Guides and stories about destination guides from Best.
A five-day Basque Country itinerary with real 2026 costs. Pintxos in San Sebastián, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, and a cooler coast that still prices fairly.
· 5 min read
Sea cliffs, levada trails, and four-star hotels at three-star prices. A five-day Madeira plan for 2026, including the new trail reservation rules.
· 6 min read
A five-day drive through Puglia, from Polignano a Mare to the Salento coast. Same warm sea as the Amalfi Coast, half the price, a fraction of the crowds.
· 6 min read
Naxos has Santorini-grade water, three times the land, and hotels at half the price. A five-day plan with real hotels, real prices, and the marble villages most visitors never reach.
· 6 min read
A five-day plan up the Albanian Riviera, from Saranda to Vlora, with real hotels and prices that are half what Croatia costs this summer.
· 7 min read
Slovenia is the country that Austria's tourism board pretends doesn't exist. Same Alps. Same lakes. Same baroque towns. Half the price. Better food in most cases. Almost nobody outside of Europe has it on their summer list. This is going to change. Slovenia has been quietly climbing every European travel writer's underrated list for the last three years. In 2026, it's still cheap enough and quiet enough to feel like a discovery. By 2028, it probably won't be. We mapped a 5-day loop that hits t
· 7 min read
Comporta sits 90 minutes south of Lisbon, on the kind of beach that most Europeans pretend doesn't exist. White sand that runs uninterrupted for 12 miles. Pine forest behind the dunes. Rice paddies inland. A handful of villages where the loudest sound is the wind moving through the reeds. This is the part of Portugal that people who can afford to disappear go to disappear. Christian Louboutin built a hotel there. Madonna spent a summer. Princess Eugenie got married nearby. None of which we part
· 7 min read
São Miguel is the largest island in the Azores and the one most people fly into. It's also where Iceland-style geology runs into Atlantic green and where you can swim in a 38 degree thermal pool in the morning and watch sperm whales from a boat three hours later. The crowds people warn you about are real in August. In June and September they're not. We went in late September, did a road trip, and came home convinced this is the best European destination most people haven't been to yet. Her
· 7 min read
Bruges had its moment. The canals, the chocolate shops, the lace, the cobbled bridges you've seen on a hundred Instagram feeds. The problem is that everyone else also had the same moment. In peak summer, Bruges runs at roughly 6 million tourists a year against a population of 120,000. The math is brutal. You're not visiting a medieval Flemish city. You're queueing through one. Ghent is 25 minutes east by train. It has the canals. It has the gothic. It has the chocolate. It also has a unive
· 7 min read
Tourists go to Alfama. Locals don't. They went there to take their parents in 2017, got annoyed by the crowds, and never went back. The Lisbon a Lisboeta actually spends a Saturday in is somewhere else. Three neighborhoods, specifically. And the hotels in each are still under €120 a night for summer 2026. This isn't another "off the beaten path" listicle. We've spent enough weekends in Lisbon to know which streets people drink on at 11 pm on a Tuesday. The bairros below are where that happ
· 6 min read
Mainland Portugal hit 35°C in Lisbon last week. The Azores topped out at 22°C. Same country. Two and a half hours apart by plane. One is melting. The other is a cool-weather Atlantic escape that almost nobody on the East Coast has connected the dots on yet. We've watched hotel search data for São Miguel for the past 90 days. Bookings are up 41% year over year. Prices are still under €130 a night for boutique guesthouses in Ponta Delgada. That window won't last. Here's what to do with 72 ho
· 6 min read
Most people pick Barcelona for the architecture and Madrid for the museums. Then they fly home and tell their friends Spain is expensive. We've watched this happen for years. The fix is three hours south of Barcelona on a high-speed train. Valencia gives you the coastline, the Old Town, and the food culture of a major Spanish city. The hotel math just works differently here. For summer 2026, mid-range hotels in Valencia are running between €70 and €120 a night in central neighborhoods. The same
· 7 min read
