Budapest is another excellent city. Another highly recommended Airbnb apartment hosted by Barbara https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1481796. Many beautiful old buildings, particularly Budavari Palota (Buda) castle overlooking the Danube river, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. Also great ‘ruin’ bars, which are rough and tumble old buildings that have been converted into bars. Budapest is a very interesting city as part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. We visited the Terror Museum which was quite harrowing. It gave the impression that the Hungarian people suffered at least as much under Soviet rule as the Nazi occupation. Disappearances, mock trials, and even today many of the old people are very distrusting of their surroundings. We also visited a museum of an underground hospital, (hospital in the rock) used during the world wars http://visitbudapest.travel/arts-entertainment/budapest-museums/hospital-in-the-rock-museum/.

The Széchenyi baths were lovely to visit; two huge outdoor pools, many indoor pools with different temperatures http://www.budapestbaths.net/szechenyi-bath. There were also very hot saunas accompanied by very cold pools. It was so invigorating jumping into the cold pool after roasting in the sauna.

Prague and Brno Czech Republic 30 July – 4 August 2014

With four of us, we decided to hire a car for a road trip around central Europe. We were really glad we did. It gave us the freedom to go whenever we wanted, and (seemed) to be cheaper than catching trains, particularly as none of us were under 26 (Europe trains offer discounts for 18-25 year olds). We hired a car through SIXT.

Prague is another beautiful city, but also very touristy at that time of year. We enjoyed the architecture, beer and hearty food.

Brno was a pleasant surprise; the second largest city in Czech was actually quite small and quaint. The city centre was very sophisticated. There were a lot of interesting sites, such as the ossuary (where skeletal remains were interred) and many underground tunnels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brno_Ossuary.

This was one city in Europe that we hadn’t previously booked accommodation for, and found a great apartment on Airbnb last minute, hosted by Jan Kabat, https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/2404001. Alex and I slept in the lounge room, but the sofa was ginormous and comfortable. The apartment was a 5-10 minute walk into the city centre. Jan was a great host, he waited for us for over an hour when we were stuck in traffic and provided lots of delicious food and even beer!

Berlin 25 -30 July 2014

Berlin is most definitely one of our favourite cities. We met up with our friends from Perth, who were also visiting Germany for a friend’s wedding. We stayed in a tiny hostel called Riverside Hostel in Kreuzberg http://accommodations.riverside-lodge.de/. We definitely recommend both the hostel and the area. It was such a cool, alternative, hipster place. We hired bicycles and rode around the city. So many parks on the river, great and cheap food and beer. So many quirky sites, it just seemed so progressive and accepting of everyone. Street art, markets, events happening every day, Berlin is a great place to be in summer.

Istanbul 3 – 11 July 2014

Where to start – what an awesome city!

We stayed in an Airbnb apartment hosted by Mert, https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1996037. It was a very funky and clean apartment, in a convenient and hip location. Unfortunately I did not have the best start though with some serious digestion problems, I felt pretty awful. It was doubly upsetting because my friend only had three days with us, and I was sick for nearly the entire time. Why do the travel doctors we visit before leaving home insist on giving us a truckload of diarrhoea medicine, but nothing for the opposite problem?

Anyway, we loved Istanbul, a relatively cheap city for being the gateway to Europe, and so beautiful and surprisingly clean. The Mosques were breathtaking, cool bars and restaurants, very beautiful, trendy people. We loved it! I won’t spend more time writing about it, other than to say, GO to Istanbul!

PS if you have a little extra time up your sleeve, and about $40 per person, we recommend checking out Suada, a swimming pool for Turkey’s elites in the middle of the Bosphorus river. It was quite relaxing, not to mention funny watching the ‘beautiful’ people strut their stuff. http://suadaclub.com.tr/en/index.html