Vienna, Austria

Is your hometown one of the 10 best cities to live in the world?

If your address ends with ‘USA’, I’m sorry to report that the answer is ‘Not even close’.

Mercer has released their new 2011 Worldwide Quality of Living index. It ranks 221 domestic and international cities for quality of living and personal safety.

So how’d we do here in Canada?

Our only city to crack the top 10 is my hometown of Vancouver, BC, which is an extremely nice place to live if you can somehow afford to live here [I home invade]. Vancouver tied for 5th place with Düsseldorf, Germany.

My life is awesome.

Exhibit A: I just bought my dream car – a hunter green MINI Cooper S convertible. It’s a ridiculously sexy ride, and when I roll through small towns, kids and hobos turn their heads to yell out “Whoa, nice car!”

I’m having so much fun in it, I started searching online for “MINI Cooper festival”. I want to meet other MINI owners so we can stand around gazing at each other’s shiny little cars and admire ourselves for being so unique.

But instead of a MINI Cooper festival, I discovered the D.B. Cooper Day festival in Washington State.

Online shopping is (arguably) most pervasive in the travel industry, so it makes sense that Cyber Monday, Black Friday's digital counterpart, is rife with deals on hotels and resorts. Most must be booked today, but some stretch out over the week. This week's podium:

GOLD: How is the luxurious Gansevoort Turks + Caicos resort (pictured below) following up on last year's popular Cyber Monday sale? By doing the same again. Today only, guests who book a minimum three-night stay in a Luxury Beachfront Spa Studio, Luxury Beachfront Studio with Terrace or Luxury One-Bedroom Beachfront Suite between now and Oct. 31, 2012, get 25 per cent off their room rate, a $50 resort credit and a welcome gift. With the discount, rates start at $450 a night. Some blackout dates apply. To book, call 1-888-844-5986. 

Earlier this week, I predicted the winners in three high-profile categories at Thursday's Canadian Tourism Awards -- and somehow managed to get four things wrong.

Impressive, right? For those keeping score at home, I predicted Ottawa's Calypso Waterpark would win Air Canada Business of the Year...and the CN Tower ended up taking it.

I then bolded announced that B.C.'s stunning Sparkling Hill spa resort would claim the Delta Hotels and Resorts New Business of the Year award. And again, I goofed: the new Ottawa Convention Centre (pictured below) triumphed.

Photo: Nathalie Madore/CP

I realized I needed new luggage when my girlfriend asked if I was using my duffel bag (see photo below) to steal corpses from the morgue.

So I’m sniffing around for the world’s sharpest-looking suitcases. But I don't want the same, dull, soulless black Samsonite that other chumps are lugging through the slush. I want something that will stand out on the luggage carousel and give me admiring glances from bellhops and airport X-ray staffers.

Here are cool-looking bags that I’d be happy to tote into a 5-star resort this winter:

Now's the time of year when southern hotels and resorts start rubbing our noses in the fact that winter is just around the corner (or is already here). Then, to make us feel better about escaping from the impending deep freeze, many offer up deals that bridge the gap between now and the holiday season. Cruel? Maybe. Effective? Definitely. This week's podium:

GOLD: Bermuda's lovely Grotto Bay Beach Resort (pictured below) is offering up bargains to guests who book holidays either independantly or through Westjet Vacations. For the former, the "Snowbird Special" cuts room rates in half  -- starting at around $100 a night, based on double occupancy -- for stays of 14 nights or more now through March. For shorter getaways, WestJet's offering includes airfare and seven-night stays for the price of four. That deal is good for Nov. 29, Dec. 1, 4 and 6 departures, and ranges from $619 out of Toronto to $919 from Calgary and Edmonton.

Here's a simple way to travel greener and smarter. When planning your next trip, enter your starting point and destination on a site called HootRoot. It then scans Google Maps and HopStop’s transit database to give you directions and compare your carbon dioxide emissions. The goal: get you from point A to point B by minimizing your environmental impact.

Here’s how it works: let’s say you’re Harrison Ford and you and your wife are staying in the Hotel 1000, a luxury hotel in Seattle.

But when you emerge from a relaxing shower, you discover your wife’s been kidnapped by bad men (this happens to Harrison Ford a lot).

Worse, they’ve snuck your wife across the border and are now holding her hostage at the Waldorf Hotel in East Vancouver, BC, a funky hotel billed as a creative hub “where contemporary art, music, food and culture convene under one roof.”

You’re Harrison Ford so naturally you’ll try to rescue your wife. But you also want to do it in the greenest way possible. What’s a hero to do? Check your options on HootRoot!

 Enter the addresses of both hotels (Start: 1000 1st Avenue, Seattle, WA; Finish: 1489 East Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC), and HootRoot calculates your travel & emission options.

For example, taking a commercial flight to save your wife will take only 19 minutes, but emit 373.77 lbs in CO_2.

Driving to save your wife will take 2 hours and 47 minutes and generate 150.46 lbs CO_2.

Ah but if you take transit to save your wife (HootRoot recommends boarding one Amtrak train and a variety of buses) it’ll take you 4 hours and 28 minutes but only generate 18.53 lbs CO₂.

Or save her by bike, Harrison Ford!

Cycling from Seattle to Vancouver only takes 15 hours and 39 minutes and creates zero CO_2. And if you walk from Seattle to Vancouver, you can rescue your wife in just 47 hours and 52 minutes while generating a whopping 0.0 carbon dioxide emissions.

Way to go, Harrison Ford! That’s how to be a real hero.

-- Ken Hegan 

Bing: reduce your travel footprint

Read all of Ken’s MSN travel stories here and follow Ken to victory on Twitter

Photos: Action Press 2004; CP Images

Do you get bored when you’re driving to ski resorts? Does the monotony of all that snow, slush, and windshield wiping make you want to shake your fist in impotent rage? Don’t you wish you had an entertaining distraction from all that annoyingly treacherous black ice?

 Don’t worry! The good people at Chinavision have invented a rearview mirror that doubles as a movie screen.

Is this the year I finally win a Canadian Tourism Awards pool? I generally fare quite well in Oscar pools, but when it comes to the climax of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada’s annual Congress — held this week in Ottawa’s Fairmont Chateau Laurier — I always seem to slip up in the “Excellence in Human Resources Development” category.
If you’re looking for tips on winning your own CTA pool, or simply (and more realistically) want to check out some really cool Canadian travel offerings, here are my picks in the three most prominent categories at Friday’s awards:

Air Canada Business of the Year finalists

Bota Bota: A “floating spa” (pictured below) tucked into the quays of Montreal’s Old Port, with two saunas, a eucalyptus steam bath and outdoor whirlpools, among other stress-busting indulgences.

Want to visit the North Korean dictatorship? Get in line, buddy!

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is so broke, it’s finally opening its door to tourists. But only just a crack. For the first time in ages, the heavily-militarized North Korea is allowing tourists in to see its waterfalls, forests, and traffic cops.

The only rules (and trust me, they’re firm about ‘em): you can’t bring your mobile phone or BlackBerry into North Korea; they won’t let you send emails, you’re not allowed to walk down their streets; and you’re not allowed to talk with the locals or take photos of them. That’s all banned. [I bet you also can’t dance to rock ‘n’ roll in a small farm community ruled by a Bible-thumping minister. Don’t even try.]