Families’ festive farm fun
herbalist, dressmaker, artillerymen and all the e other support staff. Local food is based around und meat and potatoes, ideal for winter. Pork, cabbage and dumpling dishes are on most menus at around £7, with a pint of best pilsner at around £1.50. Typically welcoming places are U Medvidku (umedvidku.cz), a brewery restaurant on the edge of the Old Town which makes its own dark beer, billed as “the strongest”. It is strong enough to knock your socks off at 12.6 per cent proof. The more leisurely U Pivrnce (upivrnce.cz), its walls covered in bawdy cartoons, specialises in giant pork knuckle – one between two really will suffice. NOT booked a Christmas getaway yet? Blyth’s View on Bucks Farm, Suffolk, has a week’s stay for seven gue guests arriving December 20 o or 21 for £1,395, a saving o of £200. The cottage is t tastefully decorated for t the festive season and has Crafts Cr are strong in the Czech Republic, particularly Bohemian Bo glass-blowing and crystal.
The thread of narrow streets linking Old Town Square Sq with Charles Bridge is lined with small shops selling se Czech-made gifts – particularly Blue, for Bohemian Bo glass, and Manufaktura for other locally made m products, wooden toys and natural cosmetics.
There are also multiple outlets selling Trdelnik, or chimney cake, a hugely popular freshbaked hollow cake filled with a mix of jam and cream, or avocado, or even macaroni cheese. There’s something glumly old European bloc about Prague’s spectacular views close to Suffolk Heritage Coast. Families will love the goats, sheep, hens, horses, ducks and rabbits at the farm plus daily animal feeding and egg collecting. Go to premiercottages.co.uk. airport hinterland. hinterland But don’t despair – downtown, reached by express bus or bus/metro in 25 minutes, is completely different.
Tram cities are generally delightful, with some rattly old antiques to ride in, and once you’ve got a tram plan and sussed the system (80 pence for 30 minutes, £1.10 for 90 minutes) you’re away. Superbreak.com p offers a two night city break, with flig flights from London Stansted, from £116. £116.25. Accommodation is in the Design Met Metropol Hotel, which is within ten mi minutes’ walk of Old Town Square. The hotel’s “design” element amounts to bright red curtains and carpets and fl flimsy see-through furniture, but it’s go good value – the bathrooms are large an and spotless, the staff helpful and the brea breakfasts excellent. NEED a yellow fever jab for Africa. Will I now have to pay under the new prescription rules?
yes. Under the new rules, GPs won’t give out prescriptions for vaccines that are exclusively for holidays.
That means that even if you’re travelling to a country where certain vaccines are recommended, you’ll need to pay.
The vaccines set to be charged for are: Hepatitis B (when not with Hepatitis A), Japanese Encephalitis, Meningitis A, Yellow Fever, Tickborne Encephalitis, Rabies and TB.
Before you travel, speak to your GP or practice nurse to find out which of your jabs are up to date.
Plenty of travel clinics offer the vaccinations – compare costs first. Here’s one for the determined traveller who wants to show off where they’ve been globe-trotting. It comes with a gold foil top layer, which means that once you have visited a country you get to scratch it off – to reveal a beautifully vibrant and geographically correct map underneath. Trainline has partnered with voice-controlled Google Assistant so passengers can talk to book tickets and receive real-time updates on timetables and delays. The app lets rail users tell Trainline info such as: “I’d like to take a train from Manchester to London on December 15 at 9am” and then follow up with questions like: “Are there any changes?”