“For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the Nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women, and children, mainly Jews from various countries of Europe.” Auschwitz-Birkenau 1940-1945 On our second day in Krakow, we did a tour to visit Auschwitz. We had originally wanted to do it on our own, but you can only visit Auschwitz with a guide, and all the Krakow tour operators buy out the tours…
To get to Krakow, we took the night train from Budapest. We got a sleeper car and thought it would be great because we got accommodation and transportation in one. Turns out you don’t sleep much on a sleeper train, especially one that makes frequent stops. I slept better on the turbulent ferry from Italy to Croatia! Needless to say, we were exhausted when we got to Krakow. We made our way to Kazimierz, the Jewish Quarter of Krakow where we…
After a weekend in lovely Bratislava, we bused to Budapest for 4 nights in the Hungarian capitol city. This felt like somewhat of a homecoming for me since my mom’s family immigrated from Hungary to the U.S. when things started getting bad for the Jews during WWII. And while my grandmother really comes from farther east, in a town that’s now part of Ukraine, seeing the synogogues, memorials, Hebrew signage, Jewish food, etc. really made both of us feel at…
After our time in Vienna, we took a one hour bus ride to Bratislava. We knew we would be going to Budapest, but when we looked on the map, we saw Bratislava on the way so we figured we’d swing by for a couple days to check it out. Bratislava is the capitol of Slovakia, which happens to have the 3rd largest growing economy in Europe. Not many people think about Slovakia as a happening place when you think about Europe, but…
Our first order of business upon arriving in Vienna from Ljubljiana was to drink some Austrian beer, so we did just that. We ended up picking a lovely Airbnb with high ceilings and tons of space, though it wasn’t as central as we’d hoped. On the bright side, it was close to Naschmarkt which, at night, has a bunch of restaurants with outdoor seating, beer on tap, and big food menus. Though we enjoyed our beers, we didn’t stay out…
We took the Flixbus from Zagreb to Ljubljana. It was fast (2 hours!), cheap (€18 for the two of us!), and had wifi! In all honesty, we had no idea what to expect from this town. We had no idea how to pronounce the name (it’s lee-yoob-lee-yanna) and we had not really heard much about Slovenia. I think this is probably the best way to be introduced to a place because you have no expectations. We loved it! We got…
It seems everywhere we go, either Amanda or I find a terrible pun or phrase to repeat over and over. In Italy, I liked to remind my wife that “this place is ruined,” or I’d sing “That’s Amoré” in my best Italian accent. In Zagreb, the best Amanda could do was ask “Can I Zagreb you anything?” Turns out there aren’t a lot of punny phrases to make out of Croatia’s capitol city, but we have few complaints for the…
Holy crap, guys. Istria is the BOMB! It is the northwestern region of Croatia, heavily influenced by Italy, and home of the largest truffle ever discovered. We spent four nights there, and we were sad when we had to leave. After a long day at Plitvice and driving, we arrived in Rovinj and settled into our apartment. Our host, Claudia, gave us a ton of restaurant suggestions, both local and throughout Istria. We told her we wanted to eat truffles…
After parting ways with our friends Eric and Lishan and beautiful Dubrovnik, we spent the good part of the next day making our way north to Zadar. We decided to stay in Zadar for 3 nights to explore the city and the two nearby national parks, Krka and Plitvice Lakes. We wasted no time getting out of town to Krka in the morning to check out the waterfalls and wildlife. We had two big observations of our visit there: Spring is just about to hit….
We were pretty psyched to head to Dubrovnik, the city that King’s Landing from Game of Thrones is based on. We weren’t disappointed. Dubrovnik is a beautiful city surrounded by beautiful water and mountains. Dubrovnik is located in a part of Croatia that is separated from the rest of Croatia by Bosnia and Herzegovina. We opted to take a bus down there, and we ended up getting to stop in B&H for ten minutes (cool!). After our four and a…