Europeans Complain World’s Most Popular Cities Too Crowded, Suggest More Crowds Elsewhere
KEY POINTS
- •A travel planner from Marvelous Mouse Travels highlighted five European destinations to experience beyond crowded capitals.
- •Salzburg offers iconic musical tours along with family-friendly attractions like the zoo and Mozart’s birthplace.
- •Cinque Terre’s villages provide unique hiking, historic sites, wine tours, and beaches, accessible only by non-automatic transport.
Marvelous Mouse Travels, yes a real company, sent its globe-trotting travel planner on an epic 2024-2026 tour to wrestle with Europe’s very best annoyingly picturesque hotspots. Five dream destinations made the cut. Salzburg, Austria, offers 'Sound of Music' tours largely to people willing to twirl awkwardly by fountains and attempt that impossible gazebo dance number, as well as zoo trips for kids who don't care about musicals. Liverpool packages you fully into Beatles lore, football fanaticism (the Liverpool/Everton rivalry), and is somehow also emerging as a chic shopping plus food hub. Italy’s Cinque Terre shines as five tiny villages with impossible machine-free access methods—train, ferry, or leg warfare via foot. Special shoutout to Vernazza's cobbled streets and Manarola cliff-jumpers and drinkers of Sciacchetrà, a dessert wine potent enough to make you forget you climbed any hills. Porto, Portugal, seduces tourists only three train hours from Lisbon with its multi-layered gastronomy, nightlife, ostentatious Luís I Bridge, and francesinha, a sandwich so decadently stuffed that it might warrant medical attention. Strasbourg, France, with its Gothic cathedral spectacle and centuries-old Christmas market, proves Europeans excel at decorating and obsessing over wooden clock dancing figures. This story first saw the light on October 3, 2024, and like fine wine, aged grudgingly to an update in early 2026.
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Ah, Europe: where to escape the hordes invading Paris, you must join Armada two towns over and pay $15 for a dancing fountain photo op.
Why climb 397 steps in Corniglia for views when you can just scroll through Instagram and avoid cardio? Asking for a friend.
Sound of Music bike tours in Salzburg: for those who want to recreate vintage musicals while sweating profusely and risking vendettas from real cyclists.
Source: Businessinsider | Published: 1/23/2026 | Author: Kari Becker
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