Heaven is doing this with Air Tahiti Nui, surely the most delightfully old-fashioned carrier in the air, which takes your mind off the fear of flying. You feel like you are in the tropics the minute you step aboard - the seats are lagoon blue and the pillows canary yellow. The meal service in business [...]

You need to be seriously cashed up to stay at Eichardt’s Private Hotel in Queenstown, the snow capital of the South Island of New Zealand. Eichardt’s has reclaimed the elegance of its Gold Rush days, but with a modern, comfortable twist. Downstairs, the cheery bar is the kind you wish existed more often, (great for [...]

For a stopover in Hong Kong, try the Lanson Place Hotel, in the newly groovy Causeway Bay area which mixes the new (Prada, LV, Gucci) with the old and there are also great little lunch spots and old tea shops.

The London art market is exploding and not just in the posh galleries of Cork Street. Such was the success of the guerilla gallery, Santa’s Ghetto, with work by the likes of graffiti artists Banksy and Jamie Hewlett, creator of virtual pop band Gorillaz and Tank Girl, that punters had to line up outside. Proclaiming [...]

The Tate Modern proved that slides aren’t just for children with their winter 2006 exhibition by Carsten Holler. It takes a strong spirit to launch oneself off a slide as high as this old power station’s towering Turbine Hall. Five slides, one from each gallery level and two from the bridge, turned art into child’s [...]

Commendably, Bekonscot, one of the world’s earliest and most loved model villages, has not tried to embrace modern times. Although additions are made to the village all the time, all are set in aspic, as if it were still Jolly Olde England in the 1930s. Back then, the young Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret loved [...]

The Statue of Liberty, designed by Bartholdi and built in Paris, was a gift from the French Republic to commemorate the centennial of America’s Declaration of Independence. The engineer for the colossal copper sculpture was Alexandre Gustave Eiffel. The Statue of Liberty was completed in France in July, 1884 and arrived in New York Harbor [...]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi4uOxuJ5BI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVO5_NFx-cY

They celebrated the sunny May London weekend when a Sultan riding a giant elephant met a little girl in the middle of the city. The Sultan’s elephant was magical, whether down on its knees and sleeping outside (the hip, grand, gorgeous eatery) The Wolseley on Piccadilly or wandering through London so suddenly its trunk would [...]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9VU1Do8Jbc

Reason to watch “The Da Vinci Code” on the plane: So you know where not to go in Paris.

The Pantheon is the temple of the French nation. It is huge and haunting and, as it is not mentioned in “The Da Vinci Code”, it is empty. It has its own successful novel though - “Foucault’s [...]