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Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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If you're European pretend you aren't.
Say you're very poor but are win a trip to Europe in a competition. As part of the prize you get to choose 12 destinations within Europe, well lets say cities/urban destinations, to visit. Which do you choose?
My list would be:
London
Oxford
Paris
Nice
Amsterdam
Geneva
Barcelona
Florence
Rome
Dubrovnik
Copenhagen
Athens
Say you're very poor but are win a trip to Europe in a competition. As part of the prize you get to choose 12 destinations within Europe, well lets say cities/urban destinations, to visit. Which do you choose?
My list would be:
London
Oxford
Paris
Nice
Amsterdam
Geneva
Barcelona
Florence
Rome
Dubrovnik
Copenhagen
Athens
That's a good list, except for Athens, you would be very disappointed, it contains very little of its ancient Mediterranean past besides the Parthenon and it is mostly a nuisance to modern and contemporary Europe. Replace that with Venice, hands down, maybe Thessaloniki.
My list would be:
1. London
2. Paris
London and Paris obviously in a class by themselves as the core of modern and contemporary Europe (putting aside polemics regarding Brits' relationship with the continent), one would also need to add a German city that played a role as continental capital at one time or another, but it is hard to pick just one, though probably Berlin.
3. Arles - probably the best preserved Roman-era city in Gaul/France.
4. a Hanseatic League city, such as Hamburg or Bruges, though it is hard to exclude Amsterdam, which is also unique, or a city like Copenhagen as well, but since they are relatively close by you could try to stretch it.
5. Cordoba - contains what is probably Europe's best preserved monument from its Muslim period, along with Granada. For the Roman period, Merida plus a few others just south of Barcelona, also Evora in Portugal.
In the context of Spain and Portugal, it is hard to leave out the capitals for their roles in modern Europe and the Americas, so let's just say you would land there or your train would pass through there and you could get a feel for them too.
6. Rome - class by itself.
7. Venice - center of Europe's last long-standing pre-industrial Mediterranean empire (death blow dealt by Napoleon), much overlooked thousand-year history. While there, take a trip down to Ravenna.
In the context of Rome, Venice and Ravenna, don't know if you consider Istanbul as part of Europe.
8. Florence - first center of Renaissance Europe, and it shows.
9. Prague
10. Vienna
11. Budapest
12. Cracow
Middle Europe, the Habsburgs, Austria-Hungary, Europe's last long-standing pre-industrial continental empire (temporarily blown away by Napoleon and ended with WWI, like its rival the Ottoman Empire). On this leg of the trip, also consider Bratislava and Trieste, its main port for a while.
Of course all this ignores eastern Europe, not sure how far east you want to go (e.g. Kiev, St Petersburg, a Serbian and Bulgarian city).
Having said all that, if the choice were only two it would be Paris and London, and if only one, Paris, the quintessential European city (it could/should be a German one, but the capital cities have changed over the centuries).
I think Rome and Paris are two cities that everybody in the world should have a chance to visit. A city for me that is exceptional and mentioned very rare is Bruges Belgium. Look up pictures on the internet to see what am i talking about
London, England
Sevilla, Spain
Berlin, Germany
Copenhagen, Denmark
Vienna, Austria
Florence, Italy
Prague, Czech Rep.
Tallinn, Estonia
St. Petersburg, Russia
Zürich, Switzerland
Paris, France
Edinburgh, Scotland
In no particular order I pretty much like all of those cities equally.
1. Paris
2. London
3. Vienna
4. Rome
5. Munich
6. Berlin
7. Amsterdam
9. Stockholm
10. Venice
11. Florence
12. Barcelona
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I pretty much like all of those cities equally.
