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Published: April 16th 2015
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Hello dear family and friends
Well your niece/friend is off again onto her next vacation, exploring strange new words, to see out new life and new civilizations and boldly go where....oh wait. wrong line ;-)
I'm off on my very first River Cruise! I am going with Avalon Waterways, and I'm going for 2 reasons (other than I am obsessed with traveling). 1. I really want to experience a River Cruise for the sole purpose of being able to sell it more effectively as they are a hot item these days; and 2. I can go on a river cruise to destinations I've not been before which got me super excited! This will be country number51, 52 and 53, I will keep adding to that eternal passport stamping.
I'm doing an Eastern European itinerary - starting in Budapest, Hungary (been to twice and love it), then down through Bulgaria, Serbia and finishing in Romania. I did a 2 day extension to stay in Belgrade so I can go to DRACULA'S Castle - YYAAAYYYYYY as I simply can't go to Romania without going to Transylvania! It's unfortunate that I won't be seeing Cluj where Dad is from, but at
least I will get a taste of his home country, which I'm excited about. And the best part of this trip is my dear friend Dennis (aka Hippie) is coming with me; I'm always quite content to travel on my own, but traveling with another person is always entertaining, seeing things from a different perspective and just having company in good and bad times (and this trip will prove to have both).
Picked up Hippie at the Save on Foods parking lot on the south side, after getting stuck in a traffic jam on the Anthony Henday (now I remember why I love going the 'back way' to the airport) but after that was smooth sailing. Explored the new area of the the terminal in Edmonton (quite nice, open airy and quiet), and found a wonderful place to have a wine, and perhaps yet another wine while waiting for our slightly delayed flight.
Our flight was fairly empty surprisingly, so we each had a row of 2 seats, I'm small enough that I fetal'd in and crashed for a good chunk; despite the whining of my knees. London connection time was only 2.5 hours, so after a wander
about, a delicious coffee, a bit of overpriced window shopping ($1,100 Pound Chanel dress I fell in love with) and we were good to go on the next leg. Best part of the flight was when the pilot announced (and I swear we both heard it) "Ok Coconuts, please sit down for landing." Coconuts. uh-huh. I see pilots and flight attendants are very friendly ;-)
Landed in Budapest, decided it was time for one more lovely European coffee, hopped a cab and went to our spectacular InterContinental Hotel right on the river in Budapest. Beautiful of course, we went for a stroll around the city discovered a lovely restaurant called "Hummus" and guess what? They served hummus on a street front patio! YYAAYYY. Chowed down on veggie food, drank fresh lemonade, and then wandered around slowly back to our hotel. By then we'd been up for an inhumane amount of time, and got settled in and quickly fell asleep. Tomorrow morning, Budapest city tour with the Avalon crew, then an afternoon to explore more on our own.
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