On Friday, November 7, we headed home. To put it in the words of our beloved Amazing Race, we: We traveled with one suitcase each, weighing about 45 lbs. We had clothes for about eight days and planned stays in places where we could do laundry. Emily had 3 pairs of shoes (sneakers, hiking boots,…

Most mornings through our travels, I, Russell, took a couple of hours to write, or otherwise work. The new manuscript on teaching philosophy with team-based learning is due at the end of December and my hope was to come home with a finished draft. I didn’t quite make it, largely because of the intrusion of…

On our final full day of our eight weeks of travels, we headed to the Basilica Cistern. It hadn’t really been on our radar, but when another couple on our food tour mentioned it and we looked at pictures, Russell remembered it being featured in From Russia with Love, and looked really cool. So to…

There were cats in many of the cities that we visited. Reykjavik, Oto, Prague, and Craiova can all hold their own. But no place had cats like Istanbul had cats. There were cats in every corner, bench, and garden. The cats were generally well cared for. Ali, our food tour guide, said that there were…

Wednesday was a little gloomy. Russell was getting hit with a cold and we were sad that our travels were coming to an end. We set out to enjoy the day without overdoing it. After a delicious Turkish breakfast, we headed to the Blue Mosque, only to find it closed for prayers. So we headed…

One of the very few activities we had pre-booked for our travels was a food tour of Istanbul. We did the Taste of Two Continents tour with Yummy Istanbul, and it was fantastic. We met at 9:30 near our hotel. There were 9 of us in the group: a young Australian couple, a French Canadian…

After saying goodbye to Marina in Craiova, we headed to Istanbul. We had a long drive to the Bucharest airport, and then a long wait at the airport, and when we made it to Istanbul, we had a long bus ride into the center to our hotel. The Istanbul marathon had been earlier that day,…

On Saturday, we decided to drive back to Craiova via Sibiu, a beautiful city in Transylvania. It was supposed to add another 90 minutes to the drive, but we decided it was worth it. If you tell a lie on Sibiu’s Bridge of Lies, according to legend, it will collapse. It is amazing that no…

On Thursday, Marina only teaches one class, and has no classes on Friday (although she usually attends a Romanian culture class that day), so we took off for Transylvania. Our Airbnb in Craiova was inexpensive enough that we were comfortable keeping it through our Sunday departure, and got an Airbnb in the town of Hunedoara…

One of Craiova’s charms are all of its parks and gardens. While Marina had a busy day on Tuesday, teaching and taking her Romanian class, we explored Nicolae Romanescu Park, one of the largest urban parks in Eastern Europe. The park is bordered by cemetaries and also houses the zoo. It is also home to…