Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It's Wednesday the 17th of

December. Travel Desk Wednesday. What you might be thinking? Yes, it's a really special one and it's going to

spill over into Travel Desk Thursday. That's because my excellent colleague, travel writer Amelia Neath,

has come up with some really good ideas.

As you know, all through Advent, we're looking at places to go in 2026, and she's done some

great work on the best value city breaks in Europe. So what we're going to do is go through

numbers 10 to 6 today, and then on Thursday we will do five up to one and I'm looking

forward very much indeed to this. So what's in 10th place? So 10th place was Thessaloniki in Greece.

It's not the first thing that comes to mind when you're looking for a holiday in Greece, but have

you been there, Simon? Is there any great things to do? It is a terrific choice, partly because

it's, like any, Greek city, full of fabulous places to eat, drink and relax, but it's much, much

smaller and less sprawly than Athens, are also slightly easier to reach

it in the north of Greece and has a wonderful waterside setting. And the great joy of it I find

is that, besides having the usual and very good archaeological museum, you can also visit some various

Byzantine churches and then just enjoy walking along this beautiful ridge that overlooks the

city before you descend for, well, something to eat and dare I say drink.

So next on the list I had Katania in Sicily.

That's on the foothills of Europe's most active volcano, Mount Etna.

Well, I can see why Katania, which is a beautiful city at the eastern extreme of Sicily,

would make the cut, purely because you've got four great airlines,

EasyJet, British Airways, Jet 2 and Ryanair all competing to get there, and I think you found

flights in January for as little as 35 pounds return. Now, when you get there, it's not necessarily

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