Where to go: May half-term 2028

Albania

Ionian beaches, Ottoman hill towns and some of the Balkans' wildest mountains all fit inside a country smaller than Belgium.

Montenegro

Montenegro squeezes fjord-like bays, Venetian-era towns, deep canyons and high limestone massifs into an area smaller than Northern Ireland.

Spain

Barcelona's Sagrada Família has been under construction since 1882 and is astonishing regardless, while Granada's Alhambra is among the finest surviving Moorish palaces anywhere.

Greece

Athens' Acropolis has watched over the city for nearly 2,500 years, Santorini's caldera is one of the Mediterranean's great views, and Meteora's monasteries perch on pillars of rock in Thessaly.

Cyprus

Look beyond the resort strips and Cyprus offers Roman mosaics at Paphos, frescoed Byzantine chapels in the Troodos pine forests and a capital divided by a UN buffer zone since 1974.

Malta

Malta squeezes 7,000 years of history into an archipelago smaller than the Isle of Wight: megalithic temples older than the pyramids, the honey-stoned fortress capital of the Knights of St John, and Caravaggio's largest painting.

Portugal

Portugal fits a great deal into a narrow strip of Atlantic coast.

Croatia

With nearly 1,800 km of mainland coast and more than a thousand islands and islets, Croatia is Europe's great island-hopping country, with Roman ruins and Venetian towns between swims.

Madeira

Portugal's Atlantic island is a year-round walking and sunshine destination: Funchal rarely drops below 19°C by day in winter and seldom tops 27°C in summer.

Corfu & the Ionian Islands

The greenest of the Greek islands, strung down Greece's west coast: Corfu's Venetian old town and olive-clad north-east, tiny Paxos, Lefkada's white cliffs, Kefalonia's Myrtos Beach and Zakynthos's Shipwreck Cove.

Sicily

Greek temples, Arab-Norman Palermo, Baroque towns and an active volcano share one island, with beaches and a food culture quite distinct from mainland Italy's.

Crete

Greece's largest island packs Minoan palaces, Venetian harbour towns, the Samaria Gorge and some of the country's best beaches into one long, mountainous strip about four hours from London.

Kosovo

Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008 and has Europe's youngest population, is one of the continent's cheapest places to travel.

North Macedonia

Lake Ohrid's Byzantine churches look out over some of Europe's clearest water, and Skopje sets an Ottoman bazaar beside a startling crowd of modern statues.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Ottoman bazaars, Austro-Hungarian boulevards and raw recent history sit side by side in a mountainous country still lightly touched by mass tourism.

Romania

Romania's big draw is Transylvania: Saxon fortified churches, Sighișoara's clock tower and Carpathian beech forests home to bears, with Bran Castle playing up its loose Dracula link.

Poland

Some of Europe's best-preserved old towns sit alongside sobering 20th-century history in Poland.

Serbia

Serbia is the Balkans at full volume: Belgrade's riverside clubs and kafanas, Novi Sad's Austro-Hungarian streets, medieval monasteries painted with Byzantine-style frescoes and the forested gorges of the Drina and Danube.

Slovakia

Slovakia fits a great deal into a small country: the granite peaks and glacial lakes of the High Tatras, the vast ruin of Spiš Castle, medieval mining towns and Bratislava's castle hill above the Danube, an hour from Vienna.

Hungary

Hungary contrasts Budapest's floodlit Danube panorama, Ottoman-era baths and ruin bars with a countryside of wine hills and lakes: Tokaj's sweet aszú, Eger's castle and cellars, and Lake Balaton's summer resorts.

Slovenia

Slovenia packs Alpine peaks, karst caves, a Venetian-era coast and wine country into an area slightly smaller than Wales, with almost everything within two hours of Ljubljana.

Germany

Germany is far more varied than its beer-hall image: Berlin's layered 20th-century history and nightlife, Bavaria's Alpine villages and Neuschwanstein, castles above the Rhine and Moselle vineyards, and Hamburg's port.

Cape Verde

Ten volcanic islands some 600km off Senegal, each with its own personality: flat, windy Sal and Boa Vista for beaches and kitesurfing, vertiginous green Santo Antão for some of the Atlantic's finest hiking, Fogo's active volcano, and Mindelo's music bars, home town of the singer Cesária Évora.

Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan is the world's largest landlocked country, and most of it is steppe, but its south-east corner holds the snow-capped Tian Shan, the red-rock walls of Charyn Canyon and the alpine Kolsai Lakes, all within reach of Almaty.

United States

The United States is really dozens of trips in one: New York's skyline and museums, the red-rock canyons and geyser basins of the national parks, the music bars of New Orleans and Nashville, and road trips down the Pacific coast.

New York City

New York is the UK's favourite transatlantic city break: Manhattan's skyline, Broadway, world-class museums, Central Park and food from every corner of the planet.

Armenia

Armenia's early Christian monasteries perch in gorges and on ridgelines, from cliff-hung Tatev to rock-cut Geghard, all within a few hours of Yerevan's pink-stone cafés.

Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan squeezes a lot between the Caspian Sea and the Greater Caucasus: Baku's walled Old City beneath the glass Flame Towers, Stone Age rock carvings at Gobustan, burning hillsides on the Absheron Peninsula and the silk-road town of Sheki in the green northern foothills.

Pakistan

Pakistan holds some of the most dramatic mountain scenery on Earth: the Karakoram Highway climbs past the apricot orchards of Hunza towards China, and Nanga Parbat towers over Fairy Meadows.

Eswatini

Eswatini is one of Africa's smallest countries and one of the world's last absolute monarchies, with royal ceremonies such as Umhlanga still central to national life.

Mauritius

Mauritius pairs turquoise lagoons and coral-fringed beaches with a mountainous interior of gorges, waterfalls and tea estates, and a culture blending Indian, African, French and Chinese roots.

Brazil

Brazil works on a continental scale: Amazon rainforest, the Pantanal wetland and more than 7,000 km of Atlantic coast.

Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad is the multicultural engine of this twin-island nation, home of Carnival, calypso, the steelpan and street food such as doubles; little Tobago is the place for quiet beaches, coral reefs and rainforest.

Canada

Canada is built for road trips and big landscapes: the turquoise lakes of Banff and Jasper, the thunder of Niagara Falls, French-speaking Québec City and the cliff roads of Cape Breton.