Heading to the UK? Here’s how to avoid going through Heathrow

For most Australians,Heathrow Airport is their first and not always most beloved introduction to the UK. But it doesn’t have to be.

  • David Whitley
Hikers on the slopes of Zabriskie Point at sunrise.

This roasting-hot national park may be America’s most underrated

Death Valley is the hottest,driest and lowest national park in the US – and arguably the most visually arresting.

  • David Whitley
Tiny seats on board Wizz Air.

This budget airline has a poor reputation and it’s justified

Tiny seats,meagre food and fee-gouging – this European low-cost carrier has it all.

  • David Whitley
Greenwich College and the landscape of Greenwich Park.

London’s most attraction-packed neighbourhood is where time begins

Britain’s maritime history is here,but you’ll also find London’s answer to the Sistine Chapel and the dividing line between the eastern and western hemispheres.

  • David Whitley
Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica in Rome.

No Michelangelo,but Rome’s other Sistine Chapel is just as impressive

The extraordinary is everywhere in the Eternal City,and the best thing about this second Sistine Chapel is that you won’t have to fight through the crowds.

  • David Whitley
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The Hoover Dam might be the greatest engineering achievement in history.

Inside one of the greatest engineering achievements in human history

From outside,this vast construction is about size,scale and spectacle. Once inside,it becomes more about appreciating how the whole thing holds together.

  • David Whitley
The colours of Sedona.

America’s most beautiful city is unlike anywhere else

Sedona is like a greatest-hits package of the world’s most beautiful cities,all rolled into one.

  • David Whitley
Sign of the times … blue plaques are all over London.

The signs of a truly great city (London has thousands of them)

Hurtling between conventional attractions without pausing to look and read means you miss out on so much.

  • David Whitley
New look,new feel.

London’s once-awful airport is Europe’s most improved

If they’d only increased the natural light,this could have been a perfect makeover.

  • David Whitley
The Hoover Dam from above.

One of the world’s weirdest cruises is in the heart of a desert

Amid the woozy desert haze springs an incongruous streak of blue. Lake Mead is the most mirage-like thing I’ve ever seen that turns out to be real.

  • David Whitley