Italy

Italy doesn't really need a pitch. The food is the best in Europe, the history is the best in the West, and the variety from the Dolomites to Sicily is bigger than people remember. Skip July-August if you can; the country is too good to share with crowds in 38°C heat.

The first-timer route still works: Rome, Florence, Venice by fast train, with Tuscany folded in. Better: pick two bases and slow down. Days organize themselves around food — espresso standing at the bar, a long lunch, an evening passeggiata before dinner at nine. Trenitalia and Italo make the big cities cheap and easy to link; the money goes to rooms in the famous centers and to the Uffizi and Colosseum bookings you should have made weeks ago.

The honest part: Venice, Florence, and the Amalfi Coast in summer are among the most crowded places in Europe, timed entries and queues included, and August adds heat and shuttered restaurants. Anywhere within sight of a major monument, the food turns reliably mediocre. If you want spontaneity in peak season, you'll lose. But walk ten minutes off any famous piazza and Italy reverts to itself — and even a fifth visit turns up a region you somehow missed.