Stray dog security guards

A small brown dog scurried towards my window as soon as we pulled up at a rest-area for the night. It had the most impassive face I’ve ever seen, it was as if he’d found a rubbish bag outside a clinic and accidentally jabbed himself with used Botox injections. Then another two dogs appeared, one…

Diving through snow in Tranylvania

We wanted to make the most of the Carpathians so decided to drive the Transfagarasan route which is the 2nd highest mountain road in Romania and plies through the Fagaras Mountains. It started off really dramatic, we could see our road ahead of us curving around a sheer wall. It was like being back in…

Dracula’s Castle and a drive through the countryside

Driving around Zarnesti was a nightmare, it was Sunday market day, music was blasting out a speaker and men in matching hats were wasted by 11am in the pop up pubs. I loved it though, it reminded me of the markets in Central America, bustling with colour and culture. But, it meant certain roads were…

The Bear Necessities in Romania

We’re well and truly in bear country now. Romania has 40% of Europe’s wild bears, if we don’t see one here, our chances elsewhere are pretty slim. We drove south of Brasov to the Southern Carpathian’s where the ski village of Poiana Brasov sits at 1030m. Finally we got a piece of tranquility compared to…

Raving about Romania

What a great start to Romania, every person we’ve spoken to has had a big welcoming smile and it makes all the difference. Plus, the English seems remarkably better than in the neighbouring countries. One worker even started conversation with us telling us nice places to visit and how apparently England wrote in its papers…

Slovak Paradise

The Tatra mountains form a natural border between Poland and Slovakia and are the highest mountains along the 1200km Carpathian Mountain Range. It was overcrowded in Poland so we were excited to head to the Slovakian side. We stopped at a very helpful info centre in Tatranska Lomnica. The girl advised us of some nice…

From Krakow to The Tatra Mountains

Krakow is Poland’s second largest city and it’s top tourist attraction. Inevitably it’s very busy, so we parked on the outskirts. We had to get a tram into the centre but couldn’t work out what number we needed. A lady of about 60 saw us struggling and pointed to a tram schedule. She didn’t speak…

Up’s and Down’ in Poland

Poland hasn’t been as exciting as I’d expected. We visited some lakes in the north and finally had a day relaxing away from the hustle and bustle of cities after the Baltic’s. They’ve been the only swimmable lakes we’ve come across in Poland, the ones down south were murky and rubbish ridden. We woke before…

Remember when: We had lunch with a Rhino

We didn’t have any bus break down’s in our entire 4 months in India. Yet the first bus we took in Nepal broke down and was deemed a piece of scrap metal. We left the other hopeful passengers and sucked up another fare on a different bus…which also broke down. Eventually, we made it to…

Trying out the Olympic Bobsleigh track in Latvia

We visited three towns within Gauja National Park; Cesis, Ligatne and Sigulda. The sights revolved around the Gauja river, with red cliff walls along the banks and orange coloured caves. The towns were pleasant for strolling around with nice castles, churches and old squares. It was all ‘nice’ but not blow away nice, so we…