TRIP TIP

Airlines are expected to be 90 percent full this holiday season, meaning that if you miss a flight, good luck getting on another one. Some advice: Don't dillydally at the airport and try to get an advance seat assignment. Arrive early, print out boarding passes at home and know security rules (if you haven't flown recently, check rules at www.tsa.gov.). Book ample time between connecting flights. But if connections are tight on tickets already bought, consider flying standby earlier in the day. On the day of the flight, a $25 fee will get you a confirmed seat on an earlier flight, if seats are available, on most airlines. Bring or program into your cell-phone contact numbers for your travel agent and airline, and sign up online with your airline for alerts about delays.

WASHINGTON POST

REAL DEAL

Two major rental car companies are offering half-off weekend rentals at off-airport locations nationwide. Enterprise Rent-a-Car (1-800-261-7331, www.enterprise.com) has economy cars starting at about $14 a day; the vehicle can be rented for three to five days, including a Friday through Monday, by June 30. Hertz (1-800-654-3131, www.hertz.com) is offering compact cars from about $20 a day for three-day Friday-Monday rentals through Dec. 31; mention code FIFTY.

WASHINGTON POST

FOOD FARE

If you're an aficionado of haute cuisine as defined by the Michelin guides, you'll be getting on the next plane to Japan. Michelin's inspectors are notoriously stingy with their praise, but eight restaurants in Tokyo, including two sushi eateries, got three stars. Michelin awarded a total of 191 stars to 150 restaurants in Tokyo -- more stars than in any other city in the world. Paris has a total of 65 stars for all of its restaurants, but can still claim to have the most three-star or top-rated restaurants, with 10. Michelin Guides director Jean-Luc Naret declared Tokyo "the world leader in gourmet dining."

ASSOCIATED PRESS

BOOK BRIEF

Travel + Leisure's "100 Greatest Trips" ($20) offers offbeat itineraries in otherwise familiar places. In New York City, go shopping in Harlem at Atmos, the Japanese sneaker store, and N, a designer emporium. In Mexico, follow the tequila trail in Jalisco, where the agave plant used to make the drink is grown. And in London, take the tube to the London Bridge stop and eat your way around Borough Market, where you can grab a venison burger at Westcountry Venison and a house ale at Brew Wharf. In Belgium, go shopping for vintage diamonds at Adelin. Tour Versailles by bicycle, or take an unusual road trip through the Midwest to see great architecture such as the Toledo Museum of Art's Glass Pavilion in Ohio and the Des Moines Public Library in Iowa, described as "a low-slung building clad in a perforated-copper skin."

ASSOCIATED PRESS

OPENING: SCOTTSDALE

Many resorts in Arizona's Valley of the Sun attempt to deny the harsh environment in which they're situated. The FireSky Resort, which opened in April on the site of the former Caleo Resort in Scottsdale, opted instead to coexist with the desert around it. It chose earth, fire and water as its theme and created the sense of a desert retreat on Scottsdale Road. Waterfalls tumble from stone pillars into the pool. At night, fire leaps from caldrons atop those pillars. And just outside the bar, living room furniture has been set up in an area of bare, packed dirt -- see, not every square inch of a Scottsdale resort needs to be artificially landscaped. The 204-room FireSky is part of the "anti-chain" of Kimpton Hotels. The objective of the late Bill Kimpton was for guests not to find any semblance of continuity from one hotel to the next.

LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS

WEB WATCH

Priceline is permanently dropping its $5 fee for booking flights on published fares, after a summer test. The fee still applies when booking through the "Name Your Own Fare" auction portion of the site.

WASHINGTON POST