Set midway between Amsterdam and Groningen in the northern Netherlands, the village of Giethoorn is the kind of place that should be prescribed for depression, said Gavin Haines in The Telegraph. With its thatched houses and “manicured” gardens, it’s “almost too perfect to be real” – but what makes it particularly “idyllic” is that it’s built largely around canals. Its charms are no secret: it receives about a million visitors a year (roughly a third of them from China), and the central waterway is often gridlocked.
Still, one local said he wasn’t much troubled by the crowds: the village still feels peaceful thanks to the absence of cars, and most of the visitors are daytrippers who leave around 5pm. If you go, book a B&B in advance, and hire a canoe or rowing boat to explore the wetlands in the nearby Weerribben-Wieden National Park.
The timeless charms of Tinos
A relatively quick two-hour ferry journey from Athens, Tinos is one of the more “wild and untouched” of the Cyclades, said Francesca Angelini in The Times – an “otherworldly” place with towering mountains, “frills-free” old chapels and gorgeous beaches. For a family holiday, I rented a “chic, understated” villa through The Thinking Traveller on the “sheltered” west coast, a 15-minute walk from the sandy beach of Kalivia.
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From there, we visited other beaches (Kolymbithres was lovely), went on some good hikes, and explored several enchanting villages. I loved “mystical” Tarampados, with its medieval, Venetian-style dovecotes (“ornate” two-storey stone structures), and Volax was wonderful, with its “bizarre” rock formations (boulders which were apparently “hurled down by Zeus in a moment of rage”) – but most “spectacular” was Kardiani, a “maze” of whitewashed houses on the “precipitous” hillside above our villa.
A cookery and craft retreat in Japan
The little Japanese mountain town of Yamanaka is known for its hot springs, traditional crafts and food culture, all explored in Water, Wood, & Wild Things, by the American writer Hannah Kirshner. For those keen to experience them first-hand, Kirshner runs a biannual four-day retreat, Foodways and Craftways, said Jessica Kozuka in DestinAsian.
Guests stay at the “venerable” Hanamurasaki ryokan – an inn founded in 1902 with a rooftop onsen bath – and take part in cookery and craft workshops at Mokkei, a renovated 100-year-old house with an open kitchen. The programme also includes foraging trips, tea ceremony classes at one of the town’s tea schools, and traditional pastry lessons at a fifth-generation confectionery.
