March 2011

National Geographic Books’ “100 Countries, 5,000 Ideas: Where to Go, When to Go, What to See, What to Do” (400 pp., $26.95) offers trip-planning tips on destinations from Argentina to Zimbabwe.

Switzerland Tourism’s “City-Guide Zurich” iPhone app, available for free download from the Apple iTunes Store, allows users to find interesting places and events in the city or the quickest route to a hotel or ATM.

The offline guide includes an integrated city map; public transport information, and tours with text and pictures to help you explore the city independently. All content is available in German, English, French, Italian and Spanish.

Big Five Tours & Expeditions and Wireless Traveler are offering a Wireless Traveler V Series global phone package that can be used in some 200 countries.

Dublin’s double-decker Hop-On/Hop-Off buses stop at 23 of the city’s major sites, including Trinity College and the Old Jameson Distillery.

The Codex Atlanticus, a 1,119-page compilation of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings and writings never shown to the public, are being displayed 22 pages at a time at two sites in Milan, Italy, through 2015.

The exhibition began in September 2009, and every three months a new set of pages is displayed, with themes like “Animal drawings & shapes” and “Astronomy & Cosmology.”

“Picasso in Paris, 1900-1907” is at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (phone +31 [0] 20 570 52 00), until May 29, 2011. Among 70-plus early works are paintings from Picasso’s Blue and Pink periods, “Self Portrait with a Palette” and some early intimations of Cubism.

The possession of up to five grams of marijuana or hashish is allowed in the Netherlands, and thousands of tourists cross the border every day to visit marijuana cafés.

POLAND banned smoking in public spaces, such as mass-transit vehicles and stations, parks, hospitals, theaters, schools and playgrounds, as of Nov. 15, 2010. In restaurants, bars and workplaces, smoking is allowed in separate ventilated rooms.

In SPAIN, as of Jan. 2, 2011, smoking is not allowed in enclosed public spaces, including restaurants and bars, not to mention the grounds of schools and hospitals. Hotels may set aside 30% of rooms for smoking. Smoking in restaurants’ outdoor patios and at sidewalk tables is still allowed.

As of Jan. 1, Rome, Italy, is collecting a new city tax on hotel rooms. The tax is per person per night and applies to all guests over the age of 10: €1 at B&Bs and campsites, €2 at one- to three-star hotels and €3 at four- and five-star hotels. (Two adults at a four-star for seven nights would pay €42 [$58] in tax.)

The tax cannot be prepaid when booking and is added on the bill at checkout. Be aware that even if you prepay your room through a travel agency, you still will have to pay the extra tax when checking out.

The Pomskizillious Museum of Toys (10, Triq Gnien Xibla, Xagħra; phone +356 2156 2489) in Xagħra, on the Maltese island of Gozo, displays toys from around the world in a converted 18th-century farmhouse. The earliest objects include a late-18th-century Maltese doll and some Italian Presepio (nativity) figurines from the 1790s. Open hours and days vary year-round.