The Wandering Enginerds

After what seemed like the most nightmarish travel day we've experienced to-date, it was quite refreshing to see a familiar face and meet some new ones. We met back up with Jenna's friend, Courtney, who we stayed with in London, and her friends Sam and Felicia at the Treviso Airport just outside Venice and crunched five people plus baggage into a hatchback rental car. Off we went to Cortina d'Ampezzo for a nature-filled few days of hiking, via ferrata-ing, mountain lodge breaks, and incredible views with Courtney's other friends, Serhat and Lilia, as well! Morning Views from Our Air BnB For context, a via ferrata is a protected climbing route that uses steel pegs and cables to mark out the general route along a variety of horizontal and vertical rock faces. The climbers wear harnesses, lanyards, carabiners, helmets, and other safety gear to clip in and make their way across the route. Every 5-20 feet there are segments broken up by steel pegs so the climber w

Budapest After what should have been a 24 hour train ride, we ended up getting into Budapest from Malmo in 31 hours because a section of the track went out of commission due to the weather. Which meant we had a few hours to kill in Munich and become ever more excited for Oktoberfest at the end of September. Since we were carrying all our bags we just walked over to the main square and then found a courtyard to hangout in until our afternoon train. The ride from Munich to Budapest was very pretty. It routes through Austria, hitting Vienna along the way. When we finally arrived in Budapest, it only took our walk from the train station to the hostel to see what a party town Budapest is (it was a Saturday night). Lots of bachelor/bachelorette parties going on. We, however, had no energy left after our long travel day (what do you call a travel day when it goes beyond 24 hours?) to join in the festivities. The next day happened to be a very big national holiday for Hungary so a l