Needless to say, 2020 was not in any way the year we expected or even thought plausible. Travel or otherwise. Originally, on our 2 year around-the-world trip started in June 2018, and had planned to wrap up in November 2020. We even went so far as to prepurchase our one-way tickets from New Zealand to LA. After touching down we…
After a 10-year Pacific Northwest hiatus, it was finally time to be reunited with the city where it all began...where Greg spent seven years of his life as a professor at Charles University before meeting Mandy in 2007, who had recently moved there to be an English teacher. See that story. We were more than ready to return...to be wrapped…
Our favorite thing to do when we lived in Prague was leave the city behind, often via the wonder paths of the Czech trail system. Trails weave through cities, villages, pastureland, valleys and hills, natural attractions, and historic sites. All with easy-to-understand color coded trail markers that even the most navigationally challenged can follow. Geography fun fact: the Czech Republic…
There is so much more to Czechia than Prague. In fact, when we were teaching English in the mid-2000’s, it was a well-worn joke that all of our students had “a house...in the nature” and they would tell us stories about weekending in the Czech countryside, amongst emerald deciduous forests, sweeping rock formations and tinker toy villages. The nature of…
We had officially entered Moravian Czech wine country, a magical place that seems to be plucked out of the Mediterranean, and dropped into southeastern Czechia. Moravia, a lesser visited region of the country has a distinctly more Croatian/Italian feel, lightness, and warmth about it than its sister region, Bohemia. Not to mention, with a four-hour train journey between them ($10/ticket)…
Venturing off the beaten path in Hungary beyond Budapest offers a more secluded, less expensive and more authentic experience into Hungarian culture, history, and life. Opportunities for finding travel perks like curative thermal baths, luscious and quality wine, hospitable people, and enchanting medieval villages abound too. What more can you ask for? Not only Budapest awaits the traveler in Hungary!…
Moldova is not one of those countries most people dream of going to. In fact, this small nation is completely off the radar to many...even European travelers. Moldova, when heard, is evidently mistaken by some as “the Maldives”. But we can attest, for a small landlocked country, its people, food, and wine pack a big punch and are absolutely worth…
Continuing on, our travels took us to the biggest country in Europe (unless you side with the people that argue that Denmark, combined with Greenland, is the biggest.) With only a 24-hour layover in Kiev (pronounced Kee-v) en route to Odessa we had just enough time to nibble at what Kiev offered up. The golden domes, clean, dynamic, and exciting…
