With the Danube river acting as a natural border we crossed from Romania into Serbia at the Drobeta-Turnu Severin – Kladovo bridge crossing. The Romanian border guard was delightful. She apologized for her poor English skills telling us she’d learned it by watching television but really wanted to know what we thought of her country…
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We left picturesque Transylvania behind and headed for the biggest city in Romania – its capital, Bucharest. The “fastest” route from Brașov to Bucharest is the DN1 which is a single-lane highway used by cars, buses and transport trucks. Don’t let the distance between the cities fool you (183 km), the bumper to bumper traffic…
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We crossed from Hungary into Romania at the Nădlac border crossing (Hungarian Highway M43/Romanian Highway A1) and had read that this crossing is often crazy busy. It was definitely chaotic, but we succeeded in correctly picking one of the “All Passports” lines even though we couldn’t fully see the signage, and reached the border checkpoint…
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Yay – we are back travelling again and will meander our way through Europe over the next five months. We have leased a car through Renault which will give us more flexibility on where to go and how to get there, but is also going to have an impact on our budget, given the current…
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We booked this trip in 2019, and paid our non-refundable deposit just before the Covid-19 pandemic saw the world fall apart. If there is something positive we can point to as a result of the pandemic it may be that African tour companies are now more willing to agree to refundable deposits. But back then,…
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Following our hectic three plus weeks in Jordan, Egypt and Dubai, we decided to relax for a month on the southeastern coast of Spain, in the town of El Campello. After spending so many months melting in the heat, the mild fall temperatures (18-20°C) along the Costa Blanca were most welcome! In the 1950s the…
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The first trip to live up to the name of our blog; after our Egypt adventure we took a detour to see the World Expo in Dubai! The six month long Expo was to open in October, 2020, (but, COVID!) so was postponed for a year, with an October 1, 2021 opening instead. We were…
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This is the second part of our Egypt trip summary. For Part 1, our visit to Cairo and Aswan (including total costs for the trip), see this post. The Nile The Nile, lifeblood of ancient Egypt (even today 95% of the Egyptian population lives within a few kilometers of this river). Its floodwaters left behind…
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So how does one summarize nearly 5000 years of history and mythology … with lots of pictures and a little bit of context, or at least I’m going to try! I expect most of us were first exposed to ancient Egypt back in grade school. That is certainly my recollection and perhaps what sparked my…
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Located at the crossroads of Asia, Africa and Europe is the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Historically, the biblical kingdoms of Moab, Gilead and Edom were situated within its borders; the Persian Empire occupied portions of the region between 549 and 330 BCE before Alexander the Great swept through the area. Simultaneously, in the southwestern corner…
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