Top 5 geek holidays for summer

Being bona fide geeks ourselves, we know how it feels when you have to switch off your PC for a week and head off into the sun for one of those pesky holidays. So, in the interests of stopping you lot spending seven days bored to tears on a beach full of sunburnt boozehounds, we’ve put together our top geek holiday destinations for the summer.

Akihabara Electric Town, Tokyo
The Holy Grail for geeks looking to splash their hard–earned Web 2.0 cash on bizarre electronic treats. As well as your common or garden PCs, you’ll find kooky personal robots and even Nathan Barley’s T12 Wasp. On top of that you’ll get plenty of anime and manga to keep you satisfied.
Virgin Atlantic flies to Tokyo from £694 return
www.virgin-atlantic.com

Silicon Valley tour
Forget Hollywood Hills. Hop on a plane to San Francisco and then take a day (or more) to take in Silicon Valley’s sites. Start at the Tech Museum of Innovation, then over to the Intel Museum (actually far cooler than it sounds) and the Big M’s Silicon Valley campus, before heading to Cupertino to check in on Apple. We advise doing the whole thing in an Infinite Loop, natch.
Virgin Atlantic flies to San Francisco from £576 return
www.virgin-atlantic.com

Mos Eisley, Tunisia
Get in touch with your inner Jedi in Mos Eisley, Tunisia (also known as Tatooine in Star Wars). It’s the home of the Skywalkers (ok, not in real life, but you know what we mean), so you’ll be able to make like you live with your aunt and uncle in a barren desert, before being taken off to learn how to use the force. Either that or head back to London from Tunis.
Flights to Tunisia start at £271 from Cheapflights
www.cheapflights.co.uk

Foucault’s pendulum, Paris
Closer to home, you can check out Foucault’s pendulum in Paris. Conceived as a way to prove the rotation of the Earth, Foucault’s experiment can be found at the Pantheon just outside the centre of the city. Not quite the same as the Pendulum we’ve just interviewed, but still.
Eurostar trains to Paris from £59 day return
www.eurostar.com

Keck Observatory, Hawaii
Hawaii’s reckoned to be one of the best places on the planet for a spot of stargazing. The Keck Observatory, on the summit of Mauna Kea has two telescopes, each a massive 10 metres across and is sat on top of the world’s largest island mountain island. You can’t just wander in, but once you’ve taken a look, you can always do a spot of surfing.
KLM flies to Honolulu via Seattle from £600 return
www.klm.com