Travel notes

We planned to go to Montserrat every time we visited Barcelona, but for various reasons we postponed it. The most frequent reason was the need to overcome about 50 km from the city, and set aside a whole day to visit. This time we traveled with friends, and collectively decided to get to this place after all. The highlands of Montserrat (“Cut Mountains”) gave the name to a monastery located there, located at an altitude of more than 700 meters above sea level . Our friend Jordi, born and raised in Barcelona, said that Montserrat is a sacred place for the Catalans. We were very happy about our decision to visit it. According to him, usually, his known foreigners rarely arrive there. In general, we gathered with friends, and went to Montserrat. You can get there in different ways – by bus, car or train. Since the territory around the monastery is declared a national park of Catalonia (landscaped, by the way, for hiking ascents along mountain trails), we drove to it by car on serpentine,

To create your impression of any region, you always want to look behind the beautiful screen saver from the most famous places, and see for yourself how everything is arranged in reality. Well, make your own individual route, depending on your own wishes, to look for exactly what is interesting, and just when the corresponding thought came, without regrets like “which places are beautiful/interesting/unusual, how sad we didn’t think about them right away “. Modern travel management technologies allow all these factors to lead to the desired result: to book hotels, tickets, car rental now you can while sitting in a cafe in real time, after arriving at the desired point. It remains only to determine this point. In our case it was the North of France. And it did not disappoint us!   We began our journey with Paris . And not only because the plane tickets were at a bargain price. You can visit this city an infinite number of times, and still get new impressions. Which we’ve been doing succ

  Vlad Dracula and everybody else 🙂   It was my colleague who suggested the idea of a trip to Romania, also suggesting to visit the Dracula’s castle in the fall, when it would be dark and depressive, so as to properly feel the atmosphere of this legendary place. Since I adore such ideas, I immediately agreed. As a result, our colleagues joined us and we drove as a cheerful company to the gloomy Bran castle.   As the most experienced traveler, I took up the development of a plan and, having collected wishes for places, budget and days, I began to search for information on flights, hotels and routes. As a result, our trip to Romania should take 4 days to go along the route – Sinaia (Peles Castle) – Brasov – Bran – Sighisoara – Bucharest. Naturally, we needed a car.   In terms of recreation, the country is quite ordinary, all information is on the Internet. Hotels can be found online and car too was booked without any problems. I should note that they have their own visa – Romanian. B

  We had the idea to go by car to Europe for a long time. And, basically, it was dictated by the convenience of traveling with the dog. Our cute beast – Kuzya – is very afraid of everything new, and traveling by plane would bring a large number of restrictions. Dogs who don’t exceed 8 kg are allowed into the cabin along with the carrying, from which the animal cannot be released during the entire flight (it cannot be even opened) . All the nuances of the dog’s life are also not clear how to deal with while the carrying is closed. Plus, the rules of airports for departure and arrival regarding traveling animals are also not simple. In general, we decided to try a long car journey. Previously, we regularly traveled by rental cars in different countries, and understood the nuances of using rental cars in a variety of circumstances: how to cross the borders, how to get a technical support or replace a car and other nuances. But how to solve similar issues with your own car – we had yet to

  Traveling by car, after crossing the customs border, Poland was the first country of “classical” Europe on our way (forgive me Belarusians, Russia, like Belarus, I consider as a “special” part of Europe, so to speak, with its own “special way” ). The first thing we noticed when we passed the border was the quality of the roads (speaking of highways) . In Belarus, the roads and hightways are clearly better than in Russia, and in Poland (in my personal unprofessional opinion), they are better than in Belarus. Even in the provincial border areas, road quality is striking. They are clean (dry and no reagents), effectively decorated with reflectors, with convenient interchanges, navigation and a network of auxiliary facilities (gas stations, recreation areas, etc.). We previously traveled regularly by car   in Europe, but now the contrast is too obvious – in a short time we managed to compare all the options. Since there was a long way from the border to Warsaw, we decided to take a break

Continuing our journey by car, we got to Dresden. As Wikipedia says, the name “Dresden”, as well as part of the names of its urban areas, has Slavic roots, from Old Serbian Drežďany (“inhabitants of riparian forests”). Dresden was first mentioned in historical documents in 1206 in connection with court proceedings. Over its long history, the city gradually became the center of the province of Saxony, and a variety of historical events unfolded in it. During the Second World War, Dresden was subjected to large-scale bombing, and its historic center was almost completely destroyed . Remarkably, the remaining elements of palaces, churches, historic buildings were dismantled, their fragments were described and removed. The rest of the ruins were demolished, leaving a flat area on the site of the city with the marked borders of the former streets and buildings. Subsequently, modern city streets and buildings were built around the restored historic center. The restoration of the center itse

It’s a resort town and located in the Czech Republic in the region of Bohemia (as the Germans used to call the whole Czech Republic) and it has a rich history. This city is most closely associated with the period of inclusion into Austria-Hungary, and traces of this influence can be found throughout the entire historical center. The main tourist orientation of the city is the health resort, it has more than a dozen mineral springs, which provide both curative drinking water and water for swimming pools and other medical procedures. The former name of the city – Carlsbad – eloquently reminds of this. At the same time, a local landmark is jokingly called “spring number 13”, Becherovka liquor. Initially, this liqueur tincture (strength of 38 degrees!) was invented by the Karlovy Vary pharmacist Joseph Becher, it was used as a gastric medicine. It was only in the middle of the 19th century that the apothecary’s son Johann Becher opened the production of a beverage on an industrial basis