Out of Darkness and into the Light

I only wanted to spend one night in L'viv, Ukraine, even though we were staying in a lovely hotel and had a delicious dinner at a delightful small restaurant called "Amadeus". I just felt uncomfortable after going through that crazy border crossing and all of those initmidating guards checking all of our papers. I guess I have just read too crazy stories about people disappearing!!

We got up early on Wednesday and headed west to the Polish border. This time there was a cold drizzly rain going on which didn't seem to make the two hour crossing and dealing with those guards again any better. Did't help either that the unibrow woman guard thought we had stolen the car from somewhere because she couldn't figure out our lease papers.

But once we were across the border the weather brightened up and rain went away and we turned south heading for the Slovakian border and Hungary just a couple of hours past that.

We almost ended up back at another Ukrainian border crossing from a mistake in map reading but we realized the mistake just about 30 miles before there and quickly turned around.

This put us into Hungary a little later than we had hoped but what a beautiful part of this country...this is where the famous (to wine lovers anyway) "royal rot" wine is made. We've never seen so many miles and miles of vineyards and orchards. It is a really pretty spot.

We ended up staying the night in a little village right in the middle of the Tezsa river area and then we spent the next morning walking through the town of Eger. One funny thing that happened on the little road to Eger was Mark spotted a small statue of a gnome next to a tree, which I didn't see so we swung the car back around so I could get a picture. As we drove slowly past it turned out to be a real little man fast asleep next to a tree, so I quickly got a picture before he stirred and woke up. It was a very odd sight indeed! It was very pleasant.

So we were able to drive back into Budapest by late afternoon, back to the Stucki's lovely house. It is nice to be back with some good friends and relax for a few days, do a little laundry, etc, before we head out for Turkey Sunday morning.