Yahoo! Picks - bringing you the best of the Web since 1995

After years of vacation and business travel, we're sure of one thing: Hotels are a little boring. Some boast spas and indoor pools. Others leave cute twisted-towel animals on your bed after tidying up. But when have you ever considered sending your family a postcard of your hotel? This site encourages you to find unique places to stay based on location, budget, theme, or the elusive "wow!" factor. With categories ranging from igloos to lighthouses to caves, it can be easy to plan a vacation around unusual hotels. If you're looking for the ones that'll really make your postcard stand out, check into these:

Dog Bark Park Inn — Stay inside the world's largest beagle. Ice Hotel Quebec — Wear your parka! Creek n Crag's Wild Canopy Reserve — Spy on a tiger from the treetops. Utter Inn — Sleep with the fishes, and wake up the next morning. The Old Jail — A different kind of bed and breakfast.

Some travel writers make a living writing about flashy hotels and trendy destinations. But not Erik Gauger. He goes, in his own words, "where nobody wants him, just to even things out." Notes From the Road is loaded with gorgeous hi-res photos, but not of the standard-issue subjects in glossy travel mags. In fact, he debunks the whole idea of such topics in articles like "How to Install a Tommy Bahama Republic," which catalogs the destruction of a tropical island by golf course development. "Catfish Heaven" similarly combines sightseeing with environmentalism as Gauger explores the Louisiana bayous. For a piquant taste of culture and history, take a bite of "The Cheeses of Extremadura, Spain." Or learn a little about Tuolomne Meadows and a lot about why this writer travels. These notes are so rich and extensive that, even though we featured Notes From the Road way back in 2000 as a "Cool Site of the Week," we had to hit the road with Gauger again.

Anyone remember those IBM commercials from the late '90s, featuring citizens around the globe waxing enthusiastic about the world's growing interconnectedness? While back then the notion was merely a clever ploy to move product, it's an undeniable reality today. Global Voices aims to "call attention to conversations and points of view that ... will shed new light on the nature of our inter-connected world." And boy does it. From India to Russia to the Philippines to China, Global Voices tracks and summarizes the blogosphere nation by nation. Some highlights: A fascinating interview with an Afghan blogger, a daily world blog roundup, and an archive of international podcasts. This is citizen talking to citizen, without governments or mass media in between. That can only be a good thing.