Porto, Portugal (© nuno_lopes)

We share below the Top 10 Best Value Travel 2017 - bargains for the budget-conscious - according Lonely Planet:

Melbourne Downtown

The 5 Most European Cities Not in Europe by Huffington Post:

Hobart, Tasmania

The world is enormous. And getting bigger. Every serious traveler I know says their wish list grows longer, not shorter, every time they visit a new corner of the world.

Spectacular Views of Australia's Gold Coast in Timelapse (by Joe Capra)

Havasu Falls - Supai, Arizona, US

Kalalau Trail, Kauai, Hawaii, United States

Free Spirit Spheres, British Columbia, Canada

Think back to where you stayed on your last trip. Was it simply a place to rest your head, or did it immerse you in local colour, surround you by wildlife and fire your imagination?

BEIJING NATIONAL STADIUM - Beijing, China

So, you didn't get a ticket to Sochi this winter. Not to worry, sports fans: There are still plenty of sites used in Olympic Games that are open to visitors. Here are some of our favorites.

Mount Fuji - Japan

We could all use a little break sometimes. The hustle and bustle of the 9-to-5 life can be exhausting.

Salar de Uyuni, One of the World’s Largest Mirrors, Bolivia

Our world is so full of wonders that new and amazing places are discovered every day, be that by professional photographers or amateurs.

Aurora borealis - Norway

Good mornings made better with unbelievable flight deals. Every Tuesday from 7-9am.

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This week, Scoot to Australia from $9.99! Yes, an offer you cannot refuse! Make sure you set your alarms for tomorrow and visit FlyScoot.com to book your tickets from 7am onwards!

But hurry, because offer is valid till 26 November 2013, 9am only! Travel period from 27 November to 31 December 2013. Blackout periods may apply during school holidays and event periods.

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Savannah, USA

Cape Town, South Africa

After feverish debate, the results are finally in. Discover our travel experts' final cut of the most essential travel experiences and destinations on our Best in Travel page. And our top 10 cities - from reinvented classics to destinations on the rise - are sure to inspire your travels in 2014...

1. Paris, France

2. Trinidad, Cuba

3. Cape Town, South Africa

4. Rīga, Latvia

5. Zürich, Switzerland

6. Shanghai, China

7. Vancouver, Canada

8. Chicago, Illinois, USA

9. Adelaide, Australia

10. Auckland, New Zealand

via Lonely Planet (all details)

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Sydney Opera House, we've tracked down 40 facts about Australia's most recognisable building

1. The architect Jorn Utzon was initially rejected by three judges in a 1956 competition to design the Sydney Opera House, but his entry was picked out by the fourth judge, renowned American architect Eero Saarinen, who declared it outstanding. Mr Utzon beat 232 other entrants.
2. He won £5,000 for his design.
3. Mr Utzon had never visited the site of the Sydney Opera House before entering the design competition, but used his naval experience to study charts of the harbour
4. Work started on it in 1959, with 10,000 builders employed.
5. Mr Utzon resigned as chief architect of the Opera House in February 1966, after a new Liberal government was elected and the Minister of Works stopped payments to him. There were protests in the streets, demanding that Utzon be reinstated, but he left Australia in April of the same year, and never returned to see his design take shape.
6. The Sydney Opera House Trust took up communicating with Mr Utzon again in the late Nineties, and the architect was appointed as a design consultant for future works.
7. When Queen Elizabeth II opened the Sydney Opera House on October 20, 1973, Utzon was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of Architects Australia – but was absent from the ceremony.
8. The Sydney Opera House’s construction cost $AUS 102 million (£60 million) – the original estimated cost was $AUS 7 million (£4.1 million).
9. The Opera House’s sails were built using cranes made specifically for the job in France, each costing $AUS 100,000 (£59,000)
10. The building is 185 metres long and 120 metres wide.
11. The highest roof point is 67 metres above sea-level - the same as a 22-storey high building
12. Its roof is made of 2,194 pre-cast concrete sections.
13. These sections weigh up to 15 tons each…
14. …and are held together by 350km of tensioned steel cable...
15. ...which if laid end-to-end would reach Canberra
16. The roof is covered with more than one million tiles, made by Swedish company Höganas.
17. The building has 6,225 square metres of glass and 645 kilometres of electric cable.
18. The glass used in the building is unique to the Sydney Opera House, and was made to order in France.
19. The architectural style is Expressionist Modernism – which involves innovative form and use of novel materials.
20. The entire site covers an area of 5.798 hectares. Eight Boeing 747s could sit wing-to-wing on the site.
21. The House hosts 3,000 events every year.
22. Two hundred thousand people per year take a guided tour of the building.
23. Its performances have an annual audience of two million.
24. The largest of the seven venues, the Concert Hall, has 2,679 seats.
25. The smallest is the Utzon room, which seats up to 210 people.
26. The Concert Hall’s Grand Organ is the largest mechanical version of this instrument in the world, with 10,154 pipes. It took ten years to build.
27. Total rooms? 1,000.
28. 15,500 lightbulbs are changed every year at the Opera House.
29. The 40th anniversary is being celebrated with a month-long calendar of events throughout October, including a large concert on 27th October with performances by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Opera Australia and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs.
The Sydeny Opera House was a focal point during the Summer 2000 Olympics
30. You won’t go hungry or thirsty at the Sydney Opera House: it has three restaurants, a café, an espresso bar, and opera and theatre bars.
31. The building was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2007, and the organisation describes it as "great urban sculpture set in a remarkable waterscape, at the tip of a peninsula projecting into Sydney Harbour."
32. Arnold Schwarzenegger won his final Mr Olympia body building title in the Concert Hall in 1980.
33. During the Eighties, a net was put in place above the orchestra pit in the Opera Theatre, after a live chicken walked off the stage during a performance of Boris Godunov and landed on a cellist.
34. The Sydney Opera House was the setting for Jon Cleary’s crime novel Helga’s Web, in which a body is found in the building’s basement. The book was made into a film starring, Scobie Malone, in 1975.
35. The building is open to the public 363 days a year, closing only on Christmas Day and Good Friday. But staff work 24/7, 365 days of the year.
36. The first person to perform at the Sydney Opera House was Paul Robeson - in 1960, he sang Ol' Man River to the construction workers as they ate lunch.
37. The first opera performed at the house was Sergei Prokofiev's War and Peace, on September 28 1973.
38. The House was originally a popular film-screening venue, with a particular surfing movie theme.
39. The venue served as the focus for triathlon events during the 2000 Summer Olympics.
40. Since opening the Opera House, the Queen has visited four times

via The Telegraph

Pestana Equador Island Resort - São Tome and Príncipe

As the royal couple kick back in the Seychelles, our writers pick 10 alternative, more affordable tropical island retreats

1. Belize, Central America
2. Kuna Yala, Panama
3. Ilha Grande, Brazil
4. Koh Tarutao, Thailand
5. Heron Island, Australia
6. Koh Si Chang, Thailand
7. St John, US Virgin Islands, Caribbean 
8. Boracay, the Philippines
9. São Tome and Príncipe, west Africa
10. Bazaruto island, Mozambique

via The Guardian (all details)

beaches in Newcastle - Australia

Australia is known for its spectacular tourist spots like the Great Barrier Reef, the Sydney Harbour Centre, and the Warner Bros. Movie World. But more than these landmarks, what most tourists love about Australia are the affordable, unique, and exciting adventures. To those who think that going to the usual Australian landmarks is somewhat costly, here are some the cheap and fun activities you can enjoy while the sights and sounds of the Land Down Under.

1. Crab Racing

2. Dr Sketchy’s

3. Visit beaches in Newcastle

4. Driving along the Great Ocean Road

5. Gliding the Morning Glory Clouds

6. Join an outback road trip

7. White water rafting

8. Overnight stay at the Blue Mountains

9. A stroll on the Bay of Fires in Tasmania

10. Sydney Sightseeing pass

via WildJunket Magazine

The Great Blue Hole, Belize

1. The Great Blue Hole

From the air, the Great Blue Hole of Belize resembles an otherworldly maw, intent on drinking down the surrounding Lighthouse Reef Atoll. In reality, the 1,000-foot (305-meter) wide hole is simply a sinkhole in the ocean. Geologists believe that an underlying cave system collapsed under increased pressure some 10,000 years ago due to rising sea levels.

2. Subterranean Splendor

The hill country of Kentucky's Green River Valley certainly has its charms, but beneath its gentle woodlands there is an underworld. More than 390 miles (628 kilometers) worth of caves worm through the rocky depths, making Mammoth Cave the largest known cave system in the world.

3. Devils Tower

When an enormous column of rock towers 1,267 feet (386 meters) above the surrounding landscape, people take notice. That's why Teddy Roosevelt declared Devils Tower America's first national monument, and Steve Spielberg decided to land a UFO on top of it in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Long before either man thrust the natural landmark into the spotlight, more than 20 Native-American tribes held the site sacred -- including the Lakota people who dubbed it "Bear Lodge."

4. The Fairy Chimneys

You want a fantastic real-world locale? It's hard to improve upon the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia in central Turkey. Here, tall spires of stone dot the landscape like some manner of bizarre growth. What's more, early Christians carved countless storerooms, stables and domiciles into the fairy towers from the 4th to the 11th century. 

5. The Forest of Knives

Madagascar is truly a lost world. Cut off from the rest of the world, the island's lemur population thrived (they don't exist anywhere else on the planet, except in captivity), and a host of unique life forms evolved in relative isolation. Yet Madagascar's geology also stands apart from the rest of the world's -- especially the region known as Tsingy de Bemaraha.

6. The Crystal Caverns

Nearly 1,000 feet (305 meters) beneath Mexico's Naica silver mine you'll find a chamber of unearthly wonder. Here in Cueva de los Cristales (the Cave of Crystals), 36-foot (11-meter) obelisks of solid crystal lay heaped about like fallen pillars in a dilapidated temple. 

7. The Reflecting Desert

Earth's vast, barren expanses are often as awe-inspiring as its highest peaks and deepest valleys. Just consider the Bolivian Uyuni Salt Flats, or Salar de Uyuni, a 4,000-square-mile (10,360-square-kilometer) plane of what appear to be hexagonal tiles. This extraordinary high-altitude landscape stretches among the snow-peaked Andean mountains, and if you happen to visit during the rainy season, you're in for quite a sight.

8. Fog-shrouded Peaks

You'll find no shortage of breathtaking vistas on the Greek peninsula, but the Meteora rock formations truly take the cake. These massive sandstone fingers seem to emerge as much from a dream as from the plains of Thessaly. Towering as high as 2,044 feet (623 meters) above lush landscape below, the steep peaks of Meteora are a perfect setting for a secluded monastery.

9. The Crack of Silfra

Conflict is the meat of great storytelling. You might prefer such tropes as man-versus-nature or man-versus-blue-aliens, but the best geological drama often unfolds when tectonic plates duke it out, especially continental plates. Travel to Iceland, however, and you'll find a most curious occurrence on the boundaries of the North American and European plates.

10. Uluru the Monolith

In "Avatar," a noble, indigenous people fight to protect their sacred landmarks against an invading culture. If you're pining for that sort of drama, then look no further than Australia's Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. Here you'll find mighty Uluru, one of the largest geologic monoliths in the world. 

via Discovery Channel (all details)

1. Devil's Pool - Victoria Falls, Livingstone, Zambia

2. Eco-Arqueological Park Ik Kil - Chichen Itza, Mexico

3. Havasu Falls - Arizona, United States

4. To Sua Ocean Trench - Lalomanu, Upolu, Samoa

5. Kuang Si Falls - Luang Prabang, Laos

6. Blue Lagoon - Grindavik, Iceland

7. Enchanted River - Hinatuan, Philippines

8. Pamukkale Thermal Pools - Pamukkale, Turkey

9. Las Grietas - Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

10. Litchfield National Park - Northern Territory, Australia

via TripAdvisor (all details)

Bazaruto, Mozambique

Sipping cocktails by the seashore, diving on a perfect reef or basking in midnight sun above the Arctic Circle - whatever your dream, somewhere out there is the right island for you. Jill Crawshaw reveals the world's most fabulous castaway experiences

1. Mnemba Island, Zanzibar

2. Lofoten Islands, Norway

3. Roatan, Honduras

4. Wilson Island, Australia

5. Sveti Stefan, Montenegro:

6. Angra Dos Reis Bay Islands, Brazil

7. Petit St Vincent, Caribbean

8. Madagascar

9. Korcula, Croatia

10. Bazaruto, Mozambique

11. San Blas Islands, Panama

12. Formentera, Balearic Islands

13. Taprobane, Sri Lanka

14. Los Roques, Venezuela

15. North Island, Seychelles

16. Funzi Keys, Kenya

17. Dhoni Mighili, Maldives

18. Aitutaki, South Pacific

19. Panarea, Italy

20. Samothraki, Greece

via Guardian