Home to the archipelago's biggest container shipping port and a number of oil refineries, SANTA CRUZ is no aesthete's delight, but its uniquely Canarian urban vibrance is hard to find elsewhere on the island. From the time of the landing of the first conquistadors, Santa Cruz became the island's main port and, as Tenerife became a routine stop-off for replenishing supplies before the final leg of the journey to the New World, Spanish galleons would regularly anchor here and the town was well-fortified to protect them.

Santa Cruz continues to be a convenient and popular port of call for navies of the world, tankers and Atlantic trawlers. As the island's capital city and the administrative and financial centre for the four westernmost Canary Islands, it has grown into a bustling, modern Spanish town, a grid of narrow shopping streets, parks and plazas, intersected by several wide bustling avenues.

The centre is easy to explore on foot, and though there are few real sights save for a couple of churches and some good museums, the pretty parks and plazas are pleasant to wander around and the absence of the resort racket makes a welcome change from the island's other major centres

With over a hundred years pedigree in the field, PUERTO DE LA CRUZ does resort tourism well. The bustling, former harbour town, which still acts as a focal point for the business communities in the Orotava valley, was historically much favoured by British traders who erected the imposing Grand Hotel Taoro here in 1889. The hotel itself helped to define Puerto de la Cruz as a tourist destination.

In the 1890s it became a fashionable spa town and since then it has been a preferred haunt for wintering European royalty and dignitaries such as Winston Churchill and Bertrand Russell. Despite the influx of various high-rise complexes and the associated tackiness of mass tourism, Puerto has managed to retain something of the style and flair of a cosmopolitan spa as well as keep the feel of a small, friendly and busy Spanish town.

It has maintained an individuality and character that the southern resorts lack. Particularly popular with a more mature holidaying clientele, much in evidence promenading and pottering happily there, Puerto boasts the highest rate of return visits of any resort in the world.

If you are coming to Spain for the first time, be warned: this is a country that fast becomes an addiction. You might intend to come just for a beach holiday, or a tour of the major cities, but before you know it you'll find yourself hooked by something quite different - by the celebration of some local fiesta, perhaps, or the amazing nightlife in Madrid, by the Moorish monuments of Andalucia, by Basque cooking, or the wild landscapes and birds of prey of Estremadura. And by then, of course, you will have noticed that there is not just one Spain but many. Indeed, Spaniards often speak of Las Españas (the Spains) and they even talk of the capital in the plural - Los Madriles , the Madrids.

This regionalism is an obsession and perhaps the most significant change to the country over recent decades has been the creation of seventeen autonomías - autonomous regions - with their own governments, budgets and cultural ministries. The old days of a unified nation, governed with a firm hand from Madrid, seem to have gone forever, as the separate kingdoms which made up the original Spanish state reassert themselves. And the differences are evident wherever you look: in language, culture and artistic traditions, in landscapes and cityscapes, and attitudes and politics.

The cities - above all - are compellingly individual. Barcelona, for many, has the edge: for Gaudí's splendid modernista architecture, the lively promenade of Las Ramblas, designer clubs par excellence , and, not least, for Barça - the city's football team. But Madrid, although not as pretty, claims as many devotees. The city and its people, immortalized in the movies of Pedro Almodóvar, have a vibrancy and style that is revealed in a thousand bars and summer terrazas. Not to mention three of the world's finest art museums. Then there's Sevilla, home of flamenco and all the clichés of southern Spain; Valencia, the vibrant Levantine city with an arts scene and nightlife to equal any European rival; and Bilbao, a new entry on Spain's cultural circuit, due to Frank Gehry's astonishing Guggenheim museum.

La ciudad de Venecia en Italia se considera como uno de los más bellos y más románticas vacaciones in situ. Casi una laguna de quinientos años atrás. Venecia ciudad hoy se jacta de atraer millones de visitantes a su tierra. Alojamiento en la ciudad de Venecia son muy fáciles de encontrar. Estocolmo Hoteles son a la vez clásico y moderno al mismo tiempo.