This gallery contains 37 photos.
No matter what it refers to, a million is difficult to comprehend. A million miles. A million dollars. A million people. A million lives. The Nazis built their most infamous death camp on Polish land, expelling the local population from Oświęcim in order to use army barracks for their prisoners. Over…
August 11 – 25, 2016 (Summer) Kraków is by far the top tourist destination in Poland. Its Old Town and castle buildings survived World War II relatively unscathed, though many of its people did not. It is a challenging place to categorize. It is a city that lives almost entirely in…
July 28 – August 11, 2016 (Summer) We didn’t know what to expect from Poland, just that we wanted to go and see if there was some sort of a personal connection. The name Tarchenski is a bit of a mouthful for folks in Northern Illinois, despite the sizable Polish population.…
June 30 – July 28, 2016 (Summer) Could we have picked a more confusing place to follow Bucharest? Maybe jumping back and forth between the Balkans and Baltics would work. But beautiful Budapest was worth the trouble. It rivals Prague as the most glamorous former Eastern Bloc capital, and without even the…
June 23 – 30, 2016 (Summer) After 12 weeks bouncing around the greater Balkan Peninsula, we still needed one more to put us over the finish line and fully “reset” our Schengen time. Rather than tacking on an extra week here or there, we took advantage of cheap flights to take a…
May 26 – June 23, 2016 (Early summer) The capital of Romania is perhaps the most populous “hidden gem” in Europe. Bucharest exists on a grander scale than we imagined: massive neoclassical facades and wide boulevards reminded us of Paris, though the brutalist remnants of Ceaușescu’s communist regime are quick…
April 28 – May 26, 2016 (Spring) Dubrovnik is not a town for introverts. Cramped streets within the medieval fortress walls force crowds together and aggressive salespeople bark at tourists with tangible desperation. Since most visitors are cruise ship day-trippers, there’s no incentive to be nice and every incentive to sell,…
This gallery contains 82 photos.
Nestled in the Dinaric Alps, a unique hydrology of rivers and karst rock create the incredible lakes of Plitvice. Turquoise pools, verdant canopies, stony gray cliffs and glimmering white waterfalls are all hallmarks of Croatia’s premier national park. The process that created them is dynamic, constantly eroding and rebuilding in…
March 29 – April 28, 2016 (Spring shoulder season) Split is the second-largest city in Croatia and sits squarely in the center of the Dalmatian coast on the shores of the Adriatic. The city sprang from the bones of a massive ancient Roman palace. To visit the palace today, it doesn’t…
March 2 – 29, 2016 (Spring) Expensive, demanding, and oh-so-crowded, Barcelona is hardly an ideal nomad destination. But one of the most overtouristed places on the continent is popular for a reason – there is simply too much to see and do in this outsize coastal city. Its popularity makes it…
We are Kevin and Danielle (and Kieran) Tarchenski, a family of introverts that travel the world. Why? To save money, have fun, maybe learn a thing or two. We love to work from the road and write about our adventures. Most of all, we enjoy living simply: peaceful walks, homecooked meals, quiet nights in – wherever we make our home this month.
