They made us laugh, roll our eyes and some even made us cringe. Wrap up your work week with some of the funniest, random travel news stories we could find.
1. Paris breaks tourists’ hearts
Paris is breaking tourists’ hearts by removing the padlocks that make up the infamous ‘love locks’ bridge.
The heart-breaking process began this week, when council workers started removing hundreds of thousands of locks that had been chained to the city’s bridge by loved-up couples.
Also an attraction in Nevada, Ottawa, Germany and South Korea – ‘Love Locks’ acts as a way for couples to share their passion by securing the metal lock to the bridge and throwing the key into a local river.
It has particularly been a hit in the ‘City of Love’, so much so that the padlocks have caused damage to the bridge.
Last year, a section of footbridge collapsed due to the weight of the padlocks.
Luckily, police had rushed tourists off the Pont des Arts.
Plastic panels were then placed along the railings to deter lovebirds, but their passion persisted and they’ve continued piling away.
This has lead to the government’s decision to start unlocking the locks.
Are you sad to see them go?
2. Woman files complaint against fellow air passenger
Plane arguments just went to the next level.
A Sydney mother is said to have lodged a formal complaint after a fellow Jetstar passenger that allegedly hit her one-year-old child when she reclined her seat.
The woman, Sunny, told the Sydney Morning Herald, that the other passenger intentionally reclined the seat to come in contact with the child.
She said the passenger was getting irritated with the noise her daughter was making while flying from Melbourne to Sydney.
“It was really vindictive. My impression was she just wanted [Lily] to shut up.”
She said her daughter had been tapping on the tray table.
Sunny claims that she tried to stop her and get her to go to sleep, but she wouldn’t.
“After about half an hour [the other passenger] just kind of lost it and basically pushed her seat back as hard as she could and her seat went right back and it just slammed into my daughter’s head.”
“And my daughter screamed and she started crying and then I just kind of lost it and I just stood up and I was like: ‘you know you just hit my daughter in the head’. And her boyfriend was like: ‘well, we told you to stop that tapping.”‘
Sunny then admits to pushing the chair in front of her, before the other passenger turned around saying she has spinal injuries.
Air tension between the two parties continued and apparently the airline was forced to separate them for the rest of the flight.
3. North Korea’s tourism plans – is it on your bucket list?
It’s the most secretive country in the world & one of the most mocked – but North Korea is hoping travellers will look past all that & book a holiday to the destination.
The country’s leaders have released an ambitious plan to increase arrivals from just 100,000 per year to around one million by 2017.
In other words, the destination that the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) is urging travellers to reconsider travelling to, is hoping to see a ten fold increase in tourism within two years.
4. UK museum gets ‘cheeky’ with Athena Girl
One of the UK’s top attractions, the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum, is enticing visitors with its new ‘cheeky’ Athena Girl dress display.
As part of the ‘Powerful Posters: Tennis and Advertising, 1893-2015′, the exhibition captures the rich history of tennis culture, fashions and traditions throughout the ages.
But more importantly, it features none other than the white dress featured in the world famous ‘Tennis Girl’ poster of the 1970s.
