This is were I spent this last weekend. Two full days of outdoor and fresh air.

I’ve finally met the Sphinx and the Babele, two megaliths, shaped entirely by the wind and the rain, that are the symbols of the Bucegi mountains.

These rocks are placed  on the Bucegi plateau, at an altitude of 2216m and only 10minutes walk from each other.

Ascending

You can get on the plateau from Buşteni(two hours drive from Bucharest). You can choose to go up with the cable car, or if you feel up to it, by foot, coming through Valea Jepilor (Juniper Valley) ( about 1300m  of climb).

The Omu Peak

From the Sphinx you’re only two hours away from the highest peak of these mountains: Omu Peak, 2507m.  It’s a medium climb, no gear necessary, only decent boots.

The view along this route is just outstanding and once you get to the top, you’ll find Omu chalet, where you can reward yourself with a hot delicious soup. The secret of this soup is that you’ll be so hungry that everything will seem the best.

Descending

From Omu Peak there are different routes to descend. At least three I think. We chose to descend through a glacier bucket.

This bucket is a well known place were you can spot  black goats.  We were lucky enough to spot more tha a few.

We spent the night at Malaiesti chalet,  located  just at the bottom of the glacier bucket(about 1700m), no more than 3hours from Omu Peak.

From Malaiesti there’s a 5hours descending route , through the forest, down to Gura Diham. And from there, you can take a bus for 5km to get back to Buşteni.

If you love the mountain and never been to Bucegi National Park, start planning your trip right now!

Check the entire Bucegi mountains gallery.

Back in 2006, in Venice, I met Paris Hilton. I was with my friend Iulian(half way our Interrail Adventure) and Paris was with a girl friend and a bunch of bodyguards. The meeting took place in Piazza San Marco.

Unfortunately, she didn’t notice us, but we sure did notice her )). And managed to capture a few pics, too.

Bonus:

After a few years, going through these photos with some friends, I’ve found out that the girl next to Paris was no other than Kim Kardashian.   How cool is that? Too bad that Kim has her eyes closed in the photo.

Advice:

Get your Interrail Pass, jump on the first train and go to Venice! If you will not meet Paris Hilton you can comfort yourself by discovering one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

We got off the train(  Keleti train station ), we went to the “Tourist Information” desk and booked for two nights at Hungaria GuestHouse hostel, just a few blocks from the train station.  It was the perfect hostel: clean, quiet, friendly staff and only 12.5 Euros per night.

Two days are barely enough to see Budapest.  To get the best experience here’s my Budapest Sightseeing Guide:

• start with a  stroll along the Danube embankment;
• walk over at least three bridges across the Danube;
• cross the Chain Bridge to Adam Clark Square , take the Castle Hill Funicular and visit the Royal Castle(Buda Castle);
• climb the Gellért Hill to the Citadella and enjoy the view(available down both directions of the Danube);
• after many hours of sightseeing, stop somewhere in the historical downtown and try a good Hungarian beer;
• visit the most beautiful public buildings: the House of Parliament, St. Stephen’s Basilica, Hungarian National Museum;
• stroll along  Andrássy Avenue and stop to rest when you get to Heroes’ Square;
• if your hungry, you absolutely must try the famous Hungarian goulash;
• if your tired, on your way back to the hostel, travel with the metro under the Danube;

Me and my friend managed to do all this in just two days.  22 and 23 October 2006. 

Go and discover Budapest. Be amazed by the greatness of it’s buildings and their extraordinary architecture.

An interesting fact is that in those few days, in Budapest were a series of anti-government protests. On the streets were hundreds of demonstrators. We passed by a few groups, but they were all peaceful. We even took some pictures…

This photo was taken in front of the House of Parliament, during a protest.

Here’s few Budapest photos from our trip.

I don’t remember much of that night because we were kind of tired(we visited Athens all day)  and we got hammered pretty fast. At one point I woke up on the beach, while a friend was telling me … Hey man, it’s 5 o’clock, let’s go home.

The next day was the beach day. We managed to wake up before 12a.m. and  went to the beach.

Here’s a perfect way to get rid of a light hangover in Athens:

An interesting fact about the beaches in Athens: Are very polluted. And it is normal I think …  That’s why the best, non polluted beaches are found on the islands. But we didn’t have the time or the money to go to an island, so Thassos took us somewhere out of the city, in a nice beach resort, at about 30-40km from Athens.

Although it was around 10 of May, it was very hot and we actually managed to get some sun burns.

After the beach … we went back to Thassos’s  … the Finals of the Eurovision Contest were about to start.  Everyone was crazy about it. Thassos even placed some bets, but no luck. We watched the Finals(Serbia won), we said good bye and parted.  The coming home trip is one of the things I hate most in this world. Especially when you leave at night, tired, by car and it’s your turn to drive. I strongly don’t recommend   it.

You can check out my entire Greece photo gallery.

He has a big apartment on the last floor of a building, with a very nice terrace. Great place to throw a party or just to chill. Here’s the view:

He and his family welcomed us with a delicious traditional meal: some fish and cheese dishes and of course, a Greek salad made with home made olive oil:

The first thing we wanted to visit in Athens was The Acropolis(known as The “Sacred Rock”), one of the greatest ancient monuments in the world.  Here I have a nice tip for you: If you are a STUDENT, whenever you go on a trip, take your student card with you. You never know when it might come in handy. For example, the price for entering the Acropolis was(last year) 12Euros, but students had free entrance.  We were all students, but unfortunately some of us didn’t  have their student cards and couldn’t prove they were students, so they had to pay.

On the top of the Acropolis lies The Parthenon(the temple of the Greek goddess Athena):

Around the Acropolis you can find a lot of souvenir shops, bars and restaurants.  It’s a great place to try some Greek cuisine or just to relax, having a beer and enjoying the view of The Acropolis. A good Greek beer is MITHOS. I recommend it.

Walking through Athens, we were surprised to see so many orange trees. Everywhere you look, you see orange trees. Too bad that the oranges are not eatable. If they were, i think no one could sell oranges in Athens anymore.

We also visited Kallimarmaro Stadium( where took place the first modern Olympic Games – 1896),The Arch of Hadrian, The Temple of the Olympian Zeus, The University of Athens, and other important monuments and places that unfortunately I don’t remember anymore. Basically, you can visit most of the important sights in Athens in a single day.

You can check out my Greece photo gallery.

It was the perfect context for an awesome travel adventure.  Too bad we could only stay for 3days.

The distance between our city and Athens is 2000km. It’s a long way to drive. We were lucky to have four drivers(two for each car). Our route was: Iasi(Romania) – Bucharest  – Sofia(Bulgaria) – Thessaloniki – Athens  and back.  From Bucharest to Thessaloniki it’s a 12hours drive. If you enter/pass through Bulgaria by car, you need to purchase a vignette(valid for 2-3days). The cost is 5Euros(the actual vignette) plus 1Euro extra tax for something else(this I didn’t understand what for). Roads in Bulgaria are pretty bad( from Sofia towards Greece is a lot better though – they were building a highway at that time). If you happen to pass through Bulgaria, be sure to keep an eye out for the police – they are just crazy. They stay in the bushes  with the hand-held speed detector.  It is really hard not to get a fine in this country.  We were lucky enough to get burned only once.  The fine was(2007) 10Euros. They’re really slick … they tell you the fine is 10Euros without any receipt, or 20Euros with receipt … Nice, right?

In Greece the roads are excellent, lots of lanes. Entering Thessaloniki:

Unfortunately, we only stopped in Thessaloniki for a coffee and to take a few pictures. There is much traffic and it’s very hard to find a parking place.  We drove around for 30minutes to find a parking spot. We finally stopped somewhere near the White Tower, the city’s landmark. At that time we didn’t know this, so the photos are not so great, they’re actually taken from the car,  but I hope you will be knowing about the White Tower when you will next visit Thessaloniki and stop there and take better photos .

The White Tower:

The coffee place(on Niki’s Avenue):

Niki’s Avenue(central seafront of Thessaloniki):

I found out after that trip that there are a lot of important historical monuments and landmarks of Thessaloniki that we had mist or  we hadn’t realized their importance. Few of them are: Aristotelous Square, The Rotunda of St. George, The OTE Tower, The statue of Alexander the Great. But I guess that’s what happens when you travel with no planning, right? In fact, our purpose was just to have fun and not to see stuff so … no problems,  I’ll visit these monuments next time.

From Thessaloniki to Athens are about 500 kilometers(5hours drive). Straight highway. I forgot to mention, Greece has no roads tax(vignette), you only pay if you want to take the highway.   From Thessaloniki to Athens the price was, last year, somewhere between 6 and 7 Euros(not too much).

See all my Greece photos

This was my first flight ever, Bucharest – Amsterdam, with the KLM company.  I was on my way to Shanghai.  But my next flight was at 15.45, so I had about 6-7 hours to kill.

I decided to try to visit Amsterdam. I was hopping at least to have a walk on the red light district.

So, I went to a Tourist Information desk to ask some information.

What you need to know:

• You can get from Schiphol airport to the touristic center of the city by train.

• Every 15minutes a train is leaving for the Centraal Station.

• You can buy train tickets from the ticket machines in front of the airport train station.

• The ticket was 6.40Euro(to the center and back).

• From the airport you can get to the center in just 25 minutes.

• At the Tourist Information desk you can buy a map of the city for  2Euro.

I bought a map, I bought the train ticket and  in 30 minutest I was in the center of Amsterdam.

During my short walk in Amsterdam this is what I’d noticed:

- There are a lot of bicycles.

- You can buy a cannabis lollipop with only 1 Euro.

-You can smell weed almost everywhere.

In Netherlands prostitution is legal. So is consuming drugs such as marijuana, cannabis and all kinds of mushrooms.  I hope i will come back next year and stay at least a week in Amsterdam(to visit the landmarks) … There are a lot of things to do that are legal only there.

In Amsterdam you can find the famous red light district.  I couldn’t really see much, because at 11A.M.  everything is closed.

So what do you need to do if you want to visit China ?

Get the Visa

Check the web site of the Chinese Embassy in your country to see if you meet the reqirements to apply for a visa.

For my country, on the website was clearly written: to get a Chinese visa you need:

• the plane ticket(I think a plane reservation is good too);
• the passport( must have at least 2 empty pages  and must be valid for at least 6months at the time of your departure;
• two passport type photos;
• some money – the tax is $25, ( + extra  $30 if you want to get the visa the same day);

When I got to the Embassy, I was told that I also need a hotel reservation. I was going to stay at a friend so I didn’t have any hotel reservation…  The Chinese Embassy   is open to public for 4-5hours, two days a week  and I could not get the visa that day.  I found a nice online portal where I managed to make a hotel reservation without giving any credit card details.   And the second time to the Embassy, I got my visa.

The visa must be issued at least 7 days before you part.

The Plane Ticket

If you’re flying  from Europe, the main airline companies that have flights to China are: Air France(From France), KLM(Holland), Aeroflot(Russia) and British Airways(Great Britain). The best price I’ve found for my flight(Bucharest – Amsterdam – Shanghai – Dalian  and back) was with KLM.  About 800Euro. I bought the ticket through   TerminalA.com. I was very pleased with their services.

Transportation
But how to travel to all these places? We had like 500Euros each.  It was impossible  with this budget.  We realized that we could only visit one or two cities with that kind of money.  And just then we came across this extraordinary offer: The InterRail Pass.
The InterRail Global Pass was exactly what we needed for our trip to happen. We paid 270Euro for a Pass.  One month of unlimited train travel within and between the countries we wanted to see.

Our adventure started on 19th October 2006, in Bucharest. The next day, at noon we were in Budapest… searching for accommodation.

Accommodation
Thanks to the Tourist information desk, whatever city your in,  you can find hostel information, prices and and free city maps. A Tourist Information Desk can be found in any big train station.  Once we got to a new city, this was always our first stop.   With the map and the list of hostels,  we searched the one that suited us best,  we checked in and went to discover the city.

My second travel experience was not so good: 8 friends in two cars went to Athens, Greece to visit a fiend for a few days. Thesaloniki and Athens are wonderful cities, with rich history. But going 8 friends on a trip was not  a good idea.  The different opinions and personalities made this trip just unpleasant.

The third trip had a well established purpose: me and Lolo wanted to party at least one night at Oktoberfest, in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.  This was a car trip. In our way to Munich, we  managed to visit Bratislava, Prague,  Frankfurt.