(ARA) - As expected, the busy 2007 travel season ended with a flurry over the Christmas and New Year's holidays. According to AAA, an estimated 65 million Americans traveled 50 miles or more from home at the end of the year That's in addition to the approximately 38 million who ventured out over Thanksgiving and the near record sum of travelers who weathered a real record number of flight delays to vacation during the summer.

It was indeed a roller coaster year for travelers, but millions endured the wild ride -- especially on long weekends -- which continue to be the most popular type of leisure travel according to a number of industry sources. So where did travelers go this year?

For long weekend travel, New York City was the most popular destination of 2007, followed by Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Denver, based on bookings on Orbitz.com. Rounding out the top 10 list were Atlanta, Las Vegas, Boston, San Francisco and Newark.

Orbitz' list also included the top travel destinations for the year, based on its bookings, and found Chicago to be No. 1 for 2007. New York and Los Angeles were second and third respectively. Perhaps Chicago claimed the top spot for the second year in a row because it's more centrally located and offers more affordable hotel options than its big city brethrens in New York and California. The rest of Orbitz' list of top destinations for 2007 is comprised of Washington, D.C., Denver, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Boston, San Francisco and Orlando.

One final surprise from the year in travel, as Orbitz data shows the 4th of July topped Turkey Day as the busiest travel week of the year. The Index found Independence Day to be the busiest of the 52 weeks of the calendar year, measured Sunday through Saturday, followed by Memorial Day, Christmas, the last week of March (spring break) and Thanksgiving.

AAA also showed better than 2.5 million more passengers traveling over the July 4th holiday than Thanksgiving this year. If you're looking for a quiet time to travel when things might be less hectic, try the first week of December. Not surprisingly, the first two weeks of December, sandwiched between Thanksgiving and Christmas, were the two slowest travel weeks of the year, Orbitz data showed.

So what should we expect when we ring in a new year of travel in 2008? If 2007 taught us anything, maybe it's that we should expect the unexpected.

Courtesy of ARAcontent