Disneyland Paris (creative commons)

Disneyland, Paris has become a popular destination for tourists all around the world over the past years. Adults as well as children have been dying to meet their favourite cartoon characters in reality. Don’t wait any longer and get your hands on some Disneyland Paris tickets! You’re about to step into another world, one filled with joy and happiness and where all your worries are flushed away! Pretty soon you’ll want to repeat this holiday every year if not more often.

Just imagine the number of activities you can do once you’re in Disneyland. From adrenaline pumping rides to dinner shows and grand parades outlined by spectacular fireworks – all of this will put a huge amount of Disney magic into your vacation.

The Disneyland resort has actually two major parks: one is the Disneyland Park, where everything becomes real, and the other one is Walt Disney Studios Park, where the Disney magic meets the surreal of cinema. Not to mention the exquisite Disney Village, a unique, fantastic entertainment area that is open day and night, waiting for tourist to explore the fascinating world of Disney.

Disneyland Hotel (creative commons)

If you truly want to take your Disneyland experience to the highest level then you must opt for Disney hotels as for the accommodation part. There are seven wonderful hotels located in the heart of this magical place to choose from: the Manhattan Disney Hotel, the spacious Disneyland Hotel and the amazing Disney’s Davy Crockett Ranch are some of the most  suitable options for you and your family when looking for accommodation. Plus, while here you can indulge with some excellent food and a variety of beverages because the Disneyland Resort in Paris has many themed restaurants and cafes that win the heart of every guest. All of this will make your journey a truly captivating one making you never want to leave this world of animated cartoons.

So start planning your Disneyland Paris holiday now! The Magic is closer than you think.

Get it while you can

The cultural contrasts that make Europe such a delight not just to visit but to cross are no more stark than they are in the manifestation of personal freedoms.

An Englishman would be scandalised to be ordered by a police officer to produce photo ID while a Frenchman knows to never leave the house without one. The Dutch have famously precise rules and regulations that govern everything from bike lanes to marijuana possession with a view to ensuring that everyone can do anything they feel like doing in an orderly and peaceful fashion. Italians make and sell their own wine and the government wouldn’t even consider taxing it, even if such a tax would ever be paid. The age of consent in Malta is 18 and in nearby Spain it’s 13.

But they’ve all got casinos. The revenue is just too irresistible and tax income is far more potent an influence in European legislation than insignificant concerns like social welfare and public morals. Having said that, in most European cities where casinos are allowed local residents aren’t allowed in — you have to deliberately travel to a casino to risk losing your soul there and that’s regarded as a fair compromise with the purists.

You also have to be, usually, 18 years old and able to produce photo ID, typically a passport and this requirement is largely streamlined throughout Europe. So, too, was the “cooling off” period which required those planning to risk their houses to be members and membership took at least 24 hours. But now in England membership is instantaneous and in France and Monaco and Italy it’s not even a requirement. You still need ID but really that’s so casinos can ban card counters and the consistently lucky.

And that market driven harmonisation has been the death of the European casino. When I first realised that I could as easily gamble in London as I could go to a restaurant in Toronto it was as though I’d discovered some spiffing secret parallel London where you could have a quiet drink, a nice meal, a large-screen football match and, if you felt the urge, a bit of a flutter on the wheel or Blackjack. Now the bars and kitchens and screens are gone and you can’t linger at a casino anymore — there’s no space with all the video poker and slot machines and perverse, unnatural, video roulette with an animated wheel spun by a CGI hand. Now, with the notable exception of the Palm Beach Casino at Green Park, you could be anywhere in the world but most probably in some dive motel in Reno.

France hasn’t been spared this race to capture the stake of the lowest common denominator tourist. Deauville, Ian Fleming’s model for the fictional Casino Royale, has installed 365 bling machines and isolated the Baccarat and other table games in curtained salons so the rich and the remainder don’t intimidate each other. To be fair to Casino Barrier, it’s still a beautiful building and would be worth the visit if Deauville itself hadn’t gone so far downmarket.

The casinos of Nice were always horrible so they haven’t really descended too far by crowding their few remaining tables at the back and only opening a single Blackjack table at 20h00 in favour of the video games that go all day and all night. To be fair to Casino Ruhl it’s the far better of the two options on Promenade des Anglais.

Campione was Europe’s most interesting casino at one point if only for its bizarre history of an Italian exclave within the borders of Switzerland, functioning during the wars as a clandestine agora of spies and diplomats but since then the city has rebuilt its sole industry twice and now it’s a multistory poured concrete pile with all the charm of a grain elevator. But it makes money and that’s what matters.

Monte Carlo has maintained its caché and appears to be the only casino in my experience that’s managed to cater sympathetically to those of us who don’t own yachts without sacrificing its old-world charm. You don’t have to wear a tie and it has its share of video poker and slot machines but these things remain subordinate to the overarching charisma of the building itself.

In full disclosure, I’ve hardly visited every casino in Europe so the following is highly arbitrary. My favourite casinos are Casino Ruhl in Nice because of its convivial atmosphere and accessibility and the casino in the basement of the Hotel Blu in Riga, also because of accessibility but only if you happen to be in Riga. The casino at Schipol airport in Amsterdam has nothing to prove but still provides a passable table experience. The Palm Beach is snooty and cold but it’s the only casino in London that still feels like it’s in Europe. And the runaway champion is Monte Carlo with its stunning location, exterior, interior, facilities and above all its friendliness in spite of a legacy that gives it every right to be the snobbiest of the bunch.

On principle I suppose I object to the delays and the nude body scanners and taking off my shoes and giving up my bottled water and bottle opener and basic dignities, but if I’m completely honest I’m not sure that I’d really care all that much if these intrusions were genuinely moving us any closer to stopping all these planes from dropping out of the sky every couple of hours on the orders of the world-wide cabal of machine-precision extremists.

Of course I don’t believe it’s accomplishing anything at all but what’s worse is nobody else believes it either, including and especially those implementing these pointless measures which are really put in place for absolutely positively no other reason than to give the appearance of a response. We’re all so incensed by violence inspired by religious or political differences on a day when thousands will die of hunger and drunk-driving and preventable illness and domestic abuse that we insist on a conspicuous reaction, no matter how disconnected it is from the actual threat. So I’ve got to calmly participate in the post-modern absurdist comedy of confirming that I packed my bag myself and that it’s never left my sight and that I have no intention of undermining democracy and I wonder why those questions. Why any questions at all — why not have me improvise a song or pick a fucking number from one to ten for all the contribution it’s going to make to the war effort.

In fact I’ll go as far as saying that if there’s any effect at all it’s the opposite of that which is so disingenuously expressed. The inept sweaty-palmed frustrated delinquents who bombed the finish line at the Boston marathon or conceived of the amazingly knuckle-brained plot to derail a train in Canada are no more international terrorists than the arrested-pubescent dropouts who graffiti the train station near my house are sophisticated art thieves — they’re vandals and like all vandals what they want is to sublimate their impotence by having an effect on a world which refuses to notice them because they’re unnoticeable, unintelligent and uninteresting. If the train station management were to respond to the sophomoric scribbled indictments of the police on the walls of the sound barrier by instituting far-reaching rules that impacted on the lives of everyone who used the trains then it stands to reason that there’d be a massive increase in graffiti. Unsatisfying as it is, the best response to the vandals is to paint over their infantile scrawl and go on about your day and make a very explicit and manifest show of nothing more.

That’s what I mean to do. I’m going to play a reluctant role in the security theatre because I need to fly but I’m going to phone it in, at best, and save my worry and my ire for cancer and drunk drivers and common household mishaps and other actual threats to our freedom and well-being that deserve the respect of a measured response.

I rest my case

According to the Canadian Expatriate Association there are some 2.8 million of us living abroad. That’s close to 9% of all the Canadians on the planet who manage to live somewhere other than the nearly 7% of the earth’s available land mass that is Canada.

And apparently we’re not just wearing seasonally inappropriate clothes and drinking lager outside in the middle of winter. We’re also directly responsible for billions of dollars in international trade. Speaking from experience, I’d add that as a whole we compose a quiet and respectable representation of Canada to the rest of the world.

So we deserve some consideration. The front lines of the facade that we’re the nice North Americans who stay out of the affairs of others and are welcoming to refugees and say thank you to bank machines has been enough of a trial since we joined the US in its absurd adventurism in Afghanistan and nearly impossible since we gave the hard-C conservatives a rock-solid majority. I’m having to tip more and more and smile more broadly and thank bank machines more audibly then I’ve ever had to in the past and now that even that’s no longer enough the only solution is a total travel ban on Justin Bieber.

Bieber’s infantile outburst last month on the streets of London when he issued and instantly regretted a challenge to a minivan-shaped paparazzo was, if not forgivable, at least forgettable as a childish outburst in the heat of the moment, grounded in his choice of out-of-touch diva dialogue “What the fuck did you just say to me?” with the easy familiarity of someone who’s regularly rehearsed the line in a mirror.

Even the conspicuous and embarrassing offense of being a creepy androgynous jumped-up karaoke singer who at the age of nineteen is still crooning highly suspect odes to little girls, while weird and borderline depraved, is by and large his problem and his evident frailty and complete absence of facility with French means that enough people either think of him as American or his own, isolated form of freak that most of us can get by with a simple acknowledgement and apology and Europeans are astute enough to recognise Bieber for what he is to most of us — an affliction.

But the patience of our hosts is bound to be strained when this illiterate fuckwit toddles outside of his natural habitat of two-dimensional teeny pop culture and blastcasts his callow grasp of the real world, as he did last Friday at the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam when he mused in the “special” guest book that the heroine of the holocaust would be a fan if she were alive today. When we allow those who are openly Canadian to publicly comment on history or politics we should do so in the awareness that it’s in these two domains particularly and passionately that people will herd and generalise and elevate Bieber from a backwoods simpleton swimming way out of his depth to a backwoods simpleton swimming way out of his depth from Canada.

So keep him at home. Not forever, necessarily, just the four or five years until he inevitably ends up on Never Mind the Buzzcocks with four other achingly uncool hipsters looking like Ken dolls in tin foil swaddling so Phill Jupitus can make jokes Bieber won’t understand before failing to remember who he is and sending him home with a gift certificate from C&A.

Not everyone should have to be a good representative of their country but everyone does have a responsibility to not be an asshole and the more well-known you are the greater that responsibility becomes. Most of us just know that instinctively and by default we endeavour in our day-to-day expatriate lives and when we sign guestbooks at memorial museums to at least not offend and ideally to smooth the welcome of fellow Canadians and the lively trade in Moosehead and cheese curd. Those of you still at home need to do your part, then, and support this comprehensive travel ban on Biebers and other morons and let us try to undo the damage already done.

Don’t go now while you still can.

Mixing politics or ethics or an even-handed gratuity policy with your vacation plans is, generally speaking, a mug’s game. Few decisions you make regarding the disposal of your travel budget aren’t laden with human rights and ecology baggage that render anything apart from a basement staycation dedicated to neutralising your carbon footprint a moral disaster.

So the rare black-and-white moral choice is refreshing and we have for the moment the Maldives to thank for the easiest travel decision of the season — to boycott the tiny, sinking archipelago theocracy. And if you’re not satisfied with just not booking flights to the chain of island paradises in the Indian ocean and not spending money in their hotels, restaurants and souvenir stores selling memorial wall mats of woven coconut grass that only and barely look good in the context of a souvenir store, you can sign the petition sponsored by the internet-based activist organisation Avaaz.

Doing so would be largely symbolic, particularly from the Canadian perspective. There are no figures regarding visits by Canadians to the Maldives and North Americans were only two percent of the almost one million visitors in 2012. On the other hand tourism is conservatively estimated as constituting 35% of the economy of the Maldives which is only true if the economic value of religious oppression and weaving ugly coconut grass tapestries for home consumption is radically overstated. In any case, if all of the 2 million of those who’ve already signed the petition had planned on going that’s sufficient to entirely kill the tourism industry twice over.

Never-the-less it would be a valuable gesture if the current Islamic government installed last year in a coup-d’état were to take notice and soften their constitutionally “legitimate” stance on the rights of women and religious minorities but in fact that’s not what the petition is about. It’s more directly about the sentence conferred on a 15 year old girl who, for the crime of premarital sex, is to receive 100 lashes. Now, you might argue that it’s the law of the land and she had it coming, people have argued stupider things in the past and doubtless will in the future, but this girl is also the victim of rape by her step-father, earning her in the view of the civilised world — so pointedly not the Maldivian judiciary — a bit of slack.

In the two weeks since the petition was started it’s already had a noticeable and positive effect. The Maldivian blinkered theocrats have publicly promised to protect the girl — although it’s a little unclear what that means only a few days after claiming that their hands were tied. However there’ve also been some enormously entertaining peripheral effects in the form of statements from government spokespimples, such as the claim that the lashings, though issued in accordance with Sharia law, are just pretend. But the best evidence that the regime is in full-on panic mode has to be the comment by Mohamed Maleeh Jamal, Deputy Minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Making Patently Stupid Statements to the Press, who posed this priceless counter-argument to the petition: “People should not be doing anything to damage the [Maldivian tourism] industry … In Switzerland, you would not see a campaign designed to damage Swiss chocolate. Likewise you would not see a German campaign to damage their automobile industry.” Except that yes, that’s exactly what you’d see, if either of these countries were taken over by an antediluvian philosophy that manifested itself in the flogging of an adolescent rape victim.

It’s worth noting that the government of the Maldives is not democratically elected and a boycott of the tourism industry is going to hurt everyone, a lot, whether or not they like being governed by wild-eyed religious hysteria. Furthermore the Maldives is already coping with the only very slightly less pressing matter of the fact that it’s sinking. Global warming and the consequential rise in sea levels will, by some estimates, completely submerge the entire nation within 100 years and render some of its 1,192 islands uninhabitable within the next decade, which offers you a very happy compromise — sign the petition and take a low-carb vacation somewhere not run by crazy people.

Bodrum, Gümbet Bay Turkey just after the sunset. By bazylek100 (Creative Commons)

Bodrum, a port located in the south-west of Turkey, largely has to play second fiddle to more illustrious cities like Istanbul when it comes to Turkey holidays.

However, while it may not boast quite the same array of sights of interest and cultural events as Istanbul, it still has a calendar of festivities scheduled in for 2013 that will delight and entertain any tourist visiting the region – not to mention easy access to some fabulous coastal resorts.

Sports

In mid-May, Bodrumites get active with both the bicycle and diving festivals taking place.

The aim of the first event is to encourage people out of their cars and into the saddle, in the hopes of making the city a cleaner place to live. Even if you’re only visiting, eschew public transport for the day and get on your bike.

And regardless of what time of year you are in town, hopping on a bike and enjoying a cycle along the coast or into the countryside is great way of checking out the local scenery.

Appreciating the environment is also the theme of the Bodrum Underwater Society’s Diving Festival, which is designed to encourage people to explore beneath the waves. They will also have a display of historic diving equipment on show.

In October, the Bodrum Cup Wooden Yacht Regatta will see naturally made vessels from across the globe compete in this fun event. The Aegean coast is a wonderful place to sail, even if you want to take a scenic cruise rather than partake in a race.

Bodrum by onur88 (creative commons)

Arts

As well as events to suit sporty types, Bodrum is also hosting a range of cultural events in 2013, including the Bodrum International Ballet Festival in August and the International Bodrum Film Festival in September, which will feature screenings and awards. Both events are taking place at the spectacular Castle of St Peter, which is one of Bodrum’s best-known landmarks.

A number of other events are being held in the surrounding area, with the International Classical Music Festival coming to the nearby seaside village of Gumusluk in late August and the Aspendos Opera and Ballet Festival, set to take place during the summer.

Unusual

In April, the Traditional Mesir Festival held in nearby Manisa revolves around what the locals know as ‘power gum’. This powerful blend of 41 different spices is said to cure ailments and people flock to the festival to sample this thick paste.

Previously, the occasion has also featured eclectic events such as canine beauty contests and skeet shooting – who knows what you’ll come across this year?

Religious

Like most countries, Turkish people also come together throughout the year to take part in a range of religious festivities.

While these events are not specific to Bodrum, the coastal city is a great place to observe and partake in these events, such as the Muslim festivals of Ramadan and Eid ul-Adha.

Weather

No matter time of year you visit, one of the best things about attending an event in Bodrum is that the weather will be pleasantly warm. Average highs don’t fall below 15 degrees even in winter, and between April and October you can be sure of plenty of sunshine and little rain, with temperatures hitting the mid-30s in summer.

So take advantage of Turkey’s great weather in busy Bodrum in 2013.

Click here for more information on holidays to Turkey with Monarch.

Badlands are in fact dry, rocky terrain which once was wet, rocky terrain and over millennia were carved and warped and distorted by raging rivers into countless shere islands of smooth sculptured rock in the form of factory chimneys called hoodoos or gigantic mushrooms called coulees, ideal for staging a final standoff between rival gunfighters or testing ACME’s latest advancement in roadrunner tracking and trapping.

The badlands were also once ideal hunting grounds for the First Nations Blackfoot tribe who would employ the eccentric terrain in an imaginative and effective bulk hunting tactic, giving a particular dead drop cliff Canada’s most endearingly idiosyncratic name, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump.

And indeed Canada and particularly Alberta have some tremendously beautiful and bizarre badlands and the province is investing in a new marketing initiative to broaden awareness of them. This involves a disbursement to some provincial tourist attractions but mostly it’s about educating Canadians about this extraordinary geological marvel in their own backyard.

Of course, Canada has a decidedly biggish backyard and the badlands of Alberta are a massive stretch of real estate along the Montana border, but they’re relatively accessible and once the not inconsiderable effort is made to reach them there are three singular destinations in the form of three of Canada’s UNESCO heritage sites within a day’s drive of one another:

Dinosaur Provincial Park is among the richest repository of dinosaur fossils in the world. Visitors who can tear their eyes away from a landscape so alien it looks like a special effect can try to overload on in-situ information on a guided hike of what is in practice a massive fossil museum, displaying the remains of Stegoceras and Champsosaurus and the native son Styracosaurus albertensis.

Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park is in the eye-wateringly beautiful Milk River Valley, carved over millions of years by a glacier to create a tributary to the Missouri River in Montana. The valley looks largely as it has done for the last million or so years and has been inhabited by the Blackfoot for, probably, the last 9000 or so and today Writing-on-Stone hosts a massive concentration of prehistoric aboriginal rock art with thousands of pieces, some predating the introduction of the horse to North America, at fifty recognised and preserved sites. This is another time when you really want a guide but your choices of mode of transportation widen to bicycle, horseback and canoe so plan an extra couple days, just in case get lost in the overwhelming expanse of history.

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, as a weapon, predates the use of horses by the Blackfoot who would herd the multi-use buffalo toward an invisible 11 metre drop as much as 5,500 years ago. Any survivors would be finished off before the remains were mined for everything from food, obviously, to clothes and shelter and kitchen implements. Now the site is a full-immersion intensive course on Blackfoot life and culture, centred around the Interpretive Centre which depicts the ecology, mythology, lifestyle and technology of the tribe. The centre itself is an accomplishment of adaptive architecture, built into the sandstone cliff-face in as unobtrusive and natural manner as a modern museum can look when it integrates with a millennia old naturally occurring abattoir.

There’s no single blog entry that can do justice to the badlands of Alberta nor any of the marvels that it hosts so the real news is that Alberta is financing Canadian Badlands and broader opportunities to learn about this unique destination before you decide to go and to ensure that you’ll never forget it when you do.

Every year for 12 gloriously sunny, star-studded days in May the former fishing village of Cannes on the Cote d’Azur transforms itself from an overpriced, poured-concrete, cynical exile for retired English bureaucrats into a glitzy, glamorous, overpriced, poured-concrete, cynical spotlight for self-absorbed Hollywood royalty.

You’re not welcome there but you’re wanted. That is if you’re a sycophantic celebrity worshipper with a slathering adoration of your betters and the patience to stand in an orderly mob on either side of the sacred red carpet leading to the prefabricated megachurch Palais des Festivals et des Congrès. If that’s the case then you might even get on TV or in a magazine photo-bombing Leonardo DiCaprio as he rushes to bask in the opening selection of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the bafflingly unnecessary remake of The Great Gatsby, starring Leonardo DiCaprio in what may be his last waste of celluloid for a blissfully long break from mumbling dialog he obviously doesn’t understand to “fly around the world doing good for the environment”.

And indeed if that’s the sort of thing that you enjoy and you’re too old to get bullied by the bigger boys then Cannes between the 15th and 26th of May is exactly the place for you. It’s going to be a madhouse but if you’re determined to chance your brush with greatness then you’ll probably want to stake out Nice airport starting on the 15th or even 16th when the fabulously overpaid begin to arrive fashionably late. Doubtless most will be delivered by yacht at Cannes or nearby Antibes or Monte Carlo but you might catch sight of a garden variety Baldwin or share a taxi with someone who touched Johnny Depp. From there you can take the shuttle directly to Cannes, a journey of about 30 minutes, but if you can’t get a seat you can head into Nice itself and take the train, an appreciably more civilised means of travel which serendipitously opens up the option of coming to your senses before you actually submit yourself to the humiliation of being a tiny fleshy fish in a tempestuous silicone sea.

If you go through with it you’re either serious about celebrity-watching or very fond of artificial beaches. The only guaranteed glimpse of a demi-god is staking out an early spot behind the barricades of the aforementioned red carpet. Arrive punctually at, say, just before sunrise, and you can while away the hours with the journeyman garbage-pickers holding spots for the jaded, cancerous paparazzi they hope to one day emulate. If you were ever planning on taking up smoking now is as good a time as any. Be prepared to defend your spot against the most overt and subtle land-grabs, if it really means that much to you.

Once you realise that the professionals have pushed you so far back that you’re only going to spot a celebrity if Kareem Abdul-Jabbar makes an appearance you can hover around celebrity-central, the Carlton International Hotel, about a kilometre along the beachfront Boulevard de la Croisette. If you look determined and presentable you might get into the lobby but then what are you going to do with yourself even if you happen to see Jack Nicholson getting on an elevator? If you get inside the hotel a far more profitable use of the opportunity will be to enjoy the interior itself with its columns and marble floors and ornate preservation of the belle epoque in which it was built.

By evening you should be exhausted and sun-stroked and thoroughly ashamed of yourself but if you’re still hungry for some sweet, sweet celebrity action you can try crashing one of the dozens of parties sponsored by Red Bull or Michelin or the Medellin Cartel. It won’t work but you can try. Typically they’re held in the nightclubs along the Croisette or rue Antibes just behind it. You can’t miss them, they’ll have the sponsor’s name and logo on a cheap vinyl banner and three spherical bouncers on the door pre-rejecting you at a range of 100 metres. With a little planning and a visit to the tourist office you can have a very respectable plan B in a ticket for the open-air evening cinema on the beach, showing non-competition selections and classic obtuse picks from festivals past, starting just after sundown at 21h30.

Or if you’ve got the time and the money to be on the Cote d’Azur in May you can do the civilised thing and give Cannes a miss altogether. Even without the invasion of the plastic people it’s solidly the worst destination out of an absurdly broad choice which includes authentic and exotic Marseille and quiet and conservative Antibes or its little suburb Juan Les Pins, proper, liveable, accommodating and expansive Nice and genuinely flamboyant Monte Carlo. And this is without mentioning the in-country day trips to La Gaude or the medieval fortified walls of St. Paul de Vence.

In fact it could be argued that the festival is the best time to visit the French Mediterranean and any of its sun-spoilt destinations with the exception of Cannes, where the beautiful people are all gathered, driving up the price of rental limousines and five-star hotels and cocaine and leaving the infinitely more liveable and accessible cities to the rest of us.

When you’re spending time in Europe and looking for a holiday destination that has plenty of interest besides the beach, then Cyprus is a great choice.

Thanks to its southerly latitude you can also get great weather there outside of the main summer months. So it’s a great place to visit slightly off-season – from late March through to late October you can get some really warm weather there.

Its climate is one reason many families head there for the October half term and the Easter school holidays. If you’re travelling without children, you’d be best advised to avoid these times as you’ll benefit from cheaper flights and better deals on accommodation.

You’ll find that the island has resorts to suit all kinds of holidaymakers. Clubbers and partygoers head for the infamous resort of Ayia Napa, where most of the action happens after midnight and beaches are full of people sleeping off the excesses of the night before. However, there are other resorts that have more of a family feel to them.

One such resort is Paphos, a town on the south west coast of Cyprus, where you can find some fantastic hotels and other accommodation like the Akteon Holiday Village and some really great beaches. You’ll also find plenty of cultural sites. Old town Paphos is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site (since 1980). The former island capital is a great place to visit for a day during a stay in Cyprus.

Paphos Castle, Cyprus

The old town of Paleo Paphos (Old Paphos) is found at the top of the hill. As well as a great covered market, there are also boutique shops, cafes and restaurants. The new part of the town is at the bottom of the hill and is called Kato Paphos. Here you’ll find the harbour, fish restaurants and lots of souvenir shops.

Paphos also has Greek legend connections and is said to be the birth place of Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty. Paleo Paphos used to be a centre of worship for Aphrodite and a little out of town you can visit the rock that she is said to have arrived at when she was transported to shore in one half of an oyster shell at the moment of her creation.

Staying in or around Paphos, you have the best of both worlds with the vibrant and interesting town to explore, some great beaches and interesting cultural and archaeological sites to visit. Whether you’re on holiday in Cyprus by yourself or with the family in tow, it’s a great destination for a relaxing break in the sun.

Cancun (creative commons)

Mexico is one of the most beautiful places to visit in the world, and from its amazing climate to its golden shores, millions of tourists holiday here every year. Mexico offers an appeal like no other North American destination, and many of the world’s rich and famous are continuously spotted here soaking up the sun, experiencing the amazing culture, and snapping up all the luxury properties! Don’t let this put you off though, if you’re concerned about the cost, it’s worth noting too that you can visit Cheapflights today to find the cheapest airline tickets to Cancun.

There’s so much to do in Mexico, it’s difficult to know where to begin. From surfing to partying, shopping to wildlife retreats, this country offers something for everyone, especially when it comes to families and young children. If you’ve ever wanted your children to experience the cultures of another country, then Mexico is a great place to start. Not only does it have a rich and ancient history, but it is also home to some of the most famous Mayan and Aztec archaeological sites ever discovered.

Although there are plenty of activities in Mexico for adults, families will surely want to know how to keep their kids entertained on their family holiday. Keeping the kids entertained on the flight, let alone in Mexico itself, may seem like a tough task, however with most hotels offering great child-friendly facilities, and it countless theme parks, museums and zoos all over Mexico city, your kids will actually be spoilt for choice!

Let’s take a look at some of the most entertaining activities for children to do in Mexico!

Isla Mujeres Dolphin Discovery

Dolphins are some of the most beautiful and intelligent creatures on the planet, so why not get up close and personal with them at this amazing dolphin discovery centre. With four locations throughout Mexico, you and your children will be put in the safe hands of an expert marine-life instructor.

Not only will they educate you about the dolphins, and the continuous dangers they’re facing all over the world, but after a little training you’ll also be able to swim with some of them! There’s no better experience than taking to the water with a dolphin, and you’ll also get the chance to feed them too!

The Interactive Cancun Aquarium

If you’re not too keen on getting up close and personal with marine life, then the alternative is to have a huge piece of glass between you both! At the Interactive Cancun Aquarium, you and your children will be able to take an amazing tour through this living museum, interacting with everything around you as you go along. Not only is this experience educational for your kids, but from shark tanks to exotic fish pools, they’ll be able to keep these marine memories forever.

Mexico’s Jungle and Waterfall Horseback Ride

If you’re looking for a nice, quiet and relaxing afternoon with your children, then this is the place to go. The Jungle and Waterfall Horseback Ride will take you to a remote island, where you’ll be able to embark on your journey of discovery and adventure. Stopping off at amazing zip lines that propel you straight through tropical forests, you’ll be able to take in the beautiful nature all from the comfort of horseback.