A new New York travel agency is offering voyagers the chance to embrace the unexpected in their next travel experience.

The Bureau of Unknown Destinations offers,

temporary displacements to members of the public seeking to experiment with their migratory impulses… We have provided the opportunity for voyagers to set forth, free of decisions, into the great (or perhaps, in this case, the small) unknown. To test their sense of destiny. To have lunch someplace new.

Beginning January 12th, the agency located in Brooklyn, New York gave away 100 free round trip tickets for train adventures in the New York area. The day trips began with each lucky explorer tearing open a sealed envelope revealing the mystery of where they would find themselves by noon and a small task for them to accomplish on their journey.

While the Bureau has given away all of its free tickets, its current project, dubbed a “Psychogeographic Destination Kit” will be made free to the public soon. Their website claims the new kit will provide everything a traveler needs to voyage to an unknown destination… just without a ticket.

The Bureau of Unknown Destinations is all part of a three month artist’s residency by Sal Randolph at Proteus Gowanus.

For more information check out the Bureau of Unknown Destinations website.

Countries all over the world are singing praises of what seems to be a record winter with less snow and warmer temperatures. But the milder season isn’t helping Winnipeg, Manitoba. With less snow than usual, the city had to buy 200 loads of snow to accommodate their annual Festival du Voyageur, an event centered around snow sports and ice sculptures.

The artificially-made snow is coming courtesy of a nearby winter recreation area, which is similar to snow made by machine for ski hills.

More details can be found at Reuters.com

A group of tourists visiting Jinan Wildlife World in eastern China narrowly escaped after Bengal tigers attacked their bus. The incident occurred when the worker in charge of the enclosure was on his lunch break.

While visitors hid under their bus seats and attempted to call emergency services, eight tigers circled the bus, smashing windows and biting the vehicle’s tires. It took 10 minutes for park officials to open the enclosure’s gates so the visitors could escape.

Luckily, none of the 27 visitors on the bus were injured. The bus driver’s hand was injured however, when one of the tigers broke the vehicle’s windshield.

While the lucky tourists just barely escaped becoming tiger lunch, workers at the Jinan Wildlife World will probably never be allowed to take another lunch break ever again…

Read more at Yahoo News.

Perfect for the hordes of tourists during Manhattan summers, bike sharing finally comes to the city this summer. And for New York residents, no more worries of bike theft.

The NYC DOT and Alta Bicycle Share have organized the program, along with private sponsorship. About 10,000 bikes in over 600 stations will be set up in the city. A fee schedule hasn’t been released as of yet but the membership cost is estimated to be less than a monthly Metrocard.

More on the new sharing program at Gadling.com

Artist Mark Jenkins has spent the last few years travelling the world and installing his controversial life-like sculptures. Civilians have been so shocked by his sculptures that they’ve called the ambulance and police to help what they thought were real struggling or dead people.

Perhaps the most controversal installation was in October last year at the Dublin Contemporary 2011 event. Jenkins placed a sculpture of a blonde girl and other figures stepping onto the ledge of a building. The work was installed during Suicide Awareness Week.

“There was some pressure put on me by the the museum and the public that these were in bad taste for this reason, and should be removed, but I didn’t think so,” Mr Jenkins said.

“Suicide is the elephant in the room and putting it out there physically in the open this way in my opinion makes it something to talk about… to pay attention to.”

Jenkins began his street art creations by making tape sculptures and street installations while living in Rio in 2003.

You can read more at news.com.au.

In a move that brings new meaning to the “housekeeping” knock on the door, New York hotel maids are now being aided with security devices.

While the security measure hasn’t been linked to French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s accused incident with a hotel maid last May, the panic-button devices are now included as a requirement to a new union contract.

The contract provision says the employees must be given devices to be carried on their persons at work, which they can quickly and easily activate to summon prompt assistance to their location.

Read on for more of this development from smh.com

Times Square is embracing Valentine’s Day with a month-long celebration dubbed “Free Love in Times Square.”

This month couples can renew their vows in the square. Also, couples can they can declare their love at the Crossroads of the World, and the declaration will be projected on a flashing digital billboard for the crowds in the square to witness. Couples who declare their love will also be entered in a second honeymoon sweepstakes.

The Times Square Alliance has also commissioned a public Valentine sculpture for the center of the square for the 4th year in a row. The commissioned sculpture will be on display for the entire month of February.

The sculpture will consist of a 10-foot tall cube of 400 transparent LED light tubes that create a glowing red heart floating in the middle of acrylic rods. The sculpture is brought to life by interactions with people in the city. If a person touches the giant heart installation it beats faster. If you hold hands or kiss the interactive sculpture will glow brighter.

Read more at France 24.

Knowing About Romantic Places

Romance is a bit like real estate – location, location, location. Once you’ve traveled the world a little, you’ll build up a collection of romantic places to add to whatever story you may want to tell your partner. Wherever you are, if you can describe what a moonlit night in Paris is like or explain how you spent a peaceful morning watching giraffe by a waterhole in Africa, you’ll have your partner enthralled. And promising to take them with you, or take them back there, is definitely going to win you romance brownie points.

Giving More Romantic Gifts

Exposing yourself to shopping adventures beyond your local department store will increase your options for giving gifts substantially. After discovering all the different kinds of things you can buy around the world your gift choices will become much more imaginative. You’ll have much better odds of picking exactly the right thing for your partner. Alternatively, you might have become very wise about giving gifts of experience and start providing air tickets or accommodation as gifts (and who could say no to that?).

Tell Me How It’s Going to Be … © Aubry Rose Aragon

Sharing Great Future Dreams

If you’ve taken the opportunity to travel widely, I believe it will give you the ability to make your future dreams much more concrete – this is certainly what happened to me. If you’ve successfully navigated your way around the world once or twice (with or without your partner), they are much more likely to believe that your common dreams of sailing the Greek islands or living for a year in China are able to come true.

So many people I’ve talked to who’ve traveled extensively say the same thing – traveling far and wide makes you really believe that you can do anything. It opens all those doors that seemed to be firmly shut when you sat at home in the place where you grew up. The world’s not as big as you think, so dream large and you can do almost anything! What partner couldn’t love the romance of this attitude?

Knowing Material Things Aren’t So Valuable

It’s easy to get caught up in the “house, two cars, a bigger house, a bigger car” trap if you’re staying in your comfort zone of home and comparing yourself with your friends and neighbours. But if you do some serious traveling it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to hold on to this way of life. Yyou will realise that all those things are nowhere near as important as you once thought.

Knowing the value of experiences over material things is likely to make you more attentive to your partner, more interested in sharing lovely experiences together (even if it’s just cooking a meal at home) rather than spending all your time working so hard just to pay off your new bigger mortgage.

Cooking Exotic Foods

The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, they say, but as a woman I have to say pretty much the same works for me! If you pick up the ability to cook some unique and delicious foods from your travels, you’re well on your way to being a winning romancer.

A Kiss on the Steps, Rome © Jon Rawlinson

Learning New Languages

Whenever you visit a foreign country, I think you owe it to the locals to learn to say at least a few words of their language. So if you pick up some language skills on your travels, you could learn to say “I love you” in numerous romantic-sounding languages!

Imagine being able to choose a different language each day of the week to whisper sweet nothings to your partner. Some say French is the language of romance so perhaps you should be concentrating your travel into French-speaking countries if you’re really keen to increase your romantic potential.

Improving Communication Skills

When you travel and interact with people from many different languages and cultures, you can’t help but improve your communication skills – you start to listen better, you stop jumping to conclusions, and you figure out alternative ways to explain things if people don’t understand. Apply these principles to your romantic relationships and you will definitely be on a winner.

Building Common Experiences

If you’re lucky enough to have already found the love of your life, and he or she is keen to go traveling with you, then this is a fantastic foundation for a long-term romance and relationship. Sure, some of the day-to-day grimy moments of travel may not be the height of romance but you won’t remember later how it was to not shower for several days on that Trans-Siberian train journey.

What you will remember is all the places you went together, funny people you met, strange things you saw – and being able to reminisce about these experiences together will bind you together in a way that not much else can.

So, if you have been worried that hitting the road might mean you could miss out on a romantic opportunity back home, forget it. On the whole, I think you’re much better off taking yourself out into the world and letting romance take its course when it’s ready. You’ll develop all these great romantic skills that you can use for the rest of your life!

If you have a few hours to kill in Singapore, take a trip to iFly–the city’s skydiving destination with a new bar, SkyLoft.

That’s right–a wind tunnel for indoor simulated skydiving and an adjacent bar. While divers are not allowed in pre-drink, they are more than welcome to come to the bar post-dive.

SkyLoft hosts an in-house DJ, live bands and is a prime location for viewing Singapore’s nightly pyrotechnics show on the South China Sea.

More details on iFly can be found at CNN.go.com