Our trip home began with flights to London today, by way of Vienna on Austrian Airlines. However, before we left, the last stop on the tour was to Bucharest, Romania for a drive around the city and a visit to the second largest building in the world, Parliament Palace, aka Ceausescu's Palace. Ceausescu started construction on it in 1984 when many of the people in the country were poor and hungry. He worked on it until his death in the revolution of 1989. The di...

The Black Sea Discovery cruise finally made it to the Black Sea. The last thirty miles was by motor coach, but we made it to Varna, Bulgaria. The first stop at the Archeological Museum was interesting. A few artifacts in the collection date back to the Old Stone Age (10,000 – 100,000 BC). The museum has its charms and is a long way from decrepit, but it lacks any kind of style and most of the displays are very ordinary and somewhat shabby. The country doesn...

We docked at Svistov, Bulgaria for a full day trip through the area. While we were on the bus going from one site to another, the boat sailed on down the river to pick us up at Rousse, Bulgaria. On the way to Veliko Tarnovo we saw fields of corn and sunflowers and herds of sheep, goats, and cattle, but no fences to keep them in. The guide explained that the herd of animals belonged to everyone in the nearby village. They had a shepherd who would collect the ani...