Start planning your 2014 travels with the help of our top 5 destination round-up. Some are hosting major events, others are under-the-radar places only just starting to attract tourists, but all of them are inspiring or exciting right now.
1. Cape Town, South Africa
Following in the footsteps of Helsinki and Seoul, Cape Town has been elected World Design Capital 2014, giving it the opportunity to showcase about 450 innovation projects. That it was selected more as a «one to watch» rather than a fully polished design leader makes it even more exciting to keep an eye on. To see a social/design experiment in action, go to Woodstock, a run-down suburb given a new lease of life through the Neighbourgoods Market), which sells artisan goods in a former biscuit factory: The Old Biscuit Mill. This is also home to Luke Dale-Roberts’ restaurants the Test Kitchen and the Pot Luck Club &Gallery. The city has got what is being billed as the world’s coolest cafe – Truth, drawing on a Victorian steam-punk theme,. For a township «jazz safari», or a tour specifically linked to World Design Capital 2014, see coffeebeansroutes.com.
Truth coffee shop, Cape Town.
2. Uzès, France
Our enduring love affair with France, and with Provence in particular, has been seized upon by Eurostar, which is extending the direct six-hour summer service from Ashford to Avignon by two weeks (28 June-13 September), with a view to a year-round service from 2015. One place sure to please Francophiles is Uzès, a short hop west of Avignon in rural Languedoc-Roussillon. The town has Renaissance architecture, mazy streets and nuns selling jam in Place aux Herbes. But a sure sign that Uzès is becoming a style outpost is the number of restored houses being run as maisons d’hôtes. L’Albiousse(from €155 a night) is a tasteful four-room luxury B&B in a 16th-century house off Place aux Herbes, owned by two former Paris restaurateurs. It is near the Musée du Bonbon, aka the Haribo Museum, as Uzès is the production site for Gummi Bears.
3. Austin, Texas, US
Hotel Sain Cecicilia, Austin
Americans are well aware that this is Texas’s coolest city, but a few happenings this year will help put Austin on the map for international travellers, too. British Airways now flies there non-stop from Heathrow five days a week; Terence Malick’s as-yet-untitled new project features the city along with an epic cast (including Ryan Gosling and Natalie Portman); and hoteliers are cottoning on to its appeal: Austin-based healthy eating chain Whole Foods is planning its first health resort, and Mexico’s hip Habita hotel group has its own impending opening.
4. Carmarthenshire, UK
The man himself would no doubt have approved. In the seaside town of Laugharne this year, the centenary of Dylan Thomas’s birth, visitors who can prove it is their birthday can claim a free pint in Brown’s Hotel, the very pub where Thomas liked to sit «mouldering» and giving his liver a punishing work-out (dylanthomasbirthdaywalk.co.uk). There will be festivals and events to mark the centenary all year, including a Dylan Thomas Poetry, Biography and Film Weekend in Laugharne, from 2-5 May, with poets including Simon Armitage and John Cooper Clarke performing in venues around town.
5. Kolkata, India
Tile Mosaic on the Kolkata subway
Change is stirring in Kolkata. Travellers in 2014 will find the same Hooghly hubbub and ghosts-of-the-Raj atmosphere, but they’ll also find a city on the move. There’s a new airport terminal, a recently opened luxury mall and Kolkata’s first skyscraper, The 42, a development just taller than Canary Wharf, has been dubbed the «cloud-kisser of Chowringhee» after the street it towers over. And Kolkata’s metro system, India’s first when it opened in 1984, is being expanded, eventually creating cross-town links for the first time. New hotel openings also sound a positive note. This month it’s the legendary Great Eastern Hotel, opened in 1840 and hosting luminaries such as Mark Twain before falling into disrepair and eventually closing in 2005. In autumn, The Penthouse boutique hotel, from the Glenburn Tea Estate group, promises a dose of low-key chic.