Are they put off by the hen parties, the tea rooms or the £5-an-hour parking? No matter. It’s time for my bold new approach ...

York may be falling out of fashion with tourists. The BBC reports January-to-June visitor numbers to my home town fell 8% compared with 2025, with visits to city attractions down by 17%.

This inspires a cocktail of conflicting emotions – selfish relief, a bit of huffiness (how dare they reject the birthplace of the Chocolate Orange and the KitKat?) and consternation. Slaloming through unpredictable, slow-moving tourist hordes in narrow medieval streets is far from my favourite activity (albeit probably good for my cognitive reserve), but tourists keep this city afloat. Our main economic activities in 2026 are “dressing up”, “tea and cake”, and “hen/stag night services (sub-categories: booze, kebabs, feather boas)”. This city runs on genteel treats and big, messy nights out: two things that are, yes, deeply incompatible. I wonder if that’s part of the problem – the bookshops, churches and scones crowd are put off by the inflatable-penis-toting, kebab-throwing party people, and vice versa – but most residents blame the £5-an-hour parking.

From ancient forests to spas, medieval cities and the birthplace of Bauhaus, Thuringia packs a punch for a car-free autumn break

It’s early morning in Erfurt, the capital of Germany’s Thuringia region, and Domplatz is abuzz with local growers setting out crates of vegetables and flowers beneath the soaring medieval cathedral towers. This 14th- and 15th-century engineering wonder holds the Gloriosa, the world’s largest medieval free-swinging bell, cast in 1497 and weighing 12 tonnes. Though the city and surrounding landscape are notably flat, its skyline is pierced by soaring church towers and steeples, the atmospheric old town hardly changed over the centuries.

Thuringia – often called the “green heart of Germany” – lies in the centre of the country, between Hesse, Saxony and Bavaria. It’s famous for its dense forests, intellectual heritage and hearty cuisine, and I’m here for four days to explore using public transport.

From Alpine valleys to belle époque towns, dip your toes in the therapeutic waters and steaming mineral pools at spa hotels offering centuries-old healing treatments

In 2021, Unesco designated 11 historic spa towns across Europe as one transnational world heritage site, recognising their “exceptional testimony to the European spa phenomenon, which gained its highest expression from around 1700 until the 1930s”. This was the original wellness tourism, and these grand health resorts include Bath in England and the town of Spa in Belgium, as well as the west Bohemia spa triangle of Karlovy Vary, Františkovy Lázně and Mariánské Lázně.

After electronics giant Philips left, the city reinvented itself as a multicultural hub for creativity and innovation, and the home of Dutch Design Week

A baggily clad skateboarder’s wheels clatter across concrete floors, the noise bouncing off exposed pipes and iron girders. Vaulted skylights set in high ceilings illuminate the industrial space and its central kitchen, from which my main course – a silky lemon risotto, spiked with samphire, rhubarb, garlic, baby onions and basil – has just been transported.

I’m in the Dutch city of Eindhoven, in North Brabant, famous for its historic connection to Philips, the one-time electronics giant. The restaurant, Radio Royaal, is housed in what was once their engine room, in the Strijp-S neighbourhood. Today, Strijp-S buzzes with concept stores, an indoor food market, MU Hybrid Art House and the Area 51 skatepark. The broader area, Strijp, was where the company was largely headquartered: its zones are named S, T and R. In the late 90s, Philips withdrew from the city where it had started in 1891, and the letters I, J and P were never assigned.

The classic pre-dinner drink and snack combo varies depending where you are in Italy. In this fair city, it’s an institution that can even be enjoyed first thing

I arrived in Verona, I admit, without a particularly clear idea of what aperitivo meant. In Italy, the ritual – broadly, a drink and something small to eat before a meal – speaks a different dialect in every city.

Milan has turned it into a polished after-work institution. In Venice, it is more itinerant: an ombra (a small glass of wine) along with a cicchetto (a bite-size snack) and then on to the next bacaro (one of the city’s traditional wine bars). Verona follows another logic.