Escapism
Fiji has 333 desert islands to choose from, and plenty of luxury hotels. Dolphin Island (dolphinislandfiji.com) is a 13-acre private retreat that's just been done up, and sleeps just eight guests in four bures (traditional thatched houses). Carved furniture and shell mirrors create a laid-back luxury look. Guests can also stay in the romantic Hilltop Sleepout Bure – set among trees on a hill and lit by hurricane lanterns. The cost? A mere £4,885 a night.
Five-step city break
Hamburg
1. Fly easyJet (easyjet.com) from Manchester from £38 return
2.Visit HafenCity (hafencity.com), a redeveloped area by the harbour
3. Stay at the new boutiquey 25hours Hotel HafenCity (25hours-hotels.com, rooms from €105)
4. See the biggest miniature railway in the world, Miniatur Wunderland (miniatur-wunderland.com)
5. Drink at the Golden Pudel (pudel.com) hut-with-dancefloor, dance at Club Ego (mein-ego.com), then on Sunday, post-clubbing beers at the Altona fish market – from 5am
Cheap date
Ski Total (01252 618333, skitotal.com) has seven nights in the Chalet Hotel Sonneck in the Austrian resort of Lech from 8 January for £360pp (reduced from £719pp) including flights from Gatwick to Innsbruck, ski hosting on three days and all meals.
Where's hot now
Rio de Janiero (33C)
Brazil treats New Year like a rehearsal for carnival, and nowhere more so than Rio. Steamond Journeys (020-7730 9639, steamondjourneys.com) has a four-night trip there for £2,980pp including flights from Heathrow and four-star accommodation on Copacabana beach, departing 29 December.
What's new?
Website
Ecoluxhotels.com is a new site from journalist Jill Starley-Grainger and her environmental consultant husband Tim. Every hotel, from Sweden's Treehouse to Shamwari Game Reserve in South Africa, is reviewed by each of them – a double-barrelled expert verdict.
Cheap travel cash
The International Currency Exchange (ICE) has launched a special e-voucher for use at Heathrow Airport, which promises competitive rates of exchange into euros and dollars. At the moment, for example, ICE offers 1.1701 euros to the pound, compared with 1.08 at the leading provider at the airport, a potential saving of £75 on a £1,000 transaction. Print out a voucher from iceplc.com and take it to the ICE counter in the ticket hall of the underground station for Terminals 1, 2 and 3.
Accommodation
Mr & Mrs Smith (mrandmrssmith.com), the luxury hotels website and producer of gorgeous accommodation guides, is offering free life membership (usual price £20pp per year). Members are entitled to special deals on rooms, and extras such as free bottles of champagne, spa treatments and picnic lunches when they book. The free membership is available with every first booking from 1 January.
Snow watch
All is well in the mountains. After a slow start to the season in the Alps, snow is falling in amounts skiers could only have dreamed of last season. As our travel correspondent Susan Greenwood, who is based in Chamonix, put it this week: "The snow here is epic. I haven't seen it like this for years. There's so much some lifts had to close last week, and I've got 18in of powder on my balcony – at just 900m in Les Houches!"
In nearby Argentière a train was derailed due to the snow, while Tignes, among others, had more in the past week than in the whole season last year.
While this is exciting for anyone who likes pratting around on a pair of planks, whether it will continue is uncertain – after heavy snow in the middle of last December, not a flake fell in many European resorts between the end of December and March.
Things seem more certain in North America: there is expected to be a repeat of last year's amazing winter, when the weather pattern La Niña brought record-breaking amounts of snow. Many resorts saw more powder than they'd ever recorded – 18m across the season in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and over 15m in Whistler and Blackcomb in Canada. The good news for skiers and snowboarders planning to cross the Atlantic for their snow fix this year is that climatologists predict the same again.
Although Europe's season is looking good, those looking for a guarantee might do best to book an early-season jaunt to the US. "The promise of another La Niña year means big snow early and often," said John Wagnon, senior director of brand marketing at Heavenly resort in California, one of those blessed with masses of powder last year.
Travel trash
Optimism over the weather is in short supply at the Lake Vyrnwy Hotel and Spa (01691 870692, lakevyrnwy.com) in mid-Wales: it is offering three-night midweek "brolly breaks" until 4 April, for £414 per couple. If it rains, guests get a free umbrella and a family of bath ducks. Does that really make up for crap weather? To really rub it in, if it's sunny, they get a bottle of champagne instead.
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The kindness of strangers
Asked a man in Alexandria for directions to museum. He flagged down taxi and paid the driver to take us there. @anniebennett
Given a bed in Skutvik, Norway, by the local postmaster when stranded by a winter storm. @J_Goldsworthy
• Next time: near-death experience
Send us your tips
Strange and funny things you've spotted abroad, your holiday nightmares and other ideas for this page by emailing travel@guardian.co.uk or on Twitter to @guardiantravel, using the hashtag #TravelCorkboard
