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Venice, Ljubljana, Zagreb, and Budapest were a blur, but we made it to France with plenty of time to see what we wanted to see. Namely, Nice, Montpellier, then four weeks exploring the different wine regions before wrapping up our little adventure in Perpignan. It’s hard to believe the end is near. A Nice Promenade…
“You know it’s almost September, right?” Pat asked me. I guess I had a vague notion. “Where are we going next?” he continued. That was a good question. We wanted to see so much; Moldova, Hungary, Croatia, and Slovenia before heading back into Italy and checking out Venice, then to France for Nice and Montpellier….
Our travels through Romania were winding down. We had hit and miss experiences throughout the country, mostly good (Sighisoara, Sibiu, Bucharest) to middling (Ploiesti, Brasov), and only one really bad experience (Sinaia). Our final stop was to be Cluj Napoca. Good? Bad? Or, indifferent? Let’s find out. The Romanian Connection A high school classmate…
I don’t have Writer’s Block because I am by no stretch of the imagination a writer, but this Sibiu post has been taking its good old time forming in my mind. I think it’s Blogger’s Block. It isn’t as serious as Writer’s Block, mainly because my livelihood doesn’t depend upon it. It’s rarely fatal, but…
Lunatic Fringe Why on earth would we leave nice, cool Sinaia in the beautiful Bucegi mountains to retrace our route back down to the blazing-hot Wallachian flatlands? Ploiești wasn’t even a tourist town. It was an oil producing and refining center. Had we finally gone mad? Were we being over-protective of our scotch? The voices didn’t…
As much as Pat complained about taxi drivers in his last post, we elected to take another taxi from Ruse, Bulgaria to Bucharest. It was about an hour and a half ride almost due north, and quite affordable given the speed and convenience relative to the train or bus. Fortunately, this taxi driver was a…
Are There Tri-Peds Here? We arrived in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria after an uneventful — although cramped — minibus ride from Plovdiv. (See Pat’s Plovdiv post if you missed it… ahem… Mom and Dad.) A taxi took us into town from the bus station and up a hill to our apartment. It seems like we are…
Rock Stars Like Us People greet us in public places all of the time, and Sofia was no exception. “Hello! Where are you from? How do you like my country?” They are eager to speak some English and hear if we like their country. We always oblige them and try to greet them back in…
Why does it seem that when I forget to charge the phone, it’s always on a travel day? Periods tend to start on travel days too, but that should probably be an entirely separate post. I used to wake up in a cold sweat the night before a travel day wondering if I plugged the…
We’re on the Road to Nowhere Just as the rain began, the minivan we had boarded in Kavala, Greece pulled into a gas station on the outskirts of Gotse Delchev, Bulgaria. The driver turned to the eight or so of us in the back, said something in Greek or Bulgarian, it really didn’t make a…
