Cheapflights.com Reminds You That the World Is a Classroom

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwired - Jun 3, 2015) -  Nothing quite beats that feeling of relief and excitement on the last day of school -- for students and parents alike. However, there is no reason to check the learning at the door when the final bell rings. Instead, take the learning on the road and let the world be your classroom. The travel experts at Cheapflights.com, the online leaders in finding and publishing travel deals, offer some lesson plans with their Summer smarts: Top 10 places to keep learning over the summer. Whether you opt to dive deep into history, culture, languages, wildlife or even fine cuisine, the experiences and life lessons from traveling will far outweigh, and most likely outlast, the knowledge gained simply from school books.

So trade in the books and computers for a passport, camera and a good dose of curiosity. and get a first-hand education in history, culture and beauty at any one of these five destinations to make the list. Added bonus -- there won't be any exams when the trip's over.

• Rome, Italy - Where better to start than at the center of all Western civilization? (We're kind of sweeping the Ancient Greeks under the rug with that statement, but they should have thought about that before they failed to invent pizza.) The history is as rich as the espresso in Rome, with legendary landmarks more than 2,000 years old: the Colosseum, the Forum and, of course, the numerous aqueducts and baths. Rome is a paradise for history buffs, who will be insufferable on their return, reciting rote facts such as "did you know the average Roman life expectancy was a mere 25 years?" and "did you know the Circus Maximus held up to 250,000 spectators?" Well, now we know.
  
  
• Egypt - The Egyptians go even further back than the Romans and claim inventions as timeless as the calendar, the plough and written language. Hieroglyphics depicted stories of war, culture and society in a much cooler way than Times New Roman 12-point font. But we're also thankful to the Egyptians for lesser-known inventions such as breath mints, bowling and make-up. A summer trip to Egypt, though, should be used for more than stocking up on Mentos and getting tips on how to avoid that dreaded ten-pin split. Visit the awe-inspiring Pyramids of Giza, where you can see the burial tombs of the Pharaohs, including the legendary Tutankhamun.
  
  
• Mexico - Let's run with this pyramid theme, since triangles are too often left out of the shape spotlight. Aztec pyramids are dotted around Mexico, and the story behind ancient Aztec culture is just as intriguing as their mummifying counterparts, even though the two civilizations existed some 4,000 years apart. These pyramids functioned as temples to gods with awesome and hard-to-pronounce names such as Huitzilopochtli and Quetzalcoatl, and as sites for human sacrifice, whereby priests would cut out human hearts then throw the corpses down into the pyramids. It should be noted that the same fate does not await tourists nowadays. A stay in Mexico also opens up the opportunity to learn Spanish with a twist. The Mexican dialect is intriguing, containing unique vocabulary such as cheve (beer), güero (someone whose hair isn't dark) and güey (dude or idiot, depending on how you're behaving).
  
  
• Costa Rica - Staying in Latin America, but putting pyramids aside, we come to wildlife-rich Costa Rica, home to at least 615 species of flora and fauna, among the highest of any country in the world. This is the ideal destination for animal aficionados, who'll come across endangered and distinctive species such as the jaguarondi (a cat), the ctenosaur (a lizard), the quetzal (a macaw), the American crocodile (a crocodile) and the Baird's tapir.
  
  
• Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, United States - The United States has its share of wildlife, as well as awe-inspiring landscapes, the best of both are protected in the country's 59 national parks. One of the most formidable may be Yellowstone in Wyoming -- not to be confused with the home of Yogi Bear and Boo Boo, Jellystone. The grand centerpiece of the park is Old Faithful, a geyser that spouts up to 8,400 gallons of boiling water more than 100 feet into the air every 90 minutes. People were known to use the geyser as a washing machine in the past, since the power and the temperature of the water provided a deep clean for cottons, though woolen items were said to be ripped apart: not an ideal consequence of laundering. Aside from Old Faithful laundry services, Yellowstone is home to various other sites of geothermic activity -- Firehole River, Mammoth Springs and Mud Volcano -- as well as creatures such as moose, elk, coyotes and even grizzly bears.
  
  

Rounding out our list of summer smart destinations are: Galapagos Islands, Ecuador; Iceland; Cape Canaveral, Florida, United States; Paris, France and Memphis, Tennessee, United States. To read the details on these learning hubs and see Cheapflights.com's complete Summer smarts: Top 10 places to keep learning over the summer, visit www.cheapflights.com/news/summer-smarts-top-10-places-to-keep-learning-over-the-summer.

About Cheapflights.com, part of the Momondo Group

Momondo Group is an online travel media and technology company that is driven by the belief that an open world is a better world. The group now serves travel search and inspiration to over 17.5 million visitors a month -- plus 8 million travel newsletter subscribers -- via its Cheapflights (www.cheapflights.com) and momondo (www.momondo.com) brands.

Skygate began the sourcing of complex air-travel data in 1992, while Cheapflights pioneered the online comparison of flight deals for users in 1996 and momondo launched meta-search in the Nordic countries in 2006.

The Group has offices in London, Copenhagen and Boston with a consumer base across more than 30 core international markets but users all over the world.

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