Holy hippopotamus, we’re in Africa! After nearly 8 months of world travel, we’re finally on the home stretch, and both visiting the African continent for the first time. Our plans over the 3 weeks we’re here include some time in Cape Town, a self-drive safari in Namibia to Etosha, a few days in Joburg, a 1-week private safari in the Kruger, followed (finally) by our flight home to Seattle via Dubai! We decided to stay in Cape Town at the…
After 3 excellent days of hiking in Skye, we stayed the night in Inverness (“the capitol of the Scottish Highlands”) before heading further afield to more adventures. We had the chance to check out nearby Culloden Battlefield, the site of the last battle of the Jacobite Rising. This was especially interesting for Amanda since it has become familiar from the Outlander books, but I also got something out of it. From there, we were off to Cairngorms National Park, the largest park…
We started our Irish journey in Dublin, arriving on a Friday afternoon. We were able to get some errands done (laundry, haircut, etc) and check out some of the sights in town. Dublin is super adorable and while it’s a larger city, still feels very Irish. I was still recovering from my migraine, so we took it easy and had a light dinner at a local Mexican restaurant called Tolteca. We had low expectations, but it was almost identical to…
After what felt like far too short a visit to Prague, we traveled to Berlin for a 4 day and 5 night stay. Once again, the bus was the way to go, being cheap and fast, with wifi and coffee included in the price. We chose to stay at the Leonardo Hotel in Mitte, which is close to the former Jewish quarter, U-Bahn train system, and plenty of good restaurants. Berlin has a totally different feel than the previous ten-or-so…
After Krakow, we continued our European city tour with a visit to Wroclaw for 3 nights, and by the 3rd night I can say we actually learned how to pronounce the city’s name. We stopped there partly to break up our journey to Prague, and partly to see the city (Poland’s 4th largest) and nearby Karkonoski National Park. We were also excited to see the Jewish quarter with its synagogue, restaurants, and memorials, and (unrelated) the random dwarf statues scattered…
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…
There’s not a ton of touristy stuff to do in Split during the winter, which is all the more reason to slow down and enjoy the place for what it is. We’d been looking forward to our stay at Le Meridien ever since my co-worker Dave recommended it last summer before our trip even began. Once we arrived into Croatia on the early morning ferry from Italy, we headed straight to the hotel and quickly made ourselves at home. Since…