Vamos à Praia

On a beautiful sunny Saturday with mid-60s (F) temps, I took a cheap Uber ride out to the ocean, where I visited Praia Grande (big beach) and then walked up and over to Praia das Maçãs, another nice beach. Both were strangely empty on such a nice Saturday afternoon. I guess the Portuguese are like […]

That Sounds Fishy

Seafood is very popular in Portugal, unsurprisingly given its long coastline. For historical reasons from 500 years ago and a connection to Newfoundland in Canada, the Portuguese love cod, which they have to import. Grocery stores sell huge salted and dried codfish fillets called Bacalhau, which are rehydrated before preparation for eating. Apparently these could […]

Koreans Love Zagreb

When visiting Zagreb in the past year, Colleen and I saw very few Asian tourists, but on this trip there are clearly many more. Our tour guide says that they are mostly Koreans! The reason is that there have been very popular Korean TV shows filmed in Zagreb, and as such there is a direct […]

Kuna to Euro

On the 1st of January, 2023 (in less than three months as of this writing), Croatia will become the 20th member of the Eurozone, a collection of countries in Europe using the euro currency. A fixed conversion rate was set at 1 € = 7.53450 kuna. Since our previous Croatian visit in April, businesses have […]

Zagreb, Are You Tired of Seeing Me?

This is my fifth arrival into Zagreb, Croatia. I came back again because I love it here. I don’t know exactly why. I met a Californian outside a ruin pub back in Budapest, and his wife had passed, and so he had been traveling solo up from Georgia (the country) and Turkey. He had been […]

Thermal Baths

Budapest is a city worth staying in for more than one week, and I now wish I had sacrificed some Bratislava time for Budapest, but maybe I’ll need to come back one day, hopefully with someone else! What an interesting and different place! I think this is also an indication to me that I need […]

Memento Park

I’m over halfway done with this trip! Wow, some periods have felt slow, while other times have passed quickly. Budapest has been exciting but tiring, given all the many interesting things to see. I’m also frankly having a tough time with the whole workation thing. Work doesn’t seem as desirable when you’re sitting in the […]

House of Terror

On Friday afternoon I visited the House of Terror Museum – it might sound like a haunted mansion, and maybe it is, because many people died there. But it’s primarily now a museum in the same building that Hungarian representatives of the Nazis and then the Soviets used for coordinating interrogation, torture, and murder. The […]

Illiberal Democracy

Hungary has had a controversial prime minister, Viktor Orbán, since 2010. His party is the far right Fidesz. From Wikipedia: “His tenure has seen Hungary government shift towards what he has called “illiberal democracy” — citing countries such as China, Russia, India, Singapore, and Turkey as models of governance — while simultaneously promoting Euroscepticism and […]

Magyars

This excerpt from Rick Steves sums up well the feeling one gets in Budapest. It just doesn’t feel like any of the four Slavic places I’ve visited on this trip. But I will say that it is also the most touristy, I think even more than Prague! And I hear English and Spanish (why Spanish?) […]