Best for beach/pool and culture?

[floofycroissant]

Planning a break in May and can't figure out where we want to go. DH wants city break but I just want to relax.

I'd like to avoid a major city, somewhere with culture/sightseeing is fine and preferably short haul.

We've done most of the obvious ones: Barcelona, Lisbon, Marrakech, Naples, Athens. Any recommendations please?

What about Bordeaux? An interesting city, vineyards nearby and coast. Or Montpellier in southern France. It's a buzzy university city, about 10ks from the coast.

The Dordogne valley? I've not been but started browsing around holidays in France today and it looks great!
about-france.com/tourism/river-dordogne-area.htm

Dubrovnik or Palma de Mallorca

Split
Sicily
Marseille

Benalmadena Spain

Verona? Gorgeous little city, fab food, and several thermal baths complexes within easy reach if you hire a car

Another vote for Italy:
Palermo or Catania
Verona and Lake Garda
lakes around Milan (Lake Como)

Loire valley? No beach but relaxing and lots of history.

Barcelona Spain

Valencia is just lovely

Thank you! I was actually looking at Sicily and Mallorca. Some other great ideas too.

Interesting France reccs, after a few crap holidays in the north I've realised I wrote off the whole country as a holiday destination, which is pretty ignorant in hindsight.

Malaga is a fabulous city. It has the beaches and also sightseeing if that's what you want, along with amazing food. One of my favourite cities in the world.

Anywhere in the South of France. Bordeaux too. Bologna doesn’t have a beach but it’s a great hub for sight seeing in Emilia Romagna. Fantastic city too. Florence is amazing or try Puglia in southern Italy. Sicily or Corsica would work and Morocco. Look at Córdoba, Seville and Granada. As a trio they are hard to beat.

My French is dreadful would this be an issue in travelling to the South of France?

@icelolly12
So is mine! It’s absolutely ok to not have great French. We found people working in hotels, car hire, museums etc were all helpful and lots of info was in English too. I don’t speak Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Icelandic, Japanese, Norwegian, Swedish or Italian or indeed any other language. We have travelled extensively though. We have never had any issues even when hotel staff don’t speak a word of English. We found this in Brazil and Japan but smiling and pointing at what you want goes a long way!

www.hlapalma.it/en/ Stresa - Lake Maggiore. The skybar at this hotel is one of my favourite places in the world. The pools should be open in May. Walking distance to the town centre and the boat dock. You can visit the islands. You can get a direct transfer to Stresa from Milan Malpensa - takes about 45 mins. Stunning scenery and lots of lovely food.

Sardinia fits the bill. Do some research as to which part is closest to what you want as some areas have more going on than others (south west is undeveloped with quiet beaches and definitely requires a car, for example), but I don’t think you can go wrong. The beaches are amazing, and you also have towns, cities and historic sites for sightseeing without it being on the scale of Rome or Naples.

We really enjoyed Valencia

Lisbon

@floofycroissant go for Palermo!

Rome
Florence
Venice
Syracuse (Sicily)
Verona
Bologna
Nice
Carcasonne
Bruges
Stockholm
Prague
Ljubljana
Cologne

Granada. Beautiful, ancient city and the Alhambra (spelling?) is spectacular).

If you want to swim, you’ll probably need a heated pool in May.

Antibes is lovely if you are thinking south of France.

Palma is stunning! 2 hour flight too.