Travel

Sitting down for lunch, I wondered whether Brangelina chose this same table, too. Tucked to one side at the back of a shady terrace, uninterrupted views across the bay, pretty flower-filled trees overhead.

Playing with monkeys in Honduras is a highlight excursion during a Western Caribbean cruise on the Norwegian Getaway

We are awoken at 7:00 a.m. by the sound of the song "Over the Rainbow" playing quietly through our cabin speakers. I pull aside the small curtain to see that our boat is moored in a crater in the centre of Genovesa Island.

On the 14-hour flight from San Francisco, a Chinese teenager marvelled at my decision to visit his hometown of Chengdu. "Why not Beijing or Shanghai?" he asked me.

Don't be afraid to travel over the busy Christmas-New Year's stretch. It will likely be more affordable and fun than you think.

Tour guide Mavis Mei loves pandas. As she leads our bus tour from Chengdu, China to the Chengdu Panda Research Base outside town, she recounts the history of her favourite animal.

I had been to Oahu's North Shore before, but this time was different. The other times I was purely a tourist — one of those who made the pilgrimage to spots seen in magazines and old surf movies ever since I was young.

When J.R.R. Tolkien penned the epic fantasy series The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, he dreamed and wrote about a bucolic setting for The Shire from Middle-earth — with Hobbiton as hometown for the race of wee hobbits.

There is something admittedly perverse about posing for photos with an animal that you might well later have for dinner. But that, perhaps, is in our nature. "OK, now hold it up high!" Ernesto yelled, and took my picture.

A Mediterranean cruise on the new Regent Seven Seas Explorer showcases all its indulgent features and glamourous ports in Spain, France and Italy