Finnair advertised today in amNewYork that it had fares to Asia: Seoul, Beijing, and Shanghai for $848; Hong Kong, Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya for $948. Let's leave out for a minute that you can't see these fares listed on their site. I find it fascinating that Finnair is flying people from New York to Asia via Helsinki:

Now you can fly Finnair's brand new aircraft from New York (JFK) via Helsinki (HEL) to Asia at a very good price.

Isn't it a lot farther this way? Concretely, how far is it from JFK to TYO via HEL versus the direct route? Fortunately, the web has the answer. Using a great circle, the most direct route on our ovoid planet, JFK-HEL-TYO is 8981 miles. JFK-TYO is 6763 miles. So the Finnair route is about one-third longer. I guess that's good if you are accumulating air miles.

And how long does this actually take? I went to Sidestep.com to look up a hypothetical JFK-TYO flight leaving 2009-06-23 and returning 2009-06-30. Northwest quotes a JFK-NRT return flight for $848 that takes 14:10 outbound and 12:40 on the return. Finnair's flight leaves JFK at 17:40 and arrives at HEL at 08:50 the next day. I think that's 15 hours less 6 hours for timezones or 9 hours. Then there is an 8:30 layover before the flight leaves HEL at 17:20 and arrives at NRT at 08:55 the following day. I'm not certain of the math, but it sounds like you could:

• take Northwest and leave JFK at 13:50 and arrive at NRT at 17:00+1 day or
• take Finnair and leave JFK at 17:40 and arrive at NRT at 08:55+2 days.

So on Finnair, you leave 4 hours later and arrive 16 hours later, for a trip that is 12 hours longer: 26 hours on Finnair versus 14 hours on Northwest.

And it's cheaper on Northwest anyway: Northwest for $848 versus Finnair for the advertised price of $948 or the Finnair.com's current price of $1178.

So on cost, time, and distance, this is a non-starter. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

• Checked bag chart
• General fee chart

Paris itinerary

My mom had an ambitious itinerary for her two week trip to Paris this fall. Check this out if you are planning a trip to Paris.

Museums

• Musée de Cluny

  The Musée de Cluny houses a variety of important medieval artifacts:

  • Its tapestry collection
    This includes La Dame à la Licorne (The Lady and the Unicorn) from the tapestry cycle of the same name, consisting of a series of six.
  • Early medieval sculptures from the seventh and eighth centuries
  • Works of gold, ivory, antique furnishings, and illuminated manuscripts

• Institut du Monde Arabe
• Musée des Arts et Métiers
• Musée d'Orsay
• Musée de l'Orangerie
• Conciergerie

  The Conciergerie is a former royal palace and prison in Paris, located on the west of the Île de la Cité, near the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. It is part of the larger complex known as the Palais de Justice, which is still used for judicial purposes. Hundreds of prisoners during the French Revolution were executed on the guillotines at La Conciergerie.

• Victor Hugo's house
• Musée Marmottan Monet

  The Musée Marmottan Monet features a collection of a hundred Impressionist works by Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, as well as the Wildenstein Collection of illuminated manuscripts.

• Musée du quai Branly

  Musée du quai Branly features indigenous art, cultures and civilizations from Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas.

• Musée Carnavalet

  The vast Carnavalet Museum, devoted to the history of Paris, includes entire decorated rooms with panelling, furniture and many works of art.

• Musée Rodin

  The Musée Rodin displays works by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin.

• Musée Picasso

  The Musée Picasso contains more than 3000 different works of art by Pablo Picasso including drawings, ceramics and paintings. This is complemented by Picasso's own personal art collection of works by other artists, including Cézanne, Degas, Rousseau, Seurat, de Chirico and Matisse. It also contains some Iberian bronzes and a good collection of primitive art. One of the most impressive aspects of the museum is that it contains a large number of works which Picasso painted after his seventieth birthday.

Department stores

• Galeries Lafayette
• Le Printemps

Squares and gardens

• Place des Vosges

  The Place des Vosges is the oldest square in Paris.

• Jardin du Luxembourg

Churches and cemeteries

• Sainte-Chappelle
• Notre Dame de Paris
• Père Lachaise Cemetery

  Père Lachaise is one of the most famous cemeteries in the world. Located in the 20th arrondissement, it is reputed to be the world's most-visited cemetery, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the graves of those who have enhanced French life over the past 200 years. It is also the site of three World War I memorials.

Outside Paris

• Chartres Cathedral

  Apparently, she took a guided tour with Malcolm Miller, a guide who has been giving tours at Chartres Cathedral since 1958. In fact, she had a tour with him in 1960 when she visited. He is now the leading English-speaking authority on the cathedral and has written a number of books, including Chartres Cathedral.

• Giverny

  It is best known as the location of Claude Monet's garden and home.

• Palace of Versailles

This is a 90 minute DVD about the backpackers' life. Lifted from Cool Tools:

Don't watch this documentary unless you are ready to quit your job. It's about the joys and woes of long-term traveling. It's impossible to watch this fun film and not confront the fact that you are here instead of there, out on the road, soaking up the mysteries of the world, with all-you-can-eat $3 dinners and $5 rooms, backpacking around the world for a year, as the filmmaker himself did. This kind of vagabonding is more a state of mind than a state of motion. Something weird happens when you travel longer than 10 days, and that wonderful transformation (which no one can explain to their family when they return) is what this superbly written, fabulously edited, deeply personal and wonderfully likeable documentary is all about.

BedandBreakfast has a database of 28,000 B&Bs worldwide, including nearly 6,000 that can be booked through the site -- with photos and expanded descriptions.

Unusual Hotels of the World lists 127 lighthouses, prisons, caves, and other unique places to spend the night.

Lonely Planet scandal

There has recently been a minor scandal in the tourist book publication business because of the admission of a Lonely Planet editor that he did not always go to the places he described in his books.

Thomas Kohnstamm says that he was in San Francisco at the time. "They didn't pay me enough to go to Colombia," he told The Australian Herald Sun. So he "got the information from a chick I was dating who was an intern in the Colombian Consulate".

[...]

Speaking from his home in Seattle, Kohnstamm told The Times that his comments had been misrepresented. He denied inventing content. However, he stood by his original argument that overstretched and underfunded freelance travel writers, whose recommendations are relied upon by generations of travellers, cannot possibly visit every budget hotel and jungle outpost they are asked to.

Death of the guidebook: lost in a cutthroat world

Guidebook publishers will deny this, but the travel publishing industry is bound to exploit demand for what is widely seen as a glamour job - travel and get paid for it. But with so many competing guidebook series, many titles do not generate sales revenue that justifies the legwork that results in genuine personal recommendations. Most publishers who make claims to the contrary are being disingenuous.