by Mia Taylor
Last updated: 5:02 PM ET, Mon August 7, 2017
A European summer vacation is something most avid travelers relish.
But visits to the continent this month are not turning out to be so dreamy.
With a record heatwave, anti-tourism protests and airports overburdened by new screening regulations for visitors, many places in Europe are experiencing a less than ideal travel season.
The heatwave sweeping the continent is so intense it's been named after the devil: Lucifer. Temperatures have been above 104 degrees, causing wildfires, fatalities and drought, The Telegraph reported.
This is Europe's hottest summer in a decade, and the weather hub Meteoalarm has issued its highest grade "red" warnings for 10 countries.
Among the hardest hit are Greece, Croatia, Italy, France and Spain, according to The Telegraph. About 26 towns across Italy, including Rome and Palermo, are on a maximum alert list issued by the country's health ministry.
"The red alert indicates emergency conditions with possible negative effects on healthy and active people, not only groups at risk like the elderly, small children and people with chronic illnesses," said a health ministry statement.
High temperatures have already led to a 15 percent rise in hospital admissions in Italy as well as deaths in Italy and Romania, according to a separate report in The Guardian.
In Serbia the record heat caused train tracks to buckle while Slovenia reported experiencing what it called its first "tropical night," during which temperatures never got below 68 degrees, even at 1,500 meters above sea level.
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Making matters worse, airports throughout Europe are now struggling to implement stronger EU border controls, which is resulting in travelers spending hours waiting in lines and some missing flights.
If these issues aren't enough to put a damper on the European holiday season, anti-tourism protests have broken out in a variety of places. From Venice to Spain, locals who say tourism does more harm than good in their communities, have taken to the streets to express their anger.
In Venice, residents recently held a peaceful demonstration against mass tourism, while activists and anti-tourism groups in Spain vandalized tourist bikes, slashed the tires of a tourist bus and burst into restaurants carrying banners saying "Tourism is killing Mallorca."
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