BACKPACKING EUROPE ROUTES: GET READY TO TRAVEL CHEAP!

Slovenian Istria

This beautiful and medieval town of Piran is located on the small peninsula of Slovenian Istria. Photogenic to a fault, it’s a pleasure to walk along its walls and walk its picturesque streets and perhaps enter one of the ten churches that are preserved in it. 

Its buildings show architectural inspiration from nearby Venice, just 2 hours away. One of the most interesting visits to Piran is the Secovlje salt pans, located within a protected area and in a natural park. 

In these salt flats, which were founded in 804, you can visit the salt museum and, through a guided tour, observe how they collect salt completely manually, just as it has been done for hundreds of years.

Along the Douro to Porto

Cities with rivers have something that gives them a special charm and Porto is one of the most beautiful, its medieval historic center is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

This beautiful Portuguese city is an excellent starting point to get to know the Douro Valley and one of the best options to enjoy the journey is by car. Explore its rugged landscape, with vineyard terraces and countless farms, traditional houses, and places as interesting as the Pinhão train station decorated with fabulous 19th-century tile murals. 

Just 20 kilometers from here is the Foz Côa Archaeological Park, a wonderful open-air display of paleolithic art, considered one of the largest in Europe!

Route 66 of Portugal

On the Portuguese road map, national road 2 is a line that seems to be drawn with a pen and runs through the center of the country. In total, more than seven hundred kilometers off highways to get to know the interior of Portugal with all the calm that is needed. 

This extensive route begins in Chaves, in the Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro region. Vila Real comes out to meet; it’s followed by the steep mountain ranges of the Parque Natural do Alvão, also Coimbra as the ancient medieval capital, nestled on the banks of the Mondego river. 

Little by little, the south is reached; you arrive in Alentejo land and the cork oaks welcome you in the landscape. Faro and its ideal beaches are the goals. In between, a feast of adventures and gastronomy!

Universe of Lorca in Granada

This is a route that starts from the avant-garde Federico García Lorca Center to cover kilometers and read verses while enjoying the landscapes of Granada.

In Fuente Vaqueros, in the surroundings of his birthplace (and today a museum), there are four fundamental enclaves to feel the poet’s breath of inspiration. From there, very close, is the other family home, that of Valderrubio, where the family moved in 1906.

Right there, you can also visit the house of Francisca Alba Sierra, Frasquita Alba, and where Lorca was inspired by his famous tragedy La casa de Bernarda Alba.

Finally, a tragic and emotional place: the Barranco de Víznar, declared a place of Memory. Hundreds of victims of Franco’s repression were shot and buried in mass graves there, including the poet.

Norway from church to church!

A landscape that is sometimes sublime and the feeling of loneliness that it provokes makes rolling on the roads of Norway an exciting adventure. On this route, history and nature are combined in equal parts to get to know some of the most beautiful wooden churches in the country. 

It’s believed that there were more than 2,000 such churches in the whole of medieval northwestern Europe, but today they remain almost exclusively in Norway. There are a total of twenty-eight churches, called Stav Kirke. Altogether they would serve to string together a long road trip through the country, but if you are looking for something shorter, you can opt for an easy route that goes from the stave church of Høre to the west; Just over 200 kilometers to do slowly and get to know the churches of Øye, Borgund, and Undredal, until reaching the wooden Church of Hopperstad, in Vik, on the south shore of the beautiful Sognefjord.

The Mediterranean coast of Montenegro

Montenegro opens onto the Mediterranean to the west with a coastline that has nothing to envy its neighbor Croatia. The traveler who ends up there, by choice or by mistake, ends up discovering rugged areas and beaches worthy of a postcard and getting to know cities that are living vestiges of the past such as Budva and Kotor, leaning out over the sea and at the time important control centers of the mare nostrum.

Are you already preparing your backpack? We are eager to travel!