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It’s practically Travel Tuesday around here!  I wrote several posts this week about my travels through Romania last August.  I really enjoyed Romania, and now is a great time to experience the Eastern European countries of Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary since you have the ease of travel from being in the EU, but the cheaper [...]

My first experience traveling abroad was to France in 2006 (when I officially got the travel bug). Since then, I’ve wanted to go back and see more of Europe. However, with the euro and dollar exchange rate at $1.60 this summer, I decided to stick to the outer edges of the EU that don’t use [...]

We took the morning train to Bucharest and walked from the station to our hotel.  It was already noon, so we took the metro to the “Champs-Elysées” of Bucharest and to see the People’s Palace – Romania’s Parliment building and also the second largest buidling in the world, after our very own Pentagon. Bucharest is [...]

After a leisurely breakfast in Sinaia, we headed for the top of the mountain. The plan was to take the second gondola up from town, and hike around.  As we followed signs to the “telegondola”  we ended up walking half way up the mountain, through little backstreets and neighborhoods. It was boiling outside, but still [...]

After a morning visit to Rasnov Fortress, outside of Brasov, we continued on to Dracula’s Castle (Castle Bran).  The Fortress was cool to walk around, but not amazing.  I also learned that Cold Mountain was filmed in Romania.  After grabbing some picnic supplies, we headed to Bran Castle. When we arrived there was a massive [...]

We took the train to Brasov this morning. After a tour of the Black Church, the largest Gothic church in Eastern Europe, we walked through town to the “Skinniest Street in Eastern Europe”, and then walked to the cable car to visit the other thing Brasov is well-known for. A quick lesson in politics. How [...]

We took the train to Sibiu yesterday morning. There was a Zorro spotting at the train station, but I wasn’t able to take a picture. Maybe it was Antonio Banderas. Sibiu is the cutest little town! Full of plazas and churches and a river and it’s all quite sweet. So sweet, that it was awarded [...]

This morning, after breakfast, I wandered back into town. After checking out the Internet place, I walked back up to the Citadel and looked at all the main sights on my map.  The covered staircase was especially cool. After circling back down to the Citadel, I sat in the old church and listened to organ [...]

I’m out on the porch this morning, surrounded by early morning Romanian village life.  A horse-drawn cart just went by and earlier a German shepherd came trotting up, followed by his farmer and a dozen sheep on their way to the field. Now, a big dairy cow is wandering around, grazing, with her bell ringing. [...]

I woke up at 4:30 this morning! After a quick breakfast of coffee and chocolate cake (I could get used to that, the cake, not the waking up!), we drove to the train station. It’s amazing that the old women are already out on the benches chatting at 5am! After six hours on the train, [...]