After selecting a travel destination, and dedicating the necessary funds, it’s all about bags: which ones to take, and what to put in them. My family has caught on. During Christmas travel in the Bay Area and Folsom, I received a Briggs & Riley satchel. Life sees its share of baggage (pun intended), so the humble carryall faces tall odds against standing out. Yet some do. This Briggs & Riley tote commands respect, replacing the made-in-the-northern-Philippines backpack (a topic for another post) as the daily bag of choice.

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If you visit only one city in South America in your lifetime, chances are it’s going to be Buenos Aires (literally “good airs”). Safer, cheaper, and more family-friendly than that likely number two city Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires is heaven for tourists who want to stay busy with never-ending sights. The only problem is the city is so huge (one of the largest in the world with 13 million people) that you will only get a taste. You will know Buenos Aires like an ant knows your house, but hopefully it’s the good parts like the pantry and cookie jar. Let’s take a twenty-four hour ride through the best of what Buenos Aires has to offer.

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As you may or may not know, Volette is (loosely) based out of Las Vegas, which means that the decision to attend CES this year was a pretty easy one. (Taxi or bus? Bus. We’re all about the cheap green solution.) So we’ll be checking in over the next couple of days with the coolest travel gear and gadgets we can find in the massive cavernous space of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

If you see us (or rather, me), say hello!

Here’s something for those of you who lug a Playstation Portable around on your adventures: Sony has officially announced that the PSP will support Skype. For those of you who spend your days living under rocks, Skype is the ultra-badass service that provides simple VOIP (Voice Over IP) Internet telephony. We’re big fans of Skype here at Volette; it’s the cheapest way to make computer-to-phone international calls that we know of, and calling other Skype users is free. Even the app is a free download.

Apparently, Skype will arrive on the PSP as a firmware update later this month.