Base towns in Europe for slow travel

Granada is lovely but does get very crowded because of the Alhambra, so keep that in mind.

For really slow travel, I would suggest getting out of Andalucia and into an area like Extremadura, which is still relatively undiscovered (or at least much less than Andalucia). I loved the town of Cáceres‎, which was like stepping back in time. We had a car when there, but I do know that it has good train and bus connections.

Montepulciano is gorgeous, though (be advised) very hilly. Another great one in that area, more level, is San Quirico d'Orcia. Pienza, Bagno Vignoni, Montalcino, all are really nice. This is a great area to escape crowds, though your time of year visiting will help a lot with that. (Full disclosure: I was not even aware that trains serve these towns--we had a rental car--but Google says they do.)

We spent a week in Wengen last Fall (end of Sept) and loved it. It or Murren are great base towns. You likely want to complete your trip there by Mid October as I hear some of the lifts close down. We work up one morning to a light snowfall which make the mountains even more magical!

You might want to look at Northern Italy as a base. We stayed in Bologna for a week and did day trips by train. Very convenient. We loved Parma which is smaller than Bologna and would consider that as a base in the future.

You have a lot of great options listed. Not sure how easy day tripping from Lake Bled would be. Beautiful area! We did a day trip from Ljubljana to there from car. Ljubljana is another great city - the old town does seen all that large.

Enjoy!

Don't believe what you read. Montepulciano has a train station, but the service is sparse and anyway the station is 9 km. (5 1/2 miles) from town.

While most of these locations are not cities, they are well known tourist centers and you will find them quite busy.

Thank you so much everyone for the input. These are some great ideas. We have a lot of research to do! Whatever we decide we will have to arrange our itinerary to work with the season, and we'll try to be in the cooler weather climates at the beginning and warmer weather climates later.

Cochem is a very nice, small, town. (I was there just 2 days ago.) but it is not extremely walkable; sitting as it does on the side of a hill, and it does not have what i would call good access to a rail network. You can get there by train, but It's only a single line in and out of town. You would be much better served staying in Bingen, which has north/south rails as well as east/west. Plus, it has the ferries, and the bike paths; it's level, and well situated to offer access to both the Rhine and Mosel River valleys. From Bingen you can easily reach places like Koblenz, Mainz, Neustadt (on the Winestrasse), Speyer, Heidelberg, Trier, Saarbrucken, etc. as well as all the smaller towns in between.

Another good transportation hub you may want to consider is Ansbach, in Bavaria, which serves most of the eastern part of Southern Germany. It's not very well known by tourists, but it's connected to almost every major city in Bavaria and is worth a visit on it's own.

Another place to think about is Bastogne, which is still a transportation hub, just as it was during (and before) WWII.

Spain - Segovia
Germany - Triberg in the Black Forest
Italy - Siena and Perugia
Switzerland - Interlakken
UK - York and Bath

Thank you all again. Bingen vs Cochem is great information. I've also read about Boppard and St. Goar for that area as well, and being on that side of the Rhine instead of the Moselle probably does make better sense in regards to day trips and access to other towns. Also good to know that Montepulciano's train station is further away from the town than I thought. Interlaken is a great town, but we have stayed there before years ago in our backpacking days, so was looking for a different Swiss town with easy access. Murren and Wengen seem to get recommended often. Also, I love the recommendation of Bologna. It is a bigger than I would normally pick, but it does seem great.

Also, about many of these areas being tourist areas and busy. Do you think we would still feel the busy-ness in the shoulder season of September, October and November? We don't like crowds, however we are tourists and would like to have a few amenities in the towns we stay, like restaurants, train access, etc.

I think that the premise of slow travel by staying in a small town and always heading out on day trips during your stay is an oxymoron. Not so sure we all agree on what slow travel means, but I suppose there is a spectrum to judge it on. So feel free.

True - slow travel can mean many things. We do not want to head out on day trips everyday, but want to lay our head in 1 location for about a week or so at a time, with the option of doing a day trip once or twice if we feel like it. We definitely don't want to feel rushed or obligated to do anything organized. I guess I titled it slow travel because we don't want to rush from one location to the next just to tick some boxes.

Faro Portugal. You can use the train system to head East and or West.

You seem fixated on small towns, and that’s great. But that means the rest of this may not go over well.

First, a lot of your list are tourist towns so escaping tourism may be a tad difficult in a smaller environment. It will just require more research.

So you are talking about 75 days more or less. The places you mention are 3 or 4 day as a tourist sort of places, so maybe twice that if you plan to just hang. I would have to do 10 of them or go crazy. Just so much time I can spend looking into the eyes of my significant other.

Think about a typical day in one of those towns. Plan maybe a week in some detail then ask yourself, “is that what I want” or was I overly romanticizing it?

Another way to approach this might be to rethink a large city or two in the mix. Lets say you have been to London and as a good traveler you stayed in the most opportunistic location for tourism, and you did it all.

Well, that’s not this trip. Now you want to find the neighborhood that is where all the up and coming are moving to. The one with good restaurants, parks, interesting architecture (new and old maybe). The clean storybook neighborhood.

You live like a local there (okay, bring it on), but now you can take the commuter train into the center for the theater one night a special meal another, maybe a local event that tourists don’t do. Each time returning to your home in the suburbs.

Maybe one trip is a longer haul to a different city for a few nights. Doing all of this you really are doing what locals do. It’s what you maybe are doing in your home town in the US (I assume US). But the options in-between extended periods of “hanging” multiply exponentially.

Remember most (many? Not to overly generalize) suburbs in European cities are not like those in the US, they tend to be more town or village in nature …. Or many are and those are the ones you hunt for.

Try a few breakfast places then go back to the one you like the best and keep returning. Ask the waiter his name and then the next time greet him by name. 9 our of 10 times you will end up with someone that will welcome you back by name and share a lot of thoughts about life there with you. I have talked a few into doing this sort of thing here, and they had a good time. The comments also included “relaxed” and “comfortable” one never stopped talking about decompressing, what ever the heck that means. But you can do it in a hundred cities.

The biggest hurdle is finding the neighborhood. For that you need a local to advise you. The same local can direct you to a local gallery opening or a visiting chef night in a restaurant or maybe a wine tasting. Better if you can swing a neighborhood tour by a local. I don’t mean walking down the street with someone pointing things out, I mean tagging along for a day in the-life. We have some on the forum that live in Germany and France and Spain and ….. maybe they can give you leads.

Suburb in New Larger City (20 days), New Small City (10 days), New Small City (10 days), Return to a Large City you know a little, but the suburbs this time (20 days), New Small City (10 days) = 70 days but nothing rushed.

And if you buy it open jaw you only have to be at the first and last location and if your mood changes you can stay longer or move on sooner and not worry.

For Germany I suggest to have a look at the ICE network map (long-distance train stations).

There you can see that for example Ludwigslust or Schwerin are well connected to Hamburg and Berlin, also Lübeck and Potsdam with World Heritage sights. Schwerin is also a beauty on its own.

Well, I love this idea. I have no trouble thinking in terms of spending a week in one place - I don’t require lots of museums and day trips to keep me occupied and happy daily for a week. I am currently sitting in Ortesei on night 4 and I could easily spend a week here just slowly wandering (weather would obviously be a consideration). Other places I have loved for a week (some small and some large) are Sarajevo, Budapest, Corfu, Krakow, and Kastraki. I haven’t yet managed a week in Granada, but I also love it a lot.

If I were planning, I might look at weather progression, transportation progression, and varying the type of location. You might end up wanting a few busier places sprinkled in with the slow and quiet locations.

Thank you for the detailed response! Mr. E, it is interesting and insightful reading your scenarios. Yes, we are researching to try and find a good fit for us, and of course some of the locations we choose may end up being perfect, and maybe some not so much, and that's ok. I think we gravitate to smaller towns because that is what we like, but we are open to larger towns and cities. Another thing that I didn't mention is that we like to hike. So towns (or cities) that have good access to hiking are a plus. Also, we don't need to escape tourism - I just don't want it to feel overwhelming. I don't want to choose the usual suspects. For example if we go to Italy, I don't want to base in Florence and Rome. 1) we've been there.. a few times and 2) I want the location to feel a bit more intimate and maybe just slightly off the beaten path. An ideal day could be: walk to a coffee shop - spend an hour or 2, take a hike for 2-3 hours, shop at the market for tonight's dinner, cook at our rental, and then take an evening walk. So pretty simple. We don't need many tourist activities to keep us busy.

Anyways, I really do appreciate all of the input and suggestions! And yes, TexasTravelMom, that is exactly the kind of trip we are anticipating - the wandering. We definitely need to look at weather and transportation to plot the itinerary. Also, like Mr. E said, we don't necessarily need a fixed itinerary. We could do open jaw and just plan the first couple of bases. Lots of options!

Bologna is high on my long stay (4 weeks), slow travel list as it is a train hub and from there can go to so many places. For something smaller, consider Ferrera..a train stop away but much smaller.

I also think spending a week in one place and doing day trips when you feel like it during that week is a great way to travel.

I think you're right on track picking little places that have tourist appeal.

Some in your list though are transit cul-de-sacs.
If I was intending to use public transit to see see more places, I would want a little town that was somewhat central in a transit system. Ortesei and Murren in particular would not be my choices. Which is not to say they are not absolutely lovely fantastic spots. I'd pick Brixen or Bruneck instead of Otesei If I intended to tour around more. And Wengen or Interlaken over Murren for the same purposes.

Colmar is a nice small city for a base from which you can explore Alsace and the Southern Black Forest.

Ghent as a northern Belgium, southern Holland base.

Salzburg/Salzburg area gives you access to a lot in a day.

All of these places are probably bigger and more touristy than you are intending though.

Also, whether you are renting a car, using trains, or using bicycles/ebikes makes a big difference in which places work best.

Thank you all again for the amazing recommendations! I'll take a look at Brixen and Bruneck. Ortesei appealed to me due to the extensive hiking network in that area - plus there is a great bus system between the villages. Yes, we will have to figure out transportation within each area - whether that means just walking, buses, trains, bikes and we are not opposed to renting a car locally for a few days if it made sense.

You just said what I was wondering--occasional car rental is on the table. That would make somewhere like Montepulciano work.

One thing I would work on is trying to piece your list of interesting places together in way where you don't waste time and money on transit. I just had the thought of staying one week, then taking a train or bus to airport and flying, rinse and repeat between every place and that's sort of my worst travel nightmare. But with some whittling, you can get it where most of your choices are linked by train. Some of these are quite spread out, and there are SO many options that could be linked together with more efficient travel. It's a lot of legwork, that's why I prefer to travel within one country, but I am also not so lucky to have 2-3 months!

Ortesei is a great choice if you want to stay somewhat local to that area. And you're also correct that the bus system is very good.

Brixen and Bruneck are on major train lines, but don't access as much immediate hiking, nor as immediately spectacular.

If you want to be able to zoom down to Bolzano, Verona, or zip over to Innsbruck, zip over to some of the more beautiful high mountain passes in Switzerland, etc, and then being close to the train makes sense. And using the train, you probably have quicker access to more widely flung interest areas in the Dolomites.

But if you are interested in spending more time in a somewhat tighter area, and an extremely appealing tighter area at that, then Ortesei is a very nice pick.

We definitely want to have a route that links destinations in a sensible way, and that is probably the hardest part of figuring out our itinerary, and then we have to factor in weather seasons as well. We are also perfectly happy to reduce the area and focus on just a couple of countries instead. When I try to search for ideas of different routes and itineraries I find hundreds of itineraries that hit all the major European cities, so the challenge for us is to find a reasonable route that doesn't base us in the major cities. All part of the fun of traveling though - figuring it all out!

Also note that there are many much smaller places along the same train lines with a regular stops. So it is possible to have a little place on the train line if that's what you ultimately are after :)

Thank you Hank - good info in regards to the Dolomites and the surrounding areas.

Sure! Another way to think about it is that Brixen, Bruneck, etc along the train line are in a big valley right next to the Dolomites. Brixen is a particularly good looking small city. It was a religious seat and has beautiful churches and arcaded pedestrianized areas. Great food, sidewalk culture, great gelato etc. Stuff that you would expect from a small cultural capital on a train line.

Ortesei is smaller, in a small valley actually in the mountain range at a higher elevation. In the winter time you can ski several different directions out of the village. It's more of a "Heidi land" higher alpine kind of place.

Both really good, I would stay in either no problem :)