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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…
I’m Goin’ Up The Country…Where The Water Tastes Like Wine Bucharest was a pretty city, as cities go, but after a heavy dose of traffic, noise, and crowds, we always end up needing a dose of the mountains. A haven, where we can stroll through winding trails listening to birds sing and dance, gaze upon…
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…
Well I’m Aching All Over Another damn travel day: Pack – unpack – pack – unpack, it seems like that’s all I do. Then there’s the joy of lugging the bags to a taxi or bus station or train station. And lately – the last three months anyway – it’s been hot, really hot. I’m…
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…
Two Wrongs Make A Right? “I’m not sure I understand what all the hype is about Plovdiv, it doesn’t seem all that great to me,” I tell Carrie. “You’re too harsh. It’s a great city. We just aren’t doing it justice.” She counters. I shrugged and let it go hoping that I’m not stuck…
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…
Fair Weather Travelers We’re almost always about the wine unless it involves any form of discomfort, at which point we head for the exits as fast as possible. And that was the case for us in Melnik. As you could tell from Carrie’s last post we loved Melnik, especially the Melnik wines, but it was…
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…
