The world's favourite destination: a guide

France receives more visitors from both Britain and the rest of the world than any other country. Here, in the first of our three-page special report on our nearest and (dare we say it, dearest) neighbour, Jeremy Atiyah offers a region-by-region appreciation

Jeremy Atiyah 

Sunday, 1 March 1998

If a country can be judged by the number of visitors it receives, then France is a big winner. Not only does it receive more foreign visitors annually than any other country, but it also receives the most British visitors - over 10 million. But where do they all go? Unlike Spain, where millions of tourists end up concentrated into the same resorts, France is able to absorb visitors throughout its length and breadth. From the flat mining lands of Nord-pas-de-Calais to the glittering promenades of the Cote d'Azure there is no region without its legion of British devotees. But for those who still can't make up their minds, here is a region-by-region guide, based on the nine most popular regions according to numbers of British tourists.

1/ Paris ile-de-France

So Paris is our favourite city in our favourite country. But given that Paris is not a place to spend a fortnight in high summer, you will probably be looking at a long weekend break. The best way to go is on Eurostar (0345 881881) direct to the Gare du Nord and then find a creaky old hotel with the help of your Rough Guide.

If you are looking for deals though, Paris Travel Service (01992 456000) has some pretty cheap ones, especially departing from the London area in the coming month. Flying from London Gatwick you can spend three nights for pounds 109 including taxes (but not including transfers), or pounds 112 if you travel by Eurostar. Travelling from elsewhere in Britain, VFB Holidays (01242 240300) offers packages with scheduled flights from almost any regional airport - with quite hefty supplements.

Another excellent idea is to combine the urban delights of inner Paris with a spot of rustic country living, by renting a gite in the ile-de- France. The advantage of doing it this way is that you can bring your kids. The main operator dealing with gites in Britain is now Brittany Ferries (0990 360360). For a family of four a gite in the Paris area in mid-summer will cost about pounds 500-pounds 600 including ferry crossings for you and your car.

2/ Brittany

At number two in our hit-list of favourite French regions comes the French equivalent to Cornwall. Brittany is the western extremity of France, its Celtic fringe - it even has its own Land's End (Finisterre). It is also but a single ferry journey away, with regular crossings linking Portsmouth and Poole with St Malo, and Plymouth with Roscoff (Call Brittany Ferries on 0990 360360).

With wonderful beaches, craggy cliffs and off-shore islands, this is a wild and beautiful region. It may not produce wine but the food is superb - come for moules marinieres and soupe de poissons.

A good-value holiday in Brittany is offered by Eurocamp (01565 626262), which provides house-like tents, swimming pools and a cheery atmosphere. Most people just come in the car and rent a gite, but you can take a tour. How about a high-brow study-tour of the megaliths of Brittany in July with Andante Travel (01980 610555)?

3/ Normandy

Even closer to Britain's southern shores than Brittany, Normandy is only marginally less popular. In addition to seaside towns, including the fantastic attraction of Mont-St-Michel, this is the region for visiting the D-Day beaches of the Second World War - Caen for example, which is also a jumping off point for ferries from Portsmouth. Paris is only two hours away by car. If you want a gite in the area try Normandie Vacances (01922 721901), or Thomson's Country Cottages (01282 445511).

4/ Aquitaine

The huge southwestern region of Aquitaine is often referred to by the British in a general way as "the Dordogne", though in fact it includes the city of Bordeaux and the fabulous Atlantic beaches of Arcachon, and extends right down to the Pyrenees and the Spanish border (including the French Basque country). The principal attractions of the area are the world-famous traditions of food and wine and the best people to take you around the vineyards are Arblaster and Clarke Wine Tours (01730 893344). I also rather fancy something called a Gastronomic Cycling Tour run by Headwater (01606 813367) which takes you from superb restaurant to superb restaurant - reckon on about pounds 400 per person half-board, if four people travel together by car. Meanwhile every inland village seems to have its discreetly resident English families; to rent a nice villa of your own try Meon Villas on 01730 268411.

5/ Rhone Alps

The figures for this huge region bordering onto the Swiss and Italian Alps are mainly accounted for by the floods of winter skiers. Not that snow is the only attraction. Lyon is known throughout France as a city of style and superb cuisine. The lake-side cities of Annecy and Aix-les- Bains, as well as Evian-les-Bains on Lake Geneva, are delightful places to take the water. These days the high-speed TGV trains connect Lyon to Paris in only two hours which means you can leave London early morning and be there by lunch-time (book your ticket to Lyon through Eurostar).

6/ Provence

After Peter Mayle, what more can be said? The red roofs, the scent of bitter thyme, the harsh light and balmy air have been attracting artists and vagabonds for centuries. Ancient fortified cities such as Avignon and Aix-en-Provence compete for attention with the great port city of Marseilles. I suggest tailor-made independent walks or bike rides with Inntravel (01653 628862), who will carry your luggage while you amble (or cycle) from hotel to hotel. Reckon on pounds 500-pounds 600 for a six-night trip, including breakfast, picnic lunch and dinner.

7/ Nord-Pas-de-Calais

Eurostar has provided a boost to British tourism in this area. A few years ago nobody used to stop between Paris and Calais. Now we are getting used to the gastronomic and architectural delights of Lille, which is nearer by train to London than Liverpool or Manchester. For Lille short breaks, call Classic Breakaway on 01492 532532. Otherwise, if you fancy a long weekend in a real rural auberge only three hours drive from London, try Inntravel (01653 628862).

8/ Picardy

Picardy is the area between Calais and Normandy, of which the big attraction once again is proximity. The First World War battlefields are attracting more and more visitors. Holts' Tours (01304 612248) arranges expertly guided trips to the Somme and other battle sites.

On a different note, Picardy might also be a good place to try the French equivalent to Center Parks, that is to say purpose-built holiday villages with self-catering studios and villas, alongside a (covered) swimming pool area and other sporting facilities. Call EuroVillages on 01606 734400.

9/ Cote d'Azure

Our ninth favourite region is that little playground of princesses and film-stars down in the far south-eastern corner of France. In the last century the British colonised Nice as an antidote to the northern winter blues. These days we prefer the Canary Islands and the Caribbean mainly because - in towns like Cannes, Antibes, Juan-les-Pins and Monaco - the British are afraid of being shown up by their sexier French counterparts. If you have the nerve, try easyJet (01582 702900) with its pounds 49 plus-tax fare; if you prefer true Cote d'Azure style, how about a villa/chateau with swimming pools and tennis courts? Available from Dominique's Villas (0171 738 8772).

Thrifty ways to treat your lover - and some expensive ones, too

JEREMY ATIYAH

 SUNDAY 01 FEBRUARY 1998

IT MAY SEEM contrary to the spirit of romance to worry about how much things cost ("yeah, what about the humming-bird-feather duvet and the penthouse suite full of rose petals?") but some tour operators still seem to think that Valentine's Day is an occasion on which people are looking for bargain breaks.

I would be extremely wary of any lover who proposed taking me to the Far East this Valentine's Day - a part of the world where holiday prices are, once again, hitting all-time lows. For example, nobody on earth is going to seduce me by offering a seven-night package in Bali for pounds 545 with Qantas Holidays (0990 673464), departing on 11 February. Would that not be a case of gross penny-pinching or what?

No. To do our lovers justice, what we need to do on Valentine's Day is to spend money wastefully, not economically. A bit more like it is the "Romeo and Juliet" Package being offered by the Hyatt Carlton Tower in London (0171 235 1234), where, for pounds 399, two people get to spend a single night in the hotel, plus dinner for two in a posh restaurant and a bit of massage/facial treatment thrown in on the side. If that isn't a splurge that you are going to regret the next time your bank statement arrives, then I don't know what is.

Anything to do with Concorde would make equally promising material for Valentine's Day. How about a two-night break in New York for pounds 1,542 with Bridge Travel Service (01992 456171), with one leg flown on Concorde? What gives this its delightfully gratuitous edge is that you have to fly to Paris in order to board your Concorde, thus nullifying the time advantage (and missing the whole point of travelling by Concorde).

In fact, people who believe in these things are facing a hell of a week. This year, the day before Valentine's Day happens to be Friday 13th, which might be an argument in favour of financial caution in the days leading up to your romantic break.

One way to avoid causing offence to your Valentine is to wait until after 14 February, when even cheaper deals will become available. How about four nights in Hong Kong, with flights on British Airways, for just pounds 299 (call Kuoni on 01306 740500)? Or 14 nights in Sri Lanka for pounds 419 per person (call The Holiday Place on 0171 431 0670)?

For the stingiest Valentine's Day offer of all, however, I suggest Kosmar Holidays, which offers "six lucky couples the chance to win a romantic night out whilst on holiday" on condition that they book the holiday with Kosmar on 14 February. In other words, even if you book your holiday on Valentine's Day, all you'll get is the chance of a free dinner. That doesn't sound like the brilliant project that I want to be whispering into the ear of my prospective sweetheart on Friday 13th.

IN THIS AGE of communication, it is always a pleasure to find that some of the old ways still prevail. A good two weeks after the close of the Millennium competition (which we ran in these pages), I am still cowering under a deluge of late entries - from India.

It transpires that, unknown to us, the Times of India ran a version of our competition, asking readers to write in to the Independent on Sunday in England to receive their prize. The snag was that they only did this five days before the closing date for entries, leaving an improbably short time in which to get a postcard from India to Britain.

I do hope that if the Times of India decide to reproduce this column they will convey my apologies to those people whose entries were doomed to heroic failure before they were even sent.

Not that electronic communication would necessarily have been any faster. A couple of days ago, this travel desk received an e-mail that I had sent in from Northern Cyprus last July. We calculate that a person on foot carrying my message in their hand would have arrived at about the same time.

You try Cornwall, we'll try Bolivia

Atlantis fever is gripping the world of exploration. Jeremy Atiyah on the rival expeditions seeking out Plato's city under the sea

Jeremy Atiyah 

Sunday, 11 January 1998

THIS is Atlantis season again. Now that the Russians are losing their ability to fund space exploration they have decided to search for mythical lost cities instead - in unexpected places. The remains of the city of Atlantis, they predict, will be found a hundred miles off Land's End.

That at least is the view of theMoscow Institute of Metahistory, an organisation formed last year with the intention of proving that conventional ideas about human history are wrong. Their application for permission to dive is currently circulating Whitehall departments.

"An operation such as this is probably going to cost hundreds of thousands of pounds," said a spokesman for the Maritime department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. "Presumably someone in Russia thinks the project is worth funding."

Their director, Professor Viatcheslav Koudriavtsev plans to lead his Cornish expedition in the summer. He has applied to explore in the area of the Celtic Shelf, an underwater hill in the north Atlantic which, he claims, sank permanently below sea-level during catastrophic floods after the last ice-age.

Oddly enough, at the very moment that Professor Koudriavtsev heads for Cornwall, another explorer, the very British Colonel "Blashers" Blashford- Snell, Chairman of the Scientific Exploration Society, is planning an even less probable Atlantis search: in Bolivia.

Colonel Blashford-Snell is not particularly impressed by his Russian rivals though he is willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

"You have to keep an open mind on these things," he says of his own expedition. "I am going to investigate a possible lost city, which may or may not turn out to be Atlantis. Our Bolivian site has about 50 factors which happen to fit Plato's description - for example that it's a rectangular plain of the right dimensions, flat and level and of high altitude. Most interesting of all is an apparent canal - exactly as described by Plato - running down to the inland Bolivian sea of Lake Poopo."

But surely South America was unknown to the ancient Mediterranean?

"So we suppose. But the discovery of cocaine as part of the mummification process used by the ancient Egyptians raises interesting questions. There is an ocean current running from Montevideo to Cape Town and quite primitive rafts could cross that gap. In fact, investigating the possibility of contact between South America and Africa in ancient times is really the serious part of our project. Not Atlantis."

Which is not, of course, how most people would like to see it. We want Atlantis. Ever since the middle of the last century, when the hero of Jules Verne's novel Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea stepped into its sunken ruins, Atlantis theories have grown progressively wilder. In addition to Bolivia and Cornwall, other suggested sites have been the north coast of Libya, ancient Wessex, Antarctica and (from the Japanese) the South Pacific.

These days, lost "secrets" from the dawn of civilisation evoke no end of extra-terrestrial trumpery. Mysterious technologies such as "cosmic crystals" have been dreamt up by mystics and attributed to Atlantis. Latter-day Platos have even claimed that it was misuse of "crystal-power" that caused the destruction of their civilisation, and (to choruses of ethereal angels) have come to see the search for Atlantis as synonymous with the search for the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

But why? Was not the Atlantis story just a standard allegory, rustled up to illustrate the dangers of a society corrupting itself? A story of a once virtuous city, now so eaten up by debauchery that Zeus had no option but to send in the tidal waves?

This is hard to dispute. Take another look at Noah and his flood, the Tower of Babel and Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible, or Irem in the Koran. (A lesser Atlantis, Irem, also has its followers, who search in the sands of the Arabian peninsular.)

Except - and this is where our psychological need for The Big Quest kicks in - the detail makes us hesitate. Plato's descriptions are packed with circumstantial evidence. He describes an island continent "circled by mountains". He talks of a "rectangular plain in the centre of the continent measuring 3,000 by 2,000 stades" with a drainage canal running round its perimeter. He talks of a strange Atlantean metal, orichalcum, which "sparkled like red fire".

Such is the detail that keeps the Atlantis-busters out in force. Blashford- Snell himself, half-Indiana-Jones half-Victorian-explorer, has been keeping his eye on Atlantis for years. In 1978 he discovered the lost city of Acla in the jungles of Panama, with the eminent archeologist Dr Mark Horton. He has also successfully demolished other people's Atlantis theories, including the persistent idea that the vanished land was near the island of Bimini in the Bahamas.

"I was asked to dive the area by an American society who had invested a lot of money in proving that this was Atlantis. In fact I shot the whole thing down. They weren't happy but in the end they accepted my verdict."

Theories spring up with the regularity of pulsating stars. In 1995 a British archeologist, Peter James, published his theory that Atlantis was actually a city called Tantalis in the interior of Turkey, which had been destroyed by flooding in 1400BC. Meanwhile a German scholar, Dr Zangger, has plausibly claimed that Plato's description of Atlantis was based on Homeric Troy, also in Turkey.

Considering that Plato located the islands beyond the Pillars of Hercules (today's Straits of Gibraltar) practically any island or land-mass in the Atlantic becomes a possible candidate. Central America and Mexico are considered promising sites by some.

Most scholars, however, suppose that echoes from a lost civilisation - if that is what Plato's story was - must have come from within the Mediterranean. Minoan Crete was one such lost civilisation: it had abruptly disappeared 1,000 years before Plato, leaving behind sketchy memories in the form of legends of the Labyrinth and its resident Minotaur.

According to Plato, the Kings of Atlantis hunted bulls for sport, and the excavation of Knossos (the Minoan capital) has uncovered pictures of bulls and people at play. To cap it all, the demise of Minoan Crete seems to have been triggered by the Mediterranean's worst ever natural catastrophe: the explosion of the volcanic island of Thera (today's Santorini), blasting four cubic miles of rock into the atmosphere, reducing the island to a fraction of its former size and causing massive tidal waves throughout Greece.

A solution to the mystery? No one can say, and in the mean time we await the upcoming expeditions. If Atlantis turns out to be Cornish, the cost of the search will surely look like the greatest investment ever made by a Russian.

From Amsterdam to Zambia: travel 1998

With high culture in Stockholm, low fares across America and a new, tourist-friendly Tripoli, 1998 will see a range of fresh options opening up in the world of travel. Jeremy Atiyah and Simon Calder offer their own A to Z of what's happening, when - and where

JEREMY ATIYAH AND SIMON CALDER

SUNDAY 28 DECEMBER 1997

A is for Amsterdam... particularly on the weekend of 18 and 19 April when you can tiptoe through Holland's museums for free (or almost free). Over 800 Dutch museums throw their doors open to the public.

B is for Blue Sky... British Airways' new cut-price offshoot, which should start flying in the spring from Stansted. BA picked up the name when it bought British Caledonian (remember them - they never forgot you had a choice); Blue Sky was the name of that airline's tour operating subsidiary.

C is for Culture... when you hear the word you should reach for your credit card and book a flight to Sweden where Stockholm will be the 1998 European Capital of Culture. Until this summer, flying from Britain to Sweden for a low fare was tricky. Then Ryanair solved both problems at once. For pounds 99 plus tax you can fly from the Essex airport to what is euphemistically described as "Stockholm South". A connecting bus covers the 60 miles into town in about 80 minutes, for pounds 11 return.

D is for Duty Free... Another triumph for European federalism; 1998 will be the last full year before the final phasing out of duty free shopping for journeys within the European Union in 1999. For cheap wine and beer you will then have to get off the boat and go into the nearest French hypermarche.

E is for England... a cultural entity that looks set to reappear in the collective hearts and minds of the English as power begins to devolve to Scotland and Wales and the British Tourist Authority starts talking about how to brand the Real England.

F is for Free-wheeling... According to Richard Trillo of the Rough Guides, seeing regions in microcosm - crossing 20 miles a day instead of 200 - will be the hippest way to go in 1998. In other words, bicycling will be big.

G is for Gold Rush... an example of which occurred in California exactly 150 years ago. It was 24 January 1848 that gold was first discovered in Oakland California, a discovery which doomed the entire area to rapid development. 1998 is liable to produce another rush as tourism leaps in to capitalise on the anniversary.

H is for Havana... where there will be celebrations in the Cuban capital on 8 January, commemorating the entrance into Havana of Fidel Castro in 1959 - the event depicted on the one-peso note. As the Revolution moves towards middle age, Dr Castro approaches old age with his economy in tatters (the aforementioned note is officially worth one US dollar, but in practice you get 20 to the dollar).

I is for the Internet... which is going to play an ever larger role in the way we book our holidays. Keep an eye out for sites such as: travel.yahoo.com/destinations (an index through which you can book hotel rooms, flights, rental cars or check on flight times around the world) and www.stratpub.com (one of the proliferating number of travel magazines; this one specialises in getting about cheaply).

J is for Jet Kerosene... the standard aviation fuel (which is remarkably similar to domestic paraffin and for which British Airways won't tell us how much it pays). International agreements mean that it has so far escaped tax but with finance ministers around the world trying to work out how to milk travellers more assiduously, you may encounter fare rises in the year ahead.

K is for Kandy... the hill-top station on the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka, a country which is celebrating its 50th anniversary of independence on 4 February. For all the efforts of the Tamil Tigers, interest in the island is booming: The travel guidebook publishers Lonely Planet says its book on Sri Lanka is the surprise top seller this winter.

L is for Libya... which is going to be 1998's coolest destination for the Real Traveller. Hard on the heels of Gaddafi's decision to promote tourism, a series of British tour operators are beating a path to the Roman ruins, sand dunes and palm trees that lie between Cairo and Tunis.

M was for Mackinaw City, Michigan... until it abandoned its annual Soap Opera Fanfare, which will now not take place in 1998. Instead, forsake this dowdy Midwest town for nearby Motown; chartbusting Detroit will have you dancing in the streets (so long as the muggers don't get to you first).

N is for Nagano... where the Winter Olympic Games are due to take place in Japan in February. Not only is Japan one of the world's major skiing countries, but it is also one of the few places where you can watch macaque monkeys with frosted faces bathing in hot springs as you ski.

O is for Oporto... in English at least. Top billing goes to Lisbon this year, venue for Expo 98, but Portugal has much more to offer beyond its capital. Enjoy the country's second city, Oporto, a good-natured conurbation devoted to port. All the famous names blend wines and brandies to create a crisp white aperitif for the locals and a rich red digestif for the British.

P is for partying like it's 1999... After next Wednesday, there is only one more opportunity to get your New Year's Eve technique ready for 31 December 1999 (as long as you don't live in Dubai, whose hotels deemed yesterday, 27 December, to be New Year's Eve in order to avoid a clash with Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting).

Q is for, inevitably, Quebec... Avoid the 1998 World Cup in France in June and July by going to the most French place in North America. Quebec City is a charming and confusing entity, quite as quixotic as the most atmospheric French city. Many Americans visit as a cut-price alternative to a trip to Europe. Cottages tumble down the hillside in random ragged ribbons, a street plan thoroughly at odds with the rest of North America. The atmosphere is faux Parisian and the food is divine.

R is for Recycling Destinations... That may sound like industry jargon, but it is also the phrase that Jennifer Cox of Lonely Planet employs to describe the post-modern phenomenon of trendy travellers reclaiming the holiday destinations of their 

ancestors. Watch out for floods of discerning travellers in the Costa del Sol next year.

S is for Southwest Airlines... the US cut-price carrier that inspired EasyJet and its competitors. An pounds 83 airpass will get you from coast to coast - and the airline gives you four vouchers for free inflight drinks, too.

T is for Thailand... Since the collapse of the Thai currency there is even less reason for anyone not to visit the land of King Prawns and lemon grass, especially given that the locals need tourist revenues more badly than ever. If you still need motivation, read Alex Garland's novel The Beach, dealing with dissipated youth on Thai beaches (due to be made into a film next year as well).

U is for the Underground in London... whose fares rise yet again next Sunday. The capital has the most expensive public transport of any major city. A journey within the central area will cost a minimum of pounds 1.30, which means that for the journey from Covent Garden to Leicester Square the mileage rate will be more than pounds 8 - nine times the rate on Concorde.

V is for vertical integration... whereby Britain's biggest tour operators own chains of High Street travel agencies, as reported on last week by the Monopolies and Merger Commission. Next year - thanks to the report - you will not be forced to buy overpriced travel insurance to qualify for holiday discounts.

W is for the World Cup... which could turn the British middle classes' favourite discreet holiday destination into a maelstrom next June and July. A million or two football supporters (not all of them, thankfully, English) will descend on France in the summer of 1998, causing hotel prices to rise and public transport to jam. Englishmen who dislike their compatriots should particularly avoid La Baule, near Nantes, where the team will prepare, and Toulouse, Marseilles and Lens in mid June.

X is for Xinjiang... the largest place in the world whose name begins with the letter X (shame on you if you cannot place this autonomous region of China which is twice as large as Germany and France combined). Xinjiang may enter the news in 1998 if simmering discontent in the local populations boils over causing the closure of tourist destinations such as Kashgar and Turpan.

Y is for the Yangtze River... another part of China that won't be out of the news next year. As construction work on the monumental Three Gorges Dam project continues, tourists will need to be quick if they want to catch a glimpse of the historic gorges before they are submerged forever.

Z is for Zambia... Last year it was Zimbabwe that featured strongly in predictions of where would be big for the forthcoming year, not least because southern Africa is fast leaving war and political chaos behind it (and not because there are so few places beginning with Z, honest).

Want to stuff the turkey? It's never too late to escape

Jeremy Atiyah reviews great last-minute getaways, from Istanbul to, er, Corby

Jeremy Atiyah 

Sunday, 21 December 1997

Have you had enough of Christmas? Those who loathe the festive season and all its works - the relations, the overcooked turkey, and the British damp - are fleeing this weekend. But should you suddenly decide you can't face it, there is still time to get away. A surprising range of possibilities is available for the coming week, on condition (a) that you are not fussy where you go or (b) that you are willing to spend a lot of money.

For those who do like Christmas but want to avoid the work, the solution could be a stay in a posh hotel in this country. Exclusive Hotels - a chain of British country house hotels - are hosting Christmas and New Year packages which should be available right up to Christmas Eve.

How about an action-packed four-night break at The Manor House (tel 01249 782 206) in Castle Combe, starting with afternoon tea on Christmas Eve and running through to a champagne breakfast on the 28th? It costs pounds 725 per person, but that is full-board and includes not only visits from Father Christmas, but also hunting, racing, golf and pantomines. Similar packages will be available at Lainston House in Winchester (01962 863 588) and South Lodge in West Sussex (01403 891 711).

If your problem is fear of loneliness and idleness, you could give Solo's (0181-951 2800) a call. They still have places for "adventurous over-50s" in Corby to spend three nights at the Stakis Hotel, including a four-by-four driving exercise on Christmas Day folowed by endurance go-kart racing.

Leaving the country also remains an option. Thomas Cook says customers walking into its shops on 22 or 23 December will be able to get something straight away, probably to the areas of highest capacity such as the Canaries or Balearics (tel 0990 181818).

For the cheapest possible escape to the continent, you can hop on to a ferry at Ramsgate for Ostend - a day-trip on Holyman Sally Ferries (0990 595522) costs pounds 7.50 any day over the holiday period except for Christmas Day (when there are no sailings). You won't escape Christmas in Belgium but you might be able to fit in some ice-skating in the town's main plaza which is used as an open-air rink. Another tempting little Belgian escape would be to Bruges with Inntravel (01653 628862) on 30 December, where pounds 232 per person will get you two nights in a 14th-century canal-side hotel including a slap up New Year's Eve dinner (and travel by Eurostar).

Many European city breaks in the days immediately after Christmas are still bookable. David Deane, product manager of Ingham's (0181-780 7700), says although flights back from Spain in the first days of 1998 are booked solid, from Italy and anywhere in eastern or northern Europe, including Paris, there is still availability.

How about Istanbul for the new year? Savile's Turkish Collection (0171- 625 3001) have availability at the Bosphorous Pasha Hotel (with private landing stage), departing on 30 December. Two nights in a deluxe double room with views will cost pounds 599 each.

If that doesn't sound exotic enough, how about these African Christmas breaks still available through Union-Castle Travel (0171-229 1411)? Departing on the 23 and 24 of December are luxury one-week trips to Botswana and Zimbabwe respectively. These all-inclusive water and land safaris in the wide open spaces of southern Africa cost pounds 2,999 per person. But you could book tomorrow and be there by Christmas.

The United States is probably off-limits and you may have left it too late to go skiing, at least in your resort of choice, though Crystal have a handful of departures on 27 December for Austria and Italy (resorts allocated on arrival). Thomas Cook, however, is confident that last- minute ski breaks will be available right through the Christmas period.