Text & Photos Copyright © Estrella Azul ONE MORNING LAST DECEMBER, when two bank holidays had us enjoy a long weekend off from work, my boyfriend and I decided to go on a road trip to Hunedoara (Hungarian: Vajdahunyad) and see one of the seven wonders of Romania, Corvin Castle (Hungarian: Vajdahunyadi...

Text & photos Copyright © Estrella Azul AT THE END OF OCTOBER our firm took us on a haunted castle-themed, weekend team building trip to Piatra Fântânele in Tihuța Pass. Tihuța is a high mountain pass in the Romanian Bârgău Mountains (Eastern Carpathian Mountains) connecting Transylvania...

Text & photos © Estrella Azul. AS YOU MAY KNOW from my previous travel article, How to not over-pack luggage when traveling for both work and fun, I visited London for the first time last year. The company I am outsourced to since I started working as a technical writer is based in the small town...

Text & photos © Catherine Nichols “Where’s a good place to hike around here?” I asked the local waitress. “Just up the street about a mile at Wildwood Recreation Site,” she replied with a huge smile. How can you tell you’re in a great place where the majority of the people are happy?...

Text & photos © Estrella Azul. Feature photo: Miskolc City at night. I LEFT FOR HUNGARY by bus on a Thursday night in 2010, and the person sitting next to me immediately proved to be quite exhausting. She got annoyed about why I sat in “her” seat, which I’d been assigned randomly...

Text & photos © Catherine Nichols and Sam Nichols I BELIEVE THERE ARE no coincidences. Let me explain my assertion. On a recent trip to San Francisco, I stayed at an AirBnb with my girls in the quaint, small town of Fairfax in Marin. The hostess sent me a text wanting to know when I was going...

Text & photos © Estrella Azul THE OTHER DAY I needed to take a moment to brag: I walked 6.9 km, and biked 6.4 km, which brought the total to 13.3 km in just one afternoon! This reminded me of the time I was tutoring English while holding down three other jobs, and used to walk to all of them. The...