Last stop Prague! A beautiful city we’d visited once before, but we had our son with us last time and there are certain sites that aren’t the sort of things you want to visit with your child (see the red photo below).

Between Budapest and Prague we drove through Slovakia. Sadly the only stop we made was at the border. We saw Bratislava from a distance, and hope to visit for real some day in the future.

Our trip was quite long, and we didn’t even pretend that we were going to do any writing while we were gone. We didn’t even take our laptops. We’ve been writing As Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #1 for about a year now, and it was really nice to look away. We came back refreshed and ready to put fingers to keyboards. As writers, we use the world around us as inspiration for our stories. Travel is a magnificent way to broaden our scope and add novelty to the idea bank. A certain location in the Ghost Series is in Eastern Europe, so if the IRS asks, this was a research trip. Our location is made up, but being able to see the landscape in person was a great help.

A good writing partner is someone you enjoy sharing a hotel room and every meal with, and someone who loves to look at your vacation photos.

The penultimate stop on our whirlwind tour of Eastern Europe was Hungary. Our Budapest hotel was centrally located on the Pest side of the river, and if the Chain Bridge had been open it would have been perfect. Alas, the Chain Bridge was closed for construction, which meant a lot of added walking for us when we wanted to check out the Buda side. Ah well, it keeps us fit.

Buda is the hilly side. We rode the funicular to the top and explored the Castle District at ground level, underground in the labyrinth (complete with subterranean fog), and high up in the towers of Fisherman’s Bastion (with a cup of mulled wine).

Budapest has tons of thermal hot springs. We visited Gellert Baths, a classic that opened in 1918. It has co-ed changing rooms, about a dozen pools, inside and outside, at various temperatures, and gorgeous architecture. We don’t have pictures of it because we didn’t want to dunk our phones, but you can do an image search if you’re curious.

Don’t fret. We have pictures of other things.

Next stop: a very rainy Croatia!

In an attempt to stay dry, we hit up a grocery store in Vukovar and raided the snack aisle. Unfamiliar foods make great holiday gifts, just ask our family!

We visited Osijek Fortress, and walked around the old town where many buildings have bullet damage from the war in the 1990s. It was a sobering reminder of the current atrocities in Ukraine.

It was very interesting and educational to experience this different side of Croatia (literally). Previously, we’ve been to Dubrovnik and Split, which are full of palm trees and Adriatic zephyrs. We did see some bullet holes on that trip too, though.

To end on a lighter note, we met an orange chonker of a cat named Garfield. He was very sweet.

Our tour through Eastern Europe continued in Serbia. We hiked through Djerdap national park to take in a view of the Danube (and Romania across the river). At an art commune we met a dog who fell madly in love with Jen, and we enjoyed some homemade honey rakia, a traditional Balkan spirit. (We may have also bought a couple of bottles to bring home.) Golubac Fortress is in the process of being restored. One of the first things they did was reroute the highway so that it no longer goes through the castle gates. We got there fairly late, and it was too dark to scale the rocky interior and walk along the walls, but we did climb a few of the towers.

In Belgrade we walked around in the rain, and had some delicious treats at the Hotel Moskva. Belgrade’s trams are fairly old, but their heaters really mean it, so we got nice and toasty on our way to the incredibly ornate Church of Saint Sava.

Our travels continue next week!

After Romania, we were off to Bulgaria. We’ve been trying to learn Russian for a while now, and our knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet came it quite handy on this whole trip.

As you can tell from the architecture, the Soviet Union left their thumbprints all over the region.

Our guide insisted that Bulgarian yogurt is the best in the world, but we were more impressed with the rose liqueur. There was also some rose brandy, which was hella intense, but it was the liqueur that we bought to bring home. We think it’ll be great over ice cream.

More next week!

We love to travel. We love to see what life is like in other parts of the world, and visit amazing sights. We had an epic trip to Eastern Europe planned for March of 2020, which didn’t happen for obvious reasons. At first we postponed it a year, thinking “Eh, the pandemic will surely be over by then.” Ahem. So then we postponed it again.

One of the stops on our itinerary was Romania, which is right next door to Ukraine, so things were looking iffy again for a while, but by fall 2022 we were comfortable enough — and vaccinated and boosted — to go. And we are so glad we did.

We met some amazing people, ate some delicious new foods, drank some intriguing new beverages, and managed to squeeze in some research at the same time.

First stop: Romania. Our Bucharest hotel was next door to the Romanian parliament, aka “The Heaviest Building in the World.” Who knew they kept track of such things? We took a side trip to Transylvania to explore some castles and the breathtaking Carpathian Mountains. Kent drank a Dracula beer in the village below Castle Bran. It was red, but contained no actual blood. Bummer. We also visited Snagov Monastery which is both the burial place of Vlad the Impaler and an ostrich sanctuary. One stop shopping for all your touristic needs!

We’ll continue our travelog next week. See you then!