Can you suggest a boutique hotel for a half-term break?

Q I’d like to travel with my grown-up daughter to somewhere sunny and warm during October half-term (she’s a teacher) to celebrate our birthdays. I turn 60 this year. We love boutique-style hotels. Any suggestions?

Jane H

A Congratulations on your impending birthdays. As your daughter will know from bitter experience, though, October half-term is expensive and crowded in all the choice destinations. I can more or less guarantee warm sunshine and boutique hotels on the Greek island of Crete – particularly in Chania in the west or Elounda in the east – but I can also be certain that air fares and holiday prices will be astronomical. Simply for the inbound flight from Crete to the UK, you can expect to pay upwards of £400.

It is a similar story across the Mediterranean. I recommend a Monday-to-Friday trip, which will attenuate the flight prices. Fares are pushed up by demand from families, who prefer weekend-to-weekend trips that make the most of half-term. Going from Monday 27 October to Friday 31 October, you need a destination that is not too far away, and has frequent flights. Malta ticks both those boxes. Flying from Southend with easyJet on Monday afternoon (arriving in time for dinner) and back to Luton on Friday evening with Ryanair, the combined fare is currently £167 – excellent value for half-term. From Birmingham on Ryanair, you are looking at £186 return. The Manchester option, also on Ryanair, is £230 – although that involves a disagreeably early flight home on Friday.

If you take up the Malta option, the capital, Valletta, has plenty of boutique hotels. But the optimum location is the Xara Palace in the former capital, Mdina. A 17th-century mansion has been painstakingly converted into a boutique hotel that entices royalty and celebrities, as well as normal people.

Wherever you choose to stay, spend plenty of time in Valletta. The capital is a spectacularly three-dimensional walled city that enjoys Unesco World Heritage status. Cultural highlights include the Renzo Piano-designed City Gate and Muza, the National Museum of Art. The latter has taken over the ancient Auberge d’Italie. It was built to house Italian-speaking knights, and served as courthouse and post office before being transformed into a ravishing collection of galleries where light, shade and history converge.

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Q You are constantly going on about delayed flights. But as a business traveller (mostly travelling on BA within the UK, with some journeys to Germany), I find planes are normally on time or even early. Am I just lucky?

Jenny R

A I am delighted to hear that you have had plenty of punctual flights. In contrast, my last four flights – all within Europe – have not been so successful. The sequence goes: cancelled, an hour late, 10 minutes late, 40 minutes late.

Of course, airlines want to keep to schedule. Their operations are contingent on planes, pilots and cabin crew being where they need to be. As a result, carriers have always “padded” their schedules to allow for a certain degree of disruption. Given the number of things that can delay flights – from bad weather to a ground-stop at Stansted to make way for President Trump and his entourage – allowing an extra 10 or 20 minutes per sector makes sense. While any airline wants to maximise the time that its planes spend in the air, some extra leeway is good for operational resilience and passenger satisfaction. If all goes according to plan, as it seems to be for you, then flights are on time or a few minutes ahead of schedule.

Another factor is at work here. You mention you are a frequent traveller on British Airways’ domestic services. Links from Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England include a large proportion of passengers who are connecting to long-haul flights. BA really wants those connections to work, and pads its schedules commensurately.

The Monday 8.55am departure from Manchester to London Heathrow is scheduled to take 75 minutes, even though the actual flying time is as little as half as much. The cost of missed connections in revenue and reputation is significant. Finally, routes to Germany are not usually affected by the storms that can afflict flights in southern Europe, and are likely to have fewer air-traffic control hold-ups than longer journeys into Europe.

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Q Will you be going to the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in November?

Ina V

A No. I am delighted to see that the official website for the Grand Egyptian Museum is now promising that the whole “GEM Complex” should be opening to the public on 4 November. The much-delayed project claims it will deliver “the world’s largest museum dedicated to a single civilisation”. It has the greatest collection of antiquities anywhere on the planet, and will certainly be the finest museum in Africa.

The official opening is timed well for the start of the main tourism season, from November through until Easter. I hope that many hundreds of thousands of visitors will enjoy the experience. The structure is spectacular and in a superb location – barely a mile from the pyramids of Giza. A good proportion of over 100,000 artefacts will be on display for the first time, including the full Tutankhamun repertoire of more than 5,000 elements.

So why I am I not planning to attend? One reason is that I am not 100 per cent confident GEM will open on schedule. Every previous deadline has been missed. Six years ago I based a trip to Cairo around the prospect of a glimpse at the museum under construction, and failed to get near it.

The other reason is that I have already accessed part of the museum. In November 2023, I paid $25 to spend time in the atrium at the heart of the museum, where a 36ft statue of Ramses II dominates proceedings. Since then, many of the galleries have been gradually revealed to a maximum of 4,000 lucky tourists a day. I will be happy to wait until the whole complex is up and running, and for the opening crowds to subside. Then I will devote a full day to what is surely the cultural arrival of the decade, if not the century.

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Q Have you been to Kaunas, and would you recommend it for a pre-Christmas trip?

Richard B

A Yes, and yes – but ideally as part of a slightly wider Advent adventure. Kaunus is a fine city in south central Lithuania, second in the nation only to the capital, Vilnius. The city centre is on the Unesco World Heritage List. Unusually, though, the honour was not awarded due to its handsome medieval buildings, but for an outstanding modernist ensemble – termed the “Architecture of Optimism”. Between the wars, Kaunus was capital of Lithuania. The Unesco inscription calls the core of the city “a local version of early 20th century Eastern and Central European modernism, bearing an exceptional testimony to the process of transformation of an industrial and fortress city into a modern capital of a newly-formed state”. As you might imagine, Kaunus also has a decent Christmas market plus dozens of excellent places to eat, drink and stay.

You could organise a quick there-and-back trip; from London Stansted, Ryanair has flights to and from Kaunus over the weekend of 11-13 December for under £50 return. Yet it would be a shame not to book an “open-jaw” itinerary, out to Kaunus and back from Vilnius (which has links to and from Luton on Ryanair and Wizz Air, and with Stansted on Ryanair).

The two top Lithuanian cities are only 90 minutes apart by express bus, for a fare of under €10 (£8.70). Vilnius has the distinction of its own Unesco listing, awarded to its vast medieval core – said to be the biggest in Europe. From the tourism perspective, the current capital has even more of interest than Kaunus: everything from ancient churches to a succession of Soviet eyesores (you can visit the latter on a fascinating guided walk). Add the prospect of a side trip to Trakai – former home of Lithuania’s grand dukes, with a 14th-century fortress perched on an island in a lake– and you have all the ingredients for enriching the bleak midwinter.

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