Week in Review: Week 10

In our 10th week we visited three countries, so we were quite busy! We started the week in Italy, hiking in the Dolomites and enjoying some time in the mountains. We love spending time in the mountains! After a few days, we made our way back into Austria, and spent two days visiting relatives of Sharleen near Graz. It was great to be with family, and we really enjoyed the opportunity to explore the Graz with them. From there, we made our way Budapest. We are in Budapest for the next few days and so far we our loving the city!

Highlight of the week

Sharleen and Darrell: We were in Austria for a few weeks and wanted to explore the Dolomites while we were close. We only plan on being in Italy in November or December this year, which would make exploring the mountains quite challenging. 

We ended up only doing one hike, but it was awesome! It was so great that we did a whole blog post about it, and you can find it here. We were exited to do a hike, especially after our awesome Norway adventures, and this hike was so much fun! Not only was the landscape beautiful, but it was a fun hike and at 20 km it was the perfect challenge level. 

Our time in the Dolomites was probably too short, and we would both love an opportunity to return back to explore more of this gorgeous area. 

Least favourite part of the week

Sharleen: Fog in the Dolomites. We had planned on spending three days in the Dolomites, and at least two hikes.However, on our first day there it was so foggy we couldn’t see anything. The fog was so bad we couldn’t even see the mountains. The hike we planned for the first day was suppose to have awesome views and WWII historical sites. We needed to take a gondola up to the top of a mountain and hike down, but since the fog was so bad when we got to the mountain we decided not to go. We didn’t want to spend so much money to go up and not see anything. Plus it was raining pretty good, so a three hour hike in the rain with no views sounded pretty terrible. We will just have to come back and visit again!

Darrell: Cell Phone: My cell phone stopped working for some reason this week, which has been really annoying. We were able to get SIM cards during our first couple of days in Germany, and our phones have been really helpful for maps or google. Our phones are supposed to work in all of the EU countries and so far we have had great luck. It’s nice to have access to the internet to be able to look for restaurants, hours of stores or even what bus or tram to take, but it’s really more of a luxury than a necessity. So, when my phone’s pre-paid plan didn’t reload for this month, it kind of sucked! Sharleen’s is still going which is good, but I now have to either learn German so I can call Vodafone or just play the “where is the WiFi” game until my next SIM card!

Favourite city/town/village visited

Sharleen and Darrell: Graz. We had a great tour of Graz while we were staying with my relatives. Sharleen had been to Graz about 12 years ago, but didn’t remember too much of the city. We started the day going up the funicular to Schlossberg, where we had a great view of the city. It was awesome to walk around and see almost 360 degree views. We also went to the Uhrtum, a clock tower that was above some beautiful gardens. After a quick lunch, we continued to tour the city and walked through the beautiful streets. We saw the city hall, the huge Kastner & Öhler store, and a few souvenir shops. We also went to the Landeszeughaus (Styrian Armoury) which was so intense! It is the world’s largest historic armoury, with over 32,000 pieces of weaponry, armour, and tools. It was so crazy to walk through each of the 4 floors. On each one, it seemed like every space, even the ceiling, was covered with helmets, armour, weapons, you name it. It felt as though an army left all of their belongings and they made a museum of it. There was so much stuff! Most of the castles we visit have an armoury display, but we had never seen anything like this before. 

We had a great day exploring the city, and it was fun to do it with family!

Favourite meal

Sharleen: Breakfast with our family. I unfortunately didn’t take any pictures of our two breakfasts at my relative’s house, but they were so delicious! We had a wonderful spread of local breads, meats, eggs, homemade jams, and cheeses from Holland. It was soooo good! The cheeses were super cool too. We had one that was a black cheese that was the same colour as a chalkboard. It was made with coal, which is where it got it’s colour from, but it had a slightly citrus taste. It made us excited to visit The Netherlands and try some tasty cheese!

Darrell: 3-course meal Budapest. On our first day in Budapest we stopped at a restaurant called 0.75 Bar and Bistro. I had the special of the day which was a 3-course meal, and it only costed $9.40 CDN! It started with a tasty soup full of veggies and large pieces of beef. The main meal was kind of an interesting combo of a really spicy meatloaf in some sort of bland potato stew. Although the potato stew kind of looked like goo, which I get doesn’t sound great, it was really was super tasty. The contrast between the spicy meatloaf and the stew was great! Then to finish it all off, we shared a tasty desert. The food was really tasty, but really the best part was that it was less than $10!! How can you beat that?!

We are spending a few days in Budapest before we make our way to Romania. We are looking forward to spending some time in the Bucegi Natural Park, near central Romania. We have booked two weeks in a B&B, which will be the longest we have stayed in one place. We can't wait!