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At the end of the summer, Kim, Lucas and I flew home from our trip back to the Balkans in business class on Finnair.
We typically fly in economy class so we can stretch our miles and go on more trips. However, award space home from Sofia was only available in biz so we decided to take what we could get to make the trip a reality. Continue reading The Worst Biz Class Amenity Kit Ever
I’ve written a bunch of times about how I love to visit McDonald’s when visiting a new country but rarely ever eat there at home.
Food is a big part of travel but sometimes it’s nice to eat something that reminds you of home (especially the Heinz ketchup!). However, the main reason that I have to visit McDonald’s when traveling is to see if there are any menu items which are not available at home which might be unique or a variation of a local dish. Continue reading A Unique Food at McDonald’s Romania
After visiting castles and medieval towns around Transylvania, we decided to change things up a bit. Before heading to Bucharest (our final stop in Romania), we figured it would be great to visit the Libearty Bear Sanctuary.
Romania has the largest amount of brown bears in Europe and we thought it would be very interesting to get to see them and learn a little about the sanctuary.
The European brown bear is very similar to grizzly bears but are a bit smaller. The bears we visited were all rescued from some pretty awful situations and we got to hear the stories of many of them. Continue reading Back to The Balkans- Day 5: Visiting A Bear Sanctuary & Getting To Bucharest
During our trip Back to The Balkans we flew with Air Berlin to get to/ from our destinations. Over the past couple of years we’ve flown with the airline a few times, finding award availability using our American Airlines AAdvantage miles.
If Air Berlin wasn’t a member of oneworld (making it a partner of AA) our summer trip to the Balkans and last years trip to Germany for Oktoberfest may have not even happened.
The thing about Air Berlin is that we’ve found the seats on their planes (in coach) to be some of the most uncomfortable for international flights. Continue reading The Sweetest Ending To A Flight
During our trip Back to The Balkans we spent a few days in Transylvania. If time was no issue I think that we could’ve spent at least a week checking out the different towns and sites in this area.
For our visit we stayed in Brasov and did day trips to a couple of different areas. While we slept in Brasov for 3 nights, we didn’t have tons of time to check out the sites around the town. However, I think we touched on the main things to do.
We had some time to wander around Brasov during the 2nd & 3rd days of our trip.
During this time we had a chance to visit a very popular and interesting site- Rope Street (Strada Sforii) one of the narrowest streets in Europe. Continue reading One of the Narrowest Streets In Europe
We made it home from our trip Back to The Balkans this past Sunday evening.
It took us quite a bit of time to reach our first destination in Romania. We had a long layover of 20 Hours in Berlin before flying to Bucharest. From Bucharest we had to take a 40 minute bus ride to the train station to catch our train (about 3 hours) to Brasov, a town which would be our base for exploring Transylvania.
We had originally planned to take trains around the area to visit various towns & castles in the area. However, a couple of things made us change our decision and just go along with a (unguided) tour from our hostel. Continue reading Back to The Balkans- Days 2 & 3: On to Romania & The Castles of Transylvania
Last week we spent a couple of nights at the Radisson Blu Bucharest during our current trip Back to The Balkans.
I booked our two-night stay for a total of 38,000 Gold Points. (38,000 points is the cost for one night but thanks to the stay 1, get 1 bonus for Club Carlson credit card holders that is all we paid for our full stay.)
During check-in there were some issues which seemed to be poorly handled by the staff. Official check-in time is 3:00pm and we arrived at around 3:30. Upon check-in we were given a choice of which floor we’d like to be on and a silly question of whether we’d like a king or queen bed. Continue reading 10,000 Club Carlson Points For Late Check-In & No Welcome Gift
To start off our trip Back to The Balkans we had a layover of 20+ hours in Berlin. Besides spending the night at a hotel close to the airport, we also had around a half-day to wander around the city.
We had a really nice time during our visit to Berlin last September (including seeing some Amazing Art at the Berlin Wall) so we didn’t mind the time in the city.
We didn’t really arrive with much of a plan besides heading over to one museum that we missed back in September. We decided to head over to the area around Checkpoint Charlie and figure it out from there.
Here is how we spent our time: Continue reading Back to The Balkans- Day 1: 20 Hours in Berlin
