In a series of Lonely Planet blog posts that promises to be fascinating, LP writer Frances Linzee Gordon is publishing her experiences traveling as a single woman traveling in Saudi Arabia for an upcoming guide on the Arabian peninsula.

Only a month into the new year, people everywhere are staking out the nicely mnemonic date of 07/07/07 (and all those lucky sevens) for their own purposes.

What do jagged, post-punky rock music and the oft stuffy discipline of food writing have in common? Listen to Terry Gross interview Alex Kapranos, frontman of Scottish group Franz Ferdinand, about his gustatory adventures on the road, to find out.

A good guidebook can go a long way towards making or breaking a trip, but the best travel experiences still come with the thrill of discovery attached: secret spots known only to locals, with directions sketched out in hand-drawn maps.

The Travelistic Blog’s holiday reading is Daniel Kalder’s The Lost Cosmonaut, in which the author journeys to the hinterlands of the Russian Federation, regions so obscure, that I had to look them up to be sure it wasn’t fiction.

Wallpaper, the glossy magazine-cum-bible of modernist chic that helped turn “design” and “lifestyle” into the ubiquitous buzzwords they are today, has just released a series of travel guides.

Ever heard of the Republic of Molossia, the Conch Republic, or the sovereign nation of Lovely? These and other experiments in declaring your own state are covered in a new Lonely Planet guide, Micronations.

Turning away from all things digital for a moment, I’d like to call your attention to the original, analog travel journal, the Moleskine.

This weekend the the LA Times, like the good industry-town rag that it is, runs its coverage of Da Vinci Code-inspired advertising opportunities — I mean travel — as close to the opening date of the film as possible.

Travel headlines for the weekend of 5/6/06