Departure gate

Your passport to the latest destinations and airline promotions

Poland's first science center in Warsaw offer visitors a chance to experience scientific phenomena at first hand. In the futuristic building located along the River Weichsel, visitors can play with virtual butterflies or watch robots write poems. The Copernicus Centre contains 350 exhibits, all aimed at bringing science to life. December marks the start of a Robot Theatre show and by next spring a new planetarium and a multimedia conference center should be ready. (www.kopernik.org.pl)

Tokyo's Anime Center closes

Fans of Japanese anime and manga comic figures should know that the Tokyo museum dedicated to the topic will be closed from Jan 10 next year for an extensive makeover. The center in the city's Akihabara district offers regular artwork exhibitions along with screenings of new works and talk shows featuring voice actors from anime films. A shop sells hard-to-find merchandise. Fans should watch the website for new opening times. (www.animecenter.jp/eng)

Oz eager for Chinese visitors

The Australian Tourism Export Council on Thursday said it sees China as the industry's lustrous pearl.

Data of Tourism Research Australia earlier showed a 19 percent increase in Chinese visitors in Australia in the year to September.

China is a big market for Australia's tourism, partly because of the two-way trade in commodities which is driving business traffic but also leisure exchanges.

DC's famous Brickskeller to shut

A Washington beer institution that has been listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest selection of commercial brews may be shutting down.

Diane Alexander, whose family has owned the Brickskeller saloon since 1957, tells news website TBD "nothing is definite" but that the bar with hundreds of different beers likely won't be open in 2011.

Visitors queued up just to get in the door at Ollivander's Wand Shop and waited an hour for the centerpiece ride, a fantastic state-of-the-art flight simulator/robocoaster called "Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey."

That sort of devotion to all things Potter is precisely what Universal hoped to tap into when it debuted the $250 million attraction in June, in a corner of its Islands of Adventure park.

Harry has conjured all the magic Universal expected, and then some. In the quarter after the attraction opened, crowds at Universal parks swelled by 36 percent over the same stretch last year, while attendance at Disney's Orlando parks stayed roughly the same.

Find a doctor online in Thailand

Visitors to Thailand who need to see a doctor during their stay can find out about treatment and services using a new international database of medical information. Patients can enter the required therapy for a particular malady using a standard search. The computer matches the query to the most suitable clinics among more than 350 on file. The database is only in English. (www.thailandmedtourism.com).

Airline news and deals:

Singapore Airlines codeshares: Singapore Airlines has two new offers from Dec 1, following the signing of two codeshare agreements: more flights between Singapore and Bali, and codeshare services to three new destinations in Scandinavia - Helsinki, Oslo and Stockholm.

Wuhan-Bangkok charter: A charter flight between Wuhan and Bangkok is now official after three weeks' trial operation since late November.

The flight runs every six days until April, when the Songkran Festival in Thailand begins.

China Southern promotion: Passengers can enjoy an extra 6 percent off when buying tickets at csair.com through online banking systems of China Merchants Bank, China Construction Bank and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. The promotion will end Feb 28.

Deutsche Presse Agentur - Xinhua - Associated Press - China Daily

(China Daily 12/12/2010 page16)