Travel news

Published on Friday 17 April 2009 15:11

On the hoof FAST food normally evokes the kind of dining experience best enjoyed at the drive-thru. However, thanks to a new restaurant in Melbourne's Yarra Valley, food on the go no longer has to mean stuffing greasy fries and burgers down your throat while waiting at the lights.

For the first time since the early 1900s, luxury horse-drawn dining is back in fashion. The newly restored Slow Coach (www.slowcoach.com.au) travels at a pace that allows guests to take in the sights and sounds of the area while enjoying contemporary regional fare. The travel-sick should probably sit this one out.

Blooming lovely

FLOWER power is being unleashed at France's gardening event of the year, the Floralies flower show (May 8 to 19), in Nantes. Celebrating its tenth anniversary, the event will bring together 200 of the world's top floral artists, landscape gardeners and environmental architects to create an explosion of colours and scents. For more information about the show and details of special short breaks to the area, log on to www.resanantes.com or www.comite-des-floralies.com.

Quick getaway

COMBINE a holiday rental and cheap flights for a unique, budget summer break. Storybook landscapes, stunning mountain backdrops, crystal-clear lakes and pretty houses with blooming windowboxes – Bavaria is all you imagined, and more. With thousands of great-value holiday homes and seven new low-cost flight routes (thanks to Ryanair), this picturesque region of south-east Germany is now a thrifty alternative to Tuscany and the South of France – minus the hordes of tourists.

Rent a gingerbread-style house, a log cabin in the mountains, a medieval castle with its own moat or a grand historic estate through Holiday Rentals (www.holiday-rentals.co.uk), which lists more than 1,500 properties.