None of us has ever driven this route before. I’ve never been to Hungary. This is our second unplanned day of travel as we avoid crossing the border into Ukraine for a second time.  I’m really sorry that this route will not afford us the pleasure of visiting L’viv and spending more time with Ella. I was looking forward to having Marek, Ola, Lina and Lindsay visit Ivano-Frankivsk, formerly Stanislawow, the place where my ancestors lived since at least the mid-1800s and perhaps earlier. I haven’t done research in the records there prior to about 1850.

I am, however, in spite of those wishes, very excited about exploring new places.  We got on the road earlier today in an attempt to arrive at our destination before nightfall.  Under the best of road conditions, each of these driving days will take 5 hours. So far we haven’t encountered the best of road conditions for any of our driving days. We have had hours of great driving, but have not avoided hold-ups due to traffic and construction.

And of course there are always animals in the road. The horse drawn carts are a given. At some point, I think it may have been driving to our last stop in Romania, there was a herd of cows that had escaped and many people in the road attempting to round them up. I’m not sure, but it looked like the cows were winning.

There were also plenty of farm vehicles with produce and hay on the road. After all, this whole area has lots of agriculture. The fields we pass are really beautiful.

Living in the desert makes all the green even more beautiful.

The architecture of the churches and old and new residences makes the drive very interesting.

We cross the border into Hungary and check into a magnificent 5 star hotel in Debrecen, once again shocked at the $50 per night per room rate!  We are getting so spoiled. After traveling all day or immersing ourselves in archives for intense days of research, these facilities are so welcome.

It’s very hot outside but we all decide to have lunch and then go walking – Lina decided to stay in and work on some of the records we’ve found – she’s going on vacation when the rest of us return to the office and there are things she wants to finish.

Lunch was delicious and the walk in the downtown area was charming – more weddings!

There are two synagogues still standing and in addition to photos of the many churches, we also got pictures of the synagogues.

We finished the day with ice cream at Paparazzi Joe.  Really it was Paparazzi Ice but the script of Ice looked like Joe.  Of course the kiosk with the ice cream didn’t take credit cards (the kiosks in Lithuania did so I was spoiled) or USD (the kiosks in Lithuania did) so I went on a search for florints. There was no way we were walking back to the hotel without ice cream. The hotel I stopped in sent me to a cash exchange which sent me to an ATM. Finally, success. We all walked away with cool, sweet ice cream to make the return to the hotel more pleasant. For some reason the return seemed to take twice as long!  Great day.