(Photo: Jordi M.J. / Flickr)

Lovers lock eyes; they lock arms and lips and they also lock … locks.  Modern legend says the custom of writing names on padlocks and clamping them on wrought-iron fences, bridge guardrails and other unmoving and clamp-able objects began in Serbia sometime around World War II.

A young woman named Nadia fell in love with a soldier who went off to fight in Greece. He, of course, fell in love with a Greek woman and broke off his engagement with Nadia and she died of a broken heart. After that, young Serbian couples started writing their names on locks and clamping them on the bridge where Nadia and her boyfriend once met.

Locks by the Mediterranean, photographed by Jordi M.J. near Barcelona, Spain.

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Rendering of Viking's new ocean cruise ship, the Viking Star. (Photo: Viking Cruises)

If you like to cruise – but rubbing elbows with thousands of other tourists makes you crazy -- you might be interested in a couple of new, smaller ships that will sail into the picture in 2014 and 2015.

The new lines are among the first being introduced in the travel industry in nearly a decade.

Viking River Cruises, the industry leader in Europe, will launch Viking Ocean Cruises in 2015. The new Viking Star will cruise to Scandinavia and the Baltic, plus the Western and Eastern Mediterranean.

(See also: Great all-inclusive cruises)

All of the Star’s cabins will have verandas; there will be no interior rooms. And, for people who hate some common cruise ship activities, there’s more good news:

• Shore excursions will be included in the price
• No surcharges at the ship’s specialty restaurants
• No casino
• 12-hour port stops
• No formal nights (meaning no need to wear a tie)

Viking Chairman Torstein Hagen, who announced the new line at a Beverly Hills Hilton banquet for 300 guests, was wearing an

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An Airbnb rental in New York. (Photo: googlisti / Flickr)

A ruling declared that a man who rented out part of his apartment on the website Airbnb broke New York City law.

Officials determined that Nigel Warren, who used Airbnb to rent out his apartment, should pay $2,400 for being in violation of an illegal hotel law, according to CNET.

The rule bans rentals for fewer than 29 days. The law was initially set up as a way to block owners from turning their residences into hotels. But the law is only enforced when a complaint is filed -- so it's unclear what effect this will have on other Airbnb hosts, Fast Company reports.

The website, which allows members to rent out rooms for short periods of time, has become popular with travelers looking for alternatives to hotels.

For renters, it's a way to pocket extra cash -- especially in a city with expensive real estate.

(See also: Hotel vs. apartment: where to stay?)

Like eBay or Craigslist, the website creates the tools for the marketplace, and people have jumped in to take part -- New York City alone has

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Dubrovnik, Croatia, also known as King's Landing. (Photo: Dubrovnik Tourist Board)

Where do Westeros and Essos fall on the map exactly? They don’t. These are the mythical lands where the HBO series “Game of Thrones” takes place. Still, the locations where the show films -- Iceland, Morocco and Croatia – are some very real destinations for travelers hoping to capture the spirit of the epic fantasy.

Playing on their GoT ties, Iceland Naturally held a recent Behind the Wall Sweepstakes. The winner will be immersed in landscapes where GoT has filmed, including the eutrophic Lake Mývatn with its wetlands, Dimmuborgir’s volcanic lava formations, Hverfell Crater, one of the world’s largest symmetrical explosion craters, and Höfði on Kalfastrandarvogur Bay, famous for its stunning lava formations, including Klasar and Kalfastrandarstripar.

Ouarzazate, Morocco, known for scenes featuring GoT’s Daenerys Targaryen is an ancient, walled Berber city, known as “the gateway to the desert.” It’s other nickname – the “Hollywood of Morocco.” The city’s desert locale has made it the Read More »from ‘Game of Thrones’ locales you can visit

(Photo: Kambriel)Back in February, Amanda Palmer, the lead singer, pianist, and lyricist/composer of Amanda Palmer and The Grand Theft Orchestra, as well as The Dresden Dolls, took to a stage in Long Beach, Calif., without striking a note. Instead, she gave a TED Talk on The Art of Asking. Palmer spoke about making human connections during concert tours by tweeting requests for primal needs, including shelter. The wisdom she gained via crash pads and couch surfing prompted FMU to unplug our earphones to get to know our seatmates en transit. To kick things off properly, we got an introduction to Palmer’s travel style.

What’s something you never fail to pack in your suitcase?
My memory foam pillow. It's my religion.

Carry-on or check-in?
Almost always both, but carry-on if I possibly can. Run, run, run away!!!

Window or aisle?
Window.

Do you bring food with you on plane?
I scour the airport for decent snacks and the only decent airport snack food seems to be in Australia. They have smoothies to die for.

What’s

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(Photo: Brian Hammonds / Flickr)

He foresaw the use of ball bearings, he designed a parachute not unlike those in use today; he had an idea for a diving suit, and he envisioned a machine he called “the aerial screw,” which with a few tweaks, four centuries later, became the modern-day helicopter. But most of all, he painted the Mona Lisa.

Had Leonardo da Vinci lived longer than 67 years, he might have foreseen electricity, the Internet and had some iDeas about the iPad. And who knows, he may have shouted Yahoo! to make Mona Lisa smile.

Photographed at the Louvre in Paris by Brian Hammonds.

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(Photo: Bekathwia / Flickr)

An airport code mix-up sent vacationing travelers to the wrong continent.

Sandy Valdivieso and her husband, Triet Vo, had planned to fly from their home in Los Angeles to the African country of Senegal. Instead, they ended up almost 7,000 miles away, in Bangladesh, because of an error by Turkish Airlines.

According to the Los Angeles Times, which helped the couple resolve the issue once they had returned home, the two travelers thought everything was fine when they received their boarding passes. The passes noted their flight plan from Los Angeles (LAX) to Istanbul (IST) to DAC -- which they assumed to be their final destination, Dakar, Senegal.

It’s not.

Unfortunately for the vacationers, DAC is the code for Dhaka, Bangladesh. The code for their intended destination: DKR.

"I guess we were just going by the flight number on our tickets, and that DAC was printed on them," Valdivieso told the Times. "You just assume that everything is correct," she added.

That small error led to a huge

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(Photo: Alan Dreamworks / Flickr)

In the opening bars of Bedřich Smetana’s symphonic poem “The Moldau,” the music reflects the sound of a small spring gently growing until it becomes the majestic Vltava River (The Moldau), flowing some 270 miles from the Czech/German border in the north to its southern extremity, where it joins the Elbe, near the Czech city of Mĕlník.

In 1302 a settlement that would be known as Český Krumlov grew on a bend in the Vltava, an important trade route, and work began on a castle for the House of Rosenberg. Throughout the ensuing ages, the conflicts and floods, the little city and castle (left) have remained intact.

This photo of Český Krumlov was captured by Alan Tsai.

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