Love - Food - Adventure

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Our Trip to Eastern Europe

Last May (2012), John and I had the opportunity to travel through Eastern Europe. We started our trip in Gdansk, Poland and worked our way south to Dubrovnik, Croatia. It was an amazing trip filled with lots of history, great food, and beautiful sights. We've been meaning to share our pictures for quite some time but had gotten behind. Well, now we're catching up!

Before we get started though, I'll share some of the efforts in planning this trip. John & I used two main travel guidebooks to determine our itinerary (DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Eastern & Central Europe and Rick Steves' Eastern Europe) and we had 27 days to explore. We were able to use frequent flier miles for our flights and we learned that some airlines offer a free stop-over when booking with miles. So we chose a flight into Gdansk, Poland on May 3, out of Dubrovnik, Croatia on May 25 with a 3-day stop-over in Vienna, Austria. John really enjoys flying different airlines, so the flights we chose included legs on LOT Polish Airlines and Austrian Airlines. A side story...The Austrian Airlines plane home from Vienna had a camera on the bottom of the plane pointing the direction we were flying. The camera provided a live feed to the in seat television and we were able to watch ourselves land! Very cool...

So back to planning.. We were not sure how much access to internet we would have while in Europe (turns out more than we expected - free Wi-Fi seemed to be everywhere). We also didn't want to spend a lot of time researching hotels while there. So, we decided that totally winging it probably wasn't a good idea. I took on researching hotels and ended up booking flexible reservations in each city. That way, if our plans changed, we could change our hotels last minute, but didn't have to spend too much time researching options. John looked into the train systems of each country so we had maps, some schedules, and ticket type options. This was especially important for overnight trains so that we could ensure we had our own room.

All right, I think that'll do it for the basics... Here's what we planned as our itinerary:
May 2-3: Fly to Gdansk, Poland
May 3-5: Gdansk, Poland
May 5: Malbork, Poland
May 5-7: Warsaw, Poland
May 7-9: Krakow, Poland
May 10-12: Prague, Czech Republic
May 12-13: Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic
May 13: Prague, Czech Republic
May 14-17: Budapest, Hungary
May 17-19: Ljubljana, Slovenia
May 19-21: Zagreb, Croatia (day trip to Plitvice Lakes National Park)
May 21-22: Split, Croatia
May 22-25: Dubrovnik, Croatia
May 25-28: Vienna, Austria (day trip to Bratislava, Slovakia)
May 28: Fly home

Hope you enjoy our adventure through Eastern Europe!

Arriving in Gdansk, Poland:

Monday, July 22, 2013

Our Honeymoon... Aruba

Soft sand, crystal clear turquoise water, warm breezes, cool drinks, a good book, and a handsome man. What more could one want? Aruba was all of those things and more. Such a relaxing vacation... since then, we've seen beaches on Oahu, Maui, Kauai, Dubrovnik Croatia, Florida, Connecticut... but none are better than Aruba (our humble opinion).

This was the most amazing tortellini with gorgonzola, pear, balsamic from Madame Janette Restaurant. We highly recommend this restaurant. Request to sit outside in the courtyard. It's gorgeous.