It's quite possible, if you think about it. A couple of snaps of those other attractions are usually enough, but once we start taking photos of tulips, it's hard to stop.

The "world's most beautiful spring gardens" are open for only the two months in which the spring bulbs bloom, so when the gates open in late March, there's a photo frenzy. Nearly a million people a year shuffle through the turnstiles in search of the perfect snapshot.

We queue at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport for the bus to take us to Lisse, about 30 minutes' drive away. On board, it's standing room only. When we pass our first field of tulips, the bus rocks disturbingly as everyone with a camera (or a mobile phone with a hole in the back) rushes to the windows.

So many tourists can't be wrong. This is going to be good. Anticipation builds as we arrive at the Keukenhof.

Music pumps out from a colourful street organ and ladies in traditional dress sell guidebooks. The site was once the kitchen garden (keukenhof) of a 15th-century castle, owned by the colourful Countess Jacoba van Beieren.

She married four times, waged various wars and died young of tuberculosis. But I don't have time to read more as there are flashes of colour in the gardens ahead and I have photos that need taking.

Flowers are easy to photograph, even for us amateurs. They sit patiently while you fumble with the camera's settings and don't pull stupid faces when you point the lens. In the Keukenhof, they've been arranged for colour co- ordinated effect.

Jan D Zocher, who also designed Amsterdam's lovely Vondelpark, planned these castle gardens in 1857; modern designers have built on his structure of lawns, lakes, trees and pathways.

Drifts of brilliant yellow, red and orange tulips scream out from between the blues of the grape hyacinths, under the bright green spring growth of the beech and chestnut trees.

Just when we think this is getting a bit gaudy, we find an area of subdued pinks and delicate mauves, contrasting with beds of purple tulips so dark they're nearly black.

We can't get enough. Those seeking close-ups of dewdrops on a perfect bloom throw themselves on the damp ground and poke their lenses upwards.

Others risk falling in the water in their efforts to frame their lake shots with overhanging branches. We throw our lunch to the swans to encourage them to glide into the ideal spot.

Poise the camera over a flower bed and you'll get a frame filled with a stunning pattern of bright "triumphs" or "double earlies".

There are more than 100 varieties of tulips here. Some 30 gardeners have hand-planted seven million bulbs.

Crouch down to flower level and you'll capture the woven patchwork of "victory" and "parrot" tulips offset against tree trunks.

There are avenues of blossom, a Japanese garden, glasshouses filled with lilies and orchids - and floral arrangement competitions. There are formal ponds lined with symmetrical topiary box hedges.

We shoot our partners posing casually next to a bed of "single lates".

They shoot us posing humorously beside a statue. At 32 hectares, the Keukenhof is the Netherlands' largest outdoor sculpture park, displaying the work of 50 artists.

People here are patient with photographers. They step back and wait, so as not to walk between us and our subjects. Passing strangers offer to take shots of us with a bed of "orange princesses" behind us and we return the favour.

The full Dutch experience is available at the Keukenhof. People snap each other trying on giant clogs and eating raw herring.

There's an old windmill to climb - another photo opportunity. International influence is on show: TV's Teletubbies are rendered in flower petals.

We grab a quick coffee and snack but there's no time to waste. We have to race home to sift through hundreds of shots and delete the rubbish.

Too much contrast in this picture? Too much backlight? Great background but what a pity your eyes are shut . . . Where's my perfect shot? I'll have to go back.

I see that next year the Keukenhof has an American theme, featuring a "flowerised version of the Statue of Liberty". I must get a picture of that.

The Keukenhof is at Lisse, about a 30-kilometre drive from Amsterdam. Buy a Combi-ticket for [Euro]20 ($40) from Amsterdam's Schiphol airport or at the train stations in Leiden or Haarlem. Entry to the Keukenhof costs [Euro]13.50, children [Euro]6. See keukenhof.nl.

When you're looking at a cruise, you often see promotions dealing with airfares to and from the cruise port. Sometimes it's "free air;" in other cases, the cruise line promotes its own add-on fare, typically announcing it's a good deal. Airfare can be especially important in one-way cruises, the most common of which are on Alaska cruises or transatlantic positioning cruises. A recent reader inquiry dealt with such a repositioning cruise:

"We are taking a repositioning cruise in April from Florida to the Mediterranean, ending in Rome. The cruise line quoted air connections (Chicago to Florida and Rome to Chicago) for $1,300 per person. I consider that expensive. What is the most cost-effective way to buy one-way tickets from Chicago to Florida and then Rome back to Chicago?"

The short answer is that, in this case, our reader can do better than the cruise line's airfare. For travel in April, Southwest currently features one-way fares from Chicago-Midway to Ft. Lauderdale as low as $59 per person. And Aer Lingus lists fares from Rome to Chicago, via Dublin, at €274 (about $356, see XE.com for current exchange rates), for a total of $415. That's a lot less than the cruise line's deal.

But the numbers don't always come out this way. You have to check each trip. And you also have to consider factors beyond just the relative airfares.

Round-Trip Air Deals

In many—probably most—cases, your air problem is a round-trip ticket from your home airport to the cruise port, most frequently in Florida, California, or the Northwest. And that calculation is easy and straightforward: Just log onto your preferred airfare search sites, such as our own comparison tool, and evaluate the results against the cruise line's quote. The only caveat is to make sure your site includes Southwest—or that you check Southwest separately.

Open-Jaw Air Deals

You can sometimes combine a one-way cruise with an open-jaw airfare. That's an airfare from your home city to your departure cruise port, with a return from a different arrival cruise port. Open-jaw tickets typically cost half the sum of the round-trip fares, which means they provide whatever price advantage you normally get with round-trips.

In the case of cruises, however, opportunities for conventional open-jaw ticketing are limited, because airlines typically won't sell an open-jaw ticket if the "open" part of the itinerary is longer than either of the flight legs. And, with many one-way cruises, the cruise itinerary is longer than at least one of the flights. Still, it's worth a try. In their wholesale deals with airlines, cruise lines can often work out what amounts to open-jaw deals that violate that rule, but you can't buy those as an ordinary consumer.

One-Way Air Deals

If your cruise begins and ends in the U.S. or Canada—for example, Vancouver to Anchorage—many North American airlines now price one-way tickets at roughly half the price of a round-trip. I checked a sample trip from Anchorage to Chicago, where the one-way fare this spring is just half the round-trip on several lines. So you can easily price the separate one-way tickets you need.

Then question becomes more complicated with international trips—especially transatlantic. That's because only a few transatlantic airlines offer relatively low one-way fares. The most notable of them is Aer Lingus, which prices even its lowest fares on a one-way basis. Aer Lingus or affiliated lines fly to Ireland from all over Europe, so connecting on that end is no problem. However, in North America it flies only to Boston, Chicago, New York, and Washington, so your options here are limited. Our reader in Chicago would do fine. The main drawback is that he would have to connect in Dublin rather than fly nonstop.

Of course, he could take a nonstop from Rome to Chicago. But the price quoted by Alitalia or American for a nonstop is a whopping $2,088! And even with a connection, most other big lines quoted one-way Rome to Chicago flights starting at $1,300. And there's no guarantee that the cruise line's air option would be nonstop, either—it doesn't say.

What if our reader lived in, say, Kansas City rather than Chicago? Without an Aer Lingus option, one-way fares are much higher. The best one-way rate from Rome to Kansas City I could find was $1,662. Of course, our reader could buy a ticket to Chicago and a separate ticket from Chicago to Kansas City, but an extra connection—and having to claim his bags and pass through security a second time—could be quite a hassle.

Throw-Away Returns

On many transatlantic routes, round-trip tickets are much cheaper than one-ways. And in those cases, you sometimes come out ahead of the game by buying and booking a round-trip itinerary, then just discarding the return portion. Our hypothetical Kansas City traveler, for example, could get a Rome to Kansas City round-trip for $842, throw away the return portion of the ticket, and still pay almost $800 less than the cost of a one-way ticket. The airlines tell you that doing this violates their rules, but who cares—and what can they do to you?

What About "Free" Air?

"Free" air on a cruise, of course, isn't really free; it's buried somewhere in the total price you pay. If you want to check on how good a deal it really is, look for the cruise line's fine print, where you may well see some sort of "refund" or "credit" if you elect not to take the line's built-in airfare package. Many of the "free air" cruise rates I've examined do, in fact, provide some form of credit if you don't take the air option. And that's the true cost of the cruise line's airfare, which you should use in your calculations.

Other Considerations

The dollar cost differential isn't the only factor to consider. Cruise air has some pluses and minuses, compared with independent air ticketing:

• The cruise line's air deal can provide you a bit more peace of mind. If you take a cruise line's air option, the line has some responsibility if the flight to your cruise is canceled or delayed past the cruise's departure time. That means either delaying the cruise departure a bit (if a lot of passengers are delayed) or arranging for you to meet the ship at its next port. But if you buy your own air ticket—or decide to use frequent flyer miles—you're on your own if your flight misses the cruise. The line might be sympathetic, but it would be up to you to arrange to connect.
• On the other hand, the cruise line's air might entail a less desirable itinerary than one you could arrange yourself. The airline handling the cruise line's business, for example, might have only a lousy connection between your home and port, whereas you could arrange a nonstop on your own. And the cruise line's air option might not earn frequent flyer credit.

As with so much else, you face a trade-off. If you do decide to arrange your own air, you're probably better off padding your schedule, especially from your home to the departure port, as a guard against missing the departure because of a delay.

Often overshadowed by New York City’s understandably more famous cuisine, Upstate New York is a meat eater’s paradise, home to such foods as beef on weck (also known as kummelweck), chicken spiedies, white hots, and the amazingly sinful garbage plate.

Buffalo Wings

Originally invented by the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, locals refer to them as chicken wings (or more simply, wings). When we lived in Western New York, our local pizzaria used to sell them with their pizzas, along with soft garlic knots dipped in butter.

Each year, the City of Buffalo holds a chicken wing festival. Last year, a record 27 tons of wings were eaten by 78,000 very happy people. Hopefully, this year’s Buffalo Wing shortage won’t impact Super Bowl parties too severely.

Beef on Weck

Beef on Weck is a juicy roast beef sandwich topped with horseradish and served on a special roll, which is studded with a bewitching combination of caraway seeds and kosher salt.

Once you’ve tried roast beef this way, you’ll find yourself regretting all the years you lost out by not eating this beefy feast on a bun. You can also thank Buffalo, New York for this heavenly food.

Spiedie

Commonly featuring cubes of chicken (lamb, beef, and venison are also used) marinated 24 hours or more in a savory sauce made of oil, vinegar, garlic, various Italian spices, and mint, this dish was invented in Endicott, New York.

Cooked shish kebab style, spiedies are often served on Italian rolls which help sop up the extra sauce. Unlike beef on weck, spiedie ingredients are easy to find and make outside of the Upstate New York area. In fact, many supermarkets across the country sell commercially prepared spiedie sauce to make this even easier. Serve some salt potatoes on the side and you can die happy.

Elegant and trendy. Smart and sexy. That is “Black” - MEXX Black.

Mexx Black Woman ~ a fruity floral with peony, ginger blossom, freesia, marigold, black currant, apricot, litchi, pear, white cedar, sandalwood, amber and vanilla. Available in 15, 30 and 50 ml Eau de Toilette or 30 ml Eau de Parfum, and in matching body products.

Mexx Black Man ~ featuring notes of black pepper, mandarin, water lily, cedar, patchouli, sandalwood and amber. Available in 30, 50 and 75 ml Eau de Toilette and matching grooming products.

(via cosmoty.de)

Other recent launches from Mexx: Berlin Summer Edition.

Dear Jessica,

Which tech items can you bring onboard a plane? Since CD players are banned during the flight, are MP3 players also subject to that rule? What about bringing AC car chargers (for cell phones or DVD players) in your carry-on?

--K.H.

Dear K.H.,

Actually, CD players are not banned during flight, nor are MP3 players.

American Airlines provides a good example of what is and isn't allowed. According to its website, "All portable electronic devices must remain off and properly stowed during taxi, takeoff, approach and landing until the plane is at the gate and the seat belt sign is off." For the duration of the flight, however, you're free to use CD players, MP3 players, DVD players, laptop computers, and other approved electronic devices, provided you use a headset.

Tech items that are banned during flight include cell phones (unless the transmit device can be disabled), two-way pagers, radios, remote controls, cordless computer mice, wireless headphones, and GPS devices. Loose lithium batteries are prohibited in checked luggage.

Car chargers are allowed aboard, but not all planes will have outlets available in coach.

If you have further questions about what is allowed in your carry-on or checked baggage, refer to the TSA's list of prohibited items.

Be ahead of the game and carry proudly this President Obama Inaugural Super Cyclone Purse. Made from 2 recycled metal plates, and wrapped around 6-inch chrome hubcaps, this commemorative bag features artwork from the renowned California artist Gregg Valley. It's available at the Urban Wave Company for the sale price of $69.60. Totally appropriate...