Our Time in Budapest!

Look at Hil go!
Indiana Jane

Good Friends at it Again!

Vienna

Playing in a park in Vienna

Rem lost?...no never!

Hapsburg Palace Grounds, Vienna

BO!!! Our Hostel beds in Budapest...chilllllllll!!!

Ah, finally, a place where the wine flows like water!

Budapest behind me

Fairytale anyone?

buddies...

crossing a bridge in Budapest!

Ah the city of Budapest!

Well I am writing from Vienna after a great week in Budapest, Hungary. We arrived after a nine hour train ride, through lush forests and endless fields of yellow wildflowers, from Romania. It was a great train, Gypsieless and with doors that closed! We found our hostel, the Backpackers Guesthouse, and it quickly became our favorite hostel yet. The place scores a perfect 10 in character. Each room was adorned with a beautiful murrel of some sort. The backyard was planted with healthy trees, ponds and hammuks galore! Needless to say, it was the chilled out spot we have been looking for and needing.

The best part of Budapest was our friend Rem meeting us here to travel with us for the next three weeks. We checked into the hostel and I quickly found out what room he was staying in, knowing he would be sleeping and not out of the hostel. I broke open his door and within 10 seconds we were hugging and jumping around in circles cheering "YA YA YA WE ARE IN BUDAPEST!!!!" It was like we were little kids again re-united after being separated for two years! (to Wu/Frimond parents...exactly like when we were little kids!)

With the cheap prices, our excitement to be with Rem and an awesome hostel crew we made Budapest our party city and saw the town! We spent three of our four nights really indulging in the local boos (Palinka) and seeing the clubs of the town! However, our hostel was so much fun, we actually only made it out of the hostel one of the three nights.

As far as the sights, Budapest is a gorgeous city right on the Danube River. Their elaborate Parliment sits right on the river in a Westminster type of fashion and the huge Royal Palace sits across the banks on a hill. The architecture is similar to most European cities in design. Beautifuly ornate domes, statues every other turn and big plazas to sit and enjoy a coffe.

Our first day out we visited a Bath House. It was an interesting experience and was a good afternoon. It got a little awkward sitting in a sauna with a very naked 85 year old Hungarian man, but I guess that is where they got the expression, just turn the other cheak!

On the last day we did an amazing caving adventure. Hungary is dotted with intricate cave systems which the people have methodically mapped out and now offer tours of. We booked it thinking we would just be walking through some large caves little did we know we would be wiggling with one arm over our heads to try and fit through a four meter long tunnel no wider than our shoulders! It was two hours of adventure that would put Indiana Jones to shame!

We were sad to leave Budapest, as most places we have been to, but that is always the sign of a great city. We met some amazing people and learned some pretty cool things about a whole new culture of people. We are in Vienna now for a qucik two day stop over before we head of to Poland tomorrow. The sights in Vienna are just as beautiful as the people have said and I would love to spend more time here, funny how much we find ourselves saying that!

So many places to see and never enough time...

A Taste of Eastern Europe

View from our Hostel Window in Simbui

Loving the fresh veg in Simbui

Clock tower in Simbui

On our "local" Hike in Sigasora
Castle Bran, Dracula's Castle
Top of the world in Sinia
View from our hostel window in Bucharest
I thought only France had one of these!
Protesting in front of the balcony where Communism fell in Bucharest (Revolutionary Square)
On our Train to Bucharest
Who ever really grows up??

Hello all,

Sorry for the delay between posts over the last month or so, but as we found in Egypt, Eastern Europe has proven to be a little difficult to find a computer made in the last five years or an internet connection with enough speed to load a few pictures!

Technological short comings aside, Eastern Europe has really surpassed both of our expectations in beauty, people, culture and food! We have been quite busy since our last post, hoping from country to country and from town to town. In a brief overview we left Istanbul on an overnight train to Sophia, Bulgaria and from there we headed north to Romania, where we have now been for about a week.

The train ride from Istanbul to Sophia was a little less than comfortable, but what it lacked in comfort it made up in experience, a stereotypical Eastern Europe experience that is. Our cabin conductor looked and acted like an ex KGB member and I am pretty sure the train almost derailed a few times through out the night! But it was all part of the fun and we made it to Sophia, so all's well that ends well eh?

We only spent a few days in Sophia, but really enjoyed our time spent there. It was a small city with a really relaxed feeling to it. We strolled the streets and walked past the few real monuments the city has to offer. The most interesting part of the city was a small open market where some venders were selling old authentic WWII German, Bulgarian and British memorabilia. It included everything from old guns and knives, to watches, medals and binoculars. It was really fascinating to see all these treasures that had just been gathered from the old battlefields around the country.

From Sophia we ventured up to Bucharest, the capital of Romania. All we had heard of the city before arrival was that was very boring architecturally and still struggling from its Communist days and that there really was not much to see. However, we found this all to be wrong. The Parliament Building there is the the second largest building in the world (second to the Pentagon). It has over 3,400 rooms and is incredibly impressive to look at. From there stretches a long straight road that is 3 meters longer than the Champs Elysee! Although, this impressiveness did not come at no cost. It took a dictator's crazy ambition for Romania to be perfect and beautiful like the west so he thus bankrupted the country and flattened 1/6th of the city to build it.

Next to our hostel was a beautiful park with gorgeous gardens filled with Tulips and other spring flowers, a lake with rowboats for rent, couples out for a romantic stroll, old people taking sun baths, youth laughing jovially and trees with such newly sprouted leaves they looked almost neon green. All in all it was the beginning of Spring and the city was out to enjoy the blue skies and warm weather.

We left Bucharest after two days to head west into the countryside and hang out in Transylvania, the region made famous by Bram Stoker's Dracula. Our first stop was Sinia. It is a small mountain town surrounded by beautiful hills and snow-capped mountains. We took a gondola to the highest point of the mountain and let our eyes indulge on the magnificent 360 degree view of nothing but nature, snow covered mountains and steep cliffs. The town was really small and only a day trip on our way to Brasov.

We arrived in Brasov on the Eastern Orthodox Easter, a week later than ours, so unfortunatly NOTHING was open! But we made lemonade out of our lemons and our entire hostel, a group of French students, A few Aussies, another American group from Boston and us all purchased the ridiculously cheap beer they have to offer and turned our hostel common room into a night of laughs, excessive drinking, more laughs, and of course deep political talks (although much less of the ladder than the excessive drinking and laughs!)

We did manage to take a bus ride from Brasov to Castle Bran, the castle Bram Stoker was to have based Dracula's Castle off. It was eerie looking and very fitting for the Count to live in, but the grounds were closed and we could only see it from the outside. Also, Dracula is a major tourist trap here and the countless Dracula masks and t-shirt stands out front really took away from the creepy atmosphere of the castle!

From Brasov we left for Sigasora. This was a truly beautiful town with an old town from the middle ages located on top of a hill with the new town surrounding the foot of the hill and all of this nestled at the base of surrounding, tree-cover, hills. Our trip to Sigasora was another train ride we will never forget! We called it the Gypsie Express. The four of us traveling together were the only four non-Gypsies on the entire train. It was a CRAZY experience. We witnessed everything from yelling at the conducter because they had not bought train tickets, to bags upon bags of clothes, to little children begging, to a mother beating her kid sensless, to the pulling of the emergency stop on the train in the middle of two stops because the village had two Gypsie clans and they were at war and the train station was located in "the other clans" territory. Needless to say, we did not sleep to much on the train and kept our belongings very close, but it was a great experience.

In Sigasora, we befriended the guy working the reception desk and he took us hiking all the next day and really showed us some amazing views and places that only locals would know about. He told us of growing up during the revolution. He was our same age so it was really interesting to hear how different of a growing up experience he had from us. He vividly recalls loving to watch the Communist Rallies on TV and that his mother almost got shot because of him and his support for the Communist Party, he was a four year old at the time!!

We are now in Simbui, another small town and leave tomorrow for Budapest. We are both really excited to discover a new country and see Budapest, which every traveler we have come across has spoken so highly of. We are alos meeting our good friend Rem who has flown out to meet up with us for a few weeks! We will keep you posted on our adventures!

Past Due pictures of Ios, Greece!! Enjoy, Dad

A room with a view. This is out our cave room window. The same cave our dad lived in during the spring of 1971.

The cave before Trevor and Erik had a chance to spruce it up

Dad, I think this is the much expanded upon hotel where you used to work. It's the oldest on the strip.

The apples really don't fall far from the tree.

The Ios cave crew

Ios.

Where East Meets West: Istanbul, Turkey

See. I told you we got to see Obama!

The Blue Mosque

Just one of the many beautiful streets in old town Istanbul

Spring has sprung

Is this in bad taste?

Basilica Cistern. Anyone seen From Russia with Love?

Keeping up with our physical activity by doing some Tony Little Gazelle beneath the Aqueduct

Another tower...

The Asian side of Istanbul

Playing a little backgammon at our local bar with some friends we've made

View from a castle at the mouth of the Black Sea

As our Egyptian adventure was winding down we began perusing (to read thoroughly) the ol' Lonely Plane book to see where we should go next. We thought we had a pretty solid itinerary going but then we started talking to some of the people we were traveling with, and as the saying goes "the best laid plans..." aaand here we are in Istanbul.

This place is amazing. It easily makes the top 3 places I've been list and each day that we are here, it climbs the charts. It has everything: perfectly planted gardens like I'd imagine Norway or Sweden to have; the hustle and bustle of any modern city; the cobble stone streets and old buildings like Holland or small English towns; and the Eastern outdoor market, barter for your life, mentality.

When we first arrived, we could not get anywhere in the city because good ol' President Obama was in town. 9,000 police were employed on that drizzling day to make sure that he was safe, and to make sure that we had a horrific time getting to our hostel. However, every story has it's silver lining. Here's ours: standing with our huge pacs on on our backs, dirty clothes from the train ride, looking like hell I'm sure, this man stops us and asks what we need. He then led us to his store where we were able to use his phone to call our hostel and leave our bags until Obama-mania settled. Did I mention that this store he led us to was a carpet store? And did I also mention that this nice mans name was Aladin? That's right, we spent the morning sipping tea with a carpet salesman named Aladin. Welcome to Istanbul.

As for the sights, we have seen many a' Mosque, walked 5km to a bridge to Asia and then found out we couldn't walk across the bridge, eaten solely street meat, raged some happening clubs (that sucked actually), and had far-out, groovy conversations about the plight of the world's citizens with kids from Germany, Portugal, France, Switzerland, UK and USA.

All and all, Istanbul is an absolutely amazing city and we've only scratched the surface.

Proof!

Hooray for DSL. Here is Egypt in a very small nutshell:

Look familiar? We don't have to use Google images any more. Booya!

Abu Simbil. 30km north of Sudan. We had to go in a huge tourist caravan so we'd be safe. This was my favorite temple.

Sailing down the Nile

Luxor Temple

High noon. Sahara Desert. 45 minutes of pushing.

Above the black desert on top of one of the volcanic mountains.

Catching air in the white desert

Sunset in the white desert part of the Sahara. There were no signs of life as far as the eye could see in any direction.
A short stop on our off-road trek across the desert. The jeep behind us is carrying our fire wood and tenting materials.

This was like one of those African sunset's you see all your life on the Discovery channel. It totally lived up to everything.

A cool water spring in the middle of the desert. We swam here (and at the nearby hot springs) all afternoon in between our dune-boarding! What an awesome day that was.

Trev on the long trek back up after an awesome ride down.

It's blurry because I'm going so fast. :)

Just your average goods in your average transport vehicle

We're even starting to coordinate outfits.

It never ends.

We were such celebrities in Alexandria. The paler your skin, the more they wanted their picture taken with you. I had a lot of pictures taken of me.

So there you have it, a small smattering of what we've been up to over the past 17 days.