Easter Weekend in Bucharest, Romania Part 2

Easter weekend was spent in Bucharest, Romania and as I mentioned in the first post the capital is not a colourful city! The colourful bits are the street art/graffiti, parks and the walls, windows in the the many churches.

The second photo is the Palace of the Parliament, we only saw it from the front, but looking at pictures of the whole building it is huge, colossal, gigantic, massive and any other adjective you can think of to describe big!  I actually now regret not visiting inside looks quite amazing! It is the second largest administrative building in the world after the Pentagon, it has 20 floors and 8 of them are underground!

Don`t be put of Romania if you think the whole country is like Bucharest as it is not! We had a quick trip to Brasov, lovely city/town and there is also Sighisoara which looks fantastic to visit and also Timisoara. Check out this link and you may be wanting to visit this country!

It is the weekend and I have plans to see some friends, go to the movies and also if you are interested in architecture there is an Open House Zürich. There are opportunities to visit different buildings, houses and museums for free!

Have a great weekend!

July Reading List

My reading from July is very low as I was in New Zealand from mid July onwards and didn't´ want to take many books with me. It did not stop me buying books there and bringing more back than I took out. This photo is from my shelf and just some of the many books I still have to read.

In no particular order:

Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor

Borkmann`s Point by Hakar Nesser

New Uses for Old Boyfriends by Beth Kendrick

Cemetery Lake by Paul Cleave


The first book is the second is a trilogy and funnily enough I am reading the final book at the moment. The last book on the list was bought in NZ and I purposely looked for NZ writers. He has written many books and I did like this one.

Hope you all had a great weekend, I have spent it reading.

A Day and Night in Oamaru, South Island

From Dunedin we decided to go to Christchurch by bus which was roughly 5 hours away to break this journey up I decided to make a stop in Oamaru. I did not know much about this place but thought it would have enough to offer for our short time there. It did not disappoint at all.

The biggest pull to Oamaru is the chance to see the smallest penguins in the world, the blue penguins. So I booked tickets for that evening, we had a short wonder around the town and headed to the penguin centre.

We had to wait until it got dark but we had some fur seals to keep us occupied, they were just lounging around. The little critters started coming after 6pm and they just waddled their way up from the sea into the grounds where their homes are, which looked like small boxes. It was well worth the wait, even though it was freezing cold by then.

The other rather interesting thing about Oamaru is the Victorian architecture it has to offer, lots of lovely cafes and craft shops. There is also a Steampunk headquarters and you may well ask what the heck is that. I had no idea until I read up about it. "Steampunk is a quirky and fun genre of science fiction which features steam powered technologies" this is from the website about steampunk. We did see some examples and if we had had enough time probably would have visited the place.

So that was our short stop in Oamaru and we stayed in a nice flat and would recommend it. The lady picked us up from the bus stop and brought us to the flat.

Happy Weekend

St Peter`s Island, Lake Biel

pavilion

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Former Monastery

One of our day trips with my parents was to St Peter`s Island which is technically a peninsula situated on Lake Biel.

I drove to Biel and we managed to get a boat just after 1pm, it is only 50min ride to our stop. We walked to the former monastery which is now a hotel and restaurant. It does still look very impressive and if you want to visit the chamber of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, it is possible but we did not.

Afterwards we wandered up to see a 18th century Pavillion, there is not much to see and we went back down again. Before we caught the boat back we stopped for a snack and for some wine made from the estate and it was very nice.

There are number of walks to do and it is possible to walk the whole peninsula to the town of Erlach. There is also a canal which connects lakes Biel and Neuchatel and it is possible to catch a boat, which does sound like an interesting trip to do.

Happy Weekend

A Long Weekend in Riga, Latvia Part 2

Very interesting bar!

So a quick trip back to Riga to finish off our travels to this city and one off the things you would notice about this city is that it is very colourful. It also has lots of amazing buildings and architecture too. You can also check out the photos from my first post about Riga on the blog. 

We went to a cafe/bar called Black Magic, which was a tip from my Latvian friend Kat. It was very nice and I tried the drink Black Balsam which is from Latvia. It is very nice with prosecco but for me on its own not my cup of tea! I would definitely recommend a visit for sure!

This week has been filled with Alessio`s birthday, his birthday was on 3rd Sept and we had a small celebration that evening. Today was his party, which was a joint one with his friend Josiah. They decided to go to Alpamare. I had not been for over 15 years and could not remember much about the place. The boys had a super time, we had delicious carrot cake bake by Amy, Josiah`s mum and of course they got presents. So that it is over for another year!!

Hope you are all having a great weekend!