After a 7-hour train ride from Budapest to Zagreb, Croatia, followed by a 9-hour overnight (and extremely uncomfortable) trainride, Steph and I arrived in Split, Croatia feeling jetlagged even though we did not cross into another time zone. Without a map and too early to find an open store to purchase one, we wandered around Split trying to find our hostel and finally bumped into Jason, an Aussie with a backpack and a map who led us to our destination, Split Host...

Budapest. A city I never thought I'd see, nor did I have much of a desire to see (I ended up here simply to appease Steph). Budapest is much different than the western European cities that we have visited. It is obvious that many cultures influenced the history of Budapest. I, for one, am a fan of the Turkish influence in particular. Today we spent a couple of hours relaxing in Széchenyi Baths, a natural thermal spring in a Turkish bath house which has more than...

This morning I said goodbye to Collin and my parents before they flew home and Steph and I continued on to Salzburg, Austria to spend one night before heading to Budapest, Hungary. I hate goodbyes. :( We traveled east by train for 6 hours, passing through Liechtenstein along the way, a country measuring just 25 km in length and 6 km in width and is the world's largest producer of dentures (a bit of information for you that may come in handy during a future inten...

This morning I was happy to find that yesterday's clouds had disappeared, giving my family a clear view of the Matterhorn. Because of the perfect weather, we decided to postpone our plans to take the train to Zurich in order to have time to take the cablecar up the 12,736 feet to Glacier Paradise on the Switzerland/Italy border. At the top we had terrific views of skiers, Italian peaks as far as we could see, clouds rolling in below us, the town of Zermatt, and o...

Yesterday we traveled to Zermatt for our last couple of days before my family leaves to fly back to the States. I am in a REALLY BAD MOOD because a virus wiped out all of my pictures from this week on my memory card. Collin brought my laptop from home and now that has a virus on it so I don't know if I can recover my pictures on my laptop either. Bad, bad day. Really grumpy.