After the physically and intellectually demanding start to our time in Albania, our last two stops were all about relaxing. From Tirana we hopped on a bus to Berat. I think I’ve mentioned a few times now that public transportation got a lot more…interesting once we left the EU. As we traveled south through the Balkans we said goodbye to bullet trains, online schedules and ticket machines and hello to rickety buses and hand written tickets. Tirana, despite being the…
From Dubrovnik it was another long and winding bus ride to Montenegro. Our first stop was Kotor, a beautiful walled, medieval city located on sparkling Kotor Bay. Kotor is similar to Dubrovnik in many ways. The beautiful stone architecture hearkens back to the same era. There are narrow streets and alleys that make it impossible not to get lost. The old city walls limit the pathways in and out of the city to only a handful. Kotor is also the…
From Salzburg we took a train south to Slovenia. Before I talk about Slovenia I need to talk about this train ride. This route was was everything I had hoped for when I imagined riding trains through Europe. We wound through narrow mountain passes with crystal clear rivers running beside the tracks. Then the view would open up into scenic valleys sprinkled with picturesque alpine villages. Lake Bled The beauty of that train ride was a hint of what was…
If I had been planning this part of the trip by myself I probably wouldn’t have gone to Salzburg. It’s not a typical backpacker destination (probably because it’s expensive). Other than vague ideas about Mozart and the Sound of Music I didn’t know what it would have to offer. However, Dan found out that the world’s largest ice cave is near Salzburg and couldn’t wait to see it. Sam and Spencer were easily convinced and I was happy to come…
At the beginning of August Dan’s brother, Sam, and our friend, Spencer, met us in Budapest. We were super excited to see some familiar faces and to share our travels with friends from back home. At this point, though, we’ve come to realize that traveling with other people means picking up the pace. While Dan and I have the luxury of moving slowly and keeping our plans relatively loose, most people only get to travel for a few weeks a…
When we started planning this trip I knew I wanted Ireland on the itinerary. My grandfather was Irish and even though I am part of the third generation born in the United States, my family has kept in touch with our relatives back in Ireland. I got to meet some of them when I visited Ireland for the first time five years ago. I couldn’t wait to get back and explore more of this beautiful country, this time with Dan…
Scotland made it on to our Europe itinerary mostly because my cousin was graduating from St. Andrew’s in June. We were pretty open as far as which countries to visit so we figured we would take advantage of the opportunity to spend some time with family. Dan and I arrived a week before the graduation so we’d have some time to explore Scotland on our own. We decided to start with the two major cities: Edinburgh and Glasgow. Edinburgh We…
One of the most popular day trips from Lisbon is to the lovely little town of Sintra. We had been planning to visit Sintra on our second to last full day in Lisbon but Dan still wasn’t feeling great. Luckily we ended up pushing it back to our last full day – it turned out there was a nation-wide train strike on the day we originally planned for. (Thank you Google Translate for revealing that ‘greve’ means strike. That would…