Traveling

Find a laundry or dry-cleaner near your hotel. I travel throughout the world on business and pleasure. This is one of the easiest ways to keep the size of your luggage manageable and save money by avoiding the high cost of hotel cleaning services. Many laundries offer hourly or daily service and will return your clothes fresh and folded. Rich Friedman Simi Valley If flying out of an unfamiliar airport, arrive earlier than you think you should. My girlfriend and I flew from Austin, Texas, to Montego Bay, Jamaica, and arrived at the airport extra early just in case.

SHANGHAI - California Gov. Jerry Brown said Saturday that he has asked his lawyers to review a new order from a panel of federal judges requiring him to file a fresh plan for reducing the state's prison population. The judges have threatened to hold state officials, including Brown, in contempt if they fail to comply within three weeks. "I did speak with my lawyers. I said, 'Take a good look at this stuff,'" Brown told reporters as he headed for a Huangpu River cruise with Yao Ming, a former NBA star turned Napa Valley winemaker.

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)

For an air carrier whose parent company is still in bankruptcy, American Airlines doesn't show signs of retrenching. American announced plans Wednesday to add eight destinations out of Los Angeles International Airport in an effort to secure more big-spending business travelers. It will bring to 51 the number of domestic and international destinations from the airport. The new domestic destinations - Eugene and Redmond, Ore.; Pittsburgh; Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis; Bentonville, Ark.; and Hartford, Conn.

Business travel spending is expected to rise 5.1% in 2013, a sign of a stronger economy and high consumer confidence, according to a trade group for business travel managers. The Global Business Travel Assn.'s latest prediction is an increase from its last prediction of a 4.6% increase in business travel spending over 2012. Travel spending grew by only 1.8% in 2012 over the previous year. The 5.1% increase means business travelers in the U.S. will spend an estimated $268.5 billion in 2013, according to the trade group.

Despite predictions by federal officials that deep budget cuts would lead to long wait times at the nation's airports, airline on-time performance did not change significantly during the busy spring break period. But the cuts brought about by the so-called sequestration did force government agencies to slash travel spending by as much as 30% in March, lowering revenue for the nation's airlines. When a budget battle between Congress and the Obama administration boiled over in February, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano predicted that job furloughs and cuts in overtime pay to airport screeners and customs officers would result in gridlock and airport wait times growing by an hour or more.

Diane Lambdin Meyer's article on Heart Mountain tells an important story in the history of our country ["Heart Mountain Still Chilled by the Winds of Internment," March 31]. It is a story that many prefer to ignore. I compliment her and The Times. It would not surprise me that some readers may not have liked it when they began to read it in the Travel section on Easter Sunday. I hope it was read by them and will lead to other serious thinking about what happened to the Japanese Americans in August 1942.

Redefining night life? That'd be Miami Regarding "For Creatures of the Night" [March 24] on Miami Beach: Jenn Harris needs to step away from Miami Beach, because anything done there is not redefining. Time to cross the bridge and step into the real Miami. Visit such places as Will Call, Space, Grand Central, the Garret, Wood Tavern, Shots Miami and the Electric Pickle Co. These places are a redefinition of typical Miami Beach night life. Marlon DeLeon Miami Wheelchair-friendly cruises Regarding "The Right Questions" by Catharine Hamm [On the Spot, March 24]

FRANCE, ITALY AND SWITZERLAND Presentation Tricia Holbrook will look at hut-to-hut trekking through France, Italy and Switzerland on the Tour du Mont Blanc, and from Mont Blanc to the Matterhorn along Switzerland's Haute Route. When, where: 7:30 p.m. Monday at Distant Lands, 20 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena. Admission, info : Free. RSVP to (626) 449-3220. CAMBODIA Presentation Travel photographer and tour guide Ralph Velasco will present a virtual circumnavigation of Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia and offer photo tips about these images.

When Silicon Valley wizard John Hanke developed Google Earth a little more than a decade ago, he put advanced, interactive mapping technology in the hands of consumers. It was a major breakthrough, but Hanke has moved on since then. As director of Google's Niantic Labs, he masterminded Field Trip, an app that provides real-time, location-based information about shops, buildings and services. It's available for smartphones and tablets. When used used in conjunction with Google Glass, expected to be released by the end of the year, the Field Trip app will be accessible to by voice-activated, futuristic spectacles, thereby freeing users' hands.