saffron all over the boat's prow.

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Those are my kids at Ephesus, the ancient Greco-Roman city in Turkey, during a Mediterranean cruise in December 2008. Through Sea Song Tours we hired a car and driver to pick us up at the pier in Izmir and help us beat the crowds to Ephesus so we could explore it independently.  READ MORE >>