Most walkable cities for a short break?

[RedDoughnut]

Where could I avoid using public transport and just explore by foot?

In my experience Amsterdam is not small at all. Most people hire a bike to explore it.

Vilnius
Paris
Barcelona
Cologne
Lisbon
London

most cities are pretty walkable

St Davids

London is very walkable - lots of places are traffic-free.

Berlin...
Loads in UK

If you want an easy walking, safe solo holiday, fresh air nice climate, I'd recommend walking the levada waterways in Madeira. Stay in Funchal, pretty and walkable town.

www.walkersbritain.co.uk/blog/madeira-walks-must-see-when-hiking-portugal

Madrid and Florence.

I made that mistake! I assumed the levadas would be like Uk canals, ground level, wide footpaths, cheery waves from other passers by and bargees, ducks, swans, a kingfisher if you were lucky………..

I found myself on my own, walking along a not very well maintained two foot wide pathway next to a narrow channel of water hewn out of a mountain, with a sheer fifty foot drop down to a road on the other side. Luckily I didn’t come across one of the ones where they recommend you take a torch to get through the tunnels. Maybe I chose the wrong levada. 🙂.

Having said that Madeira is beautiful, the food is delicious and Funchal is an interesting city with a fascinating history and lots to see.

Florence Bruges Venice. Not Berlin or Rome! Both awesome but enormous and exhausting.

Budapest! I was not a big walker when we went but still didn’t use public transport and it was an easy taxi from the airport to the hotel.

Krakow
Prague
Wroclaw
Tallin
Riga

Some people on this thread don’t know the meaning of walkable.
A lot of these cities are not walkable because they are big and sprawling. You walk a certain part of them but then you need public transport or bicycle to get to another part to walk that too.
Edinburgh is pretty much walkable from this list and Bruges too. Lille also. The rest no so much.

We found Rome to be walkable to a point, but we used the open top tourist buses to get to key sites. They stop at all the major attractions and as they're double deckers, you get a view of the city you wouldn't see from the ground. Not as gruelling as a standard commuter bus

Bilbao is a great place for a visit, lovely food, interesting city, great art. One of those cities where everyone and their granny comes out in the evening to walk along the river, sit in a park, watch the kids play, very civilised. Excellent easy bus service to go to places like Geurnica which are moving and horrific. I went nearly 30 years ago and actually met someone who as a child had survived the bombing. I also got badly scratched by a huge feral cat who was being fed in a park by a woman who had taken it upon herself to feed a whole pack of them, (I still gave her €20 to buy more food, at least I think that is what we agreed it was for, bit of a language barrier!)

"Some people on this thread don’t know the meaning of walkable.
A lot of these cities are not walkable because they are big and sprawling. You walk a certain part of them but then you need public transport or bicycle to get to another part to walk that too.
Edinburgh is pretty much walkable from this list and Bruges too. Lille also. The rest no so much."

Riga is and so are Budapest and Prague. Most of Lisbon.

Pmsl at the "Washington DC is extremely walkable, the open top bus tour is fantastic" though 🤣.

And Venice?! How the fuck are people getting to murano, burano, lido and the like on foot?

Tallin (going to Xmas Market in Dec)
Bratislava
Ljubljana
Cluj
Sibiu
Riga
Vilnius
Krakow
Wroclaw
All compact, walkable & cheap as chips
Eastern European cities are so underrated.. Magical at Christmas

@smashinggrapes Venice city itself is walkable though :)

Tallin is lovely - the food is amazing. And it's walkable, friendly and lovely coffee shops, with great Wifi, to pass some time.

Nah. One of the first things anyone mentions when you book a trip to Venice is the vaporetto and gondola rides.

The public transport system there is always in heavy use.

Rome is not “enormous”. My day trip is taxi to the Colosseum from airport, walk round Forum and “secret “ tour of the underground areas. Taxi to Vatican. Look round walk up to Piazza Navaroni, Pantheon, Carrivaggios in the church and Trevino fountain. Dinner. Flight home.
it’s very very walkable.

"Rome is not “enormous”. My day trip is taxi to the Colosseum from airport, walk round Forum and “secret “ tour of the underground areas. Taxi to Vatican. Look round walk up to Piazza Navaroni, Pantheon, Carrivaggios in the church and Trevino fountain. Dinner. Flight home.
it’s very very walkable."

You got a taxi 🙈

I've been three times and still not taken a gondola ride 😂

Same actually. Bet you used the vaporetto though

@smashinggrapes For our island trips yeah :) But we thought it was a waste of money for Venice island itself so if we were seeing something on the island we just walked there instead.

Most smaller European cities are pretty walkable. The bigger ones would be too, except that their scale means it would be a very long walk to get everywhere.