Based on my own experience of spending couple of months in Europe, I can certify that it is genuinely beautiful, however can be a bit repetitive at times. My wife and I went to Europe for our Honeymoon and we fell in love with most of the European cities due their uniqueness but at the same time we started observing patterns in each region.
For the most part, once you start exploring more and more in Europe you start noticing that majority of the cities in Europe more of less offer similar set of attractions. Intention of this blog is not at all to discourage people who are thinking of travelling to Europe, However to give our point of view so that it can be used as a consideration while planning your own trip to Europe.
Let me first talk about the positives of travelling in Europe and then will comeback to the not so great things we realised which you can skip if you don’t want to spend time reading it and already booked flights for Europe.
Europe has a lot to offer including Royal Palaces, Castles, Gardens, Museums, Cathedrals, local food, etc. I am an art lover and I was fascinated by the paintings I saw in various museums across Europe. If I were to pick one museum, which stood out for me during the whole trip then I would definitely mention Albertina Museum in Vienna (Austria). I had never seen such kind of paintings in my life and when found out that most of them were dated 300-400 years back I was speechless!
There are numerous Castles in Europe but my personal favourite is Buda Castle in Budapest. I liked it not because of the castle itself but the city view you get while standing in the basement of the castle. You get to see two of the most famous landmarks in Budapest from this castle; Chain Bridge and Hungarian Parliament Building. Both these landmarks are stunning in their own rights.
Most of the castles in Europe are quite similar where you get to see imperial rooms where Emperors/Kings would stay use different rooms for different purposes. You get to see Dining halls, bedrooms, living rooms, corridors, bathrooms, children rooms etc. used by Royal families back in the days.
When it comes to food, Europe has plenty of variety depending on which part of the continent you are visiting. I personally liked food in Spain. We spent a week in Spain while travelling to Barcelona, Madrid, Toledo and Segovia. We instantly fell in love with the rice in Spain (maybe because its quite similar to how we cook in India!). I was fond of the pot in which they used to serve the rice.
Public transport is mostly cheap and quite comfortable across whole Europe. I still don’t understand why Tram no. 28 is so famous in Lisboa (Portugal). For me its just a tram which you can ride in most of the cities and they are all faster than the trams in Lisbon. Maybe this tells me a lot about human psychology; why would people come to Lisbon and in spite of having to wait in queue for half an hour and then riding the slowest tram in whole damn world; what kind of pleasure one would get from this? I still don’t get it, but you know what I also did it like all others! I waited for 40 min in the afternoon (was sweating as well and was at the receiving end of a pissed-off wife!), ride the tram (didn’t get the place to sit so was standing for another half an hour inside the tram for the whole journey!) and get to see the whole city of Lisbon from the backside of a tram.
I felt few things were quite funny in Europe the way the tourists were responding to it. Anything can be famous and has some weird history to it in Europe. Just to name a few; there are steps in Florence which are widely famous and known as ‘Spanish steps’ (just like usual steps, what is so different about that), every other public square in most of the cities is famous (I literally mean every square and each will have some random sculpture at the center of it), in some cities you will see famous bridges (like Charles bridge in Prague or Ponte Vechhio Bridge in Florence), tourists rubbing on weird statues and saying ‘it’s a good luck!’ (I mean seriously?) and many others.
One common thing and my personal favourite one in Europe was European people. Europeans are really kind and friendly people. Most of the times you will see someone helping the lost tourists and giving directions to reach their desired destination. If you keep aside the tourism part of Europe then there is still a lot to get amused with and we really enjoyed our travelling experience in Europe and consider it as our treasured possession.
Happy travelling! Go get a flight ticket to Europe! Cheers!
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