Wish We Were There
ROMANIAN WANDERLUST
So many travel dreams right now. We usually take two to three major trips per year. Our next planned trip is in May to Romania and then a river cruise up the lower Danube from Bucharest to Budapest. We like the fact that they stop at many small towns and villages along the way — Vukovar in Croatia and Vidin and Rousse in Bulgaria. The big cities are interesting, but the small villages are usually charming and more authentic feeling.
Romania looks to be an amazing country! It wasn’t on our radar until we decided we wanted to do the lower Danube, but the more we looked at Romania the more we wanted to explore it while we were there. The landscape and wildlife look amazing. It is considered the most bio-geographically diverse country in Europe. It also has incredible history — including Vlad the Impaler and Dracula — and is multiculturally diverse, where you hear Hungarian and German in Transylvania and Turkish in the Dobrouja area. Most of all, looking at the internet, it still seems to have a very authentic feel to it. It feels like it is somewhat undiscovered by tourists. When we scheduled this trip about a year ago, we were sure by May of 2021 COVID would be gone — or at least well on the wane — and we wouldn’t have a problem going. Now there are a lot of moving pieces that have to fall into place before we can leave. We are over 65, so we got our COVID vaccinations. However, the U.S. has to say we can leave the country and the E.U. has to say we are welcome there.
We will be very disappointed if this trip doesn’t happen, but if it doesn’t, we will immediately rebook. Fingers crossed!
BUENOS AIRES DREAMS
In 2020, my husband Sangam and I were excited to book our first South America trip, with plans to visit Buenos Aires, Argentina. When shelter-in-place took effect in mid-March, we optimistically thought things would be fine by our late April departure date, but we all know how that worked out. Once safe to do so, we’ll look forward to finally visiting the “Paris of South America”!