For a few days during the year the locals of Saint Lucia don their fanciest and most summery carnivalesque costumes before taking to the streets. Hailed as one of the best carnival celebrations in the Americas, this yearly event manages to portray the Caribbean culture of this small island nation perfectly. The festival arrives at its climax with a two-day long parade of live music, feathers, beads and scantily clad carnival-goers moving rhythmically under the radiant Saint Lucian sun.

Don't miss strolling through the gardens of Bouknadel 12 kilometres north of Rabat. Covering 4 hectares, exotic plants from around the world have been planted here in five educational circuits. In the vivarium, you can watch reptiles and amphibians.

Ain Zubaidah stands as a testament to ancient engineering, a water system commissioned over 1,200 years ago by Zubaidah, wife of the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid. Moved by the plight of pilgrims, she ordered the creation of a complex network to channel water from the Al-Kar mountains to the holy sites of Makkah. This 35-kilometre feat of engineering combined underground channels, surface aqueducts, and deep reservoirs, some reaching 40 metres underground, to traverse the arid landscape. Though time has left much of the original structure in fragments, sections have been restored, including a major renovation in the 1920s. The system's scale remains awe-inspiring, with its gentle gradients, 132 inspection chambers, and strategic storage tanks. Today, visitors can explore remnants of the conduits in the foothills around Makkah, a tangible link to a visionary project that sustained generations of pilgrims.