Europe for Visitors Blog

For 2013, we've made a few small but significant changes to Europeforvisitors.com and our related travel-planning sites:

First, we've switched from a three-column to a two-column layout, with a top menu replacing the left-hand navigation bar. This will make our pages display better (and without horizontal scrolling) on most smartphones. It also should make our body text easier to read on smaller tablets like the iPad Mini and the Nexus 7.

Second, we've removed our photo from the page header, which now displays a simplified logo (see the enlarged sample above). This isn't an earth-shattering change, but it does put more visual emphasis on the editorial content of our pages, and it means one less object for your Web browser to request from our server.

Third--and perhaps most important--we're now using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to serve our pages from 23 data centers around the world. According to Google Analytics, our average page-loading time has decreased by about 60 per cent, and several tests have indicated that Europeforvisitors.com is now faster than 90+ percent of all Web sites.

Finally, we'll be spending much of this winter on updates and reformatting of "legacy content." We hope you'll continue to plan your travel with our main site and our subsidiary sites at:

Europe for Visitors

Venice for Visitors

Paris for Visitors

Rome for Visitors

Europe for Cruisers

ABOVE: A museum official shows off the airlock in the former State Security Service bunker near Leipzig, Germany.

The Museum im Stasi-Bunker, a.k.a. the Museum in the Stasi Bunker, offers an intriguing glimpse into life in the former German Democratic Republic.

The restored underground command post, which was designed to house 120 Stasi officers and two KGB liasons during an attack by NATO, occupies a wooded setting about 30 km or 19 miles from Leipzig, Saxony. During its heyday from 1972 to 1989, the site had a cover story: The GDR's powers-that-were claimed that it was a holiday retreat for Leipzig water and sewer workers.

For a two-page illustrated article about the bunker, which is open to the public once a month, see our Museum in the Stasi Bunker article in the Germany section of Europeforvisitors.com.

ABOVE: Don't make the mistake of standing in a long line at the Eiffel Tower: You'll save time and money when you skip the lift and take the steps instead.

We've just published an illustrated article at Paris for Visitors titled "Top 11 Tourist Mistakes in Paris (and how to avoid them)." The article, which is in the same vein as our earlier "Top 11 Tourist Mistakes in Venice" article, has pages titled: 

• Here today, gone tomorrow
• Arriving in high season
• Staying in the wrong arrondissement
• Commuting from the suburbs
• Lugging overloaded bags
• Sightseeing by the numbers
• Booking unnecessary tours
• Driving in Paris
• Overspending on local transport
• Being easy prey for pickpockets and purse-snatchers
• Saying "Adieu" instead of "Au revoir"

The article isn't just a list or slide show. Each page has practical advice and, in many cases, links to other resources at Paris for Visitors or elsewhere. 

If a trip to Paris is on your travel calendar, read our Top 11 Tourist Mistakes in Paris (and how to avoid them) before making your plans.