Five of the best European adventures

FROM gourmet delights in the City of Love to finding leprechauns in Dublin - sample the best Euro delights with these destination tips.

Paris

THE City of Love is at its best in the crisp, spring morning air, when enticing smells from patisseries drift through the streets.

Tempo Holidays has a package designed to let you indulge in the gourmet delights of Paris.

Their Parisian Gourmet is a food lovers' tour of the city, where you will discover some of the exquisite local shops owned by some of the who's who in the gourmet food world and sample some of the delicacies including cheese, heavenly bread, foie gras, wine, pastry and more.

That's just the preamble before learning the secrets of French cuisine during your own cooking class with a bona fide French chef, using ingredients you'll buy from the Montmartre markets. The package includes three nights at the Hotel Moliere and costs $1371 a person.

AirAsia X has just started flights to Paris from Kuala Lumpur from $304 one-way, with easy and cheap connections to KL from most major Australian cities.

Dublin the fun on a budget

What better way to spend St Patrick's Day than to ensconce yourself in a pub in the capital of all things Irish Dublin.

From March 16 to 20, Dublin goes green with music, street theatre, family carnivals and up to 4000 performers joining the fun at the St Patrick's Festival.

If a raucous party sounds right up your alley, Student Flights has a low-cost St Pat's package that emphasises the party side of Dublin town.

The three-night trip is based in a hostel, Hotel Isaacs, and includes a walking tour of Dublin, a tour and tasting at the Guinness Storehouse and the chance to see the big parade and party on into the night in the hottest spots courtesy of a local guide.

The trip costs $449 and flights to Dublin with V Australia start from about $1880 ex-Sydney. If you still haven't found a leprechaun not even at the bottom of a bottle you might want to stay on for a jaunt to a quirky festival in beautiful Carlingford and join the National Leprechaun Hunt on March 27. The annual event started in 1989 after a set of leprechaun clothes were found on the Slieve Foy mountain by a local.

Green fields of the Western Front

For Aussie devotees of military history, Anzac Day is the perfect time to make the journey to the battlefields of the Western Front in France and Belgium, to explore the pretty land that was torn by the Great War almost a century ago and pay your respects to the 48,000 Australians who were killed there. Mat McLachlan Battlefield Tours has a nine-night tour to the Western Front, visiting all the key Australian battlefield sites, as well as Paris, Champagne, Reims and Bruges.

The highlight is the moving Anzac Day dawn service at Villers-Bretonneux, after which you'll enjoy an Anzac Day breakfast in the village of Hamel, scene of a great Aussie victory led by General John Monash in 1918.

Fully escorted by military historians, the tour travels by coach and you'll be provided with a full educational kit letting you know the secrets behind each battlefield as you visit. Most meals are included, as well as a farewell dinner in Paris's Montmartre district where the wine will flow and you'll swap your own war stories with new comrades.

The tour costs $3797 twin share and departs Paris on April 18. Return flights to Paris from Sydney cost from $1965 with V Australia.

On the shoulders of giants

You won't believe the shade of green in Northern Ireland until you see it for yourself in springtime.

It's such a small country that it's possible to see a lot of it in a short time and slowly meandering along its entire coastline by car is a fine way to spend a week or so.

Starting in Belfast and heading north, you'll come upon tumbledown castles, rugged clifftops, deep silent glens and lush forest parks with crystal-clear streams. Of course the highlight will be the Giant's Causeway an amazing rock formation where hexagonal pillars of volcanic basalt spring from the Atlantic Ocean.

Locals would have you believe it is all the work of an industrious big fella called Finn McCool.

Feel free to argue the point with them into the wee hours in one of the many welcoming pubs.

British Airways has flights from Sydney to Belfast from $1810.

By the way, if you're a history buff, May 31 marks 100 years since the Titanic was built in Belfast. Huge celebrations are planned.

Become a real Highlander

Spring is a fine time in Scotland to hike one of the most impressive walks in the world, the 152km West Highland Way.

Pull on your tartan socks and grab a walking stick as you tread in the shadow of towering mountains, pass by tranquil lochs and cross rushing rivers on a well-marked trail from Milngavie, near Glasgow, to Fort William.

Glengoyne Distillery is a popular stopping-off point for something to spur you on your way to Loch Lomond, then a dram at the Drovers Inn at Inverarnan to get you over the remote wilderness of Rannoch Moor you see how this is working, right?

Scottish company Macs Adventure offers a wide range of itineraries for all levels of fitness, from four to 10 days, on a self-guided basis.

They make sure you have a comfortable bed each night and there's a daily door-to-door baggage transfer so you don't have to humph your pack the whole way.

The trips start from $523 and British Airways flies from Sydney to Glasgow from $1845.