The long day of travel from Romania into Hungary seemed to pass by rather quickly. I guess we're just getting comfortable with days that require 20-plus hours of travel. We've become the self-proclaimed seasoned veterans of the 'long-haul'. We pulled into the Keleti Train Station late in the afternoon, having left Brasov around the same time a day earlier. It was grey, wet and cold outside. We couldn't really get a feel for the city as we passed through it in ou...

We boarded our first European train in Bucharest and set our eyes on the medieval city of Brasov. Aside from experiencing the beauty of the Transylvanian countryside, we were in search of the infamous Bran Castle, mythically pegged as the 'home of Dracula'. The short 3-hour train ride had us pass through stunning autumn landscapes and small, simple villages that appeared to grow out of the mountainside. It was exactly the type of environment we had envisioned wh...

Romania is a country that had us intrigued. We knew very little about Romania other than the typical Western stereotypes of roaming Gypsies and the home of the infamous blood-sucking vampire Dracula. As a recent addition to the European Union in 2007, change is the big topic in Romania these days as it tries to escape its oppressive Communist past. In fact, we were actually visiting the capital during the country's democratic presidential election.Our goal for Ro...

Bulgaria was quite different from any other country that we had traveled to, except maybe Croatia. We were only a bus ride away from Turkey but felt like we had entered another world. We must confess that is was nice to finally blend in the crowd.It was great to be back in a country where locals spoke to us in their native language. Though English is rarely spoken, and we couldn't understand a word that was said to us, at least the people didn't assume we we're t...

The overnight bus left Istanbul around 7:30 pm. We expected to arrive in the Bulgarian seaside city of Varna about ten hours later. We selected Varna, Bulgaria's third largest city, as our next target because it's said to be the capital of the northern Black Sea coast and a popular tourist destination. It seemed logical to add the Black Sea to our itinerary in order to round out the "Circuit of Seas" - having already touched or swam in the Mediterranea...