Your questions: What should we do with four days in Singapore?

We are visiting Singapore for four nights, and we’re interested in good food, markets and non-mall shopping. Can you recommend some interesting places to eat, drink and shop?
Anna Chisholm, Brighton VIC

Lau Pa Sat is a great starting point for Singapore’s hawker centres.Credit: iStock

Hawker centres are the best place to sample Singapore’s pan-Asian palate. Which hawker centre serves the best food is a topic of endless debate but Lau Pa Sat is a great starting point. Amoy Street Food Centre on Maxwell Road is also popular with locals and Michelin Bib Gourmand critics alike. Keong Saik Road, Singapore’s former red-light district, has been repurposed into a red-hot dining district.

For fine dining try Cure, a “Celtic Culinary Adventure” orchestrated by Irishman Andrew Walsh, or local favourite and Michelin Bib Cantonese diner Kok Sen Restaurant. The spicy jumbo prawn soup is a standout. For shopping, take a look at Haji Lane, known as Singapore’s original hipster haven, while Design Orchard is an incubator for the city’s creative talent, home to more than 100 shops where local designers showcase their wares. See visitsingapore.com

My husband and I plan to fly into Geneva before a walking tour of Mont Blanc. We’re looking for one or two places to spend five days. We’re thinking of France more than Switzerland but are open to ideas. Annecy has potential, but possibly not enough to fill the time.
H. Smith, Nowra NSW

Annecy and its lake.Credit: iStock

Annecy is a great choice. You can get there in just over an hour from Geneva Airport and you’re in a picture-perfect old town with canals that earn it the title “Venice of the Alps”. Annecy has a wealth of heritage landmarks such as Chateau d’Annecy and Palais de I’Ile, churches, museums, plenty of cafes, bistros and Michelin-rated restaurants. It’s also surrounded by a pristine alpine wonderland with rivers, waterfalls and peaks as well as sandy beaches on Lake Annecy.

You can hire a bike from the Lake Annecy Tourist Office and spend a day cycling around the lake on the 40-kilometre cycle track, or even pedal all the way to Albertville and take the train for the return journey. I can’t think of a better place to recover from jet lag and get your legs and lungs ready for that fabulous Mont Blanc walk. In your shoes, I’d spend all five days in Annecy rather than somewhere in Switzerland, you’ll save money and eat better.

My husband and I would like to take our two and four-year-olds to Europe in June/July for three weeks, staying in only one or two places. We would like a good mix of beach, culture and food it also needs to be child-friendly. We were thinking perhaps Crete or Naxos. Any recommendations for child-friendly beach locations?
M. Papadopoulos, Sydney NSW

Crete is a great choice, and Stalis Beach, towards the eastern end of the island, is a long sweep of sand with sunbeds and umbrellas for rent at the beach clubs. The beach slopes gently into the sea, making it safe even for small children. There’s also a beachfront playground. Just behind the beach, Stalida has a choice of accommodation from resort-style properties with spas, to B&Bs including Airbnbs, and plenty of restaurants, tavernas, cafes and bakeries. Just west of Chania’s Venetian Walls, Nea Chora Beach is popular with locals and visitors. There are lots of facilities here, even lifeguards, and it’s well-organised, with heaps of dining options, but it’s going to be crowded in midsummer.

There are several more beaches on Crete that are perfect for small children but few are close to towns, and a hire car is the only practical way to reach them. Elafonissi is a lagoon-like beach in the south-west of Crete with calm water, but you need to arrive early to secure a decent spot. Close to the north-east tip of the island, Vai Beach has sunbeds and umbrellas for hire. It’s famous for its palm trees, but it’s remote.

We’ve been avoiding travelling overseas since the pandemic and finally decided to take a tour next year starting in Rome for three days, not realising the Jubilee of Hope was going to be on then. Could you recommend a couple of day trips we might make outside Rome?
T. Moller, Fitzroy VIC

Spectacular: Villa d’Este.Credit: iStock

Villa d’Este in the town of Tivoli is a spectacular Renaissance mansion created by Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este, son of Lucrezia Borgia. The rooms are extravagantly decorated with frescoes but the gardens and fountains are the villa’s main source of fame. A highlight is the Fountain of the Organ, which had a water organ installed when it was built in 1571. It still plays every two hours, starting from 10.30am.

Another local attraction is Villa Adriana, which belonged to the Roman Emperor Hadrian, but Cardinal Ippolito stole most of its treasures to furnish his own villa in the 1500s and it’s a shadow of its former self. Trains depart Rome’s main Termini Station for Tivoli at frequent intervals. The station at Tivoli is a 15-minute walk from Villa d’Este. A fast train will get you from Rome’s main Termini Station to Orvieto in 90 minutes. This is one of the finest cities in Italy, perched on an enormous volcanic plug overlooking the rippling hills and vineyards of western Umbria.

From the station at Piazza Matteotti, the funicular hoists you to Piazza Cahen. Off to one side, the remarkable Pozzo di San Patrizio well plunges 62 metres underground, with a double-helix walkway on its sides. Star attraction is the Gothic duomo, a towering wedding-cake of a church three centuries in the making, exquisite in its detail. Inside, the frescoes in the San Brizio Chapel were inspired by the biblical account of the Last Judgement. Streets radiating from the piazza in front of the church are lined with cafes, restaurants, gelaterias and galleries, and are too narrow for traffic, a maze of delights for idle strollers. Beneath the city is a labyrinth of caves used over the centuries to store wines and to escape barbarian raiders and the bombs of World War II.

Travel advice is general; readers should consider their personal circumstances.