A short 45 minute bus ride through the country side near Brasov will take you to see Bran Castle- Dracula's Castle. You would expect the castle that inspired Dracula's castle to be imposing, desolate, dark, creepy and damp. At least, that is what we expected. Instead, we found the castle to be super charming, and as homey as a castle can be. Its interior was sun drenched and warm, and it had a wonderful courtyard in the middle. Its views overlooked the sleepy village below on one side and the beautiful mountains on the other side. We also found out it is for sale- anyone want to go halvsies on a castle? Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, had never visited [...] Continue Reading

Brasov Romania sits at the base of the Carpathian Mountains in the region of Transylvania. Look up into the mountains and a Hollywood-esque sign reading Brasov greets you. You can climb up to the sign, but it was recommended that we not do it at night as there are bears (and since it is Transylvania, possibly vampires). The small city center is not only super picturesque and full of history but also has a lot going on- over the four days we were in Brasov we saw the Brasov Music Video Awards [...] Continue Reading

We have spent the past several months varying degrees of dirty and its been since Costa Rica that all of our clothes have been truly clean. Seriously, its been that long. We have done a few loads here and there, but we have had to be selective about what gets washed since there have been weight limits or a limit on the number of items we can wash. However, our days of being dirty came to an end in Budapest- at least for a little while! We found a laundry facility that cost 800HUF to wash and 800HUF to dry ($1=238HUF) and the best part was [...] Continue Reading

Budapest is made up of two separate parts, Buda and Pest (pronounced "pesht" after all, as our tour guide pointed out, they don't want it to be known as a pest. In Hungarian the "s" makes a "sh" sound anyway. "Zs" is pronounced like our "s" sound). The two sides are divided by the Danube river. Buda is the hilly side of the city known for its abundance of healing waters (the name buda actually comes from the Hungarian word for water). Buda is also home to the castle [...] Continue Reading

After Sofia our next stop was Belgrade, Serbia. We chose Belgrade simply because it was one of the two cities that was directly connected by train to Sofia, the other being Bucharest which we are visiting later in September. We checked out our options and decided on the night train. Being Eastern Europe, you cannot simply go online and purchase the tickets. So we headed to the train station and after wandering around what looked like a movie [...] Continue Reading

Sofia could not have been a more perfect place for our first stop in Europe. We expected to be exhausted from our crazy trip over from Buenos Aires- and we were. Two nights in a row of "air-hotels" was not ideal. We did get to ride on a double decker plane on our Lufthansa flight from Houston to Frankfurt which was cool- it was the first time for both of us and it seemed to be a much smoother ride. But even on a luxurious double decker plane we didn't sleep well and were walking zombies when we got to Sofia. Fortunately, we had been emailing back and forth with a friend of Aunt Pants and he volunteered to pick us up from the ariport and get us where we needed to be. So, we met the gregarious and [...] Continue Reading

Bariloche has completely charmed us. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Giant snow covered peaks shoot up over the biggest lake in Argentina, Nahuel Huapi. There is hiking, skiing, kayaking and more. But no swimming, even in the summer the lake is too cold to swim without a wetsuit, someone tried to swim part of it last summer and died from the cold. Bariloche is also the place that has the distinction of being the first place we couch surfed. We stayed with a [...] Continue Reading

Another chapter in the harrowing South American Bus Series. We have been so excited to go skiing in Bariloche, getting there was a bit of a challenge though. The trains of Argentina, while dirt cheap, are very long and uncomfortable, so that was out. We had heard that the airlines were expensive, so that was out (good thing too, the pilots recently went on strike). So we were left with the bus- a 20 hour long double decker bus ride from Buenos Aires to Bariloche [...] Continue Reading

Argentina defaulted on the second largest debt ever in 2001, subsequently, inflation went through the roof and people tried to find other ways to make money. This resulted in numerous "Puerto Cerrados" or closed door restaurants. Essentially, chefs opened up their homes to those in the know and served multi course dinners and drinks forto make extra money. The industry has continued [...] Continue Reading