The insiders’ guide: Where to go in Europe to avoid the crowds | Canada Voices

Representing six extraordinarily calm and irrefutably cool destinations across Europe – ones shielded from overtourism yet within easy reach of an international airport – these stylish locals and insiders would welcome your company.

Here, they talk about their connection to home and how travellers can get the most out of a visit to their corners of the world.

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Helsinki: Where art and dining seamlessly meet nature

Arrive by air to Helsinki. Your insider guide: Kati Kivinen, head of exhibitions at the Helsinki Art Museum.

Of any place in the Nordic countries, Helsinki is most like a Canadian city, with its deference to forested parks, architectural modesty and embrace of its 80 miles of coastline, at least for a few months a year.

Nature is impossible to avoid here. If you’re not in it, you’re asked to contemplate it. Visit the modernist buildings by Alvar Aalto, Finland’s most influential architect, and you’ll be confronted with vast windows showcasing the outdoors (a recent renovation of his lakefront Finlandia Hall added even more). Restaurants have hopped on the sustainability bandwagon, heralding foraged dill, blackcurrants, quinces and rowanberries alongside wild salmon and trout. And the art world is overwhelmingly concerned with ecology.

The city’s third art biennial, on until Sept. 21, seizes on the national preoccupation but shifts the focus from human-centric stories toward Helsinki’s natural assets. The principal venue is Vallisaari, a former military island used by Swedish and Russian powers before it was left to rewild in the hands of the Finns.

“Nature has taken over the island, so it‘s like an outdoor museum,” Kivinen says. “The natural world has been in the DNA of the biennial from the beginning, but we want to approach the topic with positivity, rather than dwelling in despair. Artists work with common eelgrass, fungi and decaying plants.”

A half-hour by ferry from the central port, Vallisaari is one of 300 islands in Helsinki’s archipelago and a habitat for butterflies, bats and even otters. But its repurposed military buildings make exhibiting here practical. Visitors can take in paintings inside by local artists such as Gunzi Holmstrom and Carola Grahn, then venture outdoors to tour Ernesto Neto’s avian-inspired tent.

“There’s a rise in the scenery nearby so the audience can climb up and see its bird shape from above,” Kivinen says.

Those with time to spare can explore Finnish sculptor Raimo Saarinen’s three olfactory installations. Dotted around the island, they release scents evoking ancient plants and non-native interlopers that crept in with the Russians.

“After,” Kivinen says, “you should go to the island of Lonna to have a sauna in an old mine storehouse, then swim in the sea and have dinner.” The island’s restaurant, called, simply, Lonna Restaurant, serves saaristolaisleipa, or “archipelago rye” with fresh fish.

“If you go slightly further by boat, there’s an Archipelago Museum on the small island of Pentala, where you can explore how people lived at the turn of 20th century. There’s a beautiful sand beach there, and a restaurant in the former boathouse.”

Kivinen also recommends hanging out at the Cable Factory, on Helsinki’s western edge. A former Nokia facility, it now hosts artists studios, a theatre, museum and café.

Where to stay: The Solo Sokos Torni hotel, a 1930s heritage landmark in the historic centre with a legendary rooftop panorama bar.

Antwerp, Belgium: Where alternative design flourishes

Arrive by train from Brussels in 40 minutes. Your insider guides: Shop owners Pieter Boels and Billyjean

Passersby aren’t quite sure what to make of Rosewood, a concept store where windows display text-art, bulbous pottery and clinical neo-eighties decor. Boels and the mononymic Billyjean, the owners (and newlyweds), opened it five years ago in their house’s main floor lounge as a passion project, and the name hearkens back to the 2000s, when “Rosewood” was an influential font and the street artist Rose Woods was making a name as the Belgian Banksy. Since that era, atypical Antwerp has gained traction as a creative outlier with a reputation for rebellious individual style.

Time has brought more attention to fashion-forward Antwerp, but prices are climbing, art subsidies have disappeared and young people struggle to get a foot in the door.

“We started as a gallery, but we also really wanted to sell these people’s stuff,” Boels says. “So our raison d’être is giving emerging designers a platform as well as showcasing our own work. If you’re just shopping for fashion, you can go to Brussels, but the idea of Antwerp being unique and a bit extreme draws an audience and those people find our shop – more from outside Antwerp than within.”

Located just outside the old part of the city, the townhouse stands between the grandiose monuments of Stadspark and the Japanese wine bar Osaka.

On long walks in the area, the couple stops at Studio Helder, a firm of interior architects who showcase unusual furniture pieces from their brand collaborations, and peruse the collectible design at St Vincents, in the centre of historic Antwerp. A few minutes away is Bourlaschouwburg, one of the city’s oldest theatres. It‘s a popular venue for the theatre collective FC Bergman, a slightly anarchistic troupe of six actors Boels and Billyjean count as inspirations.

Among art-lovers, Antwerp is perhaps best known for its Old Masters. The garden behind Rubenshuis, former home of Peter Paul Rubens, was recently overhauled with 22,000 plants by homegrown fashion designer Dries Van Noten. But Boels has a soft spot for the contemporary art museum M HKA. And the couple extend their walks to the Nieuw Zuid neighbourhood for the FOMU photo museum and the avant-garde gallery of Tim Van Laere. “He made the local artist Rinus van de Velde famous,” Boels says.

Beyond Rosewood’s immediate neighbourhood is Antwerp’s central station and a melting pot of Hasidic Jews, Indians, Moroccans and Chinese. Here, the food is a draw.

“The Chinese restaurant ‘the Best’ is a great example of manifesting,” Boels says. And the converted military hospital Pakt is a goldmine for food and drink. “We’re both vegan, and there’s a good plant-based restaurant there called Camionette, as well as Standard, for pizza. The vibe is just right because the industrial architecture has been maintained.”

Where to stay: De Witte Lelie, a converted 16th-century gabled townhouse covered in bold wallpapers, swathed in lush fabrics and stuffed with mid-century furniture.

Valencia, Spain: Where ornamental architecture shines in the sun

Arrive by train from Madrid in less than two hours. Your insider guides: Interior designers Ana Milena Hernández Palacios and Christophe Penasse of studio Masquespacio.

The maximalist, colour-drenched design of Masquespacio is influenced by the artisanal spirit and sunny climate of Valencia, where the sun shines 300 days a year. Follow the pastel interiors from the café-clogged Ruzafa district to the residential seaside enclave El Cabanal and you’ll end up in Hernández Palacios’s and Penasse’s inspirational corner of the city, where colourful ceramic tilework, manufactured locally for generations, is on full display.

“The facades of the houses are made of ceramic tiles in beautiful patterns,” Penasse says. “Legend says the fishermen living here bought leftover stock from local producers to make their houses beautiful without a lot of money.”

Abandoned after the war to make way for high-rise development that never materialized, the ornamental streets have been repopulated and gentrified – most successfully by La Sastreria, a seafood restaurant designed by Masquespacio with marine-coloured checkerboard tile and a rain shower of ceramics dangling from the ceiling. It‘s joined in the grid of streets by tapas and vermouth bars, and La Fabrica del Hielo, an old ice warehouse that now shows live music and stand-up comedy. From here, the seaside boardwalk and meticulously palm-lined beach are just over the road.

Valencia has aged spectacularly well, thanks to the star power of homegrown architect Santiago Calatrava. His City of Arts and Sciences, a giant plaza of skeletal museums and carapace-shaped halls is a highlight of Turia Garden, the rewilded riverbed park running through town. In the summer, Penasse and Hernández Palacios prefer the watery outskirts in the village El Palmar, with its traditional ochre-stucco homes and an emphasis on late paella suppers. Rice fields splay out south of the city in L’Albufera, a natural park on the Turia delta that‘s been home to fishermen and farmers for generations.

Penasse also suggests walking to the northern suburbs around Port Saplaya. Known as the Venice of Valencia, the marina area is home to seafood spots with Mediterranean views.

Where to stay: Only You, a boutique hotel a few minutes walk from the art nouveau central market in Port Saplaya.

Reims, France: Where old-world vintages meet modern art

Arrive by train from Paris in an hour. Your insider guide: Olivier Livoir, head of hospitality at Maison Ruinart.

The beau monde in Reims, capital of the Champagne region, wear T-shirts and shorts, play French indie rock in their e-cars and entertain in blond-wood bars bathed in light from steel-framed windows. Many have bounced over from sexy careers in Paris to bring their family winemaking operations into the 21st century, and it shows in the paint-spattered tasting room at Taittinger, the feature walls at Krug and the statement lighting at Pommery. Today, champagne tourism is taking cues from the New World and wooing with art and design.

Last fall, even France’s oldest champagne house, 300-year-old Ruinart, unveiled a massive investment in “experience”: a visitor pavilion designed in ethereal glass and Soissons stone by feted Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto. It has beechwood seating in the shape of rose petals with upholstery the colour of chardonnay leaves, and a tasting room with soft, strategic lighting that protects the product. The sculpture garden has been recommissioned and features works by hot, young European artists such as Eva Jospin and Jeppe Hein, who use plaster, powder-coated aluminum, mycelium and resin to evoke the historic chalk cellars of Reims. Trees planted on the new terrace are cork oaks.

“Since the early 2000s, the house has incorporated contemporary works of art into its outdoor and in-house itineraries,” Livoir says. “The new artist garden, inaugurated last year, is another example of our commitment to art and culture. Each of these works is a way of illustrating the message.”

If you visit, be sure to cultivate your chardonnay appreciation. “The grape variety and its life cycle take centre stage,” Livoir says, “overshadowing the rich history of the house since its foundation. A tasting of three 100-per-cent chardonnay wines completes the experience.”

He suggests a visit to the cellar and bar (specialty cocktail: French 75 with R de Ruinart Brut) after a hike to the summit of the Montagne de Reims, a 286-metre hill coated in vineyards. If you’re serious about improving your champagne scholarship, the new Pressoria museum, in a former Pommery pressing plant near Epernay, immerses guests in the mechanics of winemaking. And Phare Verzenay, a 100-year-old lighthouse surrounded by land, has a mini-museum dedicated to the characteristics of the champagne terroir.

Livoir also recommends dinner at L’Art de Vivre in Cernay-lès-Reims, a suburb that has not got the memo about moving with the times. The dining is fine here indeed.

Where to stay: La Caserne Chanzy, a luxuriously converted fire station across from the city’s UNESCO-listed Gothic cathedral.

Istria, Croatia: Where the coastline welcomes adventure

Arrive by taxi or bus from Trieste, Italy, in two hours. Your insider guide: Jerko Sladoljev, director of Top Camping Croatia.

The Valalta resort on the western coast of Istria may be the best campground in Europe, according to Sladoljev. He spent decades evaluating the country’s 6,000 kilometres of coastline, but keeps coming back to this Adriatic headland near Rovinj, an old Venetian fishing port surrounded by vineyards. Valalta‘s hiking trails, boating docks, sunset views and four-kilometre white-sand beach have lured tourists from Trieste and Germany since the 1960s.

Valalta, it must be said, is a nudist colony – one of the first naturist resorts in a European hub. The practice has waned in other parts of the country, to be sure, but it continues to thrive here thanks to the heavenly location and a COVID-era bump. “In those days,” Sladoljev says, “the only good style of living was naturism – no contact with things or people. The practice was completely reborn.”

While many of Croatia’s naturist spots appease the old guard with a strict no-clothing policy, Valalta takes its reputation for freedom seriously. “It‘s more kumbaya,” says Sladoljev of the clothing-optional dress code, “more of a state of mind.” Most of Istria’s beaches, it bears saying, are not the nudist kind.

Sladoljev’s work covers about 2,000 wild, hidden beaches between Slovenia and Montenegro, but he lives and works on this stretch of coastline. For every naturist at Valalta are a dozen Europeans who come to sail, cliff jump, visit forgotten medieval towns such as Vodnjan and watch dolphins play from the Porec seawall. Off the shore at Medulin are shipwrecks to dive to. On the island of Brijuni, easily reached from the local capital Pula, the remains of a Roman villa stand over a quiet beach – no barrier ropes, no tickets to buy. And just outside Rovinj, you can taste the salt in the air while walking the vineyards and olive groves at Mare, producer of the local malvasia white.

From Rovinj’s old town, cobbled paths curve around baroque St. Euphemia church to Puntalina, a taverna so close to the water that diners can feel sea spray on their faces and descend ancient marble stairs to dangle their feet in the water between courses. The food still leans into the Italian archetype established centuries ago – pasta with truffles and Adriatic mussels; artichokes, tapenades and squid risotto.

When it comes to souvenirs, Sladoljev steers visitors toward Aura, a family distillery that‘s revived the taste for biska, a local brandy from inland Istria. It‘s made from wild herbs, apples, mistletoe and local grasses, and sold out of a 17th-century cottage near Rovinj’s highest point.

Where to stay: Villa Tuttorotto is a grandly decorated converted medieval Venetian palazzo in old Rovinj.

Folegandros, Greece: Where there are more paths than paved roads

Arrive by ferry from Athens in 3.5 hours, or by ferry from Santorini. Your insider guide: Resort owner Ricardo Larriera.

On the Cycladic island of Folegandros, there are only 300 permanent residents and just one main road, where the only traffic jams involve beasts of burden. It‘s hardly a household name, which is why Larriera, an ex-advertising-exec originally from Australia, was able to nab 80 acres of clifftop by the sea for his new resort, Gundari.

“There’s a sense of timelessness going back not just to the old Greece but to old values, old senses of community,” Larriera says. “When you’re driving down the road, everyone waves to one another, everyone stops to chat – it‘s a bit like high school.”

Larriera touts the resort‘s ecocredentials: desalination plant, solar-powered pool, native-plant gardens and a fleet of electric vehicles. Partnering with sustainability consultants back home, he resolved to build almost entirely with traditional methods from the stone beneath his feet. “We took a punt and felt whatever we excavated would be lovely stone – and it was.” When it‘s 40 degrees outside, the rooms are cooled by the natural earth slab. But his most resounding success is maintaining and helping to regenerate the local population of rare Eleonora’s falcons. His coterie of ornithologists built wooden nests for the birds that shade eggs from the sun and lead guided falcon walks.

The eponymous clifftop town, or chora, is best experienced at night, when the five plazas fill with locals and visitors. “It doesn’t feel touristed,” Larriera says. “Community matters here.” The best restaurants are owned by the farmers themselves, including Chic, where the fresh lamb and produce are island-raised, and Paliomos Winery, serving recipes from the family’s yiayia (grandmother) with its own wines.

From Gundari, a rocky footpath leads across the south of the island to Katergo Beach, lapped by the denim-blue Aegean. In the other direction is the fine sand of St. Nikolaos beach and Larriera’s favourite restaurant, Papalagi. “It‘s like the Bondi of Folegandros,” he says, referring to the famous Aussie spot, “a cliffside restaurant with spectacular seafood and a charismatic owner called Paris. You can take a beautiful walk past ancient lighthouses to get there.” That said, without proper roads, beautiful walks are very much a part of the island experience.

“From a nature perspective it‘s spectacular, and you get to enjoy that through cobblestone paths and hiking trails that remind you this place has been going for thousands of years.”

Where to stay: If Gundari is booked, stay at Anemi Hotel & Spa, a contemporary white stucco villa with a popular pool bar steps from the port.