Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey

Planning the summer holiday is pretty demanding for our family. Each of us expect something different from the summer vacation and getting everything together is almost beyond our powers. I want to lie by the sea, mom wants to see some historical monuments, dad would prefer climing mountains and my brother doesn't care at all because he would prefer to stay at home and watch TV. But every year our fights create an amazing holiday.

We didn't stay at Romania for a long time, actually we just drived through Transfagarasan and actually even altough I'm not a big fan of mountains, I have to say it was really beautiful and very photogenic. Especially the way back to the Czech republic - again over Romania - over Parang mountainst, we were at such an  altitude, than we were going through the clouds. I don't know about you, but when I wass little, I dreamt about touching sky, sitting on the cloud and this stuff - just a deformation by a Peter Pan fairytale, where they were jumping on the clouds. Hey ho, I partly fulfilled my childish dream.

We just couldn't not take a photo of these creatures - kind of Hanzel and Gretel in Romanian way. 

Before we went to the Bulgaria, we stayed overnight in Sighisoara. It's a centre of Transylvania and the place where Dracula should have been born. On the road, we discovered one crazy district with colourful houses with sheet silver roofs, that was so different than other districts in Romania, where people live like in the Middle Ages.

Then we finally arriver to Bulgaria, but we stayed there just for one day, because then we moved to Turkey. We don't really enjoy lying by the pool or on a beach, suntaining and then evening shopping etc. - the things which the travelling agencies offer. That's why we travel by car - because we like to be active all the time and we can't stay at one place for a long time. However we stayed in a hotel in Bulgaria the first two nights and we spent the day just by lying by the pool because we were quite tired from the journey.

Then we went to the Istanbul for two days, and that was an amazing experience. Mountains and sea are great, but I've been to Turkey for the first time now and that's just a bit different world. We visited the Blue mosque, Sultanahmed, we went to the cruise to the Bosphorus, that connects the European and Asian part of the Turkey.

The cruise was beautiful (you can see in the video), but the monuments - sorry mom - were easily forgotten by Grand Bazar, that I have the biggest experience from. Where else you can argue with somebody about a price of thing, you wanna buy? There's a habit, when you ask for a price, they tell you some totally absurd high price and they just practicly don't think you're gonna pay so much. So they ask you, how much would you like to pay and then they reduce the price and you increase yours, until boh sides are satisfied. So for example they offer you glasses for 35lira and at the end you buy it just for 10. And you can really buy a lot of different things there - gold, jewelry, clothes, shoes, bags, electronics, spices or typical Turkish sweets.

Arguing about the price is funny on its own but it's even more funny with a dad who is very bad in English is trying and if the seller offers you half price if he can kiss you on cheek (in the end we got the halfprice wihout that)

  

Before leaving Istanbul, we went to one of the biggest mall on the world - Cevahir. I'll tell you one - I could live there and shop for ages ♥ 

Comming to the Bulgaria was weird - you know, the Tsarevo is within Bulharia one of the bigger cities, and there are a bit lot of tourists, but in the comparison with Istanbul, it's a hole. Anyway the sea was great and we had a small beach, where was mostly empty, really close to our apartment.