The search for Europe's most relaxing city – and why good things come in small packages
Another week, another travel survey revealing an unimpeachable truth - this time, a slew of data from a spa-focused holiday operator which claims to have unearthed the identity of the European city best disposed to provide a relaxing long weekend away.
It's an interesting idea, this "Relaxation Index" - 28 major urban dots on the soil of our home continent, compared and contrasted by the travel company Spa Seekers, and arranged into a league table of general chilledness using six different variables.
But while the news that Copenhagen (a city which has marketed itself so successfully as a kernel of Danish "hygge" cosiness that, in the mind's eye, it effectively resembles a thick wool sweater and a cup of tea on a rainy afternoon) emerges top of this pile is not really news at all, there are some intriguing results once you drill down into the figures. If you feel like doing this for yourself, you can find the complete statistics here.
Untranslatable phrases that reveal the soul of a nation
It should be said at this point that there are a couple of obvious issues with the way the results have been collated. The first is that every city mentioned is a national capital - which does rather undermine the pie-in-the-skyness of notoriously hot and busy Athens making the top ten. Have the compilers, for example, not heard of Lyon, Porto, Krakow, Valencia, Florence and other such places that are all distinctly more relaxing than the Greek kingpin?
The second is the use of the relevant country's length of shoreline as a valid factor in a city being an unflustering environment for a weekend away. While claiming 7,314km of Danish seafront as one of the viable reasons why time in coastal Copenhagen will leave you feeling refreshed (assuming you like beaches), throwing in 5,835km of Croatian waterline as explanation for Zagreb being a soothing destination - when it sits a full 168km inland, at the wrong end of a drive through the Ucka mountains (which this writer did as recently as April, and knows it takes two hours) - is a case of adding two and two to make 4,677, a bag of marshmallows, and all the unicorns you can ride.
But beyond this, there are nuggets of plausibility which suggest a wider accuracy - not least the point that the smaller the city, the greater the likelihood it will provide a mini-break where stress is a distant concept.
Three variables are crucial here - population density (number of inhabitants per square kilometre), the number of travellers passing though the main airport every year (in this case 2016; fewer people meaning shorter queues and less security delay) and the quality of public transport.
With these vital signs to the fore, it should be no shock that Copenhagen (population 1.3million; public transport superb) comes first, above Amsterdam (27th), Paris (26th), Madrid (25th), London (21st) and Rome (18th). Nor should it be wholly improbable that Zagreb (population 1.1million; public transport pinned to a hugely efficient tram system) could be fifth - even if it will take a lot more global warming for it to be deemed a beach destination.
At a glance | The "Relaxation Index" top 10
This approach also provides a surprising, and pleasing, runner-up. Luxembourg City (population 116,323, centre so small that you can walk it easily) rarely features in the upper echelons of city-break tables, and yet there it is in a noble second.
Quite rightly. It is neither well known nor appreciated by European travellers - general perception has it as a nest of grey-suited bankers chewing through their expense accounts in dull but expensive restaurants. But those who have bothered to seek it out - in its delicate position between northern France and south-western Germany - will know that it is a compact delight.
It is certainly one of the continent's most picturesque capitals, perching, as it does, above - and within - a steep-sided gorge where the Alzette and Pétrusse rivers meet. Spend 48 hours in its company and you can eat in the restaurants dotted around the central Place d'Armes, shop for high fashion on Rue Philippe II, and marvel at the mix of Gothic, Baroque and Renaissance styles in the Cathedrale Notre-Dame (which, though far tinier than its Paris namesake, is arguably just as attractive).
On the same basis, I will cry foul at the relegation of Sofia to the bottom of the list. The Bulgarian capital (population 1.7million) is troubled by the same dearth of profile - and probably suffers in the Relaxation Index because its public transport system is decidedly patchy.
But you don't need an elaborate Tube network to enjoy a city which offers more than most realise. My last visit there brought me the antique red-brick grandeur of St Sofia Church (which dates back to the sixth century), the ancient wonders of the National Museum of History (not least the gleaming gold of the Panagyurishte Treasure; historymuseum.org) and the burble of the Tsentralni Halite market. That all of this is served in a place whose sometimes stern architecture seems to leave it marooned between modern Europe and the Iron Curtain realm it once inhabited only adds to the charm. And having seen all of it on foot, I cannot recall a single moment when I felt anything less than relaxed.
Good weekend-break things coming in small packages? It would seem so, however you arrange the figures.
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