Extending from the Atlantic to the Arctic Ocean and the Ural Mountains, Europe has about 50 destinations with many interesting destinations from the sunny beaches of the south to the mountains and vibrant cities.
The most familiar to Finns are not only the neighboring city destinations of Stockholm and Tallinn, but also other metropolises, such as London, Paris and Berlin. Popular beach resorts in Spain, Greece, Italy and Portugal hold their ground year after year, and many holiday experiences also include motoring in Central Europe.
According to Countryaah.com, Eastern European cities led by St. Petersburg and Budapest are among the rising favorites, as are beach holidays on the beautiful Croatian coast.
On the Beach Beach Europe page, we present European countries and travel destinations. In our destination guides you will find both comprehensive information on familiar holiday destinations in Europe and new ideas for those who have traveled a lot.
Geology and surface shape
Compared to the other continents, Europe has a particularly rich structure and coastal development. The largest peninsulas are the Scandinavian, the Iberian (Pyrenees peninsula), the Balkan and the Apennine peninsula. The surface shape of continental Europe is determined in the north and northwest by the remnants of the Old Paleozoic Caledonian Mountains in the west of the Scandinavian Peninsula (Scandinavia) and in the northern and central part of the British Isles as well as by the plains and mountainous areas in the area of the Precambrian Fennosarmatic continental block (Fennosarmatia, Baltic shield). On the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mountains in western Norway have partly alpine character due to the rich glaciation and deeply cut fjords. The extensive Eastern European Plain (Russian tablet, part of the Fennosarmatian continental block), which is largely covered in the north by glacial deposits and in the south by loess, goes in the west without any sharp border into the central European glacial bordering the Baltic and North Seas embossed lowlands over. Located on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, one half geologically to Europe and the other half to North America, Iceland is of volcanic origin.
The diverse low mountain ranges of Western and Central Europe include the remnants of the Upper Palaeozoic Variscan Mountains and Mesozoic sediments (the plains land in the south-east of England, the French plains land with the Paris basin, the Swabian-Franconian plains land), basin landscapes and sinkholes such as that of the Rhône Rift valley reaching across the Upper Rhine to the Oslofjord as well as phenomena of tertiary and quaternary volcanism (including in the Eifel, Westerwald and Vogelsberg). During the Pleistocene, the higher low mountain ranges carried local glaciers, in the periglacial area rubble layers and block seas formed, and loess layers (loess) formed on the edge of the mountains. The Variscan Mountains extend from the Massif Central to the northwest across Brittany (Armorikanisches Gebirge) to southwest England and northern Spain (Galicia) as well as across the Vosges, Black Forest, Rhenish Slate Mountains, Harz, Thuringian Forest, Bavarian Forest and Ore Mountains to the northeast to the Sudetes. The highest peaks are 1,886 m in the Massif Central and 1,602 m in the Giant Mountains. The Urals also emerged from the Variscan mountain formation.
The young (tertiary) fold mountains of the Betic Cordillera (in Andalusia), the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Carpathians and the Balkan Mountains, the Apennines and the Dinaric Mountains, which are located in the Hellenids (Pindos, Mountains of the Peloponnese, Crete and Rhodes) in Greece. In addition to steep high mountain forms, remnants of older mountain ranges include low mountain range forms (e.g. in the Alps, Eastern Carpathians and in the Dinaric Mountains). In the Alps there are still extensive glaciers, in the Pyrenees there are a few Kar glaciers, otherwise only patches of ice and firn. The alpine fold mountains surround the Po Valley, the Hungarian lowlands drained by the Danube and Tisza, and the lowlands of Wallachia (on the lower Danube).
The mountains of eastern and north-eastern Greece, on the other hand, are Variscan folded mountain ranges. The interior of the Iberian Peninsula is occupied by the wide-span plateau of the Spanish Meseta. The meseta, framed by mountains, formed in the area of the Variscan folded Iberian mass, which broke into clods in the Tertiary; Its cover layers, which were inclined and partly folded during various uplift processes, were later leveled to form a fuselage surface. – There are active volcanoes in the Mediterranean (Etna, Vesuv, Stromboli, Vulcano, Thira), on the arctic island of Jan Mayen (Beerenberg) and in Iceland (around 30 active volcanoes).
