Leisure

Anyone who has booked a last-minute flight knows you pay more when you wait. But you also pay more if you book too early. What's too early? What's too late? Pity the poor fare geek trying to hit that elusive sweet spot. Discount travel site Cheapair.com has crunched a year's worth of booking data and found some answers to these and other eternal travel questions, including: - Best time to book a domestic flight? Seven weeks in advance. - Best time to book an international flight?

Eagle Creek has fine-tuned its new Afar Backpack (EC-60263) to be all business and a pleasure. It weighs a pound and 11 ounces and is 12 1/2 - by-20 1/2-by-8 1/2 inches. It has well-padded contoured shoulder straps, a tuck-away padded hip belt, adjustable sternum straps, external compression straps and a sturdy top grab handle. A padded breathable mesh back panel makes for comfy cushioning. The back panel incorporates a zippered padded compartment for a laptop (up to 17 inches)

This website finds savings so much deeper than those from Kayak and Travelocity that you'll think it's magic. Name: GetGoing.com What it does: Finds better rates for flights by showing airlines that they are selling to leisure travelers. Deals are found when the traveler is flexible about dates and destinations. What's hot: Proven savings are key. I tested flights for two adults and one child from San Diego to Beaches and Sun for June 22. I got several destination options and narrowed them to two choices: San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Honolulu.

Travel + Leisure magazine has selected Ping Pang Pong of Las Vegas in its new list of best Chinese restaurants in the United States . The restaurant, inside the Gold Coast Casino -- on Flamingo Road across from the Palms resort -- opened in 2001. It quickly became a favorite with the local Asian community, despite its location just a few blocks south of Sin City's Chinatown, with its bevy of eateries. Not surprisingly, several restaurants in the L.A. area also made the list (Din Tai Fung Dumpling House, Sea Harbour Restaurant, Chung King)

I demand a recount! Or a re-survey! Or some form of redress for the aspersions Travel + Leisure magazine has cast not only on the City of Angels but on all of us Angelenos. The magazine released a survey last week of travelers who, in all their wisdom, concluded that Los Angeles surpasses New York as the rudest city in America. Excuse me? My first reaction was fear that I would never again be able to use the rude New Yorker jokes in my already limited humor repertoire ?

As the work-life boundary is increasingly breached, leisure time is becoming more stressful, a new survey finds. More than 40% of those surveyed reported dealing with work or being on call during off hours. Still, workers don't view cell phones and pagers as high-tech leashes. More than half, and 66% of those younger than 35, view technological devices and the Internet as making leisure time more enjoyable, according to the telephone survey of 1,000 U.S.

It may not be the eggnog, the endless holiday music or even the pounds of sugar cookies that are making you ill. It may be the same thing that seems to set you back when you finally head for a weekend of winter sports or jet off for a week on the beach: You're off work. Ad Vingerhoets, an associate professor of clinical health psychology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, calls it "leisure sickness."

Do you work just as hard at having fun as you do at your job? Then you may be going about it all wrong, says Steve Sumpter. And your efforts to reduce the level of stress in your life through leisure activities may be having the opposite effect. "Many people have a work-oriented approach to their leisure," says Sumpter, who is director of rehabilitation services at Capistrano by the Sea Hospital in Dana Point and a specialist in leisure counseling.

The couple came to Dr. Bruce F. Morehouse with a problem: The husband liked to spend his leisure time in highly competitive pursuits, such as tennis. The wife preferred spending such time in an activity with more social aspects, such as softball. After each filled out a questionnaire, which was fed into a computer, they were presented with a solution that would allow them to spend more time together. "I put them into volleyball, which is competitive but still social," the consultant said.

Bars, restaurants and theaters reported a sharp decrease in business during the first few days of the Persian Gulf crisis, but now Americans seem to be ungluing themselves from their television sets and going out again. Some believe that leisure-time businesses will get a boost if the hostilities drag on because people will turn to entertainment to escape war worries.

With average gasoline prices topping $4 a gallon, fewer Southern California residents say they plan to take a leisure trip over spring break, according to a survey by the Auto Club of Southern California. The annual survey of Auto Club members found that 47% said they plan at least one leisure trip this spring break season, compared with 57% in 2012 and 55% in 2011. High gasoline prices prompted 69% of those polled to say they made at least one significant cut to their budget, compared with 66% in 2012 and 61% in 2011.

This website finds savings so much deeper than those from Kayak and Travelocity that you'll think it's magic. Name: GetGoing.com What it does: Finds better rates for flights by showing airlines that they are selling to leisure travelers. Deals are found when the traveler is flexible about dates and destinations. What's hot: Proven savings are key. I tested flights for two adults and one child from San Diego to Beaches and Sun for June 22. I got several destination options and narrowed them to two choices: San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Honolulu.

SAO PAULO, Brazil - After a few hours, you sink into a pleasant trance. Time no longer matters. You stop checking your phone, if it hasn't already lost its charge. You're comfortable. Your mind settles into the little there is to do - think, maybe read a book or, of course, watch the stunning Brazilian forests and countryside pass by. Soon enough, you'll be at one of the country's deservedly famous tourist spots, by way of a few nice little towns no one has heard of. Traveling through Europe by train is an elegant and relaxing alternative to flying.

- One night as my sister and I walked across the rugged yet strangely delicate terrain of a place called Farm 215, the path to our cottage lighted only by the stars and a flashlight, the wine-wobbly beam suddenly illuminated several sets of legs. A moment of what the ...? And then we realized that we were standing in the middle of a small herd of horses, including two mares and their foals, that roam the South African eco-retreat outside Gansbaai. It was a perfect mother-child moment and a symbol of new beginnings in this Southern Hemisphere spring.

This year I had one of my best Christmas Eve dinners ever. Maybe it's because it unfolded in such a leisurely fashion--a little eating, a little dancing and listening to music, a little nibbling, a little conversation. And repeat. Watching the sunset, admiring the ring around the moon. We started about 4 p.m., shucking five dozen kumamoto oysters and watching the light fade over the horizon as we sipped a 1996 Fleury Champagne followed by a 2004 Muscadet. Bruschetta was involved too, lavished with olive oil, ricotta cheese and fresh roasted red bell peppers.

I suppose it is not especially strange that in the centenary year of the sailing and the sinking of the Titanic we would see two miniseries on the subject. The first, written by "Downton Abbey" scribe Julian Fellowes, played here in April on ABC, its final episode timed to air 100 years to the night the ship went down; my fellow critic Mary McNamara called it "ill-paced, sanctimonious and overly stuffed. " "Titanic: Blood and Steel," which begins Monday on Encore, is the second and, I feel safe in saying, the last such miniseries we will see this year, or soon.

Studying leisure and recreation is not all fun and games. Consider the varying theories one must weigh when deciding whether an activity can be elevated to play: Is the motivation intrinsic? Is there a suspension of reality? Is there a locus of control? These are just some of the concepts that students grapple with as they pursue their bachelor's and, yes, master's degrees from the department of leisure studies and recreation at Cal State Northridge.

It's a slow afternoon. So slow, in fact, that Jerry, an American male in early midlife, is spending a little time working on his triangles. He draws a real good one. His neighbor drops by and is impressed. "Great triangle, Jer." This is familiar, right? We all know lots of people hovering around the age of 40, with no kids or pets or spouses or all-consuming jobs, right? People who wake up every day with the choice of doing just about anything or nothing at all, right? No?

If you were to create a bucket list of great places to stay around the world, Travel + Leisure's list of best hotels of 2012 might be a good place to start. With a few exceptions, Travel + Leisure readers who weighed in prefer remote locations over urban centers in making their top hotel picks. High-end safari lodges in Africa snagged four of the top 10 spots with No. 1 going to Singita Grumeti Reserves in Serengeti National Park in Tanzania for the second year in a row. Triple Creek Ranch in Darby, Mont., makes it to No. 2 overall and No. 1 in the U.S. inn/small lodge category.

The cost of air travel has rebounded to pre-recession levels, and now it looks like the prices of hotel rooms for business travelers are on their way to those heights. Hotel rates for business travelers in North America surged 9.3% in April, coming within 3 percentage points of the peak pre-recession rates in fall 2008, according to Pegasus Solutions, a technology company for the hotel industry. "Rates in many markets are either continuing to grow at near-record paces or setting new year-over-year growth records," the Dallas company's report said.