T+L Magazine named the Amore Hotel Jamison the best Sydney hotel last year so we figured we should find out what the fuss is about. Although, if you recall those listings aren't always quite accurate. Nevertheless, this hotel is pretty luxurious looking place, not small (415 rooms) and it's smack-bang in the middle of the city.

But what makes us crack up is the names they've come up with for some of their packages. Our favorite: "Run Away With Your Husband". It's a one-night package that includes a deluxe room, dinner in their Charr Restaurant and breakfast in the Gallery Restaurant the next morning.

Unlike their "Amora Affair" package, which includes strawberries, champagne and chocolate and

We're going to enjoy this vacation, or else! Hugh Jackman pushes a nearly toppling luggage cart at Sydney International Airport on a family vacation to Cambodia.

Baggage limits and fees are nothing new to international travelers, but let's hope the Jackmans are better one-bag packers the next time they head Stateside: Now that airlines like United have seen the market tolerance for baggage fees as represented by the extra revenue they're bringing in--in United's case, an expected $700 million for the year--there's no slowing down.

And when Southwest's no-fee approach becomes unsustainable? Well... We'll see!

Related Stories:
· United Expects $700M from Baggage, Flier Fees [Newsday]
· Southwest Airlines May Profit from Its Rivals' Fees [Dallas Morning News]
· Celeb Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Faded Youth Blog]

Sydney's Harbour Bridge has been carrying people across the water since 1932 but it's only a decade since the Sydney Bridge Climb allowed brave tourists to stand on top of the city's world famous icon.

To celebrate the ten year anniversary of climbing the bridge, the Bridge Climb people organized a bunch of people to climb with their flags to break the world record for "number of flags flown from a bridge" (damn, we really wanted to break that one ourselves).

Apparently the new world record is 137: A neat number that represents the number of different nationalities of the tourists who've successfully scaled the bridge so far. How very intellectual, Sydney.

Related Stories:
· Aussie Icon Sets New World Record [news.com.au]
· Touching Rivets in Sydney Harbour [Jaunted]
· Sydney Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: buck82]

While some people might say spontaneous beer pong is the best thing about Sydney Harbour, after seeing this video we're inclined to say it's the photo ops that are tops.

This clip, one of a three-part series from Vimeo user Keith Loutit, was shot with tilt-shift lenses on a Canon A-Series camera--which means these are real scenes, not renderings.

Related Stories:
· Bathtub II [Vimeo]
· Bathtub III [Vimeo]
· Beached [Vimeo]
· Tilt-Shift Photography [Wikipedia]
· More Travel Videos [Jaunted]

We always have a good chuckle about travelers who end up on the wrong continent by making an online booking to someplace with the same name, but we shouldn't laugh too much--there's just as good a chance we'll do the same one day.

In a recent incident, an Argentinean woman tried to book a flight to Sydney. We'd be thinking Australia, and so was she, but her flights took her to Sydney, Nova Scotia.

The funny thing is that tourists have ended up in the Canadian Sydney by mistake before. Perhaps they should start selling toy kangaroos in their souvenir shops and apart from some unexpected weather, maybe nobody will notice.

Related Stories:
· Accidental Tourist Ends Up in Wrong Place [news.com.au]
· Sydney, Australia Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo of Sydney, Nova Scotia: dmealiffe]

Sydney-siders will know that the future of the Swiss Grand Hotel Bondi Beach is a little uncertain at the moment: developers want to soften the famous "wedding cake facade" and turn the interior into a combination (smaller) boutique hotel and residential apartments. But since the council hasn't decided yet, any change is a long way off.

Just the same, there's been a flood of journos reviewing the Swiss Grand, which perhaps hopes to remind people you can still stay there. A recent Sydney Morning Herald review spoke of all the good sides to the Swiss Grand, the best of which is of course the view over Bondi Beach.

We heard a rumor at Jaunted that Melbourne is the new Sydney but judging by all the new hotels in the works, the Sydneysiders seem pretty confident their town is tops.

The brand new Pullman Hotel just opened this month at the main site of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Homebush. It's a five-star joint with 212 rooms and more of a focus on business people than tourists, given that it's not exactly in the sightseeing hotspot.

Speaking of sightseeing, Darling Harbour is one of the ideal places to hang out in Sydney and hotels are going up there by the bucket load. There's the Hotel Ibis at Darling Harbour due to open later this year, and

It's hard to be separated from the one you love! But Samantha Ronson carries that burden along with her luggage in a recent swing to Sydney.

The DJ gave maybe-girlfriend Lindsay Lohan, currently shooting scenes for her recurring role on "Ugly Betty" in New York, a shout-out on her blog, mentioning how she was thinking of "someone I am missing who I must say posted a very good blog while I was flying."

Aww, technology! Put that in your Louis Vuitton and tote it.

Related Stories:
· Sydney Airport Is Swingin' [Jaunted]
· Australia's Grotesque Anti-Smoking Ads: Collect 'Em All! [Jaunted]
· Celeb Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Faded Youth Blog]

HotelChatter Questions: In which, the intrepid HotelChatter editors and our hotel maven readers answer hotel questions that pop into our inbox. Have a question for us? Send it along. Think you have a better answer than we gave, or better yet, want to give a vote of confidence to our answer? Comment away.

We love to be here to help, and HotelChatter reader Jamie has a quandary: where to stay in Sydney? He's trying to choose between the Travelodge Sydney or the Oaks Goldsborough Apartments and says: "We're most concerned about location!"

The Travelodge is on Wentworth Avenue, really close to the true downtown center of Sydney, while the Goldsborough Apartments are on Pyrmont Street

It's a good year and a half since we last checked into the guest reactions on Sydney's Kirketon Boutique Hotel, when we lamented that Conde Nast Traveler might have once called it Australia's Coolest Hotel but now ... well, it wasn't anymore. But apparently, the tide has turned again.