As soon as I leave Buenos Aires, I’ll be heading over to Ireland to visit my friend Andy for a few days. I’m not sure how long I’ll be in Limerick, but afterwards I’ll probably make my way to Dublin to explore that city a bit more. Another friend of mine from Vancouver, Tanya, is probably going to meet me in Dublin for a bit of exploring, so that’ll be fun.
Sometime in June I’d like to make my way to Serbia to visit my friend Milan.
But outside of those two bookends, I really don’t have any plans for Europe. Truthfully, it would be great to meet up with people I know along the trip, but I honestly don’t know who I know in Europe.
So I’m really looking for the following:
1) Do any of you live in Europe? If so, where do you live?
2) If you had three months to bounce around Europe, where would you go?
I think I’ll be forced to spend April bouncing around and possibly bunking with friends here and there, but I’d like to rent an apartment in May and June similar to what I did in Buenos Aires. But where I would live is still up in the air – possibly France for part of it, and maybe Greece for another part. Any recommendations?
I’ve spent a lot of time in Europe, both for work and for pleasure. I’m pretty sure I’ve landed in LHR over 25 times, for example. I didn’t enjoy Dublin as much as I thought I might, although in many respects it reminded me of Vancouver.
I will tell you about the best experience I ever had in Europe: I took the train from Amsterdam to Milan through Switzerland. I cannot even begin to tell you how amazingly beautiful it was. It was an 8-hour ride, worth every minute (once we got past Germany). The views were stunning, shockingly gorgeous, and I grew up in British Columbia! It was only in 2007 so prices are probably similar, it was around $275 all told. Milan is better than you might expect as well — it’s the home of the apertivo where you can get a whole meal for the the price of a drink. Many places have a whole free buffet if you spend 3 or 4 Euros on a cocktail. I ate so cheaply there and it was a fantastic place to visit.
If you are en route to Serbia via train, Slovenia is well worth a visit. Ljubjana is gorgeous, cheap and people are fantastic. One of the best places to be in Europe right now and an easy train from Milan. Also, everywhere in France is worth visiting almost – one fairytale city after another. Paris is much more expensive than London, though, for tourists, unless you rent a cheap flat and can cook from home.
I could go on for ages, but let me know if you have any questions about specific places!
Some years ago, I wrote a couple of posts about things to do both in Dublin: http://bit.ly/g5GSqn and http://bit.ly/hieaGa. Hopefully they prove interesting.