I took many photos of flowers through Europe, both wild and garden-variety. We found ourselves along a few forested paths in our travels. These paths were full of various wildflowers in bloom, and I took the time to photograph as many as I could. These flowers were found all across Europe, from Varna to London. See how many you can recognize!

Our trip through Europe was a fantastic experience, including all of the different foods and drinks we tried. Many of the dishes in Bulgaria were familiar to Desi, but nearly all were new to me. I’m sure we both enjoyed trying new foods throughout our travels, even when we didn’t know exactly what we were getting:

Another series from Europe would be traffic lights. Though I didn’t garb them from every country, I did snap quite a few photos of them. I was curious what differences I would find from country to country – the differences were less noticable that I had hoped. Even still, it was a fun experiment!

Throughout our trip across Europe, I took a photo with my fisheye lens inside each cathedral and church that we visited. The results were beyond what I could have expected:

Most of these wonderful buildings have archways and symmetrical designs – which can be beautifully enhanced with the distortion caused by the 180 degree view of a fisheye lens:

You see more of the architecture this way, such as the windows on the sides that wouldn’t be in the frame with a regular lens. The fisheye effect can get old fast – but I love what it does to churches and cathedrals. Here’s the full set:

Our final day in Bulgaria would have one final destination: the beach. Before we left though, I wanted to take photos of some more artwork in the  apartment, my favourite of which is one of Desi’s paintings:

Desi’s dad also had many works up on the walls, all made of wood. Here’s one of my favourites (more in the gallery below):

We then headed out to a beach with Nasi, somewhere in the Balchik area. The beach was calm and not too busy, and the sun was nice and warm. We browsed a local bazaar before heading to the sand, and had one of the first moments of relaxation on our adventure – one of the last moments. Desi’s dad was nice enough to drive us all to the beach and wait for us until we were ready to go. It was a lot of fun – Desi and I played in the sea, so did Desi and Nasi while I relaxed in the sun. It was a wonderful visit to the beach, I just wish we had more time!

We went back to the apartment and had lunch – so much good food that kept coming. I was full, but there was so much. We gathered our things and headed to the airport for our departure… where the adventure continued!

We were late. We thought we were on time (my fault, I think) but we were a half hour late for check in, and when we went to the check-in desk the attendants had already left. Uh oh! We looked around and saw absolutely no one. Desi spotted a lady in a back room at a desk and asked about boarding passes – the lady said boarding was done and the attendants had left. Desi’s response probably saved us, simply saying that this was impossible and they needed to come back.

Within 5 minutes the attendants came rushing back, scolded us a little for being late and told us to hurry. We got our boarding passes, ran through the security checks asking with panic to cut the lines or we’d miss our plane. We got through everything okay and the bus was still waiting for us. Phew!

The plane was fine, we landed in Vienna a few hours later and found our hotel just across the street, 2 minutes walk from the airport terminal. Early the next morning, we were waiting for our plane and it was overbooked – we decided to wait and get home 6 hours later with a stop-over in London and put 300 Euros each in our pockets. We arrived very late on the 11th at Toronto Pearson International Airport, and ended our adventure.

I must say, it was the best thing I have ever done. I know Desi would agree with me as well. We learned and experienced so very much, and took some major steps towards our future. I could not possibly speak more highly of this journey, and we definitely wish to continue these worldly adventures in the future.

Thanks to everyone who has followed this series of posts and enjoyed it – there will be more to come! I will be posting certain series of photos over the coming week or two. If you haven’t seen it already, check out the Europe 2009 page with all of the post links and a map with all the photos on it.

Every day is an adventure.