After a long day at the airport we finally made it to Sicily. We rented a car and I got lots of practice driving a manual over the next few days. We stayed in the old city of Siracusa called Ortigia. SO beautiful. Our hotel was right on the water a few meters from the castle. We did a day trip to Taormina, another town on the coast famed by its Mount Edna, an active volcanic mountain (couldnt see it the day we were there tho even tho it was sunny and clear......

What a beauitful city! Despite the communist remnants in some of the drab buildings they have really spruced up the city, restored a lot of the historical architecture and have really made it quite nice. We stayed on the Pest side (budapest used to be 2--technically 3 actually--cities and then to become the capital they merged buda and pest into budapest) very close to the hussle and bustle. Since we only had a day there I wanted to make the most of it so I foun...

ON the 3rd and 4th Josh and I did a wine tour that started in zagreb and ended in budapest. Last time josh was in hungary he met Gabor who took him on a wine tour and they have stayed friends ever since and he organized and guided this tour for us (he even picked us up at the zagreb airport!). We began in the croatian slavonia region and then crossed the border into the hungarian villany region. The border crossing was quite a spectical considering we had, by ...

Ok so I am SUPER behind but thats only because weve been having such an amazing time and havent been sitting around on the internet! Our last day in Dubrovnik we spent it wandering the town and walking the walls. The entire old city is surrounding by a protecting wall from many centuries ago but it actually came in handy in the early 1990s when they were under siege during the croatian revolution from yugoslavia. We also went up to the old fort above town which...

First blog entry that isnt delayed--woohoo! Today Josh and I did a Peljesac Peninsula wine tour. When we arrived in Dubrovnik on Friday our host (the woman than owns the apartment we are renting) gave us an overview of the area and mentioned good wines nearby, and of course, Josh's ears perked up and she then set us up with a driver who took us to the peninsula and to a handful of private wineries. This was my first wine tour and it was really fun! Our guide's...