The lead singer and lead guitarist of U2, Bono and The Edge, won a protracted legal battle yesterday in their effort to renovate and expand Dublin's Clarence hotel, which they own.

The Clarence, located near the Temple Bar district of Dublin, is one of the city's most famous hotels.

The architect that the two musicians have hired for the $235 million renovation plan intends to completely gut the hotel before expanding into neighboring property sites, ultimately more than tripling the number of rooms currently offered.

The duo's plan had been marred in a 4 year legal battle, as preservationists argued that too many other protected buildings in the vicinity would be affected, including several which now will have to be knocked down.

Ireland's planning board approved the Clarence expansion, but with conditions, including calling for an archeologist to be on site throughout the project.

Naturally, preservationists say the celebrity of Bono and The Edge, two of Ireland's richest men, allowed them to bypass planning laws that would have thwarted anyone else.

I'm not sure if I'll ever get married, but if I do, I'm clear that I'd want it to be as quick as possible, a couple of minutes is what would work best for me. Being Indian, a wedding under four days is sacrilege, but oh well.

A registered wedding at the court was what I thought the only option, a super boring option indeed, until I read about the quickie weddings possible at the airport!

At Los Angeles International Airport, a man called "The Officiant Guy" can marry you without witnesses and in full confidentiality. You don't even need to be an LA resident! At Sweden's Stockholm-Arlanda Airport, you can arrange to be married in the airport church or by a registrar; last year the 500 couples got hitched there. "Say Yes and Go" marriages sound awesome too -- say "I do" and jump straight onto a plane, a common wedding style in Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport.

However, if that's too simple and you want a bit of a novel themed wedding, you can tie the knot inside a parked Concorde Airplane at England's Manchester Airport, and Schiphol Airport has a wedding planner who will organize it the way you want at the airport (boarding pass style invites? Air crew uniforms as outfits?). The airport will even allow you to have a champagne brunch, and should you want to take all your guests on a trip straight after, a special "Ticket to Paradise" package deal can be sorted out.

So if you are looking for a different, cheaper, and quicker way to get married, you might want to ring your nearest airport!

You can still marvel at the Pantheon in Rome this summer. Just don't be eating any gelato while doing it.

Rome has passed a measure outlawing the eating of snacks at many of its most famous tourist attractions, in an effort, say officials, to preserve the city's treasured monuments.

The snack ban went in effect this past weekend, and will last through October.

For travelers, this came as a shock, since many choose to buy food at street vendors or markets on the go rather than sit at many of the expensive cafes that have set up shot near Rome's most popular attractions.

"You don't want to sit at that place," Kristin Benner of Annapolis tells the Associated Press, pointing to one of the cafes near the Pantheon. "And if you have signs, police and benches, isn't that taking away from the monuments more than drinking near them?"

Rome is also cracking down on drunks -- banning them, too -- and is prohibiting homeless from sleeping near tourist attractions.

It seems cities across Italy are really cracking down lately on things deemed to take away from the tourist experience, even as though they claim it is for the good of buildings, monuments and other sites.

Venice has banned picnics and bare torsos in St. Mark's Square (not to mention pigeon feeding); Florence is targeting the men who wait with squeegees to wash the windows of cars idling at traffic lights.

Rome also recently passed a law cracking down on street vendors.

Now here is one court ruling that pretty much any traveler could get behind.

According to the German news weekly Die Zeit, Germany's Supreme Court, the Bundesgerichtshof, recently ruled that airline passengers traveling home from a holiday are entitled to a full refund of the cost of their trip if their plane crashes or comes close enough to crashing to have caused passengers fear and stress -- thus ruining the relaxation won on said vacation.

Obviously if a plane crashes, more than likely there won't be many refunds to hand out. But it's the latter condition that is interesting here.

I'm not talking a refund of airfare. I'm talking a refund of everything that was spent on the holiday. Many German tourists book vacations through packages that include airfare, so this means they'd be entitled to a refund of the entire package.

Now, a court in the town of Duisburg must decide whether this ruling from the high court has any bearing on a case it is currently hearing involving a German couple whose plane home from Turkey had to make an emergency landing in Istanbul three years ago.

The couple's plane malfunctioned shortly after taking off from Antalya. The couple says the plane's door almost opened, pieces of the cabin's ceiling starting coming down and the plane had to do a corkscrew landing in Istanbul.

The couple was on a two week Turkish vacation -- some say Turkey is Germany's 17th state -- from a German packager called Alltours.

Alltours gave the couple around $430 for the delay they suffered. The couple sued for their entire package to be refunded, saying they lost all the peace and rest they'd built up during their two weeks by the pool.

The Duisburg court must decide whether the couple really thought they were going to die, which could bring the matter in line with the high court's ruling.

But there are a few questions that go unanswered in the article, including why the high court bothered to rule on this in the first place. Had another lawsuit like this reached it? And also, isn't this a stupid ruling? I mean, what if the packager was from the U.S. or U.K.? Can a German court compel a foreign company to pay up?

What if you weren't on a package, and didn't keep receipts?

However, it's a nice thought, isn't it? Imagine coming home from the Caribbean or Disney or what have you, hitting unusually bad turbulence, maybe even making an emergency landing of sufficient drama and getting the cost of your vacation refunded because you now feel, you tell people, so frazzled it's like you never went on vacation at all!

10 tips for smarter flying

With summer in full swing it, finding good outdoor spaces to have a drink is the thing to do. Nothing says summer more than a couple of friends sitting on an outdoor terrace sharing a pitcher. But even better than your average terrace or patio has to be a rooftop.

Stopping for an evening drink is an excellent activity, but if you can find a bar on top of a tall building with an excellent view of your host city, even better. While in Vietnam last fall, my hostel in Hanoi had a rooftop bar and it seemed none of us ever wanted to leave. Our friends over at Matador Nights -- part of the Matador Network -- think along the same lines and have graced us with an article on The World's 10 Best Rooftop Bars. It's the insider's guide to finding the best rooftop nightlife, from the ultra cool to the ultra sexy.

Here are the top five:

1. Sirocco, Bangkok, Thailand
2. The Penthouse, Madrid, Spain
3. Luna Bar, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
4. Rooftop Bar, Melbourne, Australia
5. Gravity, Dublin, Ireland

For the rest of the list and descriptions to all of the bars, read the Matador Nights article here. Do you have a favorite rooftop bar?

Gotta hand it to the Brits: They know how to go crazy when on vacation.

A group of British women are facing prostitution charges after they took part in an oral sex competition on the Greek island of Zakynthos this past weekend, according to eTurboNews

Nine women received money to "perform" in the competition, which was recorded and posted on the Internet.

Another six British men and six Greek men (two of whom owned the bar) are also facing charges of "encouraging obscene behavior," eTurboNews says.

Zakynthos has the reputation of being pretty full on when it comes to its party scene, not unlike Majorca and Ibiza.

The competition took place on Leganas beach, with is in the south of the island.

No word on who won it.

One of the reasons I have a fear of amusement parks is because of a story like this.

Yesterday, a jam-packed amusement ride at a Swedish theme park collapsed, injuring nearly 20 people, many of who were children.

The collapse happened at the Liseberg theme park outside Goteborg, in western Sweden. The ride was a spinning arm-and-seat combination.

Swedish authorities tell the Associated Press that a malfunctioning ball bearing was behind the collapse. The ride had been checked for safety in the spring, and nothing at that time was found to be amiss.

Twenty-five ambulances responded to the scene.

Liseberg is Scandinavia's largest amusement park, with 30 different rides, the AP says.

One of Spain's most iconic monuments La Sagrada Familia, a humongous Roman Catholic church in Barcelona that has been under construction since 1882, will finally have a roof. Expecting to be ready by 2010, the church will then be able to host services and events inside its premises.

Originally designed by Antoni Gaudi, the church is recognised by its 18 tall towers and its architectural style is a cross between Art Noveau and Cubism.

What's most interesting about this structure is that it's not funded by the government or any church. It has been built purely on private donations and money from tourist tickets, the main reason why it's still under construction for the last 125 years. The church attracts about 2 million visitors annually and standard entrance is €10.

Word is that the structure will be completed in 2026, but since its construction relies heavily on tourist pennies, that date is debatable.

The world famous wonder that it has become, you'd think that an official body would take over its completion; 144 years for a church to be completed is just way out of line. But then again, what's a dozen more years, eh?

[Via Globorati]

Just opened in Pentonville Road, Islington (Greater London) is Surya (Hindi for "Sun" and Sanskrit for "Sun God"), the world's first green nightclub.

It will generate its own electricity when people move on its floors, will operate on solar and wind energy, has air-flush waterless urinals and low-flush toilets, and free entry for cyclists and walkers. Otherwise club entry is £10 and customers must sign a pledge towards helping combat climate change.

Brainchild of Mr.Charalambous, head of Club4Climate, the club's dance floor is made of crystal and ceramic, which when trodden on generates electricity under the concept of "piezoelectricity". This current is fed into nearby batteries, which in turn fuel the club. It is estimated that if a large group of clubbers danced vigorously, they could generate 60% of the club's energy needs.

With aim of inspiring the youth to get involved in tackling the issue of global warming, Charalambous said in the Times of India: "Unless we stop preaching to people and use an inclusive philosophy we're never going to create the revolution to combat climate change." I couldn't agree more.

I'm all for equal opportunities, but St. Mary's Airport (Isle of Scilly) offering a job application form for an air traffic controller in braille is, for lack of a better word, retarded.

It's a huge waste of time and money creating forms in braille for jobs the blind just cannot have, and questions the intelligence of those people making the rules and enforcing the "small print" on employment procedures.

According to this article, the airport defended itself by saying that they were "simply abiding by equal opportunity guidelines but the requirements for the job would be 20/20 vision, from this it can be concluded that a person who was blind or partially sighted would not have a chance of obtaining the job."

Errr...so the point of a braille form exactly? To avoid being penalized by the law? In fact, because they offered a "false" opportunity to a blind person who clearly cannot get the job, they should be penalized for being misinforming and misleading, no?