Is it surprising that Albania is a great destination for castle hopping? Like, really great. Albania is not a large country, and there are by no means countless historic fortresses and edifices — which means that castle sightseeing is not overwhelming, there’s no FOMO, or castle fatigue. Another huge plus – you don’t have to have a PhD…
We’ve spent more than one day in Tirana, Albania — three days, in fact! — and found it to be a very pleasant experience to amble between our coffee shop of choice, several green spaces in downtown area, and a few monuments and notable buildings. Tirana is not going to win any awards for the…
One of the biggest clichés in travel writing is how this one place or that other place is full of contradictions. Grand, old buildings mixed-in with cutting edge, modern architecture, a striking mix of cultures or religions in cafes and on the street, old money next to new money and how that contrast pales next to…
So, where are you from? – oh, you are Russian? No wait, you don’t have an accent… Oh you are American too? After many such conversations in a course of a year plus in travel, we don’t tend to over-think this part of getting to know other travelers too much. In general, we feel equally…
Pet the Goat – a cool game you can play while driving down the Albanian one-way highway. Having read a bit about transport in and across the Balkans, I was slightly petrified of what could go wrong as we climbed aboard the train in Budapest to start our adventure across three country borders in as…
If the number of posts (4!) about just one city is any indication, it was pretty hard for us to let go of Budapest. We had all sorts of grand plans to see the countryside, perhaps chill out a few days at Laka Balaton, which we’ve heard is pretty impressive.
“I am going to visit Gellért baths this afternoon” , I casually offered Sergey towards the tail end of our stay in Budapest. I fully expected Sergey to stay behind. Outdoor wave pool at the Gellért baths, Budapest, Hungary. Typically, I think that there’s two kinds of people – those who like getting wet, and…
I hope y’all are enjoying my pun. Because I have been wanting to write it for a year now — basically ever since our first meal in Budapest. Because we ate like there was no tomorrow in Hungary’s capital. We ate as if we’ve been starved for the previous 11 months of our RTW trip….
Today’s spaces around the globe is a bit of a departure from what I was originally thinking for these series, i.e. well-designed spaces for living, eating, or socializing. But really, most of us spend the majority of our time at a work place — where we eat, socialize, and basically, for better or worse, live there…
The minute we walked out of the airport and onto the subway bound for center of Budapest – I knew it. This was my city. Sometimes you just get that feeling. Very rarely is it wrong. And this time, this feeling grew and expanded until I was about to burst – that’s when we walked…
Interiors have been on my mind a lot lately, particularly as we are planning to start another phase of our own house renovation (the idea is actually to build up our travel fund with this project). It’s going to be busy, hectic, and exciting. We are pumped. So it’s high time to share more properly a key…
STATS Days on the road: 397 Number of beds: 7 Countries visited: Albania, Turkey, Russia Postcards sent: 15 thoughts As we head back stateside, we’ve been thinking lots of homecoming. Although it is bittersweet, we are definitely ready for some comforts of life with a more permanent address. So rather than dwelling on drawbacks of our…