It’s been less than two weeks since we left Europe for Asia, and yet it feels like a lifetime ago. That could possibly be because we’re in Varanasi, India which is a whole world different than Europe. Having had enough of the sensory overload from the city, we’re hiding in a café drinking coffee (made with filtered water) and reflecting on our 100 days in Europe. Continue reading
Budapest has it all. Seriously, within a few hours of being there I had settled on the fact that it was my favourite city so far in Europe. And that’s not an easy feat, we’ve covered most of the ‘must-see’ European cities: Reykjavik, London, Brussels, Paris, Zurich, Rome, Florence, Milan, Venice, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Dubrovnik, Athens, Munich, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Berlin, Warsaw, Krakow, Prague, Vienna, and Bratislava. Yes, I admit we’ve missed a few, but you get the point. I thought Budapest would be cool, but I didn’t expect that much – and it blew my expectations away. The city just has so much to offer from modern vegan and raw food eateries to wine bars and hip cafes to a huge influx of craft beer and brewed-in-house bars to organic food markets and Christmas markets all mixed with traditional markets and delis selling Hungarian sausage and around the corner from a crumbling church hundreds of years old is a crumbling building turned into a Ruin Bar. I mean, every European city is a complex mix of hundreds (usually thousands) of years of history and modernization (which in many ways is synonymous to Westernization) but Budapest seemed to pull off the mix of new and old best. It has managed to keep it’s complex and lengthy history alive while showcasing how far the economy and people have come in the past decade. Continue reading
We arrived in Bratislava in the afternoon and our airbnb host met us at the train station. He had already bought three tickets for the bus and he offered to carry my luggage. He rode the bus with us to our apartment and showed us around. The apartment was one of the best we have stayed in – everything was there. The bathroom was stocked with toiletries and the kitchen was stocked with everything you could possibly need for cooking as well as enough food in the pantry for a dinner or two, all for our use. We were very pleased and happy with the fantastic start to this new country. Continue reading
After an activity-packed 11 days in Poland, we were exhausted when we arrived in Prague. We booked an Airbnb room in someone’s apartment but lucked out and had the place to ourselves for the first two days and we took the opportunity to sleep-in and relax. Our first day and a half in Prague we really didn’t do anything, and it felt great. The apartment was spacious with a beautiful view and a Starbucks across the street; it was pretty easy to do nothing. Continue reading
If you follow our blog, or know us, you probably understand that we are not your typical ‘two-week tourist’. The ‘two-week tourist’ as we call them, tries to do everything in two weeks; it makes sense, they have two weeks off a year and want to do/see as much as possible in that limited time. They also probably have a daily budget close to ten times ours. For us to try and be that type of tourist in all of the places we have been too (over 112 cities and counting), it would simply be impossible – we would have ran out of money months ago and likely been so exhausted we’d just have flown home. Continue reading
Attending a Polish Wedding was never something I imagined myself doing. So, when the opportunity presented itself, I was pretty excited. First off, it’s an honour to be invited to a wedding – anywhere in the world. Second, a wedding is an incredible way to get a better understanding of local culture and traditions. Continue reading
We left Berlin early in the morning to ensure we arrived in Warsaw on time to meet Dan’s sister, Jessika, and his mother, Ewa, at the airport when their plane landed. When we arrived (a bit late) they were waiting for us with Ewa’s brother, Krzysztof. We picked up our rental car and followed Krzysztof back to Otwock, a small town about 45 minutes from Warsaw where Ewa grew up. Her entire family still lives in that town and her brother and his family currently live in the same apartment she grew up in! Since she left, Ewa has only returned to Poland twice, once in 1998 with Jessika and Daniel. Dan barely remembers this visit and was essentially re-meeting his entire family; a very special part of our trip! Continue reading
Dalmatian dogs originated on the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia, hence the name, and we saw plenty of them strutting around. I saw a postcard which would make the perfect cover photo for this post: a Dalmatian sitting tall and proud on an ancient stone wall overlooking the Adriatic Sea. I would have loved to Google that photo and stick it in here but that would be strictly against our rule of only posting our own photos so you’ll just have to live with imagining it (or Google it yourself). Continue reading