Easy Walking Cities
Hi GuysWife and I are reasonably fit 60 year olds and want to have a "cities visit" in Europe in July next year.
Our only European visits have been to London and Rome so we have decided to add another 4 cities to our list. (a week in each)
Interested in the history and archetecture. As I said we have been to Rome and found that it was a fantastic city to just walk around with easy access to everything. (reasonably compact city)
Prague is one city we are thinking of. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Grub
1
Prague is nice but maybe a week in there is too long. Now a question: As we have nearly 50 countries in Europ do you have some details concerning you choice. Cities, capitals, which time next year, east, west, south or nord?3
Thanks for your response REGARDAs I said, we are looking at July next year.
As for where in Europe, we are completely open and the destination does not have to be in a Capital.
Thanks
Grub
6
we are completely open and the destination does not have to be in a Capital.
The problem is that your criteria do not present a great limitation on picking alternatives. Europe is full of such places. Certainly most cities have more than enough attractions for a week, but walking for walking's sake is a different matter. I try to extrapolate from your example of Rome being a good walking city, combined with history and architecture, and also with your home country as a basis for comparison ..I've always considered Paris to be a good walking city. It's full of dramatic vistas and more intimate quarters of small laneways.
A place like Venice is as much an open-air museum as anything else, but perfect for walking around - a real architectural immersion - gives you that sense of being in a foreign place and former time. Size may or may not be an issue. I can manage a week there - or combine a local/regional multi-location visit with one city as a base. Verona is a good place for walking.
For architectural immersion, an area in Belgium such as the Brugge/Ghent/Antwerp group gives you a different historical and cultural location with a similar sense of immersion in a different environment.
Perhaps if you can pick 4 widely separated places to max out on cultural historical variation.
7
Istanbul, Budapest, Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona. Plus a few hundred others."History" and "architecture" can be found everywhere; the industrial architecture of, say, Essen or Rotterdam may not be everyone's cup of tea though. Some like the grandeur of e.g. Vienna, others prefer the small town atmosphere of e.g. Ljubljana. Some people are interested in ancient history, others in WWII - in short: you need to specify these extremely broad requirements to help us narrow down the options to more than a random list.
8
Just to add to the confusion over your criteria, the problem is there are so many places we could recommend. The two you've been to are both big capital cities, and you've got plenty of recommendations above for similar places, but there are smaller cities which require perhaps 3 or 4 days that would be on many people's list of recommendations. The only way I can think of narrowing your options might be to suggest you look at a more specific area of Europe - for example Hamburg and Munich are both in Germany but have very little in common, likewise Naples and Venice in Italy, and part of the interest to you might be in discovering what made them so different?? Doing my best to help but it is difficult!!9
Hello and thank you again for the input so far.Sorry about being so vague. I guess our real interests are in the ancient / medieval history, hence our visits to Rome and London. Having said that, St Petersburgh sounds pretty good. (just had a quick google search).
Don't suppose that has helped clarify anything but thank you for the suggestions
Being Australian, we have a very short history so seeing and absorbing things that you have only read about makes for a great trip. As an aside, we have been to Egypt, China, Peru, Easter Island, Turkey, Cambodia and a few other Asian Countries. So I guess most of these cover ancient history.
Grub
10
St Petersburg hardly qualifies as an old city -- it was founded in the early 18th century. I wouldn't really consider it a good walking city either.I agree with #5: Paris and Istanbul. Or at least choose a city that has some ancient and medieval history to it.
12
Paris is an excellent walking city. You can easily discover by your self or if you Google Paris Walks there are many options, here is one: http://www.paris-walk.com/14
Any city in Europe is good for walking, as all cities developed and were constructed (at least their centers) before there were cars and urban sprawl.Prague has plenty fo stuff to see. As does Paris, Barcelona, Naples, Amsterdam, Madrid, Berlin... I would always add some day trips if you spend a week in one places- again, easy to do with public transport in all these places.
Be forewarned that St petersburg means getting a Russian visa which means extra hassle, and extra money. I wouldn't bother.
