I am a bit biased. I’m fascinated by cities that kind of float on a east-meets-west split of some kind. Berlin (East/West Germany), Sarajevo (Austro-Hungarian/Ottoman influences), and Istanbul (geographic split) are a few different examples of that.
Some people kinda crap on Berlin a bit but it is one of my favorite cities in Europe.
Paris is the most quintessentially European city that exists and the obvious suggestion for first timers. Berlin is more for nerds I guess, but I love it.
I don’t know. To me, Paris felt like a New York where everybody spoke French instead of English.
It didn’t meet that stereotype of people indulging in vices and living a relaxed, leisurely life.
Could be because I didn’t stay in Paris itself and instead was in a residential area within ile-de-France but not in some place with beautiful architecture.
That said, it was still a great city to visit and I had trouble debating between London/Paris/Rome as the fifth city on the list. Just doesn’t fulfill the French stereotypes that persist.
spain. anywhere in spain really.
Portugal + some Spain would be pretty good. But can’t really disagree with any of the other suggestions.
Team Paris.
It’s up there for me as well. The fact that it’s so different is really part of the attraction, I guess my point is that if someone wants to “see europe” for the first time, Berlin is so far out of the mainstream that it would be hard to recommend.
Language barrier in Barca is definitely higher than most of europe (in the major cities) that I’ve experienced (I’ve basically only seen western europe), but still not impenetrable. But yeah, for anyone that has anxiety about language barriers (which is probably a high percentage of people who haven’t been to europe before), it’s probably not a great first trip. Berlin probably the best in that regard, I think I only ran into one local who didn’t speak english in my time there (late night in the S-bahn, couldn’t figure out how to get to the other side of the platform, an older couple sitting on a bench, we figured it out anyway).
damn I need to reign in my use of parantheticals
Co-sign on Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin.
Of ones I haven’t seen mentioned, I’d suggest Copenhagen and Florence.
London (3 days) Paris (7 days) Amsterdam (3 days) would be my itinerary for a 2 week trip for a first timer. Cut out London and/or Amsterdam for a 1 week trip. London being all English is a good starting place, though all the world capitals are reasonable.
Amsterdam was fine, but I liked the smaller cities in The Netherlands better. This is even more true for Brussels and Belgium.
Never been to France, so can’t comment on that, but will cosign the “anywhere in Spain” suggestion.
Another good city if you have anxiety about language barriers is Glasgow. It’s like everybody there is interviewing for jury duty - they clearly understand English more then they let on.
LOL
I’m surprised by the takes about language barriers in Barcelona. That wasn’t my experience at all. Arriving there from France, where we always exchanged pleasantries in French, even if we hardly knew more French than that, we hardly used any Spanish at all in Barcelona. We just used English and were fine. That seemed to be how almost everyone preferred to deal with us.
Yeah, this. It’s a super touristy city. No need to even attempt Spanish or Catalan.
Can’t imagine anywhere in Europe that a first time traveller would go to is going to have any real language barrier.
Can’t believe we haven’t gotten more votes for Prague, which is just an incredible city. However my European travel was mostly a long time ago and I’ve never done France/England so can’t comment on those. Feels like you really can’t go wrong with most choices, just depends what kind of experience you’re looking for.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a cabbie in Barca that spoke English. Obviously people working on hotels and larger restaurants all speak English but a lot of randos on the street don’t.
That was the once and only time we had any issues, lol
Cabbies in Rome didn’t speak English. But most places have apps to call cabs (if Uber isn’t an option), and even if not, learning enough words in another language to be able to hail/navigate a cab ride is pretty easy.