Travel News

MailOnline Travel's Sadie Whitelocks (inset) ventured to Karkar island off the north coast of Papua New Guinea to find her estranged great uncle, who moved there more than 50 years ago. The small outcrop, which is just 24km long and 19km wide, is home to a very active volcano (top left and right), cocoa plantations that supply M&S; with chocolate beans, vast swathes of jungle and axe-wielding locals who aren't keen on foreigners exploring the terrain...

Fiona Hardcastle found that the Relais Bernard Loiseau hotel in Saulieu, in the heart of Burgundy, France, is a foodie's paradise. It is named after its former head chef (inset), who committed suicide in 2003 upon hearing rumours that he was about to lose one of his three Michelin stars. The hotel is run to exacting standards by his widow, Dominique. The restaurant currently has two Michelin stars and Fiona was bowled over by the nine-course tasting menu there. Find out why she rated the hotel five out of five all round.

MailOnline Travel's Sadie Whitelocks signed up for the Shotover Canyon Swing in Queenstown, New Zealand. It's the world's highest cliff jump. And she's scared of heights...But she fought past the terror in the name of travel journalism.

Out with the old, in with the new - and the new that's 'in'. Conde Nast Traveller has revealed its 2019 Hot List of the best new places to stay from around the world - and it's not hard to see why they made the list. We're talking jaws on the floor ahoy. Here are MailOnline Travel's 10 favourite hotels from the 66 that make the cut. Pictured clockwise from top left: Can Bordoy, Mallorca; Joali, Maldives; Bulgari Hotel, Shanghai; Shinta Mani Wild, Cambodia, and, inset, Hotel Peter & Paul, New Orleans.

When nature calls for visitors to the Hipopo Papa Cafe, in Akashi on the Hayashizaki Matsue Coast, they can relieve themselves on a loo that's surrounded by exotic fish - and a male turtle.

First officer Emilie Christine, 31, from Toronto, Canada, has over 38,000 followers on social media. She got her commercial pilot's licence in 2012 and works for Canadian airline WestJet. Emilie flies a Dash 8-Q400 plane and has anywhere between 12 and 16 flights each week. So far, Emilie has visited countries including Iceland, Croatia (top right), France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Peru, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Republic of the Congo, Rwanda (top left), Australia and the Bahamas.

If you want the ultimate beach break in a city that's stunning, surprising and sexy, then The Mail on Sunday's Neil Simpson suggests hitting Rio. Norwegian is now running cheap flights there. Pictured from top left, clockwise: Copacabana beach, a female dancer wearing carnival attire, Christ the Redeemer overlooking the Bay of Botafogo and the colourful Escadaria Selaron Steps.

The trail stretches from southern California to the border of Canada and explorer Tim Voors had to learn to navigate bear territory and plan his food supply - and carried everything he needed to survive in both blistering heat and freezing snow storms. He charts his journey in a stunning new book, The Great Alone - Walking the Pacific Crest Trail. Here we present some of the amazing pictures that adorn the tome.

Plane cabins resembling a cross between a restaurant, sports bar, living room and a shop could be coming to a flight path near you in the near future. That's if a certain British aircraft interior designer and his team get their way. Ross Burns is the lead designer of cabin interiors at Bournemouth-based Aim Altitude, the company behind the bar areas on Emirates and Virgin Atlantic. Now they've created a social space concept called 'Ultraflex', reminiscent of Virgin's sofa-clad 'loft' area for the A350 - but even more radical.

Most Instagram accounts are packed with glossy pictures showing off the finer things in life. But Belgian Instagrammer Hannes Coudenys prefers the ugly side. Specifically, houses in his homeland that are so wretchedly awful – it’s funny. His Instagram account, called Ugly Belgian Houses, contains over 1,400 pictures of houses that are, well – peculiar. The images and the witty comments that come with them have landed him over 55,000 followers. He has even released a book featuring his pictures called Ugly Belgian Houses: Don't Try This At Home.

Is your holiday album hiding an award-winning shot? Well, it might be worth digging through your pictures as the 2019 international Travel Photographer of the Year awards (TPOTY) is now accepting entries and various prizes - including a Northern Lights and whale watching trip - are up for grabs. If you're unsure if you've got what it takes, it might be worth checking out some of the jaw-dropping shots from the past 16 years the competition has been running. Pictured from top left, clockwise: Manhattan's iconic Flatiron building in the snow, a bloody-faced lion cub in Tanzania, a meerkat waking up in South Africa and a polar bear off the coast of Svalbard following a seal dinner.

Hotel du Lac (main) has been a landmark in the Tunisian capital, Tunis, thanks to its inverted pyramid aesthetics. But now, abandoned and exposed to the elements, its fate hangs in the balance as architects believe it could cost more to restore it than to replace it. The hotel opened in 1973, then Tunisia was chosen as a filming location for the desert scenes in the very first Star Wars film. That movie featured the Sandcrawler (inset), a huge mobile fortress used for transport and shelter by the scavenging Jawas. Due to its similarity to the hotel, Star Wars fans couldn't help but wonder if creator George Lucas was inspired by the building.

The Dark Arts at Hogwarts Castle show is running nightly until the end of the month at the Hollywood theme park. The show received its media premiere on Thursday, which saw hundreds of guests gathered in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter to watch a mesmerising display of lights, music and special effects. The show sees some of the movies' darkest creatures and villains unleashed, including the powerful dark wizard, Lord Voldemort.

UK and U.S tourists were asked to draw some of the world's most famous landmarks from memory and the results range from the amazingly good to the shockingly bad. And overall, it seems that it's Americans who are the better artists with higher accuracy scores than the Brits. In total, 132 people aged 18 to 64 were asked for their renditions of 12 of the world's most recognisable tourist attractions, with the Statue of Liberty the best-drawn and Dubai's Burj Khalifa the least accurately rendered.

Stunning photos show what the historic Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park London hotel now looks like following its pricey makeover, with it set to finally fully re-open on Monday. Bedrooms are decked out with contemporary furnishings, the bathrooms clad in sparkling marble and the spa area has been spruced up with a shimmering pool and 13 state-of-the-art treatment rooms. Pictured from top left clockwise to centre: The swimming pool, a superior suite, a bathroom in one of the two penthouses, the entrance to the grand ballroom and an exterior shot of the sprawling building.

The Chicago-based Council On Tall Buildings And Urban Habitat (CTBUH) hands out awards to skyscrapers and other developments it believes are creatively designed and blend in with their cities. Pictured are some of the winners: the Amorepacific Headquarters in Seoul (top left), The Pinnacle@Duxton, Singapore (top right), the headquarters of Shenzhen Energy in China (bottom left), the Morpheus hotel in Macau (bottom right) and the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco (inset).

Just over 20 years ago on the Kentish coast, Dermot Cronin was retired as Britain's last lighthouse keeper when automation took over. Many others were decommissioned and now operate as highly unusual self-catering or bed and breakfast establishments. Rob Crossan chooses six of the best. Pictured: Sally Port Cottage, Cornwall (main); St Abb's lighthouse (top right), Berwickshire, and bottom right, North Foreland lighthouse, where Mr Cronin worked.

Some people really do live the high life - because they call extremely lofty settlements home. Here MailOnline Travel reveals, in ascending order, the world's highest hamlets, towns and cities. Some are accessible only by dangerous hairpin-laden roads, some are snowed in for half the year and some are so remote the only TripAdvisor reviews are for the local volcanoes. Pictured clockwise from top left: Shimshal, Pakistan (10,200ft); La Rinconada, Peru (16,728ft); Kibber, India (14,200ft); La Paz, Bolivia (11,942ft) and (inset) Ushguli, Georgia (6,900ft).

Virgin Atlantic has unveiled the cabin for its new Airbus A350-1000 aircraft – and it has been transformed throughout. The business class section (main and top right), which Virgin Atlantic calls 'Upper Class', features brand new suites and a 'social space' called 'The Loft' (bottom right). The carrier operates bars on all its long-haul aircraft, but said that this is 'the largest social space in the airline's fleet'.

The jaw-dropping entries for the 2019 National Geographic Travel Photo Contest keep on coming. Here we present 10 more that have impressed the judges – and it’s clear they’ve got their work cut out. There’s a stunning snap of UFO-like clouds hovering over jagged peaks in the Dolomites (main), an electrifying image of a lightning strike behind the Acropolis in Greece (bottom left) and a mesmerising picture of the Taj Mahal silhouetted at sunrise (bottom right). This sneak peek also includes a superb aerial shot of Manhattan and an osprey captured speeding through the air with a freshly caught fish.

Located on the Nishikigawa Seiryu line in the south of the country, the station is called Seiryu-Miharashi, which translates to 'clear stream viewing platform station'. Travellers who get off there while the train pauses get amazing views of the Nishiki River and the surrounding forest.

Lee Parker, from Beccles, Suffolk, checked into the Catalonia Punta Del Rey in Las Caletillas, Tenerife, expecting a four-star hotel. However, he claims that when he complained to a Tui rep, they admitted the hotel had been wrongly graded and Mr Parker was forced to shell out an extra £1,200 for alternative accommodation. This was on top of the £1,200 he had already paid for the holiday for him and his teenage daughter, Sophie (inset with her father).

They have been drawn by New York-based artist Jake Berman. The catalyst for the project, he explained, was being stuck in traffic in Los Angeles and finding himself feeling ‘frustrated at the lack of good mass transit’. So Mr Berman, who was born in San Francisco, set about redrawing old transit system maps, using copies from university collections and public libraries, and modern equivalents using maps put out by each city’s respective mass transit authority. The result is fascinating. Some systems have remained largely intact, while others have been decimated. He said: 'This project is to map the lost subway and streetcar systems of North America. Unlike Western Europe and Japan, which rebuilt their mass transit after World War II, the U.S. and Canada spent three decades tearing out their mass transit and building enormous freeway systems.'

Hauteville House in Guernsey had been closed for 18 months while being extensively restored to its former glory. And yesterday, the home, which is now a museum, finally opened to the public once again. The house, which usually welcomes 20,000 visitors a year between April and September, has been given a number of improvements. Among the renovation works, furniture collected by Hugo from all over the world has been reconditioned, the conservatories have been rebuilt to bring more light into the house and the garden has been re-laid to how it was originally conceived by Hugo.

They may have been built hundreds of years ago - but castles continue to capture the imagination today. And these incredible images show why. They appear in a fascinating new book called Castles of the World by Phyllis Jestice, which examines more than 150 fortifications from across the world, from 5th century fortresses and fairy-tale Alpine wonders to Norman keeps and Samurai strongholds. Jestice says: 'This book is a beautiful examination of past worlds viewed through castles that continue to enrich the modern landscape. They evoke an imagined age of aristocratic warriors and noble aspirations for which many people still yearn today.' Pictured clockwise from top left: Eltz Castle in Germany; Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk; Oberhifen Castle in Switzerland; Coca Castle in Spain and (inset) Beersel Castle in Belgium.

If you thought Ibiza was all wasted, semi-naked millennials, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Jet-setters and celebrities now flock to the mystical White Isle in ever greater numbers, edging and pricing out the tacky ravers. Ever since Errol Flynn moored his boat to party there with the Hollywood crowd at Sandy’s bar in Santa Eulalia in the Swinging Sixties, the island has had a showbiz party reputation. Now it attracts stars including Leonardo DiCaprio (inset), Madonna and Kylie Minogue. Sarah White finds out why, with her mission including a stay at the hyper-swanky Atzaro Hotel.

Dan Richards has spent years seeking the farthest-flung outposts — beacons, shebangs, mountain expedition stations, tundra, forests, and oceans. Here he reveals his favourite peaceful destinations. They include the Greek island of Spetses (top left), Kootenai National Forest, Montana (top right), Belle Tout lighthouse at Beachy Head by the English Channel (bottom left) and Svalbard in Norway (bottom right).

These pictures will make even the most confident climber's palms sweat. That's because they show some of the world's bravest daredevils proving that they have limitless reserves of derring-do. One is pictured sitting on the edge of a skyscraper in New York's Times Square (bottom left), one somersaults on a precipice in Norway (top left) with a 2,300ft drop and another takes a lie down on the arm of a massive crane without a harness. The gallery of images also includes a snap of a pair of newlyweds in New Hampshire in their finery negotiating a sheer cliff face (bottom right). And let's not forget the image of a climber hanging like a bat hundreds of feet up.

Qatar Airways' business class suites have been named as the best cabin experience at a prestigious awards ceremony. The Pax International Readership Awards 2019 honoured airlines from around the world with gongs handed out in categories including food service, amenity kits and catering. Air Canada was named as having the best food service for a North American airline while American Airlines came top in the first class amenity kit ranking. The awards were voted for by readers of Pax International, a publication that focuses on passenger services and in-flight interiors. The publication's title refers to the term used by airline workers to describe passengers. More than 35 gongs were handed out to airlines and their suppliers at a ceremony in Hamburg on Wednesday.

It's part of the Camp Adventure Climbing Park, one hour south of Copenhagen on the island of Zealand, which at 18 acres is the largest woodland adventure park in Denmark. The hourglass-shaped tower is the first of its kind in Scandinavia and allows visitors to get closer to nature. It has 10 climbing courses that all vary in height and visitors can move from tree to tree via different obstacles or zip lines - two of them being the longest zip lines in Denmark. The winding 650-metre-long (2,130ft) twisted ramp, which includes looping pathways and bleacher seating, provides a 360-degree bird's-eye view of the forest and can accommodate 10,000 people at a time.

Art fans are being given the chance to spend a night at the world's most popular museum alongside its stunning masterpieces. Airbnb has teamed up with the Louvre to let one lucky winner and a guest see what happens inside the building once the lights go out. They will sleep in the famous glass pyramid, which has been transformed into a bedroom, drink cocktails in front of the Mona Lisa and have dinner in the company of the Venus de Milo.

They've been published in a brand new book called Ruin and Redemption in Architecture by Dan Barasch, which charts ruined spaces and the extraordinary designs that have totally transformed them. The scale and diversity of abandoned buildings and their redesigns is shown through examples from all around the world. They include a former industrial grain storage facility in Deneveter in the Netherlands, which has been transformed into a trendy new food court. Others featured are the transformed Gucci hub in Milan, which used to be an aircraft factory, and a sugar mill in China that is now a stylish hotel. Pictured: A former cement factory in Spain that's now an architect's home and office (top) and the once dilapidated warehouses in Paris that are now trendy exhibition spaces (bottom).

The 13-metre-long skeleton is located in Terminal 5 and is on show before being sold by the French auction house Aguttes. It will remain in the terminal's check-in area until early June and will be seen by millions of passengers. Footage taken of the skeleton's installation shows how crews worked quickly over the course of three nights to painstakingly assemble it bone by bone.

The movies screened have been made exclusively for the experience, in collaboration with porn star Kim Holland. Customers watch X-rated movies shown in 3D and with a variety of sensory effects - wind, water, bubbles, lights and snow - that sync with the action. The cinema is located in Amsterdam's medieval centre.