We are back in Granada for about a week after wrapping up a
nice long train trip to southeastern Europe. It’s kind of funny how a place can
feel like home, despite never really feeling like you belong, but I think that’s
where we are with Spain these days. It’s less foreign than Romania or Slovenia,
so it hardly feels foreign at all anymore!
We started our trip with a few days in Bucharest, Romania,
where we got to see one of the world’s largest buildings (their Parliament
Palace) as well as an interesting mix of residually communist-feeling areas and
lively sidewalk café/restaurants. The past few months have taken us to lots of European
places with revolutions in their history, but probably none quite so recent. There
is no shortage of graffiti, and people park their cars literally everywhere (street,
sidewalk, you name it)…just a little rougher around the edges overall. I’m sure
the city has changed a lot over the past few decades, and who knows what it
will be like a few decades from now. Probably a little more expensive than it
is now, but it was an incredibly refreshing change to spend $25 for lunch that
would’ve cost $100 in Switzerland!
From big-city Bucharest the next stop was small-town Brasov
(still in Romania), a lovely little spot with Transylvanian castles and a very
quaint central plaza, where Coco could feed pigeons and practice her driving skills
in the rent-a-PowerWheel cars. We managed to visit while they had their
Oktoberfest going on (lots of German heritage) at the town fairground/high
school track, so that was an interesting comparison with the giant beer halls
of Munich. They have a mini-mountain in the middle of town, and spelled the
name of the town at the top in giant white letters (a la Hollywood) so of
course we had to go up there and check that out. Wrapped up the stay here with
a local guy threatening to call the cops on Eric, who he thought was trying to
abduct a *seriously* tantruming Colette. I guess it’s nice to think that people
are looking out for the kids, and it probably did look a little sketchy that
this grown man was chasing a screaming, crying 3-yr old up and down the
streets, but at the time it was hard to see the humor!
From Brasov, we hopped on the overnight train to Budapest,
Hungary – amongst the three of us, we may have gotten a combined six hours of
sleep. Ugh! Managed to survive without either Coco or I falling out of the
upper bunk, so I guess we can say it was a success, but it made for a LONG
first day in Budapest. Luckily, the beautiful weather we’d been getting had
continued, so seeing a wonderfully historic city on a sunny summer day helped.
We spent most of our time on the Pest side of the Danube, which is the flatter
side and the more hustle-and-bustle modern side. ‘Modern’ in this case meaning
built in the early 1800’s, of course! Another giant Parliament building (although
this one felt a bit more warranted since Budapest had sort of been the eastern capital
of the Austro-Hungarian empire) as well as cathedrals and busy little
pedestrian-only shopping and dining streets made Budapest feel quite European.
Besides the intensely difficult Hungarian language all over, you could’ve
easily mistaken it for a big city in Germany or France. They even had a cat café
that we had to check out – I think the cats are slightly less enthralled with
the arrangement than all the patrons, but they’re cats, so that’s par for the
course. Luck with the weather had to finally run out, but we took advantage of
the cool rainy day by going to one of the huge outdoor thermal baths in town…which
was perfect! Not as crowded as it would’ve been on a nice day, and there was
something really neat about the mist created by the hot water and cool air. Our
only minor catastrophe was one shattered iPad when Coco dropped it, but that was a mixed blessing since we didn’t have to hear quite as much
Caillou after that – oh, how I miss the Peppa Pig obsession!
A full-day train trip brought us from Hungary to Slovenia,
which is now high on my list of favorite European countries. The
centrally-located capital city of Ljubljana was our ‘home base’ and we took day
trips to Lake Bled, Lake Bohinj, the Postojna caves, the Vintgar gorge, Predjama
castle, the Vrsic nature area, and Triglav national park (highest point in
Slovenia!). The country is about the size of New Jersey, so things are
relatively compact, and the Julian Alps were gorgeous. Big thanks to Tomaz
Vrabec for all the suggestions about what to see and where to eat – I really
hope we can get back there again someday and check out some areas we didn’t
have time for, and re-visit places we really enjoyed the first time around. Plus
it was nice that they were on the Euro so we didn’t have to use any brain power
for currency conversion like every other place on this trip!
The final days of the trip brought us back to Croatia, a
day in the capital (Zagreb) and a few days on the coast (Split). It was nice to
end the journey in a smaller city with a great beach, since by this point we were
ready to take it easy! No waves, soft sand, plenty of cheap chairs/umbrellas, bars/restaurants, and a bay the size of 4 football-fields full of perfectly clear thigh-deep water...really can't ask for more when you're trying to enjoy the end-of-summer sun. Well, Coco could also ask for the floaty toy from the family next to us, who was kind enough to share :) The town of Split has grown up around an ancient Roman ‘retirement’
palace that was built by a guy named Diocletian ~1700 years ago, but control of
the city has changed hands a lot since then, and people basically just moved
into the palace for protection over time, and now it’s full of shops and
restaurants and people’s houses – very interesting! Along with Slovenia,
Croatia is definitely a country I hope we get to spend more time in someday.
While getting back to Granada has been nice, it’s been a
LONG time since Coco was in school (early August!) so it hasn’t been easy for
her to transition back into it. More tears in the morning, so thankfully Eric
is doing drop-off and I get pick-up. The weather here has finally cooled off a
bit, so we can get out and enjoy the city again – plus with August over, it’s
not a ghost town anymore. We got to see some NFL in the local Irish bar tonight,
unfortunately the Packers/Vikings game isn’t on until 230am our time, so I’m
just going to have to trust that the good guys will win, and catch the
highlights in the morning :)
