Romania was... rainy. Our flight to Crete departed from Bucharest on April 14, so we had six days to spend in Romania before flying out. Bucharest seemed a bit depressing so we headed to the Carpathian mountains and the cute town of Brasov to spend the next five days. To decorate the city gates, they …
I've had a variation of a Beach Boys' song stuck in my head this week: 🎵 Serbia, Croatia, ooh I wanna take ya / Bosnia, Slovenia, North Macedonia / Albania, Montenegro, baby why don't we go? / To Greece not Kosovo 🎵 Serbia has been a different travel style for us. We usually wander and …
Budapest wasn't on the itinerary for this trip. We went five years ago, and while we liked it, we tend to travel General Sherman style--we burn through our checklist with the expectation that we will never return. We have never burned down a city. Geographically it didn't make sense to add this city, but it …
Venice is magical. This is our third visit to Italy, and on past trips I have found it frustrating, hot, and expensive. We are constantly shaking our heads and muttering Freaking Italy! as we deal with a nonsense processes, late transit, or poorly marked everything. My research told me that Venice would be like a …
We got up at 4:30am to catch our flight to Oslo. Our lack of sleep didn't make us grumpy, but I did fall asleep every time we sat down for the rest of the day. We went into a museum exhibit titled Sensory Overload that had moving colors on the walls and cacaphonous background noise. …
Separated by 50 miles of the Baltic Sea, Finland costs twice as much as Estonia and feels a world apart. Tallinn was yet another charming old world city. I am sure I have seen it in an old illustrated Grimm's fairy-tale book. The city walls are intact and only one section has been removed to …
Kaunas, Lithuania was quiet. I wasn't expecting much, and it was a good place to break the journey from Warsaw to Riga, but the city was empty. We were the only people in our entire hostel. They didn't even have staff and we checked in with a lock box. It was weird to be alone …
Wroclaw was very picturesque, but I have forgotten it already. A year from now we may distinguish the cities by whether it was windy or snowy, or maybe it will all meld together in the fuzzy, happy memory of Poland. I really like each of these cities and they seem like great places to live, …
We are back in Europe and it is everything we were hoping for. We recognize letters if not words and there is a logical pattern to ordinary activities. This is the easiest time we have had since Australia. Old town Krakow is a sweet old medieval city with a castle, soccer stadium, and central square. …
We stayed in the Red Sea town of Aqaba, just a few miles from Saudi Arabia and Egypt. It is much cheaper here than Israel, and our hotel suite cost less than a shared Airbnb room in Jerusalem. I wish I could filter that I don't want to rent from a group of college students. …
We Won't Melt 