50 things we learned about travel in 2018 - from secretive cities to 'DNA tourism'

Telegraph Travel has grown another year older and with it, another year wiser. Here are some of the most pertinent lessons we learnt, from the profound to the absurd.

1. Tourism broke the world (but the worst is yet to come).

2. The morality of trophy hunting in South Africa isn't as clean-cut as you might think - and a reason why some animal lovers condone it.

3. There's a curious reason why the Dutch are so tall.

4. Reclining your seat on a plane is a silent act of war, apparently. Telegraph Travel's Annabel Fenwick Elliott had been doing this, and been on the receiving end of it, for her entire life without considering it rude, and more than 20,000 (mostly irate) Telegraph readers entered the fray to cast their votes on it.

5. Chernobyl is easier to visit than you might assume. Four hours to Kiev, two hours to Pripyat... it's a feasible weekend break. You'll find a desolate, depressing but utterly fascinating place – it is like nowhere else on Earth.

6. The good folk of Milton Keynes don't take kindly to their town being described as "big on roundabouts but woefully short on beauty".

7. Airports of the future will be managed from remote digital control towers.

8. Europe only has one free-flowing river left - and it's under threat from hydropower.

9. Drunk plane passengers came under the strong arm of the law... as did drunk pilots.

10. Some believed Gatwick was trying to introduce sneakily a 'stealth runway' without anyone noticing.

11. Father Ted's house is very much worth a visit.

12. Queen Victoria took her favourite pony on holiday to Switzerland.

13. Stockholm has reopened its best museum, and that's also worth a look-in.

14. The car hire industry is still a minefield for consumers, but there are ways to navigate it more smoothly.

15. It's never too late to get fit as a family, so says our very own Sally Peck. You might train to be a gladiator in Rome, or do push-ups in Brixton.

16. Scarily, we still don’t know how safe our children are on holiday, with no governmental or charitable body keeping tabs last year

17. Shark attacks are on the rise, and it might be due to warmer ocean temperatures

18. Edinburgh's famous clock hasn't been on time since 1902. And for good reason.

19. Those smiley buttons at airports do actually work, and they are changing the way we travel.

20. The world went to war with Uber.

21. ... and Airbnb.

22. Some super duper rich people actually use private jets to fly from one corner of London to the other.

23. One of Captain Cook’s last anchorages has hardly changed in 200 years.

24. The UK's seaside towns aren't as faded as you might think. We visited several to find out, Broadstairs and Bogner Regis among them.

25. Through our series on Great British Getaways, we discovered that the UK has some wonderfully bonkers festivals. One held in the Welsh town of LLanwrtyd Wells springs to mind.

26. A lot of the best art in Venice can be found in its less crowded churches.

27. Most people agree that New York's tipping culture is whack.

28. But there is a surprising amount of history to be found in the Big Apple.

29. There's also an intriguing history behind the tiles of the London Underground, and helpful clues in their design.

30. Being a baggage handler is easy, broadly speaking. This according to our news editor Hugh Morris, who spent a day doing it at Heathrow.

31. Hugh has also declared Madame Tussauds to be unutterably ridiculous.

32. 'Urban rambling' has become an unlikely trend for millennials.

33. And so has going on holiday to be bored on purpose.

34. The Telegraph Travel readership agrees that the Wirral is really great.

35. But Cape Town was voted the best city in the world for the sixth year running in our Telegraph Travel Awards 2018.

36. The final stop for lost luggage is an auction house in Tooting - and it’s a curious place indeed.

37. The first Lonely Planet guide had some very strange advice. Running out of cash? Then "sell your blood... or become an escort".

38. London once had a daily railway service with the sole purpose of shuttling dead bodies out of the city.

39. The reason American diners look like train carriages is because they once were, sort of.

40. Lisbon has become very busy. Portugal's tourist boom (from 6.8m in 2010 to around 20m this year) has seen to that. But head south to rural Alentejo and you'll soon find peace and quiet. Herdade de Matinha offers tranquility, good food and reasonable prices, says our assistant head of travel Oliver Smith.

41. The world's oldest wooden church? It's in Essex.

42. Thanks to the popularity of genetic home tests, 'DNA tourism' is becoming a thing.

43. The Dolomites is the most beautiful mountain range on the planet – and home to its most incredible bike route. The Sellaronda offers the chance to circumnavigate a colossal massif of jagged limestone peaks and impossibly green pastures, cross four mountain passes (three of which are higher than 2,000 metres), and tackle almost 100 adrenaline-pumping hairpins – all before lunch.

44. Costa Rica really is one of the world's happiest countries.

45. Russia still has towns and cities you're not allowed to visit, around 60 of them.

46. Luxury hotels are getting an awful lot better at hosting vegans.

47. Travel is yet another area where single parents get a raw deal, contending with high costs and poorly-designed products. Happily, there are some companies doing great work, and we're putting pressure on the others to shape up.

48. People have started eloping to other countries in increasing numbers. 

49. Thanks to engine problems with 787 Dreamliners, airlines including BA and Norwegian were forced to wet-lease lots of aircraft, including at one point, a swanky Airbus A380.

50. Last but not least, 2019 brings with it an array of new flight routes. Here's 11 of the ones we're most excited about.