Drifting under the shades on the trees along the canal du midi in France. Photo credit: Peter Gugerell

Each Monday, powered by Globalista, we bring you the best of the weekend’s travel pages. Looking for an escape? Look no further.

Cruising
Cruising on Sweden’s Göta canal “at a sedate four knots”, The Independent‘s Xav Judd sings the praises of the slow drift coast to coast on a “pleasure cruise [that] takes you back to a bygone era”. In The Times, Carolyn Boyd takes her family on boating holiday on France’s most famous waterway, the Canal du Midi connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Mediterranean, “waterways that can take you to parts of the country other modes of transport just cannot reach”. And Jane Archer from The Telegraph also took to the water on the aptly named Spirit of Adventure for a two-week trip across South Asia, “the perfect antidote after cruising the Mediterranean or Caribbean a few times”.

Playing hide and seek with giraffes in Kenya - Photo credit: Svdmolen

Playing hide and seek with giraffes
Walking at the pace of Kenyan herds on Crescent Island and the surrounding lake, New York Times writer Alexis Okeowo developed a special relationship with giraffes:“When I stepped to one side, [a baby giraffe] briefly emerged. When I stepped closer, it shuffled back behind the tree. The giraffe was playing hide-and-seek.”Away from bustling cities, Telegraph writer Adam Ruck chose to rent a family villa in Arabella, a small island at the mouth of the Po Delta, some 30 miles from Venice. “The island forms part of a vast nature reserve and the “slow tourism” idea is that children and wildlife have first-equal priority. As well as all the bird life, hundreds of deer roam free in the wood.”

Diving in crystal clear waters
In Honduras’s Bay islands, on the trail of Caribbean pirates, The Guardian‘s Jennifer Cox reported that “people come for three days, and stay for two months”.  As Cox prepared to dive with her instructor in the Mesoamerican barrier reef, “the world’s largest after Australia’s”, its “deep valleys of coral, colourful sponges and grass beds undulating in the current”, she “took a deep breath, and prepared to experience a new world.” Learning about Free-diving in Turkey, and how to slow one’s pulse,  Cox’s Guardian colleague Tristan Rutherford “glides slowly and in complete control” in the deep blue waters of Kas, “an overgrown fishing village basking in nearly year-round sunshine.”

More Globalista »