Prague/Bucharest

We went to Europe!!

After 2 years of working at a grocery store as a second job specifically for this purpose, saving that money, and lots of planning, we were finally going to a new country after 5 years of being stateside!  Crazy that other than our little jaunt into Mexico last fall and some trips to Canada, the last time we were out of the country was when we were living in Korea and went to Borneo for our 2nd anniversary.  It was time!  For a while, I had been to as many countries as I was years old, but I had gotten behind and needed to catch up.  So we decided to go to Eastern Europe.  Many people asked, 'why there?'  Good question.  We didn't really have a specific reason in mind, other than the following.  We like Europe, and hadn't been to that area of it.  We heard Prague was nice, and figured we could get in several countries around there.  Plus, Eastern Europe is still on the cheap side for now and we wanted to hit it up before it got pricier.  So the planning began.  We knew we wanted to go to Prague and get in as many countries as reasonably possible, so we started there and looked around at what was interesting around there.  We ended up getting in 5 new countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Poland), bringing me to a total of 29 countries I've been to and I'm 28 now, so I'm ahead for a short time!  :D

It was sure nice having Katelyn around while we were gone; she kindly stayed at our place and dogsat Gromit for us.  We took off on a Sunday night, flew all night and arrived in Prague in the early afternoon.  After navigating our way to our hotel, we pretty much managed just to stay up in time to grab some dinner at this awesome vegan restaurant (Loving Hut) before heading to bed, trying to adjust to jetlag.

The next morning we got up and headed to the airport again, this time to fly to Bucharest Romania, our southernmost destination.  All our subsequent traveling would be done via train, working our way back north to Prague where we would catch our flight home at the end.  Once we made it to Bucharest we felt like our trip had really begun.  Romania was my time to shine as far as communication, since Romanian is a romance language with similar roots as French and Spanish, unlike the rest which were Slavic and totally unfamiliar to me.

We made it to our hotel, which was awesomely centrally located.  We could've taken the metro to get around to the sites, but when it's only one or two stops you figure you might as well walk.  And walk we did!  That first day we were in Bucharest we didn't do a whole lot, just got to our hotel and then walked around a bit, admiring the cool architecture (especially the banks weirdly enough).  We were a bit worried about finding good vegetarian food in Eastern Europe, and especially good vegan food.  We wanted to eat local cuisine, but also good for us cuisine haha, which sometimes conflicted.  So before we left we downloaded this helpful app on my phone called 'happy cow'!  It would fine the all the vegan and/or vegetarian friendly restaurants near you, which came in handy during our trip.  So our first evening in Bucharest led us to a restaurant called Aubergine (eggplant), which was quirky and trendy, even for locals.  Super busy and pretty dishes, but the food was just alright.









The next morning we hit Bucharest!  There were several highly rated churches we set out to find, and several more we stumbled into on the way to those churches.  Romania was probably one of our favorites countries on the trip, in large part due to the fact that it was so ...eastern.  It felt the most unique, with influences from Europe to the west and Russia to the east, resulting in a lot of eastern orthodox churches/basilicas.  The big thing in Bucharest we did though was a tour of the Parliament building.  I'd never heard of it till we went there, but turns out it's the second largest building, after the Pentagon.  And I can attest to this, since we walked around nearly the whole thing trying to find the darn visitor's entrance, haha.  We were so excited when we finally found it.  We did a tour of it, which was super informative and interesting.  During it and our time in Romania in general (and the other countries), we were frequently reminded how recently these places were Communist, which influenced things in so many ways and its effects could still be seen.  After traipsing around all those church, the parliament and its tour, our feet were ready for a break (we ended up walking over 25,000 steps/10.5 miles that day!).  Before our trip, we had kind of trained our bodies to not need much of our usual lunch.  We'd eat a nice hearty breakfast, have a snack around lunch time, and then and earlyish dinner and call it good.  This was in an effort to save time and money and not have to stress about finding 3 good meals a day.  We're glad we did, as it accomplished its goals, but around lunch time most days not only were our tummies ready for that snack, but our feet were ready to sit!  So that day in Bucharest we found a nice cafe and had some drinks and pastries and played a couple of games, which started a nice lunchtime tradition for the trip :)  






After our 'lunch', our feet kept us going and we saw the National Museum of Romanian History and some cool gardens before finding some dinner and calling it a day.  The next day, we had a couple of hours left in Bucharest before heading out.  We saw (the outside of) a cool performance hall and the National Museum of Art of Romania and the University Library, as well as some monuments dedicated to the fall of communism before catching the train to some smaller towns in Romania!