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 in USA Today about 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!

Those of you sick of hostels, bed&breakfasts, and motels, wanting to go upscale on your accommodation when you travel without spending a fortune, this new brand of Citizen M Hotels might be just what you're looking for.

Go to their website and you'll find a great brand-building and marketing effort targeting the "mobile citizen" who is a new generation traveler, explorer, culture seeker, shopper and professional, looking for low-price luxury.

By its description, it seems more like a big apartment than a hotel. It has modern rooms up to date with all the technology you need including free movies on demand and free wifi, a living room to hang in, and a 24-hour canteen area for food and beverages.

Other than the fact that you can self check-in and you "shouldn't pay for bits of hotel that you don't need" (butler, chocolate on pillows?), it's not clear how they manage to offer their so called low-price luxury rates, whatever they may be (not mentioned either).

Their first hotel has just opened at Amsterdam Schipol Airport and currently has two offers running: 1) become a Citizen and the first 100 to book with them will get a free room, 2) if you aren't one of the lucky 100, throughout summer you can avail of their special room rate of €69 a night. Considering the fact that in Amsterdam any decent 2-star hotel is not available for less than €45 a night, for €69 if you are getting the luxury they promise, it's not a bad deal.

In the future, they plan to spread this concept throughout Europe.

All-in-all, a unique concept -- but no one has been here yet, so we'll just have to see .

Book lovers and aficionados: if Amsterdam wasn't on your travel plans before, you might want to add it. On April 23, UNESCO named Amsterdam the World Book Capital. The city will hold the title until April 2009, and in that time hopes to inspire dialog and spark debate about the freedom of expression.

Here are some of the World Book Capital's upcoming events that just might be of interest:

May 18: Amsterdam International Literary Festival. With over 1,000 stalls this is Europe's largest book market held in the streets of Amsterdam.

April 23 - June 23: Amsterdam in Words. An exhibition with portraits of 60 authors and quotes from their work that relates to a street, park or site in the city.

June 1 - September 8: Poetry in the Park. Two days of poetry in ten of Amsterdam's parks, beginning with Vondelpark and ending with Westerpark.

I guess it's time to hit the Amsterdam books.

You may be sick of hearing how low the dollar is, but today we have just another example of how badly the American currency is fairing. In Amsterdam, small currency outlets are refusing to buy dollars for euros, making it difficult for tourists to exchange their money.

"Our dollar is worth maybe zero over here," said Mary Kelly, an American tourist from Indianapolis, Indiana as reported by Reuters. "It's hard to find a place to exchange. We have to go downtown, to the central station or post office."

Small currency exchanges are different than banks and other institutions in that they don't want to be holding a currency that will devalue and be worth less next time they have to sell it. One euro is currently worth $1.58, compared to $1.47 a month ago. If you want to make your travel money last, it's probably time to find a job in Europe.

Last time I went to San Francisco I was happy to come across Hotel des Arts, a well-priced boutique hotel. I am normally a hostel-goer, so anytime I can branch out and have my own room it's cause for celebration. Despite Hotel des Arts being an actual hotel, I was even more excited about its use of art as interior design. The hotel hired a San Francisco gallery owner, John Doffing, to curate the hotel and he brought in work by every type of artist from graffiti taggers to professional illustrators. The end product is a hotel full of color and life, and a look into the local San Francisco art scene, all without even leaving the hotel doors; I was hooked.

Budget Travel just published their own list of Art Hotels; places to stay where you can rest assured that your room won't be painted in white. On the list:

Hotel des Arts, San Francisco
The Winston, Amsterdam
Art Luise Kunsthotel, Berlin
Daddy Long Legs, Cape Town
Hotel Fox, Copenhagen

To read descriptions of these and other hotels and their artistic rooms and settings go here. You might be so inspired you won't even make it to the surrounding museums.

In December, I wrote about how Amsterdam is dramatically downsizing their red-light district in the coming years. It seems that's just the least of it.

Rumors are coming in that within a couple decades, Amsterdam will start building a massive underground city. Engineered already by the architecture firm Zwarts & Jansma, it calls for "a range of underground facilities ... at various levels below the city."

The project will cost some 7.4 billion euros and take 20 years. The good news is that the city's historic canals will be left in place--thought they'll have to be temporarily drained. Could we see this elsewhere?

I don't see why not. Many cities are already building as high up as they can possibly go, just look at Shanghai. The next logical step is down. When I was in Beijing, I stayed in a terrible hostel that was minus four stories down. It felt like I was two levels removed from hell.

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What strange things have been found on planes?

Click the image to read the bizarre story...

When Anne Frank was hiding in Amsterdam, she often gazed at a chestnut tree outside her attic hiding place, about which she then recorded in her famous diary.

The chestnut tree has been condemned, as its trunk is so diseased it could topple over. But before the tree is cut down this Wednesday, one entrepreneur was able to snatch a relic and attempt to make a profit on it. Charles Kuijpers, who lives next door to the tree's garden, has put one chestnut from the tree up for sale on eBay.

Bids at the time of writing were at $700. How much would you pay?

While we here at Gadling do not advocate the use of drugs, we suspect that some of our readers might feel otherwise. And so, as a public service announcement for all you pot heads out there, we'd like to point your pie eyes in the direction of Amsterdam later this month where the 20th annual Cannabis Cup will celebrate five days of getting stoned.

I'm not sure what will happen November 18 – 22 during the festival because the website is a bit short on information; it looks like someone got too baked and forgot to post an itinerary of events.

It does appear, however, that there is some type of competition amongst 21 coffee shops and 25 seed companies. In addition, Tommy Chong and Cheech Marin will be inducted into the Counterculture Hall of Fame. Wow, I can't believe that it's taken this long for the poster children of the pot movement to receive this honor. I'm sorry, but are you telling me that there have been 19 better qualified honorees over the last two decades of this festival?!?!

Anyway, if weed is your thing, be sure to head off to Amsterdam for five days of amnesia. Oh, and don't forget your passport. And your wallet. And your pants. And your shoes. And to tell your boss you won't be coming in to work. And don't forget your passport too.

I used to have a pair of roller skates with metal clamps that fastened to my shoes. No matter how I tightened them, they wouldn't stay put. Finding out about Halloween roller skating events has made me nostalgic. Around the world people don costumes and roller skates this time of year for organized Halloween skates. These are not at a skating rink, but out on the town. I was in a Halloween run at midnight once, but roller skating sounds a lot more fun.

If you agree, then check out this list of places around the world you can skate in honor of the ghoulish holiday:

A chunk of one of Amsterdam's most famous tourist draws, the red light district, will soon be transformed into housing. The 700-year-old district is a maze of alleys lined with brothels, sex shops, and "coffee shops" selling marijuana and other mind-altering substances. This darker side of Amsterdam is as much a tourist destination as Anne Frank's house or the Van Gogh Museum. However, the city's Mayor, Job Cohen, opines that the concentration of sex in the city center is too high.

The brothel owner got a pretty sum for his 51 windows -- 25 million euros, or $35 million. Real estate must pay more than sex these days.

[via Reuters]