Even though the Damascus Gate restaurant (Syria’s gargantuan restaurant) can cater for more than 6,000 diners, The Financial Times was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food and there’s no doubt that it’s an exciting place to eat.  In Desert adventure in Libya, Kimiko Barber concluded, “The country has the finest unspoilt Roman ruins outside Italy as well as the most extraordinary desert landscapes that expand and enrich your senses.”  Touring Saudi Arabia is not a common practice, especially for women, but Amar Grover took a tour of the country and decided that although a ‘generalised inoffensive scruffiness was pervasive except in hotels’,  she hoped to return.

The New York Times Nicholas Kulish took in an evening with Chaussee der Enthusiasten, a troupe of writers in Berlin who give regular readings from their works, where Authors find their voice.   The Dogpatch neighbourhood in San Francisco, way out east, missed the earthquakes and fires of 1906 and the much more recent dot-com-era loft developments and has now ‘reached a revivalist critical mass. Restaurants are leading the charge, attracting foodies hunting for farm-to-table bliss.’  36 hours in Majorca is a guide to Spain’s largest island, focused on the off-season when the drunken crowds are not on parade.

Continuing the Bauhaus theme, as well as looking into the impact of the design movement on Dessau in general, The Guardian reviewed the Grand designs at Bauhaus B&B, which has opened in a studio of the Bauhaus building.   The capital of the eastern Franche-Comté region remains an underrated destination, France’s secret city of Besançon, which Lizzy Davies concluded is no bad thing: ‘Besançon’s determination to keep a low profile is one of its most endearing characteristics.’  Dario Cecchini has just opened a fast-food joint, ‘Mac Dario’, which remains A cut above by delivering on his guiding principle: “The most important thing, when someone comes here, is that I give them a taste of happiness.”

In time for the Easter holidays The Telegraph has selected Ten reasons to travel in April, focussing on some great European festivals, which aren’t happening on the overpriced Easter weekend.