ALASTAIR + LALEINIA

It's nice visiting Rome, but it was more of a "Barcelona appreciation day" for us. Rome is like a dirtier version of Barcelona, but that's just our opinion. However, I did enjoy our stay in Perugia. The Italian countryside is where it's at, not so much the bigger cities. Sure, you get the ruins and the history in Rome, but Italy is much more enjoyable in the quiet little towns. It just feels more authentic! So I found my place- Lake Como is my jam! I absolutely loved it! The only thing I knew about the place was that George Clooney had a multi-million dollar home alongside the lake. I would if I had the money, it is gorgeous! We stayed in a not so fancy airbnb, which was pretty cold. We just bought our food at the market, mainly bread and snacks, nothing fancy.  Alastair wanted to get to a point where we could hike, but Google maps couldn't get us to that point. We ended up driving a little less than an hour away, to a small town at the edge of th...

While we were planning our trip, I wanted to make sure that we were in Prague and Krakow for Christmas because they had some of the best Christmas markets. We spent Christmas morning driving to Krakow and arrived late afternoon. We were very tired, so once we arrived to our airbnb, we took a nap. It was really sweet, because the hosts weren't able to greet us but they did have traditional cakes in the fridge. We decided to get out and try to find food. We figured that a lot of restaurants and stores would be closed since it was Christmas, but we still were determined to find food. Before we left, we did make plain noodles with sausage, it was all we had, we thought that was going to be our Christmas dinner. We walked past a corner store and asked what time they would close, which was around 10 pm. Hope! We decided to walk a little more and get to the Old Town, to see if the Christmas market was open. As we were walking, we found another market and asked what time they cl...

Before planning this leg of the trip, our plans to Morocco fell through. I was so sad that we couldn't be riding camels in the Sahara desert like three wise men. So I wanted to make sure that our new Christmas plans would make up for our loss! I researched all the top Christmas markets in Europe and we hit almost all the best spots. Prague was the top of the list! So we left Slovakia, not much to say about it we pretty much slept there for the night and visited a castle. It was windy and cold while visiting the castle. But at least we stopped to say we've been. Country counted! Once entering Czechia, there were lots of billboards painted like the Czechian flag. It was cool at first, but it never ended. Every few yards, there was another one. A bit overkill! On our drive, I interview prepped Alastair. I went through the list of questions and then made up my own. It was fun! We got to our Airbnb, a cute apartment with lots of charm! We also went to the grocery st...

I don't really know much about Vienna, but a few years ago I went to Innsbruck in Austria and it was amazing, so I had high hopes for Vienna. Given that we were going at Christmas time, we were really excited to see the Christmas Markets which we'd read about online. As we were walking around the city, we ended up seeing loads of them, spread all over the place. At the first one, we ate some really really good food. Lain and Emre had some kind of mac and cheese thing, and I don't even remember what I had now, I just remembered that it was great. As we walked around the city we admired the architecture, and Emre loved to see the horses and carts that seem to be all over the place. After walking around for hours, we were only moderately impressed with the markets. As we were walking around aimlessly we decided to head for a really tall Church spire. As we got closer and closer, we started to see what all the fuss was about, we had just found Vienna's best Ch...

I was really excited about the Hungary part of our trip. My grandad was born in Hungary and left for England when he was a young man. As far as I know he never went back. I visited over a decade ago but got really sick thanks to a curry on British airways, and so I didn't see much outside my hotel bathroom. Anyways, we flew in to Budapest and picked up our rental car in time for lunch. Lain found a place on Google maps which was so amazing she said she almost cried. The food was so heavy and filling and tasty, wow I can almost taste it again as I write this. I had some beef stew thing with dumplings which looked like pasta. Lain had a chicken Kiev thing which was also amazing. I'd love to go back, but I didn't have change to leave a good tip, so we had to eat somewhere else for dinner! After a short nap in our Airbnb, we looked out the window to see that it was snowing - time for ice skating! From the tiny amount of research that I did, it appears that Budapest has th...

We arrived in Rome and left as soon as possible. San Marino is a few hours away and we wanted to take the opportunity to cross another country off the list. We got turned around a lot, ate McDonald's, and listened to some Italian music. It was late, but we eventually made it to Perugia. We woke up to a lovely Italian breakfast and we were the only ones staying there. The staff was super nice and Emre loved all the cats walking around the property. There was a huge cricket that Alastair found and we set it down on the ground. The cat we were playing with pounced and ate it whole. We felt so bad for the little bug, didn't mean for that to happen! After breakfast, we made our way to San Marino. We skipped the tolls and drove in the countryside, it was gorgeous! Made me a little carsick but the views were worth it! We ate some pizza at a restaurant and walked around the city. Just lots of walking and taking pictures. There wasn't much to tour but the views were wo...