As the busy summer car-rental season begins, prices are expected to climb. “In early June through the end of August, these rates will spike,” said Neil Abrams, president of Abrams Consulting Group, which tracks the car rental industry. Last July, for example, the average rate for a weekly airport rental of a compact car booked seven days ahead was $369.62, or 56 percent more than the $236.73 charged in March, according to the Abrams Travel Data Index. Here are some tips to keep costs down.

Let go of name brands. Look beyond Avis, Hertz and other big national chains to independent agencies like Payless and Fox Rent a Car. Because of lower operating costs, their cars, which can be found at Web sites like CarRentals.com and CarRentalExpress.com, typically cost 15 to 30 percent less than rentals from mainstream agencies. Another company with an unfamiliar name, at least to most Americans, is the German agency Sixt, which has begun opening branches in the southeastern United States, including in Atlanta, Miami and Orlando, Fla. To boost brand recognition, the company, whose fleet includes BMWs, Mercedes-Benzes and Volkswagens, is offering deep discounts. For example, a Mercedes C-class cost $38.81 a day in late May at Sixt’s Orlando airport location, according to a recent search. By comparison, the lowest rate offered by Hertz for the same dates was $50.57 a day for a Kia Rio or similar economy car.

Dig for virtual discounts. Search for discounts and coupons on sites like Promotionalcodes.com and CouponWinner.com, or type in the name of a rental company and “coupon code” into Google to see what turns up. Rental car companies offer discount codes to members of frequent flier programs, and other organizations they partner with, including AAA, Costco and BJ’s, so check those sites if you’re a member. But don’t stop there. Most major car rental companies allow you to combine discount codes with a coupon code. For example, a full-size car from Hertz over Memorial Day weekend at Washington Dulles airport was $255.71 in a recent search. Plugging in the discount code 62455 for United Airlines frequent fliers and Hertz’s promotional coupon code, 168210, brought the price down to $160.02.

Track rates through Autoslash.com. This site, which continually checks for lower rates and coupons until your trip date, can be used in one of two ways: You can track the price of a rental booked elsewhere, or you can book directly through Autoslash, which currently works with Payless, Sixt, Fox and E-Z Rent-A-Car, and the site will apply any discounts it finds.

The drawback with the second option is limited inventory. Major companies don’t like the idea that Autoslash capitalizes on the fact that consumers can usually change or cancel car reservations at any time without penalty. Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, as well as Hertz and Advantage, recently pulled its inventory from the site, as my colleague Ron Lieber recently reported. Enterprise, which owns National and Alamo, won’t let AutoSlash list its cars either.

Avoid the airport. Off-airport locations are typically cheaper than airport locations, which tend to tack on fees that can raise the price by 30 percent or more. For example, a compact rental from Hertz at Boston Logan International Airport over the Fourth of July weekend was recently listed at $50.49 a day, or $219 a week with taxes at Carrentals.com, a unit of Hotwire. By taking the subway to the Arlington stop and walking a couple of blocks to the local Hertz lot, a traveler could cut costs to $39.98 a day, or $146.65 with taxes for the week.

Reserve the car for longer than you need it. This may sound counterintuitive, but tacking an extra day on to that weekly rental or even adding a couple of hours to extend it over a weekend — with no intention of returning the car that late — can actually lower your rate. The strategy takes advantage of lower prices aimed at leisure travelers who are more likely to travel on weekends, said Marty Paz, a telecommunications manager from Las Vegas who has become something of a car rental pricing sleuth since he began avidly renting cars to pad his frequent flier account. (Last year alone he rented more than 100 vehicles, accumulating a quarter-million miles.)

Mr. Paz said you are essentially tricking the system into thinking you’re booking a two-day weekend rental, which typically has a lower base rate, with the goal of returning the car early. For example, the rate for a midsize car rental from Alamo at the Las Vegas International Airport, from noon on Thursday, June 7, to noon on Friday was recently listed on Alamo’s Web site for $35.95 (or a base rate of $27.27 plus $11.41 in taxes and fees). But extending the return time to 2 p.m. — two hours after the weekend rates “officially” kick in — drops the base rate to $15.18 a day. Though the overall estimated cost shows an additional $10.12 extra in hourly charges, you can still return the car at noon and get the lower rate, said Mr. Paz, who added, “Oops, you got there early.”

Negotiate. Even after you’ve booked the best possible rate, it can be worth swinging by the rental counter to see if you can finagle your way into a better car. “You don’t ask, you don’t get,” said Mr. Abrams, the rental car consultant. Success with this strategy can depend on everything from the type and number of cars on the lot to the mood of the clerk, he added. But some companies are happy to put you in a bigger, or less popular, vehicle for the cost of a compact — if it’s in their interest.

“I frequently need minivans for the volunteer activities I do with teens,” said Marty Paz, the car-rental rate hacker, who has noticed by perusing the parking lot that there is often a glut of minivans at one location he frequently rents from on the weekend. “Often times I’ve reserved an economy car for a Friday and just offered graciously: ‘If there’s a van, I’ll take that. I don’t mind,’ and for the price of the economy car I get the minivan.” (A larger vehicle, of course, will require more fuel.)

Prepay. Taking a page from hotels, rental car companies are offering discounts of up to 20 percent to travelers willing to prepay. In a recent search for weekly rentals at Boston Logan International Airport in mid June, for example, Hertz was offering economy cars for $173 a week at the “pay now” rate. The “pay later” rate was about $30 more. The trade off for locking in a low-rate? Cancellation penalties ranging from $10 with Budget to $50 if canceling within 24 hours with Hertz. And don’t forget about Priceline.com and Hotwire.com, which offer deep discounts to travelers willing to be locked into a preset price before finding out the rental car company.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 16, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the relationship of Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group and Hertz and Advantage. Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group is a holding company that owns Dollar Rent A Car and Thrifty Car Rental; it does not own Hertz and Advantage.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=bac833794cf6dc2d9dd66a9a995f41cf

ON Monday, the wind blew so hard that only a fool would have ventured near the rim of the canyon. On Tuesday, a sandstorm colored the sky the yellow of motel linoleum and left a film of grit in your mouth. By Wednesday, I was properly stir crazy, and so when I stepped out into a cold Arizona morning of cerulean skies and the medicinal smell of sage, I got into my car and, for no particular reason, decided to hit the road.

It was my vague notion to drive from my hotel near Canyon de Chelly to Hotevilla, a town about 100 miles away on the Hopi reservation. In reality I was not headed anywhere specific so much as I was fleeing the confusion of a sad and bitter winter. I thought somehow I might find peace in a region as large as West Virginia and about as heavily populated as Mars. I left at 8 in the morning and returned nine hours later, having traveled more than 300 miles.

I love to drive and enjoy it so much it gives me pleasure even to make the declaration. But because I live in New York City and take public transportation everywhere my feet won’t carry me, I am sadly deprived of this rudimentary American pleasure. The cars in which I travel mostly have ticking meters above the dashboard and tend to be operated by a marginally lunatic person gibbering into a Bluetooth.

So seldom do I drive these days and so special is the experience that I still get a little canine jolt of excitement whenever someone rattles keys. Surely this sentiment cannot be shared by the greater population, for which, I imagine, driving long ago ceased to be an adventure, a portal to freedom. It is, rather, a chore and a nuisance, the thing you do to get from swim meets to soccer practice, from the split-level in Armonk to parking level 3 at the mall.

In a car I feel free, in my own autonomous zone, and in a sense that feeling is not misplaced. Cars are among the few remaining spheres in which it is possible to be uninterruptedly alone with one’s thoughts. In a constitutional sense, too, that privacy is real. No one is invited to enter my automobile without due cause and probably also a warrant or unless that person is carrying a tray with burgers and fries.

For as long as it lasts and until the robots take over, it remains possible to experience in a car that thrilling breakaway feeling celebrated by Jack Kerouac and other gassy laureates of asphalt and also by more companionably sprightly runaways like Thelma and Louise. It won’t be this way forever, as we all know: global positioning systems already have us pinned to a cosmic surveillance grid. Yet freedom is what I felt as I headed south on Highway 191.

That the American road system is a crowning achievement of Western civilization is too little appreciated. The gorgeous blue highways slashing straight across the country, the sinuous coast roads hugging vertiginous cliffs, the corrugated back country lanes no longer attract poets like Woody Guthrie. If they did, odes would be written to the stretch of 191 between Chinle and Ganado, one snippet of an elegant historic roadway engineered so that on maps it resembles a zipper fastening the Western states to the rest of the land. Traversing the country longitudinally from border to border, Highway 191 crosses the Rockies and links Canada to Mexico.

But the piece I know best runs die-straight through tableland south of the Defiance Plateau, paralleling the rim of a pinkish mesa that, just yards from the shoulder, falls away steeply to the aptly named Beautiful Valley. The distance between Chinle and Ganado is not much, maybe 40 miles, and can be covered in about that many minutes, less if there are no Navajo Nation police patrols around.

I drove south that morning and then west, stopping briefly in the plaza of a scrubby pueblo, where some bare-chested locals dressed as kachinas seemed to be readying for a sacred ceremony. It was not long before a couple of the men ran at me with menace. Taking the hint, I peeled out quickly, stopping next at a roadside card table where a Hopi woman sold bottled water and jewelry made from minute discs of white shell.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=932cffdf0a8f9d6ae13ba0290d0935eb

BY the time we reached the first rest stop, a Burger King in Cle Elum, in central Washington State, I was suffering two anxieties: That I would kill the guru, and that if I didn’t, he would ignore me for the next 3,000 miles.

He’d been as quiet as a statue for the two hours since we left Seattle. When he finally spoke, it was to say, “Oh, look, chicken sandwiches, only $1.05.”

People who haven’t spent time with a spiritual master might think that being in their presence has a calming affect, that wisdom drips from their lips like nectar. But in my experience, masters of meditation and miracles are not so easy to be around.

I have known this particular guru for about 14 years; he is a yogi, a brilliant meditation master and an award-winning filmmaker from the Kingdom of Bhutan. I call him Rinpoche (RIM-po-shay), an honorific akin to reverend or rabbi. And when I’m in his presence for any extended period of time, it’s as if I become invisible.

Then again, at the most unexpected moments (over fries at Hooters, for example), he’ll give me his full attention to deliver a brief instruction, like “Fall in love” or “Lose your address book and go to India,” and my life is changed.

Over the years he has asked me to do all variety of odd things, so I didn’t think much of it when he asked me to fetch a map of the United States. He was wrapping up a teaching in Seattle and wanted to take his time and see a bit of the country before his next engagement in New York City.

That he would take the time for a vacation was a surprise and a relief to those who know him. He flies almost every week of the year, accepting as many invitations as he can to meet the needs of his students around the world. So I looked for a road map.

My friend Emily, who travels with the guru wherever he goes, nudged him and said, “Aren’t you going to tell her?”

“Tell her what?”

“That she’s driving?”

“Oh yeah,” he said without looking up from his iPad. “Right.”

And that’s how I found out that I would be spending the next three weeks at the wheel, a holy man at my side, all of the United States in front of me.

Being asked to chauffeur was, to me, a thrilling honor like being asked to drive the president or the pope. But it was also scary, like being asked to transport someone’s kidney.

I would have help. Along with Emily, there would be David, a phlegmatic retired therapist and former New York City taxi driver. When I asked him why he thought he’d been selected, he said, “Rinpoche’s going on vacation and I guess he knew I’d be pretty low maintenance since I don’t talk a lot.” My mind immediately began wheeling. Why me? I remember Rinpoche telling us that when Lord Atisha traveled to Tibet, he intentionally took along the most infuriating person he knew so there’d be plenty of opportunities for practicing patience. Am I that person?

One of Buddhism’s famous sayings is: “Drive all blames into one,” which is funny when you have friends named Juan. It’s meant to point to the ego as the one root of all suffering. But in the case of our little road trip, I was the Juan. As the primary planner I would be the bearer of bad news, the target of raised eyebrows, the one responsible for tedium and sad continental breakfast options.

But we started out well enough. David picked out a comfortable Chevy Traverse and I charted the first part of our journey, a four-day trip from Seattle to Boulder, Colo., my hometown, where we would stay a week. On the morning of departure, Rinpoche’s devotees came to see us off, offering him white scarves and bowing with worried looks on their faces. One approached, hugging me as she whispered, “Drive safe.”

A whisper can be so loud and penetrating. It was now up to me to deliver Rinpoche, the most precious human these people know, safely to Midtown Manhattan.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=35e5460e28b1e593c0dffd92d02f8ac2

Editor’s Letter

Finding pleasure in the ephemeral is, actually, the why and wherefore of travel. It’s about memories, not mementos.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a2a292a7df298be4985b0b4302ebaaa6

The summer travel issue of T kicks off in Oslo, Scandinavia’s next capital of cool, with the city’s model-movie star couple as our guide. Next stop is the French department of the Gers, where the joie de vivre includes plenty of Armagnac and foie gras. And then we make merry with the fife and drum players of Mississippi hill country as they celebrate one of America’s oldest forms of music. Between stops, we take the pulse in a remarkably resilient Bangkok, check into London’s latest hotels and have a romp through Sicily’s hot spots. And for a little reading along the way, Abraham Verghese heads to his ancestral homeland of Kerala, India, and Joyce Maynard says goodbye to Lake Atitlàn, Guatemala, reminding us of the importance of seeking out one’s happy place, even if you have to let it go. See more from the issue

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=0b306f001ddef58f5ec34b5c0ea2352b

Lords South Beach

In a short-term takeover being billed as a pop-up hotel, the Hotel on Rivington in New York will become Lords New York, a spinoff of Lords South Beach in Miami, for a week.

During NYC Pride week, June 18 through June 24, the managers of the Lords in Florida — which calls itself a gay resort — will import the hotel’s style and staff to the Lower East Side. A nine-foot, inflatable polar bear, a portable homage to the fiberglass version in Miami, will anchor the lobby, which will be painted neon pink and will feature a portrait of Elizabeth Taylor from the beach. As in Miami, guests will be able to opt to support LGBT charities by adding a $10 donation to the nightly rate, which starts at $268.

South Beach staff members will work the lobby, and several special events will be held throughout the Pride festival, including parties in the penthouse and lobby.

The pop-up concept is one way Lords aims to explore expansion to other markets. “It’s about creating an experience,” said Brian Gorman, the hotel’s founder, adding that the Lords spirit is inclusive. “There’s no velvet rope to fun.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=18b0d3c63f32ef334fba8f387340ca96

ColorBlind Images/Corbis

Alec Baldwin is not alone.

Like the actor, who was removed from a plane for playing Words With Friends on his phone last year, nearly a quarter of the 1,200 fliers surveyed by the discount travel site Airfarewatchdog.com said they do not comply with the request to turn off their electronic devices after the cabin doors close. According to the survey, released this month, almost 10 percent of respondents were seemingly unapologetic, saying they do not power down their gadgets even after hearing the announcement. (A contrite 3 percent said they keep their devices on when they don’t hear the announcement.)

Although it is often delivered in the same polite tone that flight attendants use when informing passengers of the cost of headsets and in-flight dining options, the request to turn off devices is in fact a regulation of the F.A.A., which says they may interfere with aircraft avionics. An F.A.A. spokeswoman recently told The New York Times that the agency was taking a “fresh look” at the use of portable electronic devices (not including cellphones) during taxi and takeoff. But for now, violators, including one Delta passenger recently reprimanded for filming a bird hit the engine with his iPad, risk ejection from the plane and a possible fine.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=0d93cc6b83e1a634b1383610920c1d42

Flowers from last year’s show.

London

From Tuesday to Saturday the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show will feature some of the world’s most beautifully designed gardens and floral and horticultural displays. Held on the 11-acre grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London, the event draws up to 157,000 visitors annually.

This year’s show introduces a new category, Fresh, which includes experimental and less conventionally designed gardens, and RHS Environment, a group committed to improving the environment through gardening. It plans to educate visitors in the science of urban gardening, illustrating how to make the most of even the smallest green spaces and how to help counter the effects of the changing climate. A hit last year, the Artisan Garden category returns with stylish gardens that use natural, sustainably resourced materials and traditional craftsmanship.

“Each year the RHS Chelsea Flower Shows kicks off the summer social season,” said Alex Denman, the show manager. “We welcome some of the world’s best garden designers, and the amazing gardens and floral exhibits represent the finest examples of horticultural excellence, as well as setting the latest trends for the coming year. Together, these elements contribute to the enduring appeal of Chelsea, widely regarded as the world’s most famous flower show.”

The Chelsea Flower Show has more than wonderful flowers and gardens. It includes several catering facilities offering everything from a quick sandwich to a three-course meal. The Plateau Café and various food courts also supply casual alternatives. For more elegant dining, there are the Rock Bank Restaurant, the Laurent-Perrier Champagne Bar and the Seafood Champagne Restaurant. Visitors can shop for garden accessories and innovative gardening products, such as garden pieces made from glass transformed with new materials such as Swarovski crystals.

Ticket prices range from £16 to £55 ($25 to $86)   for RHS members, £22 to  £49 ($34 to $76)  for non-members. All tickets must be bought in advance.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=80169d7936ae068d117feb3d1e4bd74d

ON Monday, the wind blew so hard that only a fool would have ventured near the rim of the canyon. On Tuesday, a sandstorm colored the sky the yellow of motel linoleum and left a film of grit in your mouth. By Wednesday, I was properly stir crazy, and so when I stepped out into a cold Arizona morning of cerulean skies and the medicinal smell of sage, I got into my car and, for no particular reason, decided to hit the road.

It was my vague notion to drive from my hotel near Canyon de Chelly to Hotevilla, a town about 100 miles away on the Hopi reservation. In reality I was not headed anywhere specific so much as I was fleeing the confusion of a sad and bitter winter. I thought somehow I might find peace in a region as large as West Virginia and about as heavily populated as Mars. I left at 8 in the morning and returned nine hours later, having traveled more than 300 miles.

I love to drive and enjoy it so much it gives me pleasure even to make the declaration. But because I live in New York City and take public transportation everywhere my feet won’t carry me, I am sadly deprived of this rudimentary American pleasure. The cars in which I travel mostly have ticking meters above the dashboard and tend to be operated by a marginally lunatic person gibbering into a Bluetooth.

So seldom do I drive these days and so special is the experience that I still get a little canine jolt of excitement whenever someone rattles keys. Surely this sentiment cannot be shared by the greater population, for which, I imagine, driving long ago ceased to be an adventure, a portal to freedom. It is, rather, a chore and a nuisance, the thing you do to get from swim meets to soccer practice, from the split-level in Armonk to parking level 3 at the mall.

In a car I feel free, in my own autonomous zone, and in a sense that feeling is not misplaced. Cars are among the few remaining spheres in which it is possible to be uninterruptedly alone with one’s thoughts. In a constitutional sense, too, that privacy is real. No one is invited to enter my automobile without due cause and probably also a warrant or unless that person is carrying a tray with burgers and fries.

For as long as it lasts and until the robots take over, it remains possible to experience in a car that thrilling breakaway feeling celebrated by Jack Kerouac and other gassy laureates of asphalt and also by more companionably sprightly runaways like Thelma and Louise. It won’t be this way forever, as we all know: global positioning systems already have us pinned to a cosmic surveillance grid. Yet freedom is what I felt as I headed south on Highway 191.

That the American road system is a crowning achievement of Western civilization is too little appreciated. The gorgeous blue highways slashing straight across the country, the sinuous coast roads hugging vertiginous cliffs, the corrugated back country lanes no longer attract poets like Woody Guthrie. If they did, odes would be written to the stretch of 191 between Chinle and Ganado, one snippet of an elegant historic roadway engineered so that on maps it resembles a zipper fastening the Western states to the rest of the land. Traversing the country longitudinally from border to border, Highway 191 crosses the Rockies and links Canada to Mexico.

But the piece I know best runs die-straight through tableland south of the Defiance Plateau, paralleling the rim of a pinkish mesa that, just yards from the shoulder, falls away steeply to the aptly named Beautiful Valley. The distance between Chinle and Ganado is not much, maybe 40 miles, and can be covered in about that many minutes, less if there are no Navajo Nation police patrols around.

I drove south that morning and then west, stopping briefly in the plaza of a scrubby pueblo, where some bare-chested locals dressed as kachinas seemed to be readying for a sacred ceremony. It was not long before a couple of the men ran at me with menace. Taking the hint, I peeled out quickly, stopping next at a roadside card table where a Hopi woman sold bottled water and jewelry made from minute discs of white shell.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=932cffdf0a8f9d6ae13ba0290d0935eb

BY the time we reached the first rest stop, a Burger King in Cle Elum, in central Washington State, I was suffering two anxieties: That I would kill the guru, and that if I didn’t, he would ignore me for the next 3,000 miles.

He’d been as quiet as a statue for the two hours since we left Seattle. When he finally spoke, it was to say, “Oh, look, chicken sandwiches, only $1.05.”

People who haven’t spent time with a spiritual master might think that being in their presence has a calming affect, that wisdom drips from their lips like nectar. But in my experience, masters of meditation and miracles are not so easy to be around.

I have known this particular guru for about 14 years; he is a yogi, a brilliant meditation master and an award-winning filmmaker from the Kingdom of Bhutan. I call him Rinpoche (RIM-po-shay), an honorific akin to reverend or rabbi. And when I’m in his presence for any extended period of time, it’s as if I become invisible.

Then again, at the most unexpected moments (over fries at Hooters, for example), he’ll give me his full attention to deliver a brief instruction, like “Fall in love” or “Lose your address book and go to India,” and my life is changed.

Over the years he has asked me to do all variety of odd things, so I didn’t think much of it when he asked me to fetch a map of the United States. He was wrapping up a teaching in Seattle and wanted to take his time and see a bit of the country before his next engagement in New York City.

That he would take the time for a vacation was a surprise and a relief to those who know him. He flies almost every week of the year, accepting as many invitations as he can to meet the needs of his students around the world. So I looked for a road map.

My friend Emily, who travels with the guru wherever he goes, nudged him and said, “Aren’t you going to tell her?”

“Tell her what?”

“That she’s driving?”

“Oh yeah,” he said without looking up from his iPad. “Right.”

And that’s how I found out that I would be spending the next three weeks at the wheel, a holy man at my side, all of the United States in front of me.

Being asked to chauffeur was, to me, a thrilling honor like being asked to drive the president or the pope. But it was also scary, like being asked to transport someone’s kidney.

I would have help. Along with Emily, there would be David, a phlegmatic retired therapist and former New York City taxi driver. When I asked him why he thought he’d been selected, he said, “Rinpoche’s going on vacation and I guess he knew I’d be pretty low maintenance since I don’t talk a lot.” My mind immediately began wheeling. Why me? I remember Rinpoche telling us that when Lord Atisha traveled to Tibet, he intentionally took along the most infuriating person he knew so there’d be plenty of opportunities for practicing patience. Am I that person?

One of Buddhism’s famous sayings is: “Drive all blames into one,” which is funny when you have friends named Juan. It’s meant to point to the ego as the one root of all suffering. But in the case of our little road trip, I was the Juan. As the primary planner I would be the bearer of bad news, the target of raised eyebrows, the one responsible for tedium and sad continental breakfast options.

But we started out well enough. David picked out a comfortable Chevy Traverse and I charted the first part of our journey, a four-day trip from Seattle to Boulder, Colo., my hometown, where we would stay a week. On the morning of departure, Rinpoche’s devotees came to see us off, offering him white scarves and bowing with worried looks on their faces. One approached, hugging me as she whispered, “Drive safe.”

A whisper can be so loud and penetrating. It was now up to me to deliver Rinpoche, the most precious human these people know, safely to Midtown Manhattan.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=35e5460e28b1e593c0dffd92d02f8ac2