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Planning where to spend your summer break? Check this out

DUBAI: With summer slowly setting in, albeit kept at bay lately by overcast skies and scattered showers, most Filipinos qualified for their annual month-long breaks have been searching the internet for a destination of choice.

To this end, several sites have arrived at a line-up of probable budget-friendly preferences, among them, the widely popular travel site, Kiwi.com which has come up with the following six selections:

• Yerevan in Armenia.
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The place is one of the longest continually-inhabited cities on the planet, and its vast squares and wide boulevards bring to mind Paris, while here and there you may be reminded of Budapest or Rome, according to Kiwi.com. Make no mistake though, it said, because Yereva is very much its own city.””

Lying in the shadow of Mount Ararat, it has been the centre of an almost constant power struggle between Christians and Muslims in the region, but today, it has emerged from the economic collapse of the post-Soviet era into a modern, open city. Note that you’d never go hungry in this city, which reportedly has 500 outdoor eateries.

• Calabria, Italy.
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If you’ve been to Yerevan then you’d probably want to see Calabria, a region in Italy that is as mountainous as it is also coastal. Covered in forests, it produces the purest air in Europe. “It’s also probably the least touristy part of the country, so prices are, correspondingly, fairly low,” said the travel site.

• Ohrid in Republic of North Macedonia.
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It has been said time and again that Ohrid had 365 churches – one for every day of the year. There are significantly fewer nowadays, but that doesn’t stop the town being one of the small number of Unesco World Heritage sites that are both cultural (the city itself), and natural (the lake on which it stands), said Kiwi.com.

The travel site said Ohrid is pretty unknown outside the country itself , which make it a great value for a relaxing budget break.

There is more! The Roman amphitheatre is still looking surprisingly good, and some of the churches, chapels and monasteries remain, including the now-restored monastery at Plaošnik. Dating from the 10th century, it’s also one of the oldest universities in the Western world.

• Strasbourg, France.
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This place is probably a winner of a choice because it is on the border of France and Germany. Strasbourg, said Kiwi.com, is a nice mix of the two, with medieval French whimsy being backed up by solid Germanic foundations. The city has a number of attractive medieval churches, such as the massive sandstone Cathedral of Our Lady as well as a wide selection of fine museums, ranging from collections of paintings by the old masters, to a science and technology centre and a museum of voodoo.

• Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia.
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A town of just over 10,000 people, the place is located in the center of a massive caldera, a collapsed volcano, and its history revolves around being very old and very rich.

Its importance since the middle ages has been tied to the reserves of gold and silver in the surrounding mountains, and this led to fortifications being built. These, in turn, mean that the city remained protected and today, the town stands as one of the finest examples of 16th century architecture in Central Europe, according to Kiwi.com.

• Osijek, Croatia.
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Sitting near the Serbian border, Osijek is known for its Summer Nights festival which runs throughout June, July and August and is a series of musical and cultural events out in the open air. The city’s culinary tradition is one of the things its residents are proudest of.

It’s also a very family-friendly place, with bicycle rental available to explore up and down the Drava river, as well as Croatia’s largest zoo and aquarium. Kopački Rit, one of Europe’s biggest wetlands is a nature reserve that provides tours on foot, by boat, or even on horseback!

Staff Report

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