If you’re a big fan of London, you’ll love this virtual aerial tour of London. It features many of the main attractions such as Tower Bridge, the Dome and Regent’s Park and allows you to pan and zoom in any direction.

[ Visit London Aerial Virtual Tour ]

Online hotel review service Oyster features a Photo Fakeout category in their blog that gives a reality check to hotel reviews, pitting a hotel’s promotional images with actual photographs.

The only disappointing thing about Oyster’s Photo Fakeouts is that there aren’t more of them—and that this isn’t the dedicated feature of any site we can find. Popular travel planning and review site TripAdvisor allows for user-submitted photo uploads, which are nice, and I’ve sometimes had good luck searching Flickr for the name of hotels, but it’d be great to see something like these Photo Fakeouts in an easily searchable database.

As weblog Of Zen and Computer points out, it’s worth noting that pictures can be manipulated to look bad in much the same way as they can to look good. That said, sometimes the difference is clear and egregious, and it’s nice to get a reality check before you book.

If you’ve got your own methods for searching out the reality of your hotel before you book, let’s hear your tips in the comments.

[ Visit Photo Fakeout ]

Bag-Claim, which costs $4.99, is an iPhone app that works with a wireless Bluetooth speaker. The app acts like a sonar system and lets the user know when the bag is within 75 feet–and then updates further with visual and vibrating alerts until the bag is safely in their hands.

The company doesn’t recommend any one speaker in particular, but points out that they range in price from $25 to $110 and often last hundreds of hours in standby mode. The problem? Many of them have pulsing LEDs that indicate Bluetooth is active–which is something I’m sure TSA employees will just love. “Oh, don’t mind that flashing light on my bag, it’s nothing.”

Bag-Claim costs $4.99 (for the app only) and is available now in the App Store.

Hospitalis is another one of those theme restaurants with great original idea, usually they try to get the lights of interest. Waitresses – nurses, forks and spoons syringes, chairs and carts make the rather paranoid image to be seen if someone visited the restaurant in Riga, Latvia.

What I can not understand is whether such restaurants have regular clients. You will visit them once or twice. Then what?

See some pictures and if you ever visit Riga, also visit this restaurant and tell me if it is worth eating there!

Located in Grenada, is the first submarine park of sculptures. The work of Jason de Caires Taylor combines art with the ecological sensitivity and the result is quite impressive. The sea in the region is crystal clear so you can see the park, even from the surface.

Visit park’s home page >>>

Visit Istanbul Sapphire >>>

But for brave punters who still want to get cosy with a feisty croc, a new Australian tourist attraction is offering the chance for a close encounter in the safety of a clear acrylic box dubbed the ‘cage of death’.

Just 4cm of acrylic, a pair of goggles and a swimsuit, will separate thrill-seekers from the jaws of Choppa, a saltwater crocodile.

The cage has no bars, unlike cages used in shark dives, which prevents the reptiles from gripping on but deep teeth scratches are visible on the sides, deterring some hesitant participants.

Top End tourists climb into the clear box before being lowered into Choppa’s lair.

They then spend 15 minutes inside the 9ft high cage and watch Choppa, who lost both front feet while fighting other crocodiles, trying to take a bite out of them.

Read the full article >>>

But in the Mfuwe Lodge in the South Luangwa National Park in Zambia, the sight of one or even ten elephants strolling around the lobby is a regular occurrence.

Unwittingly built on the elephant’s traditional path in 1998, the Mfuwe Lodge stands directly en-route to this elephant herd’s favourite food – wild mangoes.

Andy Hogg, 44, Director at the Bushcamp Company that runs the Mfuwe Lodge, has lived in the South Luangwa national park since 1982.

But in his 26 years of dealing with wild animals in the Zambian national park, Andy has never seen such intimate interaction between man and beast.

“This is the only place in the world where elephants freely get so close to humans,” says the 44-year-old.

“The elephants start coming through base camp in late November of each year to eat the mangoes from our trees.

“When they are ripe they come through and they stand about for four to six weeks coming back each day or second day to eat the mangoes.”

Living in the 9, 500 square kilometre national park, the ten strong elephant herd are led to the lodge each day by the matriarchal of the herd, Wonky Tusk.

Read the full article >>>