HITS AND MISSES:

There is a reason why everyone talks about the Cinque Terre in Italy. The location is as dreamy as it sounds — five old fishing villages along the Italian Riviera, each village connected by beautiful long walks, overlooking the most gorgeous clear blue sea. Because the cliffs are so steep, locals have built houses into them and created small terraces for gardens. All the buildings are beautifully coloured with tiny walkways in between. There is only train or boat access — which makes a nice change not having any cars around. And because of there being no cars, there are very few corporate food outlets or shops, which I liked. I recommend the local pesto, gelato and the local limoncello, too. But I dream of returning to the area to swim and float in the clear blue sea and then to lie on the huge rocks after my swim.

In Thailand last year we had such an amazing holiday — except for when we decided to visit Tiger Kingdom, a very popular tourist attraction where visitors can “interact with tigers”. My family are big tiger fans, especially my 8-year-old, so we were very excited to see them up close. After a long taxi ride, we were led to the ticket office and advised it was a one-hour wait and (what I thought) a very expensive ticket price for five minutes in a cage with a tiger. So we walked away to think about whether it was worth it and looked as far as we could into the cages where the tigers were. Very quickly we were horrified. The tigers all looked miserable, all of them kept in separate small cages. They were being yelled at constantly and hit with sticks if they were not sitting in the right place for a tourist photo. We quickly left, feeling sad for the way the tigers were being treated.

Charlotte Ryan co-hosts Wednesdays at 9.35pm on Prime.