Do you usually find the experience of visiting a museum:

Either way, you could benefit from a museum that provides visitors a place to sleep. Here’s our rundown of five museums where you can spend the night among the art galleries and science exhibits:

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Mention the word “hostel” and most people recoil in horror, perhaps haunted by memories of dirty dorms, queues for the bathroom and rowdy backpackers. But hostels have transformed in recent years into some of the best value accommodation around, offering the same comfortable rooms and range of facilities you’d expect in a hotel.

As the credit crunch bites and travelers cut back on their holidays, this couldn’t be a more timely transformation—why pay the high room rates of hotel chains when you can get the same standard in a hostel?

Forget the standard youth and backpacker hostel, the term now covers a huge range of lodgings, from guesthouses to beachside apartments (you can even find hostels in tree-houses and old castles these days!). Many hostels now boast private rooms with ensuite bathrooms, widescreen TVs and even a Jacuzzi if you’re lucky!

The rise of the ‘boutique’ or ‘design’ hostel in major cities, with cutting-edge design, stylish interiors and high-tech facilities, is perfect for those of us that want to be cheap and chic.

Here is a look to the five most luxurious hostels out there:

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Japan is a modern country, famous for its electronics and technological prowess. Thankfully, a few little pockets of the old, traditional Japan remain. Such as the wonderful little village of Onta.

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When we first heard about a restaurant in Okinawa, Japan that was lodged on top of the remnants of an absolutely massive tree, and that customers went up to this restaurant by taking an elevator through said massive tree remnants, it immediately raised several questions for us:

What’s the story behind what must have been the largest tree in Japan? What happens to the restaurant when the ex-tree’s wood rots? How did they build an elevator through the tree? And how did the restaurant end up in the tree to begin with?

It turns out the answers to all those questions are essentially the same . . .

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