My husband and I are hoping to have a weeklong trip during the first week of January, ideally flying on 2 January and are looking for some recommendations on places. We are based in north east England, I’m from Northumberland and my husband is from the Cairngorms so we are very much into wild natural landscapes, history and culture, and food.
We travelled to Armenia last January and absolutely fell in love with the country. The natural landscape was so spectacular and the freezing cold weather and snow added to the whole atmosphere. We are looking for recommendations for places with a similar vibe - impressive nature and scenery, laid back town/city, full of culture and history. Ideally we are looking for somewhere cold and snowy, but mild weather isn’t a dealbreaker.
Our local airport doesn’t have the biggest range of flights so we’re not opposed to a flight transfer somewhere, but ideally would be flying for less than 6 hours each way given the short timeframe that we have to travel. Our timeframe is unfortunately fixed as this is the week that my husband’s workplace closes for their post-Christmas break.
I know some European countries celebrate Epiphany and Orthodox Christmas during this week so have closure so ideally we would also like to avoid this so that we’re not dealing with trying to navigate around limited public transport or restaurant/museum closures.
We have already been to Iceland a couple of times and loved it, but we’re looking to try somewhere new. We’ve also recently been to Italy, France, Slovenia, and Poland so would prefer to avoid them. We’ve just gotten back from China and absolutely loved Zhangjiajie.
Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are also on our radar but we’re looking at doing them during the summer.u