Category Travel
Paris! (three hours in the airport is better than nothing)
My flight home was pleasant. I had had the foresight to give myself a 3.5 hour layover in Paris, so I didn’t have the panicked dash through the terminals that I had last time. In fact, I ended up thoroughly enjoying the layover in the Parisian airport. I walked around the fancy boutiques (Hermes, Louis […]
Croatia – Zagreb
We didn’t actually do that much in Zagreb. We got into town relatively late in the evening, and so pretty much everything was closed. Plus, it was rainy and cold, and we knew that we would have to get up around 4:30am to get me to the airport in time for my flight back to […]
Croatia – Dubrovnik
I am sitting in a dimly (but bright greenly) lit internet cafe in Dubrovnik, on the Dalmatian Coast in Croatia. I have about thirty minutes to write before I have to pay again, which would be fine except that the keyboard is pretty unusual and it is taking me longer to write than normal. For […]
Croatia – Driving Adventures
It’s been great traveling by car during this trip — QN’s little BMW is a nice little car, and I’ve really enjoyed the independence that it’s given us. At first, I admit, I was a little worried that having a car would mean missing out on good travel adventure stories. (Nothing like a van-ful of […]
Croatia – Split
After our grueling hike around the lakes, we headed into Split, a coastal town famous for being the site of Diocletian’s palace — the retirement home of one of the later Roman emperors. He built a giant palace on the shore and, over the centuries, the city grew up around — and in — the […]
Croatia – Plitvice Photos
Map of the park Niko et moi, consultant le plan du parc (on n’arrivait pas a trouver la sortie)
Croatia – Plitvice National Park
My last email got us to Croatia and my encounter with Croatian law enforcement and someone else’s encounter with the grill of an oncoming truck. What I left out between those two episodes was a day of hiking in Croatia’s Plitvice National Park. Back when we were planning this trip, I had asked Quynh-Nhu and Nikolas […]
Budapest – Public Bathing
After my last post I went to one of the fancy old public baths in Budapest. It was giant neoclassical complex built in the mid-1800s and painted bright yellow. Turned out not to be anything like the Turkish baths; instead, it was a hot springs on steroids. We started outside, in a series of pools […]
Budapest – More Photos
Hostal Ginkgo Hungarian Parliament Architectural purists are horrified by this Renaissance dome on an otherwise Gothic building Chamber of Parliament Cigar HolderThe MPs would leave their cigars here in the foyer when they needed to go into the chamber to vote or debate Fisherman’s Bastion Can you see me? Now can you see me? […]
Budapest
I hadn’t known entirely what to expect from Budapest, and it has definitely exceeded those nebulous expectations. I would say that Budapest is to Vienna what London is to Paris, or what New York is to Washington DC. In other words, it’s vibrant, chaotic, kind of messy, and full of energy — I love it! […]
A More Gentlemanlike Manner 