Updating Facebook while on vacation?

You can feel guilty and ashamed for wasting your precious holiday time online but one thing you shouldn't feel is 'alone'. 70 percent of us update Facebook while we're on vacation, i.e. the majority of us are bragging jerkwads.

Am I making this statistic up so I can feel better about posting my brazenly-happy Costa Rican vacation columns on Facebook? Or can I back up this 70% statistic with actual science-y scientific factual science?

I'm proud to say it's the latter.

Summer vacations to southern destinations where tourism slows down in July and August can deliver some truly eye-popping bargains -- as evidenced by this week's podium:

GOLD: The luxurious Grand Lucayan resort on Grand Bahama Island is offering a double dose of savings with its "Take a Little Trip" promotion. If you book by Aug. 20 (for travel through Dec. 25) you can get an airfare credit of up to $350 per booking and half-price room rates (starting at $119 a night for an ocean view room). In addition to the obligatory swimming pools and white-sand beach, the resort (pictured below) features an 18-hole golf course, four tennis courts, a full-service spa, a casino and eight restaruants.

I'm always seeking interesting travel contests to share with you (or win for myself).

ContestCanada.net is my favourite place to find online travel contests that Canadians can enter for free. It's a simple, well-designed site, plus their contest descriptions are cheeky and fun.

Many of their contests have budget prizes like 'Win a BBQ' or 'Win a Salmon Fishing in the Yemen' DVD (zzzzz). But a few of their contests offer big-ticket prizes to sunny destinations. Get your swimsuit ready and check 'em out!

Do you read TripAdvisor reviews before you book a hotel room?

I sure do. It's all about preparation and expectations. I mean, if I'm booking a 'junior suite' in a '4-star hotel' that's actually a naughty bondage dungeon or filthy junkie nest, I like to know that beforehand so I can dress appropriately.

This TripAdvisor screenshot depicts a lovely Toronto hotel room that's not a dungeon. I checked.

I'm not a lone nerd on this subject, either. Turns out nearly half of us read hotel/property reviews before we book a holiday (49%), and 81% of us find hotel reviews useful.

These figures are from a 'hotel reputation management' company called Olery. They believe that "Customer reviews are vitally important. They can make or break a hotel and its reputation."

So Olery has been aggregating and studying travellers' positive and negative reviews of hotels around the world. Olery wanted answers to these questions:

Ah, the bucket list. It has become synonymous with our life-long, big-ticket aspirations, whether we’re travelling or dining or shopping or fantasizing about running away with Shania Twain.

But behind every list of things we want to try -- regardless of how ardently we embrace the “I’ll try anything once” maxim -- lurks a loathsome counterpart.

I call this my anti-bucket list.

My ABL includes those activities I just know I don’t want to try. The Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain, for example. Growing up in Alberta’s cattle country, I’m familiar with the unique terror of sprinting across a field with an angry bull in hot pursuit. Unlike the millions of nutcases who have this annual event on their bucket lists, I’m not at all interested in recreating this prairie experience on slippery cobblestone streets while juiced on Rioja.

Then there are those things you don’t know you don’t want to try until you try them. (Granted, taking part would seem to automatically cross them off the list, but the ABL allows for some “live and learn” leniency.) Here I would include "playing mini-putt with a two-year-old." On a recent trip to Ontario’s Blue Mountain I learned that this activity would try the patience of Job.

By Hole 7 of the resort’s beautiful new hillside course my youngest daughter (pictured at left) had finally learned not to run ahead on every hole, pick up all the golf balls, and deposit them in the nearest water hazard. For the remaining 11 holes — I can’t believe we made it all the way around — she teed off with our family foursome, but swung her putter with such abandon that it made contact not once, not twice, but thrice, with my groin. 

Can't get enough airplane food in your diet?

A new theme restaurant in Chongqing, China will give you the jumbo jet experience without leaving the ground. The restaurant's called DC seafood restaurant (or 'Super-class Restaurant') and it's designed to look like the cabin of a luxury A380 jumbo airbus.

The double-wide, 4-engine A380 -- dubbed the 'Superjumbo' -- is the largest jet airliner in the world and flown by airlines like Air France, Singapore Airlines, Emirates, Qantas, Lufthansa, and China Southern.

To emulate the look and feel of a Superjumbo, DC seafood restaurant has windows that look just like plane windows, the seats recline, the carpets look just like the plane carpets that toddlers love to play and drool on, and even the cabin lighting is inspired by the A380 jet airliner. The 600 square metre restaurant has 28 tables, six private rooms, and can seat up to 100 customers.

To complete the in-flight illusion, the servers look and talk like flight attendants and pilots. But it wasn't easy. According to Oddity Central, DC's servers "had to go through a series of courses on how to apply their make up and act just like actual stewardesses".

Free hotel nights, free guided tours, free spending money -- this week's podium is a mixed bag of freebies:

GOLD: Starwood Hotels & Resorts' "Canadian Long Weekends" promotion adds another item to the long list of things to love about extra days off in the summer. Guests who book two nights at the dozens of participating Starwood properties, such as Toronto's Westin Harbour Castle (pictured), Vancouver's Westin Grand and Le Méridien Versailles in Montreal, will get a third night free on stays through Jan. 2, 2013. The the promo code for the offer is "Z3H".

Photo credit: Boris Spremo/CP
 

Whoa. If you're a sleepwalker, AVOID THIS TENT.

Some British genius has invented a tree tent that looks like a spider web and hangs from trees like a hammock. 

Basically it's a portable treehouse for snipers, fugitives, people with severe back pain, stoner anti-logging protesters, Ewoks, and hardcore survivalists preparing for some seriously futuristic camping.

This tree-hugging 'tentsile' was conceived by a clever chap named Alex Shirley-Smith. As an 'architect and treehouse designer', he already had the coolest double-job title on the planet. Now he can add the title 'Tree tent designer of The Future'.

An Australian beer company is brewing an island of men.

Here's the deal:

XXXX (pronounced fourex) GOLD is a pale lager in Australia that contains a whopping 3.5% alcohol. Pretty thin stuff. It's like when I was a kid and my friend's weird cheap mom watered down their milk. That's what XXXX GOLD kinda tastes like.

But it's sure popular down under. The company claims it's "Australia's leading mid-strength beer." And they're making so much money off it, the beer company JUST TOOK OVER AN ISLAND.

They say people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. But what if you live in a glass bubble tent?

These spherical, see-through tents are called BubbleTrees. Created by French designer, Pierre Stéphane Dumas, the tents are four meters in diameter and attached to an entry tube that looks like a decontamination chamber.

Apparently the French can't get enough of them. Numerous French campsite-hotels, like Attrap’Rêves, are offering luxury camping adventures inside Dumas's domes.