Local Bites: the best places to eat and drink in Chiang Mai

After winter made a couple of extra encores in Britain this year, summer has finally arrived. It's time to book some friends and pack your bags for a weekend of unbridled joy, with live music, dress-ups and fairground rides, plus performance poets, world food and pop-up hot-tubs – the UK’s music festivals are worth planning a holiday around. 

Oddly, it wasn’t the food that drew me to Lyon.

Medallia’s and Kantar’s partnership with Virgin Atlantic has been awarded the “Best Use of Customer Insight” accolade.

Halifax is a harbor town. A narrow neck opens up to the protected waters of Bedford Basin, making it ideal as a naval and shipping port. Before Europeans arrived, this body of water was a sanctuary and home to Indigenous Mi’kmaq for millennia.

Dog-friendly year-round but with an on-leads rule between 1 April and 31 August to protect ground-nesting birds, Holkham beach is a brilliant family destination. The walk down to the golden sand is enchanting – along boardwalks and through pine forest – and there’s a cafe serving homemade sandwiches and cakes. Lots of great local walks too. Stay pet-friendly Sueda Cottage, with its own walled garden, is a minute’s walk from the harbour and pub. From £89a night (sleeps 4, plus two dogs)

True to form, I was welcomed to Scotland in the pouring rain.

I often recall the deep cherry lip tint I wore on my first night in Paris. My dear Parisian friend complimented me, borrowed it, and planted a kiss on my cheek. Plenty of smiles came my way on the Métro, thanks to her lipstick stain on my face. On a cloudy day in Berlin, I applied a tinted suede shade of pink, kissed a cozy café’s free postcard, and sent it to my friend back home in NYC. In Manhattan's West Village, one friendly (and perhaps tipsy) stranger asked if she could borrow my NARS Hot Kiss lipstick to use as her blush. She was visiting from Italy—it was her first night, and tragically, she had forgotten to pack her entire makeup bag.

Wild Canvas, one of the recent wave of pop-up campsites with a festival vibe, has a host of new additions for its fifth outing this summer. The campsite makes the most of its riverside setting on the Turvey House Estate near Bedford. It has a new wellness area, the Nest, with direct river access (BYO paddleboard!) plus a yoga yurt, a mobile sauna, a treatment tent for massages and free early-morning activities from meditation to boot camp.

It would be an understatement to say that there’s a lot more to do in Dublin than drink your weight in pints at Temple Bar — the city is rich with deep-rooted history and offers an incredible English literary scene that easily rivals any other big English-speaking city. The pint at the end of the day is really just a bonus.

Destinations across Europe are battling overtourism - visit Venice and you’ll have to pay an entry fee, book for Amsterdam and you’ll be asked to take a quiz about your holiday activities, head to the Canary Islands and you might see graffiti telling tourists to go home.

Ryanair, easyJet, and Wizz are Europe's three biggest budget airlines, but the experiences can be quite different.

While there aren’t many bargains in Munich, there are a surprising number of one-of-a-kind activities and sights that are completely free.