Carnival of Europe

This month I'm delighted to host the Carnival of Europe for Karen from Europe a la Carte, who's been off on her travels in Italy.

It was fun to read so many great articles from blogs that were new to me and it took much longer than I thought as I got hooked on reading all the other interesting stuff on these blogs. Here are the best ones for your delight.

For some family fun, why not have a picnic in Parc Guell in Barcelona, among the glorious Gaudi mosaics with Debbie at Delicious Baby. If you're travelling with children you'll be interested in her city-guides with child-friendly things to do in other European destinations such as Paris, Rome and Seville.

If you're heading for Rome, find out how to eat pizza and read about some favourite restaurants in Kristie's article Rome, Italy: The Food & Drinks posted at Culture Shock. Like Kristie, when we were in Rome recently, we found some great new places to eat and some that were well reviewed in the guidebooks but didn't make the grade for us.

If you enjoy ski-ing there are plenty of smaller ski resorts in Europe that are worth visiting for a day or two if you're travelling in the area. My sister often visits northern Greece, a country known more for beaches than ski-ing, over Christmas and Year for the mountain scenery and the local ski resorts. In this spirit Ultimate Vacation Guide visits the Cairngorms in Scotland for a day's ski-ing and lunch at the highest restaurant in Scotland.

However, if your idea of the perfect holiday is to drift down the river admiring castles and vineyards, then you may be interested in this post at The Cruise Info Center, which suggests a few alternatives for river cruises through Europe on the Rhine, Danube or Scottish Lochs.

Always a source of great travel tips on a minimal budget, Less Than a Shoestring shows us how cheaply it is possible to travel in this post on Baring My Budget: Madrid and Barcelona. The post gives plenty of ideas for free things to do in Madrid, Barcelona and Girona in a trip which costed a mere €150.

One of my favourite museums in Paris, the Musee d'Orsay, which always seems more accessible and manageable than the Louvre was featured in this post at The Earthly Paradise. If you're artistically inclined, you'll find some other interesting posts about the decorative arts in Paris and the interesting places Margaret visited on her trip there - I loved the look of those pink macaroons at Duree.

Finally, I hope you'll indulge me if I mention a couple of other posts from my own blog. Firstly, take a look at a guest post on my blog entitled Teacher meets Europe by Monna from the Teacher meets world blog, in which Monna visits different European destinations and muses on what each of them has taught her.

In exchange I did a guest post on Monna's blog on Memories of travelling and Rome, based on my two holidays in Rome, one at the age of seven and my more recent holiday with my own son in April. If you want to see my old family snaps of Rome from the 60's this is your chance.

And if you need any more inspiration to plan your next trip, read the 10 Inspirational Travel Quotations posted at Travelers stories - my favourite is;

The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page
St. Augustine

I hope you enjoyed the Carnival of Europe and next month it will be back to Europe a la Carte as usual on 7 July. Do submit your blog articles on travelling in Europe by 30 June using the carnival submission form.

Thanks to Loops San, wwwlicious and tgraham for the photos on Flickr.

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