Articles from this Category
June 8, 2023
Is Romania Europe’s prettiest country? It just might be. Enchanting town plazas that date back to medieval times, Parisian-like capital city, rolling hills as far as the eye can see, castles cloaked in the mystery of Count Dracula, craggy mountain vistas, and a seemingly infinite array of fortresses and churches. There are so many places […]
October 23, 2020
Odessa in Ukraine is a port city on the Black Sea, founded in 1794 (relatively young compared to Kiev or Lviv) by the Russian Empress Catherine the Great. Its reputation as the summer capital and number of things to do in Odessa Ukraine draws in visitors who are eager to stroll around the city’s tree-lined […]
December 8, 2019
I had imagined Bucharest as a kind of transition place…. a couple of days as my jumping-off place to where I really wanted to go in Romania – Transylvania. And as my driver left the airport, we passed a multitude of utilitarian-looking communist bloc apartment buildings, and I felt more-or-less resigned to spending an uneventful […]
April 19, 2019
Vibrantly-painted examples of Gothic, Baroque and Renaissance architecture rise up above me on all sides. I think to myself, I need blinders to walk through the cobblestone alleys in Lviv’s UNESCO old town. My eyes were constantly being drawn away from the uneven path directly in front of me to the magnificent buildings in my […]
February 26, 2019
If you only go to one place for dinner in Lviv, Ukraine it should be Kryivka. Here, you get not only food but an entire World War II Insurgence Army experience. But first, you have to find it… Lviv is the prettiest European city that you’ve never heard of. Located in western Ukraine near its […]
January 4, 2019
The 7th-floor terrace of House of Legends restaurant was small and cramped, just two tables taking up any excess space. I squeezed past the diners, made my way over to the railing, and whipped out my smartphone to snap a photo of the stunning sunset over Lviv, one of Eastern Europe’s most beautiful cities. Recalling […]
November 27, 2018
Broken glass crackled and crunched beneath my feet. Sun streamed through the remains of a once-magnificent stained glass window. Broken dolls and filthy baby shoes littered the floor. A child’s storybook stood open as if waiting for its reader to continue. Never would I have imagined that Ukraine‘s Chernobyl tours, the site of the worst […]
November 19, 2018
Kiev is the lively capital and largest city in Ukraine, greedily taking up both banks of the Dnieper River. Three million people call this fusion of ancient and modern architecture home. Kiev’s beautiful cathedrals and monasteries spill out onto cobblestone streets and abundant green spaces and parks. Although many buildings were destroyed during the Communist […]
October 15, 2018
Lviv is Eastern Europe’s undiscovered gem, at least to Americans. This utterly gorgeous city, just 40 miles from the border of Poland, is not only home to stunning Austro-Hungarian architecture and colorful town squares, but the restaurants in Lviv are unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in all of Europe. They’re called “Emotional Restaurants,” and they […]
September 26, 2018
Ukraine is one of the largest countries in Europe, second only to Russia in size, and shares borders with Russia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, and Transnistria (the nation that doesn’t exist). It’s a country with a long, complex, and turbulent history. The Eastern European nation is home to a plethora of beautiful places […]