We were sad to leave Venice. I think it is our favourite city in the world, for both of us. It was a good thing that we left though because we always spend so much there that if we stayed any longer we would have left broke. Anyway, lots more to get excited about! We left Venice early because we heard that it can take a long time to cross the border into Croatia and we had been told by our AirBNB hosts in Opatija that there was a special event on there today and...

Another brilliant day in Venice today. We had a lot to pack into one day and we managed to achieve everything we set out to do. We began with an early tour around the Doge's palace, just off Piazza San Marco. This was very interesting, giving us a full history of Venice's merchant past, dating back to the 1100's when Venice was a global power. We saw where prisoners were kept right in the bottom floors of the same palace building used by the Doge. Casanova was i...

Well, what a big day we had today. We woke early and got a good start on the day. It was a 2.5 hour drive to Venice and we wanted to get there as early as possible. We were on the road by 8:00 and heading for Italia. We arrive in Venice at 10:30, right on time, and after waiting half an hour to get into the car park, we took a private boat transfer to our hotel, the Westin Europa and Regina, and were here just before midday. The hotel was nice enough to leave u...

After leaving Budapest, we drove to Ljubljana in Slovenia. This place was a real surprise to us. We weren't sure what to expect, and so I guess it wasn't hard for Ljubljana to exceed our expectations. And this it certainly did. Driving into Ljubljana was very picturesque, with green mountains all around. The city itself is really quite beautiful. The city centre is very old with no skyscrapers or modern buildings at all. The architecture is simple and old schoo...

We have spent the last 2 days in Budapest and had a great time. The city is composed of 2 suburbs, Buda and Pest, dissected by the Danube river. The Buda side contains a castle and a monument to the freedom of the Hungarians (which started off as a monument to the Soviet "liberators") and many socialist monuments, which were moved there from all over the city after the end of the communist regime, in order to preserve their history. The Pest side of the city is...