In 2021, when Cathy and I made our first ‘Pandemic Escape’ back to Iceland, I sent pictures to my then 82-year-old aunt, Edna. Her mother is our grandmother, so she too is Icelandic. I wanted to share with Edna some of our favorite places in Iceland and give her the feeling of ‘home’ like Cathy […]
Read More2023 is my 4th trip to Iceland. This time my son Barrett is my travel partner. We were lucky that we found a Delta flight which had a layover at JFK and instead of taking the usual 3 days, it only took two. We landed at Reykjavik airport at 9 am and had a private […]
Read MoreIt’s our last day in Prague as the end of our trip is tomorrow. We decided to spend the day relaxing, wandering around taking pictures, visit the Powder Gate Tower, Vysehrad fortress, shimmying down the narrowest street in Prague, doing a little Bohemian crystal shopping, and our final Michelin dinner at V zatisi. One of […]
Read MoreDay 3 finds us going wine tasting and visiting the National Museum. My research showed there the National Museum owned some Impressionist paintings and that was all it took for me to want to visit. The Museum isn’t big and it’s laid out differently, as in there isn’t a Baroque area, or Flemish room, or […]
Read MoreWhile we may have worn some tread off of our shoes the day before as we trekked around Prague, today was another busy day and more trekking. We decided to do a walking food tour with our guide Lucie. I’ve done food tours in other countries and always find it to be fun as you […]
Read MoreLeaving Budapest we had two options – drive or fly. It’s only 5 1/2 hours by car; so again it would take almost as much time to deal with airports, airlines, and luggage retrieval to fly, while if we drove we could see more countryside of Hungary and the bonus is that we could stop […]
Read MoreThe biggest decision about Prague was how will we fit in all the things I wanted to do in only 4 days! No grass growing under our feet, each day we took private tours, visited museums, ate at Michelin restaurants and enjoyed Charles Bridge once the weekend was over and all the visitors, apparently from […]
Read MoreI’m a sucker for Roman history and will take any and every opportunity to see Roman ruins when I’m travelling. Today, we visit Aquincum. The area of Aquincum was originally settled, sometime between the third and forth centuries BC, by the ancient Celtic tribe called the Eravisci. Little is known about the tribe, but it […]
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Hungary has been on my list of places to visit for a very long time. I don’t know exactly why other than my grandma used to make goulash and I always thought it was a Hungarian dish. What I didn’t know is that Grandma’s goulash was her own invention and nothing like Hungarian food! Then […]
Read MoreLeaving in the morning, we had more wonderful stops as we made our way towards Budapest, Hungary. Not too far outside the city of Cluj Napoca, we made a really interesting stop at the Water Mill Bologa where a local family is making an effort to preserve a historical watermill. Here we met the 6th […]
Read MoreOriginally we were going to fly from Bucharest to Budapest. Then, one night when I couldn’t sleep, I realized that the driving time wasn’t a whole lot different than flying given all the time involved in driving back to Bucharest from Brasov to fly to Budapest. It was an adventure trying to cancel a refundable […]
Read MoreA day trip out from Brasov, we hired a private guide to go to Sigisoara with a stop in the historical town of Viscri. Viscri Viscri’s white fortified church was first mentioned in 1400 as Alba Eccelsia, ‘White Church.’ There was actually a church prior to the arrival of the Saxons between 1141 and 1162. […]
Read MoreTransylvania has been a region of Romania since 1918 but historically was an independent province. Ottomans, Hungarians, Jews, Serbs, and Roma gypsies all lived in the area over hundreds of years. Their beliefs and cultures have woven the history and myths into the region. I love history and the stories of Vlad the Impaler, Dracula, […]
Read MoreBob and I had watched a travel show a few years ago that included Bulgaria. We were surprised to see the rural way of life was more akin to the early 1900s where farmers still do a lot of the work by hand instead of with machinery. Horses and wagons are plentiful and it and […]
Read MoreThis year I will travel to 11 countries, 8 of them will be my first time to visit. The first long trip of the year to Eastern Europe is with my husband Bob. Bob decided he wanted to visit Romania after we had a fun conversation with a driver in Chicago when we visited in […]
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