Holidays 2018

July - Wellington, NZ

August - Singapore

October - Barcelona

December - KL, Malaysia

December - Bali, Indonesia

March - Romania

April - Riga, Latvia

January - Barcelona

I have gotten the photos a bit muddled up, but you get the idea!

Jan and October we went to Barcelona, we saw FC Barcelona play on both occasions

March was spent in Romania during the Easter weekend, we stayed in Bucharest and a day trip to visit two castles and Brasov

April - We went to Riga,  Latvia

July/August - New Zealand, we visited both islands

August - was a quick 2 hour tour of Singapore

December - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Bali, Indonesia

It was a great year of travelling but my favorite was New Zealand!

I have already got plans for this year!

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!

Bucharest, Romania Part 1

For the Easter break I went to Bucharest with my friend Arlene, driving is not for the faint hearted and our taxi ride from the airport was quite an experience!

I did not know much about Bucharest before we were there, I did read lots of blogs about the city and of people who had visited the city so that helped me a bit. I guess most of them mention that the city is not the prettiest of cities! And to be honest it turned out to be true, lots of rundown buildings and not much colour!

Little by little we managed to find some areas that looked cool with bar, cafes and interesting shops. The Romanian people were always were nice and helpful when we got a bit lost or when we spoke in shops and restaurants. By the end of our trip we decided to call Bucharest edgy and gritty which we thought was quite positive!

My parents are here visiting at the moment and on Sunday we had a lovely day visiting Säntis mountain and the next few days will be quite busy too!

Hope everyone had a lovely 1st of May day!

A Glimpse of Brasov

Piata Sfatului

Black Church

Over the Easter weekend I went to Romania with my friend Arlene and we stayed in Bucharest. We went on a day trip and visited Peles and Brans Castle (which will post another time) and as a final stop we had a really quick visit to Brasov.

Brasov is situated in the region of Transylvania, about 166km for Bucharest and we stopped for a short guided tour of the town. It would have been really nice to have been able to walk around ourselves and check out some of the shops.

Brasov is a lovely 13th century town with lots of colourful buildings with great architecture. One of the big tourist draws of the town is the Black Church. It is the largest Gothic church in Eastern Europe, it earned the name after a fire in 1689 caused the walls to be darkened by smoke.

There is a funicular which takes you up to Mount Tampa with lovely views from the top. The main square is really nice and lined with cafes and shops but we just wandered through to see the Black church. Of the little that we saw of Brasov it definitely would be nice to spend a bit more time to investigate the town more.

Have a great weekend!