12 of the Best Free European Attractions

Many European cities have the bad reputation of being expensive to visit. And when you plan to see as much as you can during your vacation, the entrance fees really add up. Thankfully, there are also lovely places which can be visited for free. These can vary from a stroll down a popular street, to spending time in a park or visiting incredible historical places like churches.

1 – St. Peter’s Basillica, Vatican City

St. Peter’s Basillica is one of the greatest Roman Catholic churches in the entire world. It is also has the largest interior, capable of holding 60,000 people. Catholic tradition holds that the tomb of Saint Peter, one of the Apostles of Jesus, is under the altar of the basillica. Despite popular misconception, St. Peter’s Basillica is not a cathedral (as it is not the seat of a bishop).

There was an old Constantinian basillica on this site since the 4th century and the present building was completed in 1626. It is associated with Michelangelo (the first chapel on the north aisle contains the famous Pietà) and with papacy. There are over 100 tombs within the Basillica, many located beneath the building (including 91 popes).

2 -The Pantheon, Rome, Italy

The Pantheon is the best-preserved Roman building in Rome and was built as a temple to all Gods in Ancient Rome. The current build is actually a reconstruction of the first temple which existed here. Since the 7th century, the Pantheon has been used a Roman Catholic church (and yes, masses are still held here on important Catholic holidays).

One of the most interesting features of the build is the central opening, called the Great Eye. When the Pantheon was used as a temple the fire inside the temple would create smoke which escaped through the opening. Today it is the only light source in the building.

3 – British Museum, London, UK

The British Museum is one of the most important museums in the entire world. The collections comprise over 7 million items, depicting the human history from its beginning to the present days. Among the key highlights you will be able to see: the list of the kings of Egypt from the Temple of Ramesses II, the Rosetta Stone, fragment of the beard of the Great Sphinx, Mummy of ‘Ginger’ (3300 BC), mummy of Cleopatra from Thebes and much more.

The museum opened in 1759 and has always been free to visit (except for the special exhibitions which usually require a fee to be paid).

Also free in London: Changing of the guards, Museum of London and many more

4 – Schonbrunn Gardens, Vienna, Austria

Schönbrunn Palace is one of the most important cultural monuments in Austria. For decades it has been a very popular tourist destination for those visiting Vienna. Only the Gardens can be visited for free and they are worth some hours of your time.

The gates open at 6 a.m (or 6:30 a.m. during winter) and close between 5:30 p.m. and 8 p.m., depending on the season. If you arrive by metro you’ll probably enter the grounds via the Zoo gate while if you come by tram, you can enter the grounds via the main gate.

The Privy Garden is located between the palace and the Gloriette (on top of the hill). In between those, there’s Neptune Fountain. The western parts of the grounds have been turned into an English Garden. On both sides of the Privy Garden there are 32 sculptures. Generally speaking, unless you enter a building, the maze, the Zoo or climb up to see the views from the Gloriette, you don’t need to pay anything.

It’s pretty much impossible to see all the parts of the Gardens during one day. It gets very hot during summer so make sure to bring enough water (you have to enter to Zoo to get to the mini-shops, so that’s not exactly a good idea) and good walking shoes. It’s pretty easy to climb the hill to the Gloriette and the views are magnificent, even if you don’t go up on the viewing deck.

Also free in Vienna: St. Stephan’s Cathedral, Hofburg Gardens, walk on the Ring Street

5 – Gellért Hill Cave, Budapest, Hungary

Gellért Hill Cave is also known as Saint Ivan’s Cave, from the hermit who lived here and was believed to have cured the sick by using the natural water from the muddy lake located next to the cave. The entrance in the cave is located 75 feet above the Danube River, on Gellért Hill (right opposite the Gellért Hotel & Baths).

Between 1926 and 1951, the cave served as chapel and monastery, while during the World War II it was a field hospital. When the Soviet Army captured Budapest, the entrance to the cave was sealed and it wasn’t until 1992 that the cave was open again for the monks and the public.

The church can be visited for free but it’s advisable to show up right after the mass (while the organist still plays religious songs).

Also free in Budapest: guided tours of The Parliament (free for EU citizens only), a walk on Margaritsziget (an island)

6 – War Museum, Athens, Greece

Inaugurated in 1975, the museum depicts the history of warfare over thousands of years. You can admire weapons from every era, starting with stone axes and ending with fighter plane.

The primitive weapons and the Bronze Age ones are among the most interesting. If you are interested in the Greek War of Independence, you can learn about the weapons used. Children will most likely enjoy climbing in the cockpit of a fighter plane.

Also free in Athens: Changing of the guards in front of the Parliament, Railway Museum, Museum of Popular Musical Instruments, The Hellenic Children’s Museum, Municipal Gallery of Athens

7 – Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, France

Paris is filled with incredible places to visit and Notre Dame is one of those iconic landmarks we all have learned about at some point during our school years.

The beautiful Gothic Cathedral is located on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité. It was the first building in the world to use the flying buttress, although it was not originally designed to use them. The construction began in 1163 and was completed in 1345.

Just like visiting any other Roman Catholic or Orthodox cathedral, make sure to dress accordingly (or how they put it on the official web site “show a respectful attitude, through both their behaviour and their clothing”).

Also free in Paris: The Louvre Gardens , Sacre Coeur

8 – The Berlin Wall, Berlin, Germany

Once the barrier dividing West and East Berlin, the Berlin Wall is an important part of the German history. The wall fell on November 9, 1989 after a series of protests. Right after the fall, the government opened ten new border crossings and visa-free travel was allowed starting on December 23, 1989. In the summer of 1990 the official dismantling of the Wall began.

Today, only some sections of the walls exist as memorials, and nearly all of the original wall is gone. The longest remaining stretch is the East Side Gallery, which is now considered an open-air museum. There are also sections of the wall along with their histories located in the busy Alexanderplatz area (pictured above).

Also free in Berlin: Reichstag

9 – Charles Bridge, Prague, Czech Republic

The Charles Bridge is one of the most beautiful places and best-known attractions in Prague. And best of all, it’s free. The stone Gothic bridge started its life in 1352. There are towers on each end of the bridge but only one can be climbed. The bridge is lined with 30 statues (most of them are replicas of the originals). Touching the status of St. John of Nepomuk is believed to bring luck.

The pedestrian bridge is almost always full so if you want to avoid the crowds, plan to walk on the bridge either early in the morning or late at night.

Also free in Prague: the Prague Astronomical Clock

10 – Red Square, Moscow, Russia

The most famous square in Moscow and possibly the most famous in the entire Europe is, without a doubt, the Red Square. During the Soviet era, the square was used to hold all the parades, and soviet rulers even wanted to demolish the famous St. Basil’s Cathedral only to have more room for their displays of power. Nowadays, the square is a preferred place to organize concerts.

Today the Kremlin and the Red Square are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The buildings located in the square are: Lenin’s Mausoleum, the State Historical Museum, Kremlin towers, the Iberian Gate and Chapel and St. Basil’s Cathedral.

Also free in Moscow: Alexander Gardens

11 – Vigeland Sculpture Park, Oslo, Norway

Part of Oslo’s Frogner Park, Vigeland Park features 212 bronze and granite sculptures created by Gustav Vigeland. Among the interesting art pieces, one can admire the fountain – originally designed to be placed in front of the Parliament -, the Monolith and the eight statues of children playing (in the area called Children’s Playground).

The park is also known for the lovely picnic area and the possibility to sunbath.

12 – La Rambla, Barcelona, Spain

The most famous street in Barcelona is, without a doubt, La Rambla. During summer it’s awfully crowded with both locals and tourists but it represents a lovely way to do some people watching and window shopping. The middle part of the street is pedestrian only and at any time during the tourist season it comes to life due to the live performances and the flower market. There are interesting buildings on both sides of the street and if you want to relax, go to Placa Reial, just off La Rambla. And for a colorful and exotic meal, check out La Boqueria, the iconic street market filled with pretty much anything you might want to buy or eat.

13 of the Weirdest Bars in the World

In the search for more unusual, out-of this-world travelling experiences, travellers are being lured to the ends of the earth to find the most eccentric, wacky and exciting activities, sights and venues. So if you’re fond of a tipple or two, you might want to try one of these bars. Their locations and gimmicks are sometimes enough to pique your interest, but add alcohol to the mix and you’re in for quite a fun time. Here are 13 of the world’s most strange, exciting and different watering holes that will leave you thirsty for more.

1. Clinic – Singapore

Many people don’t like visiting hospitals so this bar might be a little questionable in taste for some. Clinic is a hospital themed bar located within the shopping and entertainment district, Clarke Quay.

It’s not surprising that the architect of the bar was wacky artist Damien Hirst, famous for such works as the cow in formaldehyde. The pill shaped rooms are all interlinked and are designed to give a drug ‘trip’ effect. Guests can drink from test tubes and IV bags, sit in wheelchairs instead of sitting on bar stools, lie on hospital beds with white curtains, and boogie on the capsule-shaped dance floor in the nightclub, Morphine.

The restaurant is designed like an operating room where guests can dine sitting in gold wheelchairs and eating from kidney shaped steel trays. Yum, I just hope the food doesn’t taste like hospital food…

2. Absolut Icebar – Sweden

The very first bar to be made entirely of ice can be found in the small town of Jukkasjarvi in Sweden. Although novelty ice bars seem to be popping up everywhere these days, even in the baking hot Niger desert, the Absolut Icebar, within the Ice Hotel, is the original ice bar.

Guests don thermal capes and huddle together in freezing cold conditions surrounded by carefully-crafted ice sculptures. The Absolut vodka cocktails are served in ice glasses, just make sure you don’t get your lips stuck to them!

The ice is sourced from the Torne River in the village of Jukkasjarvi and the frosty bar is only open during the winter from December to April.

3. Red Sea Star Underwater Restaurant, Bar and Observatory – Israel

The world’s first underwater bar, the Red Sea Star, is submerged six meters below the Red Sea in Eilat. Each table has Plexiglass windows – two either side and one above – so that diners can admire the fish, coral, and other sea life from their dinner table. The décor is even marine-inspired with jellyfish stools, urchin cushions, and anemone lighting fixtures.

Before the Red Sea Star was built in 1998, the area on which it stands was a damaged seabed, but four years before it opened the Red Sea Star team started growing a coral nursery surrounding the reef to save and preserve what used to be an active and colourful coral reef.

4. Bojangles – Australia

In the town of Alice Springs in the red centre of Australia, backpackers and travellers on their way to visit Uluru will almost certainly end up at this curious bar.

Walk through the closely guarded saloon doors and you’ll be amazed at what you see – boots hanging from the ceilings, snakes in tanks, and a coffin with a suit of armour inside which says ‘How Much To Touch Ned’s Nuts?’ Pull out some peanuts and throw the shells on the floor, because at Bo’s anything goes.

Sounds like a quirky bar already, but wait – it gets better. If you go to the bathroom you might get a little surprise, for when you come to wash your hands, each tap turns on the water in a different sink!

5. DM Bar – Estonia

If you’re a huge fan and you just can’t get enough of Depeche Mode, this bar in the capital city of Estonia, Tallinn, is entirely devoted to the band.

It doesn’t seem the most obvious choice of band to dedicate a bar to, but the synth-poppers from Basildon in the UK are extremely popular anywhere east of Berlin. The bar’s walls are filled with Depeche Mode memorabilia and guess what’s on the playlist for the night? You guessed it, Depeche Mode songs.

Members of the band Martin Gore and Andy Fletcher have actually partied the night away in the bar which is sure to be one of the strangest hat tips to the band.

6. Hobbit House – Philippines

Hobbit House in the Philippines is based on the J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy, “Lord of The Rings,” and all the staff in the bar are friendly and charming dwarfs. The dark, smoke-filled bar offers around 100 different kinds of beer and is a great live music venue.

Opened 35 years ago, The Hobbit House has been around in Manila so long, it is a famous institution. The Iowa-born owner, Jim Turner, is an ex-Peace Corps volunteer who has rescued these dwarfs from the slums and streets of Manila and given them an honest place to work. He has given them new cultural identities and they are no longer shunned or avoided; they are respectable business people.

The bartenders are merry characters and entertainers who are up for a laugh and will happily pose with tourists for photos. The Hobbit House features possibly the world’s smallest Elvis impersonator, hobbit jugglers, comics, dancers, flame-eaters, and singers.

7. Baobab Bar – South Africa

Drinking a beer inside a tree? You wouldn’t think anyone would even fit, but you will inside this 6,000 year old Baobab tree.

The hollow 72-foot high tree offers a cool interior to step into from the heat outside and now has a bar, dart board and benches.

It was created in a Baobab tree in Sunland Farm in Limpopo to keep the thirsty locals happy and now thousands of tourists travel from miles around to have a pint in this interesting establishment.

The trunk has a 155-foot circumference and is wide enough to fit 40 people inside it. It even has its own cellar with natural ventilation to keep the beer cool!

The pub is owned by the van Heerdens, who decided to open a pub when they discovered a natural hollow in the tree in the 1980s. While clearing out the hollow centre of the tree trunk, the van Heerdens found historical evidence of Bushmen who may have once lived in the tree.

8. Das Klo Bar – Germany

One of the most bizarre drinking experiences ever, Klo Bar in Berlin is reputed to attract more tourists than Charlottenburg Castle and the Museum Island. Klo 1 and 2 no longer exist, but Klo 3, which started life on Christmas Day 1971, still does. Part flea market, part zoo, and part theme park, Das Klo (German for “the toilet”) is meant to evoke the inside of a toilet, but it ends up giving visitors the feel of stepping onto an Indiana Jones movie set.

Prepare to be shocked – expect red wine in blood transfusion packs, electric shocks from tables, rotating bar stools, a hammer that comes down unexpectedly, and a bird spider, boa constrictor and iguana. It’s an attack on the senses – upon entering Klo you’ll be sprinkled by water, spooked by skeletons and a gust of air might blow ladies’ skirts up. Lightning flashes across the rooms and there is a false ceiling of paper mâché rocks that fall in a giant avalanche every 10 minutes. A kilted figure in the ladies loo is booby-trapped so that whenever a lady lifts the kilt to see if he is going commando, a siren goes off in the bar.

Seating is a choice of coffins or toilet seats, the beer is served in new urine specimen bottles, and the food is sausages with sauerkraut fetchingly presented in huge enamel potties. Supposedly most of the owner’s ideas came to him sitting on the loo.

9. Skeleton Bar – Switzerland

This odd museum-bar was designed by Swiss man Hans Rudi Giger who worked as a designer on the Oscar-winning Alien movies. Giger designed the title character, the human-eating Alien monster, and won an Oscar for best special effects in 1980.

The bar in Gruyere, Switzerland, will remind you of the alien – or perhaps sitting inside a monster’s stomach, with its spinal chord-like skeleton decoration.

The creepy, horror movie-inspired bar is decorated with skeleton bones throughout, from the walls and chairs to the flower vases.

10. Floyd’s Pelican Bar – Jamaica

Floyds has to be the coolest bar in the Caribbean. Looking out from the shore at the dot on the horizon, your first reaction might be “is that really a bar?”

Perched on stilts on a sandbar, Floyds is made completely of driftwood and palm leaves. Bring a sharp object and you can carve your name in the floor. It looks like it might fall over, but it’s surprisingly sturdy.

Floyds sits about a mile off the south coast of Jamaica in Parottee Bay and local fisherman will take you out there. There’s nothing like a cold beer in the middle of the ocean, doing a bit of snorkelling and enjoying a fresh lobster meal prepared by Floyd himself. You might spot some pelicans and a few sting rays too.

11. Alux Restaurant & Lounge – Mexico

Alux, in Playa Del Carmen, is one of only two restaurants in the world inside a cavern.

The whole Yucatan peninsula in Mexico is riddled with an interconnected system of caverns and subterranean rivers and after years of planning and restoration, Alux restaurant and lounge was opened for the public to enjoy this natural environment with a drink in hand.

The Flintstones-like cavern has numerous chambers where you can lounge, drink, dine, and dance amongst the stalagmites and stalactites, which are lit up in shades of violet, blue and pink. Small, magical beings called ‘Aluxes’ are said to occupy these caverns, so look out for one as you dance the night away! It’s a drinking spot you mustn’t miss if you’re staying in Playa Del Carmen.

12. William Thornton Floating Bar & Restaurant – British Virgin Islands

The William Thornton is a steel 100-foot schooner with a restaurant and bar on board, moored at The Bight off Norman Island.

The Willy T, as it is affectionately known, began life in the 80s as a wooden Baltic vessel. But after the boat sprung a leak and sank at its anchorage, the owners, Annie and Mick Gardner, replaced it with the larger steel boat everyone knows today.

The William Thornton who the floating bar is named after was born in the British Virgin Islands and is the man behind the design of the United States Capitol building.

13. The Rock Bar – Bali

Perched 14 meters above the Indian Ocean, this open-top bar is literally served straight up on the rocks.

It’s a perfect place to sit and watch the sunset, sip cocktails and admire the view of the perfect Bali waves splashing against the rocks below. What makes it even more novel is the outdoor elevator which takes you down the cliff to the bar. Beware though, it only holds four so you might end up taking the stairs!

Live musicians play on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays so you can sit back and enjoy some tunes with a view. Located within the Ayana Resort & Spa in Jimbaran Bay, The Rock Bar will certainly leave a lasting impression and is Bali’s most chic sunset and after-dark destination.