Broaden your horizons this week – learn to do the Haka, make perfume, or learn to speak French and surf simultaneously. Uncover stone-age man’s artistic side, get your hips going in Rio, experience new wines and new foods across the globe and visit the more obsure cities of famous countries – Casablanca, Zagreb, Qingdao. This week’s categories are City, Escape, Foodie, Learning and Ancient Wonders.

CITY

• Alex Crevar say, “While Zagreb’s vibe is indeed more Vienna than, say, Belgrade, it can also be deliciously rough-and-tumble.” Crevar does an exhausting itinerary for 36 Hours in Zagreb, Croatia
• “Singapore has never been this hot” says Evelyn Chen in City Slicker: Singapore. The second Formula One night race is happening this month, and due to open in early 2010 are two integrated resorts: Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa. Singapore is one of Asia’s “most happening destinations.”
• December brings Brazilians and tourists Into Rio, the samba city for National Samba Day. Discovering the historic roots of samba and boarding the “samba train”, Peter Owen-Jones gets into the swing of Rio.
• A city of cloaks, fancy slippers, men with donkeys, tinkers, cycling fishermen with eels on their shoulders – John Gimlette is delighted by the theatrics of Essaouria. “Like watching an epic that’s about to begin”, Gimlette calls Essaouria, Morocco: The stage where everyone is a star
• Gone are the days of following a man with a raised umbrella on a run-of-the-mill tour. Rebecca Seal books in for a highly personalised tour to seek out vintage clothes and furniture gems in Barcelona, and discovers that you can Get to the heart of a city with a new kind of guide
• Casablanca is often denounced as a western, French colonial, economic capital – not the “real” Morocco. But, what struck Stephen Emms, as he wanders the city’s new and old quarters, is that Casablanca, with “its grubby, glorious present is where history is being made now, and surely illuminates the path where Morocco is heading.” Here’s looking at you, Casablanca

ESCAPE

• In the Aeolian Air, Art and Volcanic Fire – “The only people who seem to be washing up on the archipelago’s shores are artists,” says Julia Chaplin of the Aeolian islands. But if you don’t go for the art, go for the active volcano, tiny villages and mysterious grottos.
• Sophie Lamm discovers a safari themed hotel on Lake Geneva, a Lucerne hotel with a silver screen theme and a chic mountain hotel in Verbier. This is The Big Six: Swiss Design Hotels
• Looking for the perfect romantic weekend away? Whether it’s the proposal weekend, the first weekend away, the first anniversary, or the twenty-fifth anniversary Matt Rudd finds the Hotels to match your love match. Unless you’re having an affair. He won’t help with that one.
• “Fear of hunger has always put me off health spas”, says Lady Helen Taylor. After a week at L’Albereta near Brescia, Taylor emerges supremely relaxed, peaceful and lighter. This is Lady Helen Taylor’s diary of a spa convert
• Autumn is a quieter and cheaper time to visit Sicily, and to witness the extraordinary volcano, Mount Etna, in action. Spoilt for a choice of villas, hotels and historic houses, Mount Etna: where to watch the fireworks , lists the best vantage points.
• Gemma Bowes says that autumn is the perfect time of year for walking, and finds a number of short-haul destinations ideal for walking, and combining other interests such as yoga, art history, wine and beaches. The destinations, including Oman, France, Spain, Sardinia, Libya and the Azores, are Not too hot to trot

FOODIE

• Rory Ross experiences wine, food and history in Chablis: A vine romance, discovering that “Wine is not the only charm of this part of France. Chablis offers a prodigality of tastes and sensuous pleasures that is balanced by an equally powerful spiritual element… as Michelin would say, worth a detour.”
• Celebrating what looks to be the year for gourmets, Nicola Iseard picks The best autumn food festivals. From cider to cheese, truffles to cockles, and covering UK destinations from Suffolk to Shetland, this is a treat for foodies.
• Justin Marozzi’s itinerary is more like a A wine-soaked odyssey on the island of Samos in Greece. Far from the sunseeking tourists of the Cyclades, the Sporades and the Dodecanese, Samos is a “quiet corner of the Aegean.”
• Vancouver has unique scenery, low-costs, versatility and huge diversity of authentic and fused cuisines, so it comes as no surprise that Vancouver lures filmmakers and foodies says Madhur Jaffrey

LEARNING

• Simon Usborne decided that the surf camp in Engenhoca, northern Brazil, was “perfect for people who like beaches but not enough simply to sit on them.” Signing up for some Active travel: Beaches, boards and bravado in Brazil.
• Paul Croughton gives us The world’s best learning holidays including the regulars such as painting, cooking and wine, but also discovering some inspiring escapes such as perfume-making, doing the haka, DJ-ing and the art of the blacksmith. These are “breaks that make broadening your mind more fun than you’d ever imagined”.
• In Biarritz, France, Beverley Fearis undertook a combined surfing and French course. With language classes in the morning and surfing classes in the afternoon, she says, “I’m not sure which part of the day I struggled with most.” Of both instructors Fearis requested: Excuse my French. And my surfing

ANCIENT WONDERS

• “Far from crowded beaches, speedboats and the stripped-bare landscapes of the Aegean Islands, a different Greece beckons,” says Kerin Hope, who discovers Trigono’s archaeological treasure and finds that Trigono “gave us an exhilarating sense of pursuing history across one of Europe’s least-visited frontiers.”
• “In most respects, Upper Palaeolithic man was pretty thick” says Anthony Peregrine. But, when faced with Prehistoric artwork in the Dordogne it is undeniable that the stone-age man of 20,000 years ago, excelled at painting. Peregrine revels in “the excitement of being eye to eye with prehistory.”
• Slavs, Albanians, Armenians, Jews and Turks, as well as Greeks have all inhabited Thessaloniki, in northern Greece. Maya Jaggi finds that its “layered past reveals itself subtly” and is due to Thessaloniki’s confluence of cultures