CITY

• From tomorrow, a faster train link will bring the Dutch capital an hour closer, Tom Chesshyre for The Times discovers What’s new in Amsterdam. From hotels to restaurants, bars and museums, Chesshyre highlights the best…but urges “Go by train: it’s more fun.”
• This weekend The Observer have Belgrade: from our correspondent in which the BBC’s Balkans correspondent Mark Lowen seeks to change the negative images we associate with the capital of Serbia. “Forget the images of the war-torn 90s: today’s Belgrade is welcoming, exciting and diverse. Spend a few days here and you’ll promise never to believe the stereotypes again…Restaurants and bars line the streets, the nightlife is as lively as anywhere in Europe and, away from the drab Socialist concrete, you’ll be charmed by the graceful Austro-Hungarian style buildings and pretty cobbled streets.”
• In The Independent Simon O’Hagan offers up the best of 48 Hours In: Venice. “Winter is when La Serenissima is at its most hauntingly atmospheric, largely free of summer crowds.”

ESCAPE

• In The Independent Beth Adamson and Simon Calder offer up the Traveller’s Guide To: Antigua which has a “distinctly English feel…with its narrow streets and quaint villages.” Antigua is best known for “its beaches and its cricketers” and its celebrity guests, “But it is not just for the super-rich: the greatest allure of the island is that every beach on the island is open to the public.”
• “Dubai may be in debt to the tune of $84 billion and not be opening a hotel a minute any more, but there’s still plenty of life left in the Emirate,” says Dominic Ellis in The Times. In Dubai: the insider’s guide Ellis reveals what’s new in Dubai – from hotels, restaurants and attractions…and a vital piece of Dubai news: A Waitrose has opened.
• “If Copenhagen needs a model, this is the most eloquent I know, a visionary example of reforestation and the long term benefits it bring,” writes Jane Owen on Cuba’s green revolution in The Guardian. Staying in Las Terrazas, 50km from Havana, Owen reveals that “This is Castro’s Eden, a paradise he dreamt up soon after the revolution in 1959, when he ordered a reforestation programme.”
• If you rather like the idea of Winter on the beach Simone Kane in The Independent reveals her highlights for Lanzarote. Accommodation, activities, culture, the beaches and the restaurants – a round-up of everything you need to know.
• Carola Hoyos and her husband discover Puglia for couples – a child free long weekend in the heel of Italy staying in the Masseria Torre Maizza. “…despite a recent rise in popularity, Puglia has yet to become as touristy as its richer northern neighbours Tuscany and Umbria.”
• “Sitting on the veranda, looking out across lush rice paddy fields and jungle-clad mountains, I was struck that we had found the kind of “away from it all” that so many people profess to want,” writes Rhymer Rigby in the FT whilst on A Borneo family holiday. “Nowadays, such isolation from the steady hum of the information highway can be disconcerting. But, after an hour or so, you start to realise that it’s actually pretty cool. No phone, no BlackBerry, no e-mail and virtually nothing to buy. Bario is a retreat from the consumerist modern world.”

OUTDOOR / ADVENTURE

• “For here was Lake Baikal; mystical, revered, sacred Baikal,” writes Mike Carter in The Observer. “It is more than 25 million years old, a thousand times older than any other lake. At over a mile, it is the deepest lake in the world. If you emptied it, it would take every river in the world flowing into it a year to fill.” Carter discovers the extraordinary Russian Lake Baikal, where the ice queen cast her spell.
• James Hanning in The Independent reports from Cervinia – where you can Do the splits on the Swiss and Italian ski slopes. “…the trick about Cervinia, which isn’t as well known as you might expect, is that you get two countries for the price of one….If you have had enough of people kindly offering you discounted bus tickets, eating unfeasibly large meals and singing “O sole mio”, you just hop on to a couple of ski lifts, cruise up to Plateau Rosa, within touching distance of il Cervino and you’re in Switzerland.”
• “Until recently it was generally only hard-core professionals and guides who would dare to go on exploratory trail-breaking trips in locations like Greenland,” writes Gisela Williams in the New York Times. “But recently, thanks to the efforts of some intrepid entrepreneurs, extreme ski touring has hit the mainstream.” So Now for Regular Skiers, the Ultra Terrain.
• “A dramatic combination of sea and mountains is usually the setting for rugged adventure,” writes Nick Maes in The Guardian. “But there are some places that demand you slow down…My idle gene was delighted to discover that the Musandam peninsula is one such place.” Exploring Oman’s rocky mountain high Maes urges, “Now’s the time to visit – before this extraordinary area catches up with the 21st century.”
• “Travelling to sub-Saharan Africa with small children has its hazards, not least getting toddlers to accept the barrage of immunisations required prior to departure,” writes Sophy Roberts in the FT. However, armed with immunisation, Travelling to Africa with children needn’t be overly challenging – Roberts shares her top tips.

FOOD

• Whilst you might not immediately think of sausages when deciding on a trip to Vancouver – let the Oyama Sausage Company in Vancouver be just another culinary reason to visit the largest city in British Columbia. Christopher Solomon in the New York Times writes, “Jan van der Lieck has been quietly selling his popular pâtés and sausages since long before hot capocollo was haute. In fact, he may be the most gifted, and certainly the most diversely talented, meat man in North America.”
• In France and my father in the FT Sandra Boler recalls fond, albeit gastronomically centred, memories of holidays in France with her father: “Food was his language and landscape, and the success of a holiday was measured by how we ate.”

MISCELLANEOUS

• “I’m sitting on the foreskin of a whale. I’m not engaged in some bestial underwater tryst, you understand. I am perched on a stool in Ari’s Bar on the super yacht, Christina O.” In The Independent Kate Simon is All at sea with the magnate and the diva – on board Aristotle Onassis’ extraordinary yacht. “This floating homage to testosterone provides a fascinating insight into the character of one of the 20th century’s most powerful men.”
• In The Times Martin Fletcher asks Burma: to go or not to go? “It remains an overwhelmingly agrarian society, a seemingly delightful throwback to an earlier, innocent age. Unfortunately, it is that way because it is governed by one of the world’s most brutal, backward and xenophobic regimes, which raises the inevitable question of whether tourists should go there at all.” But Fletcher is clearly enchanted by Burma: “This is Burma – a visual and sensory feast. It is a country of stunning mountains, of lush forests and of rivers and lakes that turn molten red at sunset. It is a country of wonderfully warm and diverse people with fabulous faces and permanent smiles…”
• In the New York Times Jay Atkinson digs a little deeper into America’s Stonehenge – A Classic Whodunit and Whydunit. “Scholars have debated whether the stone cairns and chambers here were built by early American Indians, enterprising colonial settlers or, more controversially, a migrant European culture that visited these woods nearly 4,000 years ago.”