Travel News

One of the biggest music festivals Europe has to offer, Sziget never fails to offer an impressive line-up of fantastic names from an eclectic range of music genres.

This year is no different, with rockers Iron Maiden headlining the event. REM have also confirmed that they will be performing at the festival, along with Pink, the Chemical Brothers and The Hives.

The acts from all over the world entertain the massive crowds from five different stages. Last year the festival welcomed more than 300,000 visitors.

Like all the best festivals, there is a host of other entertainment available during the six -day festival in Budapest, which takes place in Óbudai Island in the north of the city. Revellers can watch films, visit exhibitions and watch theatrical performances.

The festival is from 12th-18th August, but pubs and bars will be open on the 11th for eager festival-goers.

Attendees can either stay in a tent or a caravan in the designated sites, or those who don't want to slum it can check into local hotels.

While in Budapest, there are many sites to explore, including Roman ruins, Turkish baths, monuments left over from the Communist era and beautiful views across the Danube.

For a license to drink alcohol and more than likely get a hangover the next day, head to Vinitaly in Verona at the beginning of April.

Last year more than 150,000 people flocked to the event, one of the largest wine and spirit exhibitions in the world.

This year Vinitaly will welcome over 4,000 exhibitors.

Primarily aimed at those in the trade, visitors can take part in five days of wine tasting, workshops, competitions and meetings.

And while traders are haggling to buy bulk purchases, general visitors can head to the surrounding area for a number of related events, including wine tasting and musical entertainment.

The beautiful city of Verona is also home to a number of historic sites including the Arena Roman Theatre, the Palazzo Tower Lamberti and the Madonna Versace fountain.

Romeo and Juliet's birthplace also offers a huge array of entertainment, with streets of restaurants and bars. Visitors to the town will often combine their trip here with a holiday to the nearby canal-city of Venice.

Renowned for its odd menu and even odder chef, the Fat Duck has gained a huge amount of notoriety in the UK along with owner Heston Blumenthal.

With a discreet entrance and modestly furnished main restaurant, reviews of this restaurant tend not to focus on its decor.

Described as a 'culinary alchemist', the self-taught chef whose Berkshire restaurant gained three Michelin stars in 2004 has a host of unusual offerings on his menu.

Most famous for his poaching of various foods with liquid nitrogen, the menu also includes snail porridge and salmon poached with liquorice.

Blumenthal is famed for his unusual mixing of flavours, which he dubs his scientific approach to cooking.

And reviews of the Fat Duck reveal it's a bit like Marmite - people either love it or hate it.

Like Marmite, the only way to know which way you bat is to give it a try.

The Fat Duck is in Bray in Berkshire, on the edge of Maidenhead in Kent.

One of the most important celebrations in Spain, the festival of Corpus Christi celebrates the Catholic belief of transubstantiation of bread and wine into the body of Christ during Mass.

A variety of special events take place throughout the country.

In Valencia there is a solemn procession, followed by a parade of horses with people dressed up as characters from the Bible. The town also hosts Eucharistic plays dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries.

Barcelona hosts parades of giants and big-headed carnival figures and a "dancing egg" festival, where locals stream water through an eggshell from one of the city's fountains so it appears to be floating, in a 16th-century tradition.

The streets around the cathedral in Cadiz are decorated and covered in aromatic plants and the Catalonian town of Sitges celebrates by decorating some of its streets with floral carpets from grass, rice and carnation petals.

Some more bizarre ceremonies taking place around Spain include the baby-jumping Colacho festival in Castrillo de Murcia. In this bizarre event, men leap over babies dressed as the devil, believing that their evil disappears and the children are cleansed.

Corpus Christi occurs between late May and the middle of June every year, on the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday.

A brand new music event is about to hit the French Alps and take the ski slopes by storm.

Prestigious DJs and new music talent will perform at TignesFest, a totally free dynamic new music weekend, aiming to help support new music talent.

The four-day festival not only includes live performances, but is also an opportunity to ski, snowboard and socialise.

Three UK-based radio broadcasters are curating the show - Eddy Temple Morris from XFM, Kissy Sell Out from Radio One and the Loose Cannons from Kiss FM..

Between them, they've pulled in some impressive up-and-coming music acts to perform at one of the world's highest and most popular ski resorts, including Autokratz live, Trash Fashion, Primary One, Alex Metric and Naomi Roper.

In the words of DJ Eddy Temple Morris: "You carve down a beautiful French mountain on a snowboard, then take your apres ski with the Autokratz and Boy 8 Bit, and while you go nuts at a brilliant gig, your mates can hear it go out on XFM and curse the fact they're not there with you."