There is a particular pleasure in travelling to a capital that is not the capital everyone has heard of. Spring, with its light lengthening by a minute a day, is the right season for these smaller European cities — places with palaces and gardens and river promenades all their own, but without the queues of summer.
Three in particular we return to each year.
Vienna, in the weeks the lilacs open
Vienna in late March is a different city from the one the music tourists find in summer. The Hofburg is quieter, the Belvedere gardens are turning their first green, and the cafes that matter — the small ones, with the single newspaper rack and the long window — are unhurried enough to hold your afternoon. We favour a suite in one of the older palace hotels, a private guide for the morning museums, and dinner held for you in a Biedermeier dining room.
Ljubljana, which almost no one knows
Slovenia’s capital is small enough to cross on foot in a morning and sophisticated enough to reward a week. The river curls through the old town, castle on the hill, markets on the cobbles. We arrange a private house along the water, a day trip to the emerald lakes of the Julian Alps, and dinners in places where the chef knows your name because you told him yesterday.
Bruges, before the season begins
Bruges is often a day trip — we prefer it as a week. In the spring, before the cruise buses fill the centre, the canals belong to the neighbourhood. A quiet townhouse near the Begijnhof, a private boat for an early morning on the waterways, and the kind of lunch that should, by rights, take most of the afternoon.
All three of these cities can be strung into a single private journey — a week of small European capitals, in order of blossom. For those who travel well to the margins rather than the middle, the month of March has few better offerings.
