Top 5 most beautiful places in Europe

Dubrovnik. Renaissance city of Ragusa and major rival of the venerable Republic of Venice. Tremendously pretty, it is justifiably Croatia's most visited destination. The sun glints off the broad limestone paving stones of the Plaça, polished smooth by generations of footsteps. Narrow hillside alleys of vines and laundry lead up steep steps between Venetian balconies and shuttered windows to the famous medieval walls.

I am only passing through Dubrovnik, on my way to Sarajevo. I've been here twice now, and I think it's one of the most beautiful places in the world. Having travelled to many places I don't say that lightly. Silver-coloured cliffs surrounding Dubrovnik drop into opaline water. Tall spears of mediterranean cypress tower like shepherds above flocks of bony olive trees on the karst rock.

And somehow Croatia produces stunning women—blonde jaw-droppers who would take the catwalks of Milan by storm, and probably do.

So this inevitably leads me to the following entirely subjective list:

The Solonaut's
TOP FIVE MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACES IN EUROPE

(in no particular order)

Dubrovnik, Croatia
One of the best preserved walled cities in Europe. Maybe the best. Tourism has grown considerably in the last five years, but even amid the summer throngs it is easy to find a quiet bar in a lane, such as Caffe Soul, to drink local fruit brandy to the serenade of a live guitarist or watch an evening performance of a chamber orchestra in the chapel of Saint Saviour.

Oia, Santorini, Greece
Those famous photos of Santorini—white domed chapels with blue crosses and low, square houses barnacled above an azure sea—are taken from Oia. The island bakes in a delicious heat in summer. It is the only place I have ever been tempted to kick back with a beer and a book on a deck chair by the pool to overlook the caldera. I deliberately missed my departure ferry to stay. Pronounced ee-ah, Oia is probably my personal favourite in this list, above Dubrovnik.

Venice, Italy
Go back a thousand years in time. Tall fourteenth-century Gothic buildings usher you between piazze and you walk and walk and walk, down tall lanes, between palaces and churches, over bridges and under arched overhangs, and there isn't a hint of the modern world anywhere. You get a sense of how powerfully wealthy this state once was from the vast and sumptuous collection of paintings in the Doge's Palace—one after another gilt-framed Tintoretto, Titian, Veronese. It's like feasting on too much chocolate.

The Vézère and Dordogne valleys, France
Go in October, in wool coat and scarf weather. Leaves from woods of oak turn brilliant orange, yellow and brown in autumn and flock like starlings in the wind. Chateaux stud the hills and charming villages grace the valleys, such as the riverside La Roque-Gageac, the dramatic cliff-hugging town of Rocamadour, and the magnificent medieval Sarlat-la-Canéda, where I lodged for a week in a 16th-century tower.

Lucerne, Switzerland
In late spring, Lucerne is storybook. Yellow flowers whiffling in green meadows. Shaggy highland cattle clanking cowbells. Bright sun and blue sky. Tall evergreen trees. Snowy mountains. White swans on crystal waters. It's ridiculous.

High water and fresco vandals

I experienced the acqua alta—high water—in Venice after all, and I'm glad I did.  Having occurred for hundreds of years, it is a quintessential part of life there.  It is not a result of rising sea levels (though this will severely exacerbate it).  Of course, it was nowhere near the magnitude of the 1966 floods, but locals were wearing their colourful gumboots (Venice is the place to shop if you're a fashion-conscious pig farmer), wading obliviously through six inches of water in the lower-lying areas.  More commonly it was less than an inch, most places were in fact dry, and the water table dropped again with an hour.

For four nights in Venice I lost track of the days, like I had taken a vacation from my holiday.  The city feels unmoved by the passage of time, like it is still its own republic, separate from Italy, the rest of the world, and modernity.  It's a strangely affecting place and, in all my travels through Eastern and Western Europe, incomparable.

So when I arrived in Verona, only an hour away, I was rather too bedazzled to fairly assess one of Italy's prettiest little cities.  That it was raining again dampened my enthusiasm, too, but the second day was beautifully clear and sunny, a cool, Autumn day (as in fact, they all have been since), and I discovered the stunning Romanesque Basilica of San Zeno.  If you remember your Shakespeare you'll know that Friar Lawrence married Romeo and Juliet in the crypt (looking on would have been the preserved body of Zeno who died in 380 AD).  Also preserved are superb frescoes, dozens of them, dating back to the 12th century.  They are still brilliant and in large sections intact, despite being damaged by time, war (Allied bombing), and 18th-century snot-nosed brats—there is a great deal of graffiti, often dated, etched into the plaster.  The architecture of the building is reknowned, with a beautifully decorated ship's keel ceiling as well as a stunning facade.  Apparently.  It was masked by—that's right—scaffolding for restoration work, rendering it unsuitable for shooting.  At least the scaffolding screens were sympathetically painted with the facade's likeness.

The not-so-happy-go-lucky-anymore traveller

For my last night in Venice, I decided to indulge myself and spend a night on the Grand Canal.  This was too wet and unsolid so I decided to spend a night beside the Grand Canal instead.

On the morning of this last night I moved across town from my old hotel in the pouring rain, carrying my camera bag and harnessed to a heavy backpack under a nylon poncho, a bit like wearing a circus big top, squeezing through narrow people-dammed passages barbed with umbrellas.  I was interrupted by some university student with, "Excuse me, sir, will you sign a petition?  It's in English.  It's against drugs."

"No," I said, irritated.  "I take drugs."

How to find a Bird in Space

The layout of Venice, evolved over a thousand years, was unplanned and has grown organically by the needs of the city, the district, and each street itself, resulting in numerous short, narrow medieval lanes that dog-leg and reticulate between canals and campos.  There are umpteen ways to get from here to there, yet surprisingly, it is not that easy to get lost.  Heading in the general direction of somewhere will get you there, guided by signs tacked to the buildings pointing to Rialto, San Marco, or Alla Ferrovia, and a glance at a map now and again is enough.

I found my way to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection today, which includes a number of Picassos (I don't care much for Pipe, Glass, Bottle of Vieux Marc, but I do like On the Beach), Jackson Pollocks (meh), Salvador Dalís (pff), and three of my favourite pieces of sculpture in one place, which I was very excited to see: Giacometti's Standing Woman, his Piazza, and Brancusi's Bird in Space.  Standing Woman is about four feet tall (130cm), but I was very surprised that the figures in Piazza are only about eight inches tall (20cm).  Things look so different in books.

Wow.

Venice is fantastic. I don’t know where to begin.

The 1500-year old city is vast—when you wander the sprawling sestieri (districts), it just keeps going—yet it never feels bigger than a large town. And there is not a single modern building in sight.

Venice is a tourist’s feast. The canals are as picturesque as you have been led to believe, and are never clichéd. The art is such sumptuous gluttony that another Tintoretto invokes an offhand, “oh, more paintings.” And the shopping (for those inclined) is comparable to Paris (both in scale and price).

Yes, Venice is expensive. The average price of a simple trattoria meal is €20. I was fortunate to find accommodation in a resedenzia for €50 per night—a simple room with no breakfast—because it is off season, and that is as cheap as you’ll find.

Visiting in the off season is the way to go. There are still plenty of tourists, but they don’t overpower the city as they do in peak season. Trying to pilot the narrow streets swollen to bursting with mile after mile of people is an arduous way to relax, as Mai Li and I found in Florence one year when we unwittingly arrived on a long weekend.

After catching a vaporetto, a public ferry, down the length of the Grand Canal the first morning of my arrival, I spent the entire day in Piazza San Marco. I took some furtive photography—disallowed—of the dazzling golden mosaic-tiled ceiling of the Basilica San Marco, now the cathedral of Venice but which for 700 years of gobsmacking opulence was the private chapel of the doge (duke and elected head of state).

I depleted the next three hours spending not enough time wandering the warren of rooms in the doge’s palace, the seat of the Venetian government. The walls and ceilings of every room are filled with paintings by Veronese, Tintoretto, and Titian, culminating in the cavernous Sala del Maggior Consiglio (Grand Council Hall) which hosts Tintoretto’s Paradiso, one of the world’s largest oil paintings. It is a mindboggling experience. One room that did stand out for me was the Chamber of the Magistrato alle Leggi, which, to my surprise, is today used to exhibit several works by Hieronymus Bosch.

Whew!

I caught the bus back from Montenegro to Dubrovnik, in the south of Croatia, then caught the ferry up the Adriatic Sea to Rijeka in the north, a 22-hour trip.  I booked a cabin for the night, a simple room with two bunks and a bathroom with sink and toilet; no window (an outside cabin costs more).  From Rijeka I had originally intended to stay a night in Rovinj or Poreč in Istria and catch a fast catamaran to Venice, but the service stopped running in early October.  Poreč has some remarkably well-preserved Byzantine mosaics which I was disappointed to miss.  So, instead, I had to kill seven hours in Rijeka, a pleasant-enough-but-not-terribly-interesting town, waiting for a bus to Trieste, from which I boarded a train to Venice.  Which is where I shall stay put for a while!

Summer is over

It's been an Indian summer in this part of the world.  The pleasant, sunny days I've had in Croatia are usually finished by September, apparently.  But there's now been an announcement that the fun is over.  Thunderstorms woke me in Dubrovnik at 7AM this morning.  The rain held off for most of the daylight hours as I walked the city walls, but now at 8PM as I write this it has returned, and it is pissing.  Notwithstanding the afternoon storm in Mértola, Portugal, I've had almost no rain at all on this trip (which was in karmic order after being practically rained out of Eastern Europe last year).

If this low pressure in the Adriatic keeps up by the time I reach Venice next week, I might just experience the notorious acqua alta, where the pedestrian areas of Venice are submerged.  I have an umbrella and a rain jacket, but I didn't bring any fishing waders with me, so I'd probably make the call to skip it and move on.  After running out of time in 2007, that would make it the second time I failed to reach Venice.