Holiday after an Italian wedding

ASK JOAN:Your travel questions answered

Moving around Le Marche

We will be travelling to Italy in mid-May for our son’s wedding which will take place in the southern province of Le Marche, the Piceno area. It is eight kilometres from the town of Ascoli Piceno and only 10km from the Adriatic coast. We would like to make a holiday of the event, staying for a week to 10 days, and are looking for your suggestions as to places and areas to visit. We will be staying for a few nights in the Borgo Storico Seghetti Panichi Hotel, where the wedding reception takes place, but after that we would be looking for less expensive accommodation – we are open to staying in BBs as well as hotels.

We also toyed with the idea of hiring a villa for a week or so, which we could share with other family members, but that would depend on whether there is sufficient things of interest to see and do in the area. We will have a car. - MS

In the leg of Italy on the Adriatic coast, Le Marche is a mixture of mountains and coast. Though not as popular as other regions, it is home to many lovely historic and authentic towns, villages and parks.

The best website for tourist information on Le Marche is the official website of the region (in English), en.turismo.marche.it.

Some of the highlights of Le Marche include Urbino, the walled capital of the region and a Unesco heritage city that has many beautifully restored buildings. It is the birthplace of the painter Raphael and his family house is a museum. The Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, in the Palazzo Ducale has one of the most important collections of Renaissance paintings in the world.

For outdoors activities, the Sibillini Mountains National Park is perfect for walking and hiking and you may even see some chamois, sibillini.net. The pretty towns of Loreto, where according to legend the angels brought the Virgin Mary's house from Nazareth to protect it, and Recanati, the home town of the poet Giacomo Leopardi, are also lovely to visit.

Further up the coast from where you will begin your trip, the coastline of Conero is particularly scenic and this might be a good place to base yourself. There is a wide choice of accommodation, from BBs to hotels and self-catering properties. The main coastal towns are Portonovo, Sirola and Numana. Find places to stay on conero.it.

May/June will be a good time to be here as it can get very busy in July and August. Holidaylettings.netalso has a good selection of homes to rent in Le Marche from pieds á terre for two to luxury villas that sleep 10 or more.

Solo trip to the Canaries

I wonder could you help with ideas for a short trip to the sun in the last week of February, and going via London?

The Canaries sounds good but I’m not sure how easy it is to do that for less than a week and without doing a full package holiday? I’d like to keep it as cheap as possible (€500 maximum) as it’s just for me, a solo female. Accommodation doesn’t need to be too fancy – adequate and comfortable with access to the beach mostly. I know Ryanair does cheap fares to Lanzarote but I’m not so sure about low-cost accommodation for four to five days.

– CP, Cork

You don't need to waste a lot of time travelling via London to get to the Canary Islands from Cork. You can book a short holiday through Steintravel.ieand they can combine the Ryanair Cork to Lanzarote service (three days a week) with accommodation and provide a holiday within your €500 budget. Tel: 1890-408408.

Alternatively you could take the Aer Lingus flight to Gran Canaria on Sundays and return to Dublin five days later – taking a coach from Dublin Airport back to Cork. The fare is coming in just under €300; use the multi-city options on the Aer Lingus website to book. Find good value accommodation on booking.com, around €30-€60 per night for a reasonable place.

Avoiding car rental extras

I often take holidays in Europe or the US, mainly city based. Typically, I’d rent a car for a few days and go touring. What happens is that before I travel, I shop around some car rental firms to find the best price. However, when I pick up the car I find that the price quoted includes insurance, but only with a huge “deductible” of $1,000 or $1,500. So I end up paying an extra daily insurance premium and the price sky-rockets. This seems to be the case in every country.

– DB, Dublin.

Car rental is never straightforward and you are right, the additional insurance to cover the excess can add considerably to the cost of what you initially thought you were going to pay. It varies from company to company and country to country.

You can now take out an insurance policy to cover the excess and save yourself the additional cost at a considerably lesser price. Carhireexcess.iehas policies for Europe and worldwide from €2.99-€3.99 per day or you can take out an annual policy that covers up to 62 days rental from €52.99 to €62.99.

The policy also covers baggage, windscreen/glass, tyres, wheels, roof, undercarriage and keys. The policy is underwritten by Mondial. Contact them at 0818-444447, carhireexcess.ie.