Chisinau - Moldova

Chisinau and Tipova – Moldova

Post published:2 April 2017
Post category:Eastern Europe Europe Moldova

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Archaic Romanian chișla (source of water) and nouă (new)

Another new country in my list! 83 so far in total, and 46th out of 50 that form the European continent at the time of writing this guide. It’s always very exciting coming to places never been before especially if these are a different country, another culture to explore and looking forward to something new. Europe is getting too small and believe it or not, we are starting to run out of destinations. For sure on the main destinations there is pretty much nothing left not visited, but thankfully there are still way many other places… although again, with so many hundreds been, this is slowly becoming a challenge to find a flight or plan a reasonable route to reach these places.

Chisinau, the capital of Moldova is definitely by all means not the usual holiday destination to anyone. The country is one of these “forgotten” for the average traveller, one of the less visited with few venturing coming to discover. To us, however, it was a must in our list for quite some time now, yet not easy to reach until now with more flights available and more flexibility in the times. In any case, talking about flying times… we took off from London minutes before midnight to land in Chisinau right after 05.00am local time the following day, but well, not everything is going to be as easy as a cup of tea.

The country, to the surprise of anyone, is full with beautiful villages, medieval castles, monasteries and amazing nature. It might be small but it offers everything to whoever comes to visit, and won’t disappoint. But before I continue in here, let me tell you that this trip was not just for the sake of reaching its capital city and nothing else, but to also include 2 of the country’s highlights: the world’s largest wine cellar, Mileștii Mici; and the largest cave monastery in Eastern Europe, Tipova. Now with all this in mind, your trip will definitely be truly worth it!. (more…)

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Katowice - Poland

Katowice and Auschwitz – Poland

Post published:5 March 2017
Post category:Eastern Europe Europe Poland

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The Holocaust

After many years trying to find a good deal to this part of Poland, either Krakow or Katowice in order to finally reach Auschwitz, it came when less expected. Over 6 years have passed since our first and only time in Krakow, and ever since, with the city booming more and more tourist-wise talking becoming much more expensive in every way; now it’s cheaper to fly to the Canary Islands than here as an example! That’s the only reason why we kept postponing a return until eventually, finding a good deal. In this occasion, not to Krakow but to nearby sister city Katowice. After all, when thinking in visiting Auschwitz, it does not really matter which of the two cities you fly into as it is literally in the middle of both.

Katowice is a modern city, developed from the 18th century gaining importance and great wealth because of the enormous coal deposits in this area of south Poland. Mines opened everywhere, the industrial revolution boomed here, and so the city grew. Not in the way of a merely industrial city, but in a good way, where the new architecture from the era, the art-nouveau, left a big mark, coupled with some fine examples or art-deco that followed the next decades until World War II and the Nazi occupation took the toll.

While many old buildings were demolished to make way for wide avenues and monuments typical from the Soviet era, half of the city was thankfully spared, notoriously the southern half where the most elegant buildings are, most of them former headquarters of coal mines, industries and banks. The northern part of the city is older and centralised around the old Market Square (Rynek), but do not expect to find a large old town, nor a market square typical from majority of the Polish cities completely surrounded in beautiful architecture. In fact, visiting the entire city will not take you much of the day, therefore plan your time accordingly as there are many places you could visit nearby truly worth it. (more…)

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Krakow - Poland

Krakow – Poland

Post published:4 March 2017
Post category:Eastern Europe Europe Poland

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The Polish Athens, The Polish Mecca

Almost 8 years have passed since my first and only time in this beautiful city, yet my opinion and judgement has not changed but turned to even better. Now after this trip I can finally update one of my older travel guides here in my blog to a much more complete and descriptive one together with a refreshed photo album. To me this felt as visiting a new city from scratch not only for the long time not been, bur for the huge difference in the weather too!. If back in December 2009 it was super cold, grey and dark, rain and the first snow of that winter; this time in March 2017 it was a different story. A proper spring day, sunny and warm to the point of needing to remove our jackets. We could not have asked for more nor been any luckier.

Krakow is the most visited city in Poland, and the facts talk for itself: it’s been the Royal Capital city of Poland for many centuries until 1596 when it was moved to Warsaw. It has always been one of the wealthiest cities in the country, with some of the finest churches, palaces and mansions built. A very large castle growing with every king. An important merchant and trade city since the middle ages, and all this architecture and historic legacy thankfully spared from the destruction during WWII mainly because of Hitler having a special love for this city. You can expect a very large collection of historical buildings everywhere, retaining much of the Medieval urban core almost intact. No wonder why it was one of the first 12 privileged candidates to be inscribed as a World Heritage Site on the very first UNESCO list when this organisation was created in 1978.

In any case, even having so much to see, the city centre is not too big and can easily be visited in full in a day or over a weekend. Also with such a compact historical centre with most of the streets pedestrianised, following a perfect orthogonal urban grid, there is absolute no need for taking any public transportation when visiting the sights.

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Lviv - Ukraine

Lviv – Ukraine

Post published:9 October 2016
Post category:Eastern Europe Europe Ukraine

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Latin Leopolis, The City of the Lion

Coming back to one of our less visited countries in Europe, Ukraine, also one of the biggest with so much to see and so much to offer. While we had a great time visiting the capital Kiev in other trips, it was about time to come to the beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Site listed city of Lviv. The most historical of any in the country and with such an incredible vast amount of old buildings, churches, palaces and monuments all over the city; many of which already perfectly restored to their former glory with many on the way. In this city you can still strongly feel its Soviet past with areas where it seems time stood still, but it is changing and redeveloping rapidly itself to become the next new major tourist spot in Eastern Europe.

The city’s potential is unquestionable. Through its history of invasions and different empires taking over this region it kept gaining strength and importance, and survived almost intact the Soviet invasion and both World Wars, unlike majority of its neighbours, or even Kiev that was severely destroyed to rubble.

Invaded by the Tatars in 1261 by King Daniel and completely razed to the ground, was rebuilt from 1270 by King Lev (Leo) who chose it as his residence, making it the capital of Galicia-Volhynia. Inherited by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1340, then Poland gaining control in 1349 with Casimir III becoming part of the Kingdom of Poland until 1772 with the First Partition of Poland and as such, the region annexed to Austria, Habsburg Empire. This would last until the end of WWI with the fall of the Habsburg Monarchy, leading to the Polish-Ukrainian War, when Poland retook control. As for the last years on the city’s recent history, at the brink of WWII the Soviets invaded the land and slowly annexed it to the Soviet Union, lasting until its complete independence in 1980. (more…)

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Nesvizh and Mir - Belarus

Nesvizh and Mir – Belarus

Post published:30 May 2016
Post category:Belarus Eastern Europe Europe

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Treasures of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Crown Kingdom of Poland

An spontaneous and very last minute decision for touring something else in Belarus than only visiting its capital, Minsk; turned out to be one of the highlights in this trip all together. However, it was not an easy task finding out the transportation to get there. But first of all, let’s start by talking about how we found and knew about both these places. At the time I was collecting information about Minsk before the trip, Nesvizh Castle also pop up, but after reading the “complicated” way to reach it I decided to let it go and not going deeper to find out more.

A second attempt came after I finalised the guide for Minsk and discovered that for sure, two and a half days in the city will be way over too much. So as usual I do wherever we travel, I searched for UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the country in case something turns to be nearby. And there is was again, Nesvizh and Mir. I only noted down the very minimal information on how to get there and though on asking someone once in Minsk rather than the almost 0 proper help from internet. And so after our first day in Minsk, and after seeing hundreds of advertisements for visiting the castle, and also the castle of Mir (which I did not have any idea of its existence until this day); our resolution was waking up early and ask at the bus station.

Asking at the bus station did not happen at the end, but at our hotel they gave us all the information we needed, and managed to get there without delay and pretty much straightforward. Not before having to ask at another hotel for further “clarification” and help but all was there at the front of our eyes. I explain below at the next section how to get there and all you need to know with details which are nowhere in the internet.

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Minsk - Belarus

Minsk – Belarus

Post published:30 May 2016
Post category:Belarus Eastern Europe Europe

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Capital of the Commonwealth of Independent States

Another exciting trip ahead of us to a country we’ve never been, Belarus. And yet another country to tick off the list of countries visited in Europe, bringing down the count to just 6 left (out of 50!). These are already serious numbers, but also means that excluding Albania and Moldova which are quite near and “easy” to reach, the others are way farther and beyond any logical time to get there on just for the weekend or 3 days trip. So unless booking some time off coupled with the weekend, there is no other possible solution to be able to enjoy them. In any case, the remaining ones will definitely require more days for visiting as it is not the only objective getting to their capital, but also secondary cities and important places elsewhere in the country.

Flying to Minsk does not come cheap either. Not only the direct flight to/from London is seriously expensive, but also the scheduled times do not make much sense to be honest if all you have is only a few days. The flights are not daily either. In the other hand, if you look to a map, Minsk is very near Vilnius, to where you can grab some nice flight deals and very frequent. We twisted even more since the deal we found was actually with airBaltic on a London-Riga-Vilnius, and Vilnius to London. The bus from Vilnius to Minsk is 3.5 hours and is just 13 Euros, but for the sake of convenience, we managed to get the flight back from Minsk to Vilnius for almost the same price as the bus would have costed us, giving us some extra hours in Minsk as consequence and avoiding at least 2 hours on the border to enter back the European Union. Leaving the EU for Belarus is as quick as few minutes, but in the opposite direction to enter the EU the queues at the border are terribly long.

So with the flights and overland transportation sorted, the next was to find a hotel. That was an easy task, and a great deal at the DoubleTree by Hilton very near the city centre. Now, as we already knew, there was still the “most” important task to be done: getting a visa to travel to Belarus. Since we already experienced a similar process for getting one to Russia, Belarus was in a sense similar although they have introduced some extra barriers in the process. I will explain this below in a separate section so you know how to proceed. (more…)

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Cesky Krumlov - Czech Republic

Cesky Krumlov – Czech Republic

Post published:31 October 2015
Post category:Czech Republic Eastern Europe Europe

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Bohemian Crumlaw

At only 5 days ago since we returned from a long trip in Indonesia and yet today once again, as most Fridays are for us, we flew to Prague, and yes, once more to this city, it’s never tiring to repeat the places you admire the most. Although the original purpose was actually not doing any sightseeing whatsoever, but instead taking the time for doing “nothing” and simply enjoy at the many coffee places, food and nice beer; we changed the plans around in order to have a day excursion to Cesky Krumlov, the wonderful UNESCO World Heritage city some 170 kilometres to the south of Prague for the whole of Saturday. As for Sunday in the other hand we retained to the original plan and enjoy the free time.

For a city of this small size its castle is second in size only after the one in Prague! That is in fact very big. Other than the castle, it is also about the incredibly well preserved old town with most constructions dating from the 14th through the 17th centuries Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architectural styles. The Vltava River also adds charm as it crosses the city in many meanders, giving many different perspectives from each angle.

Due to its small size and easy to navigate through when visiting I cannot think of anything else to give you as a note in this brief introduction. Furthermore when planning for lunch I cannot even give you a recommendation here either because our lunch was included as part of the tour hence we did not need to be looking around for restaurants, but as for any city in the world and specially if highly touristy as Cesky Krumlov is, care to have a look around at few places as you might end up in a tourist trap, or paying twice for the same, or having pretty low quality. (more…)

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Opole - Poland

Opole – Poland

Post published:3 October 2015
Post category:Eastern Europe Europe Poland

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Historical capital of Upper Silesia

Another weekend flying to Wroclaw after a year we went there, yet with a different reason this time which was reaching Opole, 100 kilometres to the southeast. Not a city of special importance or any great sights, but fully meaningful to my travel companion as it is his birthplace before having to move to Germany when the borders changed and Opole returned to be a city in Poland and no Germany.

Also a good reason for returning to Wroclaw was to be with my friend whom I did not see for almost 12 years!. And of course, for the city itself. It is still among one of my favourite in Poland with so much to see and do. While the last time we visited it was almost December and the huge Christmas market was already on in the main square and streets, this time we got just in time to enjoy probably the last days of sun and warm temperatures before the Autumn drop. We’ve been very lucky on both Wroclaw and Opole with the weather, it could have been already very bad.

I know this guide is going to be quite explicit, but for the shake of it I could not pass the occasion and give it a go in creating it as I got some spare time right before our main long holidays for this year just 5 days ahead of us. But not minding the very small size of it and that there is not much to see, it was still worth to come for the day and enjoy the cute old town knowing most of it is a reconstruction since the World War II made a great loss and destruction in Opole. (more…)

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