Today is our last day in Montenegro. We’ve been hanging out in the Bay of Kotor for the last nine days, catching the end of summer sunshine, relaxing, eating cheap seafood, kayaking, and marathoning Game of Thrones. It’s been like a vacation within our vacation! We will miss this place dearly but we are ready to hit the road again. Next destination: Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Flying into Montenegro, we were amazed at the lush landscape:
Český Krumlov looks like a town straight out of a fairy tale. We spent three days relaxing there with my parents and uncle. Ian went to Český Krumlov back in 2002 during record-setting rain and flooding, so he enjoyed seeing what the town looked like in the sunshine.
We explored the castle, climbed the bell tower, and visited the castle bears (!):
Wut.
Crazy, right? This is a chandelier made of 100% bona fide human femurs and scapulas and such (oh yes I did).
We took a day trip from Prague to the town of Kutna Hora for the primary purpose of visiting the creepy and amazing Sedlec Ossuary. In the 1800s, Catholic monks “artfully” arranged the remains of between 40,000 and 70,000 people in the ossuary. Most of the bones belonged to plague victims who died in the fourteenth and fifteenth century.
Make no bones about it – there were skulls everywhere. My mom used to be an anatomy professor so she was super into it. Honestly, we were too. It was macabre but also beautiful. Take a look: (more…)
Living on the edge.
We recently spent five lovely days in Vienna. We thought the city was very beautiful and amazingly clean. Below are some of the highlights. We started off, as always, with some nighttime exploring:
In which Ian tries the water from the thermal springs in Karlovy Vary:
In Budapest we visited Memento Park, which is a collection of Soviet monuments that were built during Hungary’s Communist period. Ian has already demonstrated that Soviets knew how to make a statement, and the monuments here were just as impressive in size and theme. Observe:
Tiara for scale
Entertaining yourself is important on long bus rides. On this trip Ian was proud to make a lady out of crackers:
Visiting the thermal baths is one of those things you have to do in Budapest. There are countless spas to choose from, and swayed by its pretty yellow buildings, we chose Széchenyi. Also, it’s the largest medicinal bath in Europe, so there’s that. (more…)
OK, truth time: We were really not feeling Budapest at first. We’ve learned that during long-term travel it’s important to have a few places where we spend extended periods of time. This helps us re-establish routines for exercise, cooking at home, etc. During our Asia trip, we rented apartments and spent a month each in Bangkok and Hong Kong. Here, we’ve taken longer stays in Paris and Berlin, and we also decided that Budapest would be a good place to slow down, so we booked two weeks there.
However, when we arrived in Budapest we were disappointed. The heat wave still hadn’t broken so it was too hot to explore for most of the day. All the food we had was heavy and really not good. And, this was the first time our research had led us astray in terms of location. The neighborhood we chose, Terézváros, was full of touristy restaurants and bars, and just seemed like a place people went to party. Somewhere along the way, we realize, we got old. Also, we’d travel to a destination only to find this sort of thing happen…constantly:
Fortunately, Budapest started what Ian called its “win back” campaign about 5 days into our stay, and we started to change our minds about the city, so much so that by the time we had to leave we had grown really fond of it. (more…)
