Europe – The purpose

Writing about a whole continent is an adventure – there are so many differences, so many interesting aspects, so many opportunities, that no matter what and how you write it, the most important is what hasn’t been written. VirtualTourist was a wide forum to share experiences, that I decided to review and copy here.
I think that these pages may only be useful if, more than listing the touristy attractions present in any guide, we prefer to write the particular sensations and experiences that we lived in the visited places.

The places

No one knows the totality of a continent (nor even of a country… or city), and the first thing to do is to situate us, declaring where we have been, and the general idea. Well, my experience in Europe was built visiting 20 countries, or 21 states (Scotland is shuffling me).

Which one did please me more? So hard to decide…

However, I must force myself to build a personal ranking, combining weather, landscape, culture, hospitality, quality of life, gastronomy, ease of communication, whatsoever…

The ranking

Overall, obviously omitting the not visited countries, and conditioned by the extension and frequencies of the visits, this my personal top 10 of the European countries, each one acting as a link to the pages where I tried to list the details that led me to this option:

• 1 – Portugal (no… not chauvinism! It is a perfect concentrate of good things).
• 2 – France
• 3 – Italy
• 4 – United Kingdom (including Scotland)
• 5 – Spain
• 6 – Germany
• 7 – Croatia
• 8 – Slovenia
• 9 – Greece
• 10 – Denmark
  

Andorra, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Ireland, Monaco, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and Vatican also deserve to be visited, but… someone has to lose… If you want to know what I felt everywhere, just follow my links to the specific countries.

In this page I will try to write only about identical sensations, contrasts, things that make talk about more than one country… if and when it happens.