All Good Things

Hey, look! I'm back in Boston. 🙂 Actually I've been back for awhile now, but have been distressingly negligent about finishing up this blog. So here we go. Coming home after almost six months of travel sounded scarier than it turned out to be. I think the biggest thing that made it easy was that …

Finishing Up

I took a budget airline (Wizz Air) from Cluj-Napoca to Brussels. It went to the Charleroi airport, which is a bit outside of the city, so I had to take a bus in to get to my hotel. Worked out just fine and saved me money, which is always a plus. At this point in …

Romania

I ended up in Romania partially because it sounded interesting, partially because it was geographically convenient, and partially because I could use my hotel points to save some money. Perhaps not the best of reasons to visit somewhere, but not bad. I started in Bucharest, the capital city. This is definitely the place I saw …

Sofia, Bulgaria

Sorry for the long gap between updates! As many of you know, I met up with family in the Netherlands and spent a week together with them. The driving purpose for this was a ceremony at the American Military Cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands, where my grandfather is buried. My father spoke at the ceremony, and …

Istanbul (not Constantinople)

I figured I'd get the obvious reference out of the way up front. Go ahead, read this post without humming the song to yourself. I dare you. I arrived in Istanbul extremely tired of air travel. There's really nothing that will make two twelve hour flights in a row comfortable, even flying business class (seriously, …

Sydney

Sydney! It's the iconic Australian city, with pretty much everyone able to recognize the famous Opera House from postcards. I had heard in advance that it wasn't as good a place to visit as Melbourne, but honestly, I liked it a lot. Even if I was there during a week of rain (if you're following …

Various Activities

Port Douglas is a good base for several days worth of activites, and I took full advantage of it. After my visit to the Great Barrier Reef, I took a day to relax and then headed out on various adventures. I drove up to the Daintree Rainforest, which is interesting if not fascinating. A long …

Darwin, Port Douglas, and the Great Barrier Reef

I said a fond farewell to Alice Springs and the red center, and headed to Darwin, Australia. This is a city in the Northern Territory, that I ended up visiting slightly by accident. When I was planning my time in Australia, I found myself with a few days unaccounted for between Uluru and my next …

Uluru

Uluru. It's a landmark in many ways - instantly recognizable on a postcard, a sign of relations between the Australian government and the Aboriginal people, and a fascinating relic to geologists. But when you get close to it, and see the immense stone towering above you, none of that matters, and you find yourself just …

Melbourne and Adelaide

My first stop in Australia was Melbourne, second largest city in Australia and the capital city of the state of Victoria. I was fortunate enough to have some family living here, who generously invited me to stay with them. I have to admit, after three months of hostels and the like, it was very nice …