Travel|Tips|Stories
Marienburg, this beautiful Gothic Castle, located 30km away from Hanover, was erected in the 19th century by King George V of Hanover as a present to his wife Marie, hence the name Marienburg or “The castle of Mary”. It clearly had no military or defense purpose, and was used as the Summer residence of the ruling family.
Another year has gone by in what feels like the blink of an eye! Merciless time, why are you always rushing? Yesterday it was summer, now we are waiting for Santa Clause, and tomorrow we start again to plan the mid-year vacations.
My oh my, nostalgia strikes again! Let’s get away from that, to the practical things and focus on the mighty travel bucket list for 2018! Or perhaps not so mighty as many of you may think, because there aren’t any major breakaways to other continents but only European trips that I thirst for quite some time:
Yes, I’m a millennial, from Romania, where everybody goes to Greece for the summer holidays, excepting ME. I know, it’s like I have been living under a rock, but hey, I’ll fix this in the year to come. I have received the advice to NOT start with Santorini, because all the other islands will be no match afterwards, so maybe Lefkada? What do you think?
I am sure I will love this place! There are so many astonishing things to visit and to enjoy in this part of Spain, that I think we will not be able to see all of it in one trip only. The countless cities – Sevilla, Granada, Malaga, Ronda, Cadiz just to name a few, and then Caminito del Rey and the White Villages(“Pueblos Blancos”), the Moorish culture and the tasty food!
Wait, don’t judge just yet! We have been here before, but a long time ago, over 8 years ago, and in Spring time when the weather was still very unfriendly: it rained all 3 days and it was so windy and cold that my partner doesn’t have any good memory of the place. The plan is to get to Amsterdam in warmer months, maybe middle summer, just to be sure to get some rays of sun:). I’m sure we’ll appreciate this time how beautiful and cosmopolitan it is.
Ever considered visiting this two beautiful Polish cities? Because I’m very very curious about them. Warsaw, one of the most affected cities by the WW2, almost razed to the grounds by the bombings, has since made huge efforts to rebuild some of the historic parts and to transform into a very beautiful and proud capital city. And Krakow, also a capital city of the Polish Kingdom, some 400 years ago, holds many beautiful sites.
I was always skeptical to plan a trip here, because of the high prices, but we have survived a trip to Switzerland some years ago, so I think we can sort out a reasonable budget.
It would have been so disrespectful towards my country not to include at least a Romanian place in the list. And I have yet to visit so many beautiful places at home too. I have never been to the Danube Delta, the 2nd largest in Europe, although I have it in my thoughts for a couple of years already.
That’s a wrap for this bucket list! Let me know what are your travel plans in the year to come because I would love to see that. My travels can change based on your travel stories also, who knows for sure where we’ll actually end up travelling?! We can only be certain of the past, right? But if there is one precious thing I have learned from the past two years, is that health is our greatest possession.
So, to end this last article of 2017, I wish you all to be healthy and to travel the world!
Good health and good sense are two of life’s greatest blessings.
Quote by Publilius Syrus
See you in 2018!
Whenever we combine travel and holidays with visiting good old friends I’m the happiest! Needless to say that we had the best of time in Lower Saxony, at the invite of our dearest friends who live here for many years already.
We discovered another beautiful part of Germany, that we had never explored before. Here is the preview of the entire trip: Four days in Lower Saxony.
Continue reading “Follow the Red Thread in Hanover – a self guided tour”
In a couple of days only we’ll go on a new trip to Italy and I recently realized that we traveled here so many times, twice a year in the last 3 years. This makes it our second most visited country, after Germany!
To honor this new discovery about my travel patterns, I have made a short list of the reasons that always draw me like a magnet towards this beautiful country.
So what is there to see in Lower Saxony, the second largest land of Germany?
A great deal of beautiful towns first of all! And what’s the special thing about many of these towns? The half-timber houses!
The method of timber-framing in house building, has been used for thousands of years around the world, but Germany and France’s Alsace region gather the biggest number of these beautiful and colorful, traditional houses. Continue reading “Four days in Lower Saxony – visiting the timber houses”
Only in Kassel, there’s a whole park, Wilhelmshöhe Bergpark (or Mountain Park) that’s enlisted today as a UNESCO World heritage: Lowenburg or The Lion’s Castle, The Oldest Public Museum in the world and Hercule’s Monument are all here, and all worth visiting. Continue reading “The UNESCO Mountain Park from Kassel”
Important note to myself: “You must dedicate more time and articles for your homeland places, because Gorj county has many fascinating sites and a beautiful and diverse landscape“.
So today story is about The Village Museum at Curtisoara (Muzeul Arhitecturii Populare de la Curtisoara), located only 10 km away from my hometown, Târgu-Jiu, the residence of the region.
Not once, while travelling in North Rhine Westphalia, had we heard talking about Sauerland… If you’re a lover of recreation activities: trekking on scenic mountain trails or mountain biking or even water sports, this land of fields and forests is a great place to do all that and more. And of course, scattered here and there are also a few pretty nice towns.
One of them is Altena, a small town that stretches on the river banks of Lenne.
It’s that time of the week again when I get to share with you another story about yet another beautiful destination: the Bulgarian town Veliko Tarnovo (Veliko Turnovo).
It’s perfect for 2-3 days visit, has a lovely topography, cultural heritage for art lovers, intriguing past for history nerds and on top of it all it’s a very affordable town. Well, I think I convinced you already, didn’t I? Continue reading “Veliko Tarnovo – the town of the kings”
How about 20 pictures or 50?! Well then, I could easily start a novel with how many pictures we took on the Croat Hvar island, last year. And back then, I wasn’t even writing travel stories on my blog. Today, I would probably fill a 2GB card in just two days.
But let’s get to the exciting part at once, right? the pictures and also a few travel tips. Continue reading “Hvar Island: from north to south, day and night”
Ego Diary Travel 
