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…
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…
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….