Firework fiesta, Elche, Spain

You’re unlikely to have heard of Elche, in Valencia province, unless you saw a recent tabloid story linking Diego Maradona with the manager’s job of the Spanish city’s Segunda División football team. Perhaps only someone of Maradona’s stature could put this workaday southern city on the map. Because Elche sits outside the gaudy glare of the Costa Blanca’s overheated beach resorts, just far enough inland to preserve its modesty. And it’s all the better for it. We were visiting friends and happy to be led on a tour of discovery. We were even happier that there were more hidden treasures than we anticipated: the Palmeral, a world heritage site of 200,000 palm trees; Altamira Castle, a 12th-century Moorish castle; the neoclassical Basílica de Santa María, home of the Elche mystery play, which was declared a masterpiece of oral and intangible heritage by Unesco; and a massive firework display to kick-start the summer festival season.

At a local restaurant we were encouraged to try fideuà, a dish similar to paella, but made with thin pasta instead of rice; and arroz a banda, rice cooked in salty fish stock and topped with a dollop of aioli. A bottle of Marina Alta white wine from nearby Alicante was cheap and delicious. But it’s not alcohol that you crave in the dog days of summer, when even a stroll at midnight is enough to reduce you to a puddle. So we dived into an ice-cream shop on Placa de la Glorieta, where our friends ordered us long glasses of horchata de chufa. And fartóns! The sweet milky horchata – made from tiger nuts – has been cooling people from the Valencia region for centuries. The fartóns were billowy soft finger buns dusted with icing sugar, perfect for dunking. I haven’t been happier sipping a milky drink at midnight for many years.

Andy Pietrasik

Gelato heaven, Italian Alps

Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Some people may regard it as mildly eccentric to drive 20 minutes out of your way in the midwinter snow for an ice-cream. I am very much not one of those people – and fortunately, the Italians aren’t either – so having heard that Aosta valley mountain guides were big fans of the Gelateria Pilier in Morgex, I decided a detour was in order en route from La Thuile to Courmayeur. Turns out those guides are good for more than just looking cool on skis, because I’m still thinking about the resulting ice-cream six months later. Made using milk from the sheep grazing on their winter pastures across the road, it combined the distinctive clean lightness of ewe’s milk with the rich, fruity flavours of the region – raspberries, sour cherries, roasted hazelnuts – and came topped with a generous avalanche of hot chocolate sauce. It was winter, after all.

• piliercentral.com

Felicity Cloake, Guardian food and drink writer



Something of the night, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Electric Castle Festival, near Cluj, Romania. Photograph: Roger Garfield/Alamy



There’s a lot to love about Cluj-Napoca, Romania’s second-largest city. It’s the unofficial capital of Transylvania, and blends the historic – a striking central square with gothic St Michael’s Church, old town hall, baroque Bánffy Palace (now the national art museum) – with a bohemian, lively vibe thanks to the big student presence (they make up a third of the population). My visit coincided with Cluj Day in September, a cultural celebration with medieval parades, outdoor art exhibitions, concerts and a party atmosphere. Cluj is known on the electronic music scene for the Electric Castle and Untold festivals and has great nightlife year round, with venues like the Gazette Club in a warehouse on top of a hill and the vast Form Space in town, and there are plentiful cool cafes and bars (try the steampunk pub Enigma). It’s got a huge vintage and outlet shopping offering and a vibrant art scene too – the Paintbrush Factory in a converted factory is a huge independent cultural space and worth a visit. It made a great value, alternative city break.

Jane Dunford

Beer capital, Leuven, Belgium

Photograph: Luis Davilla/Getty Images

One of the best places in Belgium to escape the summer heatwaves is under a canopy in Oude Markt in Leuven, 16 miles east of Brussels. This cobbled square is in fact a rectangle of towering Flemish gothic architecture, but on warm afternoons it feels like one long terrace bar, with students lounging on outdoor sofas, lazily sipping Hoegaardens. The traditional Café Belge is a good place to test out Leuven’s reputation as Belgium’s beer capital, while more sophisticated spots include Bardot and Café ’t Vertier, which has the comfiest outdoor seats for people watching. Leuven is small and still off Belgium’s main tourist circuit, so even at the weekend it’s surprisingly peaceful – but the city’s history, architecture and bar and restaurant scenes rival those of Ghent and Bruges.

Rachel Hall

Love at first bite, Aberdeen

Coming off the overnight ferry from Orkney, I dropped in at the Bonobo Cafe for breakfast and promptly fell in love. Aberdeen’s first workers’ cooperative vegan cafe opened in its current central location in 2017, after a couple of years as a pop-up. I headed upstairs to the bijou dining area – lots of exposed wood, reclaimed materials and a warm, friendly vibe – and was soon tucking into a generous, tasty and very reasonably priced cooked breakfast: vegan sausages, tomato, tofu “scrambled eggs”, baked beans, tattie scones and more. As it was sunny, I had a cheeky post-prandial hot chocolate and CBD oil in the roof garden, where I made friends with Mickey, a handsome white-and-ginger tom who has adopted the cafe and is now a permanent fixture. It’s not the first time I wished I were a cat.

• bonobotribe.co.uk

Dixe Wills

Wild woods, East Sussex

This summer we spent three days in a Sussex field – and it was one of the most successful family holidays we’ve ever had. The sun shone; my son and his friend (both nine) disappeared for hours on end, and I had time to read. Wowo is known for its family-friendliness, offering bushcraft, circus and storytelling sessions, and the boys enjoyed these, but the thing they loved most was the freedom to play in the woods on rope swings and makeshift bridges. There were times when I worried I was giving them too much freedom – like the time my son came back and told me he’d been dangling upside down over a ditch – but the benefits of being able to roam wild far outweighed the risks. To my astonishment, the boys completely forgot about electronic devices and instead got into whittling. They had zero interest in day trips, so we stayed on site, adjusting to the rhythm of outdoor life – waking early, cooking breakfast outside, exploring the woods that border each field. I’d expected to be eager to leave; instead I was reluctant to rejoin the real world and would happily have stayed for the rest of the summer.

• From £10 a night adult, £5 child; sessions such as bushcraft and circus skills from £12; wowo.co.uk

Isabel Choat

Splendid isolation, Lincolnshire

Gibraltar Point at low tide. Photograph: Martyn Williams/Alamy

Much of Lincolnshire’s wild coastline is unspoilt by development, with vast sandy stretches, dunes and wildlife-rich, marshy hinterlands. The only sign of human presence from the beach at Gibraltar Point was a wind farm, far out in the misty sea, and the boardwalk leading back to the nature reserve. When I visited in August, we paddled in the warm shallows, skimmed stones, walked barefoot across the mudflats and explored several miles of pathways around salt marshes and freshwater meres. Nearby, there’s the new North Sea Observatory at Chapel Point; fab fish and chips at Waldo’s in Sutton-on-Sea; and Anderby Creek, a sandy beach with a small cafe and “cloud bar” – which claims to be the world’s first dedicated cloud observation platform.

Antonia Wilson

Strawberry Field … forever, Liverpool

Julia Baird, John Lennon’s sister and honorary president of the Strawberry Field project. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

For a Beatles nut, the opening ceremony of Strawberry Field in September was a magical moment. The grounds of the former Salvation Army children’s home that inspired the Beatles’ 1967 classic had never before been open to the public (as a boy, John Lennon would bunk over the wall to play in the gardens) and were the last major unknown piece of the Beatles jigsaw. Where the gothic Victorian house once stood, the Salvation Army has built a light-filled cafe and exhibition space to help fund its Steps to Work programme, which is on the same site and helps young people with learning disabilities get into employment. The exhibition covers Lennon’s early life and the making of Strawberry Fields (Lennon added the “s”), with a virtual Mellotron that teaches visitors to play the song’s famous opening notes. But the real joy was sitting in the peaceful now-landscaped garden (free to enter) imagining which of the trees my hero would have climbed (“No one I think is in my tree”) while his psychedelic masterpiece played in my head.

• Cafe and garden free to enter, interactive exhibition £12.95 adult, £8 child (5-16), strawberryfieldliverpool.com

Gavin McOwan

Antiquity-on-sea, Paestum, Salerno, Italy

The Diver tomb painting at Paestum. Photograph: Louis Mazzatenta/Getty Images

Craving a long empty sandy shore after cheek-by-jowl experiences on tiny Amalfi beaches, I spotted Paestum on a map, to the south of Salerno. A modicum of research produced tantalising images of ancient Greek temples and the remains of a Roman town behind the dunes – history and swimming, an ideal holiday combination. As it happened, cafes on the delightful little square over the road from the temples took more of our time than we had envisaged, as did the fascinating museum, with its Greek and Lucanian tomb art, made famous by the stunning Diver painting. We also managed to photobomb the most stylish wedding I’ve ever witnessed, just outside the venerable Paleochristian Basilica of Our Lady of the Annunciation. A 10-minute walk through dunes took us to a huge beach curving away south to Cilento. Easily big enough to dodge the sunloungers and roped-off private areas, this was an idyllic place to wander and swim. But there’s more history to ponder: this was also the site of the US 36th Division’s fraught Salerno landings in 1943. Just how did those stunning temples survive?

Adam McCulloch

Pots of delight, Beirut

Nicole Bersuder and Imad Baalbaki pottery studio/gallery. Photograph: Liz Boulter

One of the first neighbourhoods in East Beirut to become trendy, Gemmayzeh is now full of bars, restaurants and clubs. Most memorable, though, was not the (excellent) cocktails but drinking coffee with inspiring potters Nicole Bersuder and Imad Baalbaki at their workshop-cum-gallery on the top floor of an old building on the main drag, Gouraud Street. Nicole learned her craft in Sweden and Greece, and she and partner Imad have been perfecting it here for 25 years, producing dishes, plates, vases and more in tactile, sinuous shapes, with finishes varying from matt to shiny, richly opaque to transparent. “I have a carnal relationship with clay,” she says. Imad’s work is more playful – expressive animal shapes in figurines or adorning a plate. He was working on a series featuring spiky-haired refugee boy Handala, commemorating his creator, Palestinian cartoonist Naji Salim Hussain, murdered in London in 1987. The pair hold an open house fortnight each September, but visitors are welcome any time at their atelier (between Café Ginette and Phil & Joe Barbers – no street number). They’ll have the coffee pot on.

• espacesephemeres.com

Liz Boulter

Take the bus to a waterfall walk, Bellingham, Northumberland

Hareshaw Linn waterfall. Photograph: Alamy

Exploring rural Northumberland by bus places great emphasis on timing, as the service can stretch your understanding of the word “frequency”. Rather than viewing the two-hour gaps between the 680 Tynedale Links buses as a negative, I took the positives: an opportunity to plan properly. Arriving in Bellingham (on the Pennine Way) on a Saturday afternoon, I had two hours – or four. Details like these focus the mind. A sausage bap and coffee at the town’s Carriages Tea Rooms (two repurposed 1957 Mark 1 railway carriages) turned out to be not my only “discovery”. With 80 minutes to play with, I took the three-mile circular walk to Hareshaw Linn waterfall. This site of special scientific interest is home to rare ferns and more than 300 types of mosses, liverworts and lichen. On a late autumn day, walking the gorge – alongside Hareshaw Burn, crossing numerous wooden bridges on the way – was a beautifully tranquil, nature-filled experience.

Robert Hull

It was ferry heaven, Greek island hopping

Photograph: J Wildman/Getty Images

I spent a few weeks in the summer on an island-hopping odyssey around the Greek islands, among them some superb craggy outcrops like Amorgos, Sifnos and Ikaria. And yet in some ways the star performer of the trip was the Greek ferry system. From the first voyage out of Piraeus, it served up a reliable mixture of fresh air, cheese pies, good coffee and spectacular panoramas. Every island had its attractions, but I always looked forward to that moment in the port, waiting in a little taverna, when the boat came steaming into harbour and I’d jump aboard. Even the occasional need to change boats for particular destinations made for interesting discoveries: the antiquities of Kos, for example, and the charm of Naxos’s old town.

• Booking info at ferries.gr

Kevin Rushby

Heart of glass, Perugia

Many visitors to Italy find themselves gazing at amazing stained glass, but not so many get to see how these masterpieces of light and chemistry are created. On a steep street in central Perugia, five generations of one family have been working in glass since 1858, when Francesco Moretti, whose work can be seen throughout Italy and across the world, founded the studio. His descendants showed us original bottles of coloured enamel powder, kilns where different colours are carefully “cooked” and workshops where new masterpieces are created. Walking into the main studio (pictured) in this 15th-century house is like stepping into a Renaissance painting: lit by a row of windows, its walls and archways are covered in decorative frescos and hung with paintings, musical instruments and even a suit of armour. Also on display are a portrait of Queen Margherita that you would never believe was glass, a version of Da Vinci’s last supper, and elegant contemporary pieces.

• Open Tues, Weds 10am-3pm, other times by appointment, donations requested, studiomoretticaselli.it

LB

About time, Olsztyn, Poland

Olsztyn old town. Photograph: Piotr Borkowski/Alamy

I made a long overdue first visit to Poland this year, and found myself really quite taken with Olsztyn, a small city in the north-east of the country on the River Łyna. Accessible by train from the UK – I travelled overnight via Berlin – it’s the birthplace of art deco architect Erich Mendelsohn and capital of the Warmia-Masuria province, known as the Land of a Thousand Lakes (though it’s actually home to about 3,000). At its heart is a laid-back mix of parks and attractive streets liberally sprinkled with medieval buildings. One of these is the very castle whose walls were used in the 16th century by Nicolaus Copernicus to make the calculations that resulted in the switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. Best of all, 11 of the region’s lakes are within the city limits, so visitors are never far from a place to indulge in water sports, a tranquil shoreline wander or a lakeside bar for a crisp, refreshing beer from the city’s Kormoran brewery. DW

Highland flung, The Lost valley, Glen Coe

Photograph: Harald Schmidt/Getty Images

Glen Coe is everything you would imagine of the Scottish Highlands – majestic, forbidding, savagely beautiful – but you don’t have to be an experienced hiker with calves of steel to enjoy it. On our visit at Easter we followed the path from a layby on the A82 up across the valley floor, edged along a narrow gorge, clambered over boulders; and after about an hour were above the Lost valley – a hidden spot where the Macdonald clan used to hide their cattl, where wild campers now pitch tents. The walk had enough drama to distract my son, and for us to feel as if we’d had a proper dose of wilderness. Plus in a week when we had almost every type of weather, we were lucky to walk under spring sunshine. IC

Happy hotel, Vienna

I’d never been to Vienna before, and on my first trip, this summer, was won over by the laid-back vibe. My base was the newly opened Max Brown hotel, a converted mansion with 143 rooms in Neubau, the hip 7th district. On the ground floor, Seven North restaurant, run by Israeli chef Eyal Shani, has a theatrical open kitchen serving southern Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisine with lots for veggies (Arabian cabbage cake, roast cauliflower or sweet potato “brain” with crème fraîche, from €9). Carnivores can feast on whole roasted fish (€14) or kebab schnitzel (€18). The hotel has a cocktail bar, cinema and pool tables and rooms all have Crosley record players, a basketball net (and ball), bright colour schemes, chic mid-century furniture, potted plants and bathrooms with Desea Spa products. It’s a great location for vintage shopping and only a short walk from the museum district and Vienna’s old-school coffee houses and lively bars.

• Doubles from €113 room-only, maxbrownhotels.com

JD

Lap it up, Husky hike, Finland

The most fun I had all year was taking a dog for a walk. (Maybe I need to get out more?) But this wasn’t any old dog walk – it was a husky hike through a forest in Finnish Lapland. Before the snows come and the sleigh rides begin, visitors can help exercise the dogs on foot. Our guide selected a pack of eight out of hundreds of baying hounds, humans and dogs were paired up and put into harness, and we all hurtled off at high speed. After the barking (and screaming) subsided, my dog, Kuiska (Whisper) and I settled into a steady jog through trees. It was ruska, the two-week period in Lapland when the autumn colours are most vivid. The peace was broken only when the huskies scented water and dashed en masse into a ditch, dragging us handlers face-first behind them. If you too want to get wet, dirty and covered in dog hair, you don’t have to go to Finland – Eagle Heights Wildlife Foundation in Kent also offers husky hikes.

• harriniva.fi

Rachel Dixon

Wild about wildlife, UK nature reserves

Kenfig Pool nature reserve. Photograph: Terry Brooks/Alamy

Thanks to David Attenborough’s television programmes, some of the British public are probably more familiar with the Serengeti and Antarctica than places like Kenfig and Skipwith Common, but there is environmental treasure right under our noses here in the UK.

My moment of awakening came at Kenfig, a national nature reserve near Bridgend, south Wales, when my guide suddenly jumped up from where he was showing me a sward covered in orchids and ran off, shouting, “Get your camera. Quick!” He had spotted a shrill carder bee, a creature rarer than a Bengal tiger. There are over 2,500 nature reserves in Britain, some managed by government bodies, some by Wildlife Trusts and some privately. There are more than 30 run by Butterfly Conservation. Many were formerly known by the catchy moniker “sites of special scientific interest”. They may not have prides of lions, but they can be just as dramatic.

Take Gilfach in mid-Wales, where the salmon spend November chucking themselves headlong up waterfalls right past the viewing platform that only occasionally hosts a visitor. Or Skipwith near York, where grass snakes snooze on the warm bricks of first world war bunkers, with not a single minivan of camera-toting tourists in sight. These places are disgracefully under-resourced by government, often reliant on volunteers, and there will be a gem near you. Give it some love.

• wildlifetrusts.org, visitengland.com, nnr.scot, first-nature.com/waleswildlife, discovernorthernireland.com

KR

Your carriage awaits, boat train to Sicily

Taormina railway line with Isola Bella in the background, Sicily. Photograph: Alamy

On 14 December, one of Europe’s three surviving train ferries set sail for the last time. The Hamburg to Copenhagen train will now be rerouted via Odense. It is the latest in a long list of lost boat trains from the golden age of rail, including the overnight London-Paris ferry. The two remaining services are the summer-only Berlin Night Express to Malmö, and the year-round train ferry from mainland Italy to Sicily. In May, my partner and I took the train from Naples to the toe of Italy, where the train is loaded on to the ferry to cross the Straits of Messina (the boat has tracks and the train is driven right on). Once on the ferry, we watched from the deck as Sicily neared. After half an hour, we were back on board and speeding down the island’s east coast to Taormina, Catania and Syracuse. With spectacular coastal scenery, the excitement of the sea crossing and our picnic of arancini and wine, it was one of the most enjoyable journeys I’ve ever taken. Next time, I might extend it by starting in Rome, Milan or even London, and go all the way to Palermo. After all, if we don’t support these venerable boat trains, there will soon be none left.

RD

Kreuzberg street art tour, Berlin

Artworks in Berlin’s East Side Gallery. Photograph: Alamy

I love Berlin’s imposing, sometimes daunting, architecture and history, but for me an even bigger draw is its embrace of cultural diversity. It still feels open to artistic expression and lo-fi creativity, amid all the European capital oomph. In the company of Elisabetta, a With Locals guide, I took an afternoon walking tour around the Kreuzberg district’s street art. What impressed me about her insight was how, as we strolled past the East Side Gallery and across the Oberbaumbrücke, she shone a light on smaller artworks and lesser-known artists, not just Insta hits. So, as well as eyecatching pieces by Os Gêmeos and Nomad, she pointed out Korkmännchen (little cork yoga figures added to road signs), the cigarette packet-style art of Taosuz, and emotional stencils by ALIAS, about children left alone in the city. The tour also takes in RAW Gelände, a complex of wildly graffitied derelict buildings that is now a cultural space (including the Haubentaucher lido).

• Tour €26.50pp, 2½ hours, withlocals.com

RH

Bastide in blue, Lectoure, France

Photograph: Thierry Grun/Alamy

Lectoure is a bastide – it’s even got a hotel called the Bastard. A bastide is a fortified town, and this one sits high above the fertile plains of the Gers river in rural south-west France. Its houses and shops are built of limestone and radiate a warm honey glow in summer, their shutters painted a distinctive pastel shade known as Lectoure blue, made using local woad. The main street is closed off every Friday for the farmer’s market, which sells local produce like armagnac (it used to be the capital of the earldom of Armagnac), prunes and, whisper it, foie gras. At the other end, there’s a rambling antiques market in the former 17th-century hospital, and a small thermal spa.

But the jewel of the town is tucked out of sight behind the monumental cathedral in the gardens of the former bishop’s palace. Sitting on a terrace overlooking the Gers countryside is the most beautiful outdoor swimming pool. It’s a 25-metre lido with a separate children’s section, surrounded by a Technicolor green lawn. It’s like a scene from a French movie: sun glinting on the water, women of a certain age swimming, head up in sunglasses, middle-aged men doing laps, couples cuddling in the shallow end. And it’s all presided over by a sun-wizened lifeguard who prowls the perimeter in a white vest and the briefest of trunks. Best of all it costs less than €5 for the whole day.

AP

Pasta glory, Lisbon

I’d only been in Lisbon a couple of days, but the beetroot pasta at Osteria Cucina Di Amici had already been name-dropped by both the manager of my co-working space and my surf instructor. The corner restaurant’s pea-green walls are decorated with vintage Italian posters and a photo of the pope lit up with coloured fairy-lights, under mismatched chairs at Formica tables dressed with red gingham napkins. An enamel bowl of silky, pink bucatini pasta (pictured) topped with parmesan and basil leaves, was perfectly in tune with the surrounding Italian kitsch. Also on the menu is Sardinian bread lasagne, and meatballs with creamy mash. The restaurant is in the hilly Madragoa neighbourhood of narrow cobbled streets and washing lines strung between crumbly tiled walls. For the more typical Portuguese cuisine, I headed down to local favourite Último Porto, where the seafood is barbecued on the dockside between shipping containers.

AW

Looking for a holiday with a difference? Browse Guardian Holidays to see a range of fantastic trips

• This article was amended on 24 December 2019. An earlier version misnamed the Straits of Messina as the Straits of Medina. This has been corrected.