My advice is two part:
Firstly, check out www.dpreview.com for info about cameras. Think of it as Head-fi but for cameras. They review just about every camera that sees the light of day, all the way from the lowly point-and-shoot up to the fully manual with a billion lenses DSLR. The reviews they do are extremely thorough.
Secondly, the best point and shoot cameras vary by price range. Canon and Nikon tend to have the best (usually Nikon). However, I'm a very big fan of Panasonic Lumix cameras. They have the best lenses in a point-and-shoot as they're made by Leica. However, the censors aren't quite as good as their Canon and Nikon rivals. Though, the Lumix cameras offer a proper manual mode which Canon and Nikon usually don't so while you can shot in auto or any of the half-breed modes, if you ever decide you want to play around with settings it's very easy to do so.
However, if all you want is just a great camera that you can leave in auto and take great pictures, the S9100 is where it's at. I've played around with that line on a number of occasions and it's very easy to use, very quick to respond and takes a very clean photo. One other advantage the Nikons have now (which the opposite used to be true) is they go from turned off to up and running faster than most other PaS cameras.
Either way, I'd head to dpreview.com. They have some rather handy lists where you can say, "I want a travel camera..." and they'll list one. The S8000 was listed as one of the best cameras for traveling under the understanding that you couldn't really do manual.
