Areas noted for their autumn leaf-peeping opportunities include Nikko in the Tochigi prefecture and Hakone in the Kanagawa prefecture.Inside Japan operates autumn “Essential Honshu” packages, where visitors will be able to see Japanese autumn colour. The 14-day trip costs £1,175 per person, excluding flights, but including accommodation, breakfast, six evening meals and the services of a full-time “tour buddy” to help you pick out the best sights. For more information call 0870 746 1044 or see .. Time to get that atlas out again. Several more destinations are to join the long list of places that you didn’t know you wanted to visit, but to which you can fly from Stansted. Bargain of the week: the Ruhr and the Rhine, from Stansted
Time to get that atlas out again. Air Berlin (0870 738 8880, ) is moving into Britain, opening up the state of North Rhine-Westphalia with the catchy slogan “Enjoy German hospitality (yes, it really exists)”.
On 30 September, Air Berlin starts flying from the Essex airport to Paderborn, M?er and Dortmund. It will also fly to Tegel airport in Berlin, competing with Buzz, which flies Stansted-Berlin Sch?eld.Fares to all Air Berlin destinations start at £9 each way. Test bookings made for the first weekend of October, going out to Germany on Friday, 4 October, returning two days later, revealed fares to each airport of €98 (£65) return, including drinks and food. For an extra €8 (£5.50) each way, you can reserve a specific seat.The airline is launching a service to D?ldorf, again in competition with Buzz, on 18 October. On the same day it starts flying to Nuremberg, which does not currently have direct services from the UK. Flights to Hamburg begin on 1 November; the latter is bound to provoke a response from Ryanair, which flies from Stansted to L?k, 40 miles away, which it describes as “Hamburg”.Yet another new airline launches a link to the Rhine on 27 October. Germanwings (020-8321 7255, ), part-owned by Lufthansa, offers three flights a day from Stansted to Cologne-Bonn airport.
A fare of £45 return is widely available.Meanwhile, Ryanair (0871 246 0000, ) starts twice-daily flights from the Essex airport to Strasbourg on 31 October. This Hallowe’en event is likely to spook Air France, which currently has a monopoly on the route from London to the French city on the Rhine.Ryanair’s “never knowingly undersold” policy applies. But prices are set much higher than its normal rates – typically £163 return. Strangely, you can reduce this fare by about £20 if you buy separate one-way flights; journeys starting in Strasbourg are 25 per cent cheaper than those originating at Stansted..
Why go now? Because Paris is a box-office smash.Am?e and Moulin Rouge painted unashamedly romantic portraits of the French capital, while Baise-moi and the forthcomingIrr?rsible are provoking fevered discussions about art, brutality and pornography. Whatever you make of these movies, they serve as potent reminders of the enduring love affair between Paris and cinema. Beam down The most romantic way to arrive in Paris is by train: return fares start at £79 with Eurostar (0870 518 6186, ). As you walk through the Gare du Nord, remember Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge, arriving by steam in 1899 in search of “children of the revolution”.