Cruising the Med part 2 – ports of call

Posted by on Feb 28, 2013 in Cruising, France, Italy, Spain | 1 comment We arrived into Barcelona on time at 9am via Ryanair after a very early start in Budapest and caught a taxi directly to the port for €28 – and back into the land of western prices.  Although our cruise ship wasn’t scheduled to sail until 6pm, we could leave our bags and complete the check-in procedure then have a few hours in downtown Barcelona ahead of our official boarding time of...
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DIPS cruises around the Med

Posted by on Feb 28, 2013 in Cruising, France, Italy, Spain | 1 comment After many long nights trawling the internet in Budapest and languishing over where to go next, we came to the conclusion that travel in Eastern Europe during winter was not going to be straight forward. Many of the low cost airlines simply don’t fly in this region during these months of year. Our departure date to Iceland from Berlin had already been fixed for the 8th of March, and we would...
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Bunkering down in Budapest… Part 2 of Hungary

Posted by on Feb 28, 2013 in Hungary | 1 comment After the departure of the grandparents, and due to our busy schedule while they were with us, we still hadn’t made any arrangements for our onward travels. We were also seriously behind with the girls school work, so after a couple of quick email exchanges with our new best friend and favourite landlord (Patrick) a further two week stay in just the larger apartment (closing up the studio...
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Getting homely in Hungary – part 1.

Posted by on Feb 17, 2013 in Hungary | 2 comments My parents decided that our time in Europe would make a good excuse for them to fly to Europe and visit us for a couple of weeks(together with some cajoling on our part). So after many hours on the internet exploring options of where to meet and spend time together, we settled on Budapest, Hungary.  Our French friend Lara had earlier offered her family holiday house close to the Alps in Italy,...
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Recollections of Romania …

Posted by on Jan 25, 2013 in Romania | 1 comment   Our train rolled into the Bucharest train station on time and we prepared to part with the €10 taxi fare that has been fixed by all the taxi drivers leaving from the station. We knew from our research on the internet that it doesn’t matter if you are taking the taxi 1 km or 10 km, the fare is still be the same fixed amount. In our case, €10 is about 3 or 4 times what the fare should...
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