Mediterranean tips

Award-winning dining meets beverage wizardry during Virgin Voyages' Eat & Drink Festival coming this July to all lady ships. 

As a result of the devastating fires on the island of Rhodes in 2023, the Greek government announced it would offer free hotel accommodations to impacted travelers.

Visiting Greece means endless opportunities beyond the gorgeous ocean vistas of islands in sparkling Aegean waters. Here, Celestyal has exciting and unique cultural encounters that truly bring visitors inside the real Greece, experiencing authentic cultural encounters. The company’s experiences scratch deeper beneath the surface to take travelers closer to the heart of Greece, where they can immerse themselves in excursions featuring local people, homegrown flavors, and stories passed down through the generations.  

The Mediterranean has long been a region of ancient history, incredible cultures and delicious cuisines. The countries surrounding the sea from which the region gets its name offers diverse opportunities for exploration, for every type of travel style. 

A waiter in an Albanian restaurant in the coastal resort town of Saranda apologised to newly arriving customers that little or nothing was still available on the menu.

Corsica, the island nestled between France and Italy in the Mediterranean, is well known for its beautiful sandy beaches, picture-postcard villages perched on clifftops and stunning central mountains—but this August, it doesn't have as many tourists as usual.

The aristocracy of Switzerland began acquiring a taste for the Swiss Alps as early as the 1760s. Lucerne—a small fishing village at the foothills of the Alps, with its temperate climate and easy access by road and rail—made the perfect launching pad for hiking and mountaineering. By 1835, the first hotel opened in Lucerne and the city soon grew into one of the largest tourist destinations in the country. In 1903, Swiss entrepreneur Franz Josef Bucher purchased a plot of land on the north shore of Lake Lucerne for $900,000 Swiss francs. After a three-year construction, Palace Hotel Luzern opened its doors, setting a new standard of luxury for hospitality, not just in Switzerland, but in Europe at large.

When I took my first Mediterranean cruise, I expected to make some mistakes. But I didn't think I'd kick off my voyage with the biggest one. 

As a family sat vigil over a coffin containing the body of an elderly relative, the wooded hills around their apartment building in Palermo burned from wildfires. Winds blew the blazes closer, torching cars, dumpsters, sheds and electricity poles. Then the flames licked the apartment building, forcing its inhabitants to flee.

Type "Tomato Girl Summer" into TikTok and you'll find a string of aesthetically pleasing shots of a certain type of travel lifestyle taking place right now—it involves farmers' markets, slow cooking in rustic kitchens, home-grown fruit and vegetables. Ideally, it has the Mediterranean as a backdrop but it can take place anywhere in the world—it just channels the ideals of this type of travel.

Repeated heatwaves and growing fears about the climate crisis may spell the beginning of the end for the Mediterranean as a holiday destination, according to a report published by the European Travel Commission.

In search of a shot of sea and spring sunshine, Lonely Planet writer Kerry Walker headed to Malta and Gozo and fell hard for these twin islands in the Med. Here she shares the highlights of her trip.