The Times’ Ultimate Guide to the World: The globe at your fingertips

The world at your fingertips

This is the ultimate Ultimate Guide. For three weeks, the Travel section has brought you the Ultimate Guide to Cruising (Jan. 25), the Ultimate Guide to California (Feb. 1) and today, the Ultimate Guide to the World. Online, you’ll find even more information such as updated lists of foreign government tourist offices, state offices, airlines and so on. Go to latimes.com/ultimateguide2009.

-- Times staff

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Car museum

Germany’s smallest but most profitable independent car manufacturer, Porsche, has opened a museum in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen in the heart of the Porsche industrial area. The new museum is a futuristic free form of glass and concrete attached to only three massive pillars. It incorporates 60,250 square feet of exhibition area and features more than 80 sports cars. Admission is $11. Info: www.porsche.com

-- Susan James

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Garden party

This year the exquisite Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew near London will celebrate the 250th anniversary of its founding. What started in 1759 as a 9-acre garden is now an internationally renowned 300-acre wonderland. Highlights this year: The Tropical Extravaganza, until March 8, displays orchids, bromeliads and other hot-climate plants in the Princess of Wales Conservatory, and a Darwin Now exhibit explores the naturalist’s life, theories and legacy. Info: www.kew.org

-- Susan Spano

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Hotel Moscow

For the fourth consecutive year, Moscow hotels have won the dubious honor of being the most expensive in the world, followed by lodgings in New York City, Paris and Mumbai, India, according to the annual Hogg Robinson Group hotel survey. The average room rate in Moscow last year was $420, the survey showed. New York lodgings charged an average of $413 per night in 2008. L.A. hotels landed in the middle of the pack at $250.

-- Hugo Martin

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Biblical digs

If you are contemplating going on an archaeological dig this year, a new online feature from the Biblical Archaeology Society lists more than 20 excavation projects that need volunteers this summer. Each trip description on the society’s website gives a bio of the leaders, time commitment involved and price of the trip. In most cases, no experience is required to participate. Dig sites currently listed include destinations in Israel, Jordan, Spain, Italy and Greece. Info: digs.bib-arch.org

-- Mary Forgione