Here’s where to shop the best Black Friday travel deals – with major savings on holiday packages, attraction tickets and summer getaways

From the lake beloved by George Clooney to the place where Mary Shelley conceived Frankenstein, this list shows that heading inland on a European vacation pays dividends

The past lives again at an unusual immersive hotel housed in the cave dwellings of Italy’s oldest city, once ruled by ancient Greece

Diners fall silent as the haunting sound of the aulos – a double-piped wind instrument from ancient Greece – echoes through the vaulted breakfast room. The musician, Davide, wears a chiton (tunic), as do the guests; the mosaic floor, decorated vases and flicker of flames from the sconces add to the sense that we’ve stepped back in time.

This is Moyseion, a one-of-a-kind hotel-museum in the famous troglodyte city of Matera, in Basilicata, known for its sassi – cave dwellings carved into the limestone mountainside. Every detail has been carefully designed to transport visitors to Magna Graecia, as this area of southern Italy was known when it was ruled by the ancient Greeks from the 8th-6th century BC.

Travel back in time at a folly in Scotland, a parador in Spain and a German castle
• Tell us about your favourite church in Europe – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

My husband and I stayed in a beautiful 500-year-old Venetian palazzo for just €100 for a double room. The exterior of Palazzo Abadessa, tucked away in the sleepy backstreets of the Cannaregio district, is low key enough, but the grandeur and opulence begin to hit your senses as you explore. First we strolled through the lush ornamental garden, then the huge entrance hall decorated with frescoes and Renaissance paintings going back to the golden age of Venice, lit by glittering Murano chandeliers. The reception area is furnished with an antique velvet armchair, perfect for sipping a prosecco or Venetian spritz. Back in the 16th century, the original owners provided Venice with two of its doges, and today the stone corridors and high-ceilinged rooms have a classy, noble air, as if the ghosts of Caravaggio or Tintoretto might appear any moment and begin painting. Breakfast of cappuccino and croissants in the courtyard served by the friendly owners was a delightful way to start the day.
April

We’d like to hear about how the move affected your relationship

After Annalisa Barbieri’s recent advice column “I moved abroad to live with my wife, but I’ve come to hate her country”, we are looking to hear from people who relocated to another country for their partner but have found the move difficult, or would even prefer to be elsewhere.

How has the move affected your relationship? What have you struggled with?

Visiting the city hosting the Cop30 conference brings with it questions about farming, tourism and sustainability

In an open-air market in the Brazilian city of Belém, I had a problem. It was breakfast time and I wanted a drink, but the long menu of fruit juices was baffling. Apart from pineapple (abacaxi) and mango (manga), I’d never heard of any of the drinks. What are bacuri, buriti and muruci? And what about mangaba, tucumã and uxi? Even my phone was confused. Uxi, it informed me, is a Zulu word meaning “you are”.

But then I started to recognise names that I’d heard on my six-week voyage from the Andes to the mouth of the Amazon. There was cupuaçu. I’d picked one of those cacao-like pods in a Colombian village about 1,900 miles (3,000km) back upriver. And even further away, in Peru, there was açaí: a purple berry growing high up on a wild palm. The Amazon, it seems, is vast and varied, but also remarkably similar along its astonishing length.