While my adventures will never reach the Epic status of those of Bilbo Baggins, The Road does seem to hold a mysterious attraction for many of us.
I have long since given up counting the number of countries and islands I have visited over the years and I almost feel sorry for those who measure out their travels in terms of numbers.
While Susanna eagerly participates in the actual journeys she does not share my enthusiasm for the actual planning of the fine details so obviously the pressure is all on me to ensure that things flow smoothly.
Of course things NEVER flow smoothly and sometimes shit happens.
In Amsterdam a few years back, a fractured rail track turned a simple trip to the airport into a mad dash between a mish-mosh of stations where no-one spoke English, all re-routing messages came over the PA in Dutch only and our route took us ( I swear) back and forth across Amsterdam by bus and train before we arrived at the airport an hour later than planned ( but fortunately still in time to catch our plane)
Similarly, in Rome last year, the Metro mysteriously shut down as we were heading for the airport, resulting in a 2km dash across cobblestones dragging suitcases, since every taxi in Rome was already taken!!!
Just what lies in store for us in September remains to be seen, but I already know that it is MY FAULT!!! LOL
Deciding where to go this year was a little tricky.
The list was rather long;
1) return to Italy to cover the places we didn't see last year.
2) Turkey (Again?)
3) South East Asia ( Vietnam and Cambodia)
4) Greece ( Again!) This would be trip # 4
5) Western Europe ( Germany, France, Belgium to visit WWI sites)
6) El Camino de Santiago ( Spain)
As the terrorism attacks in Europe began to ramp up we eliminated #2 and #5.
#3 and #6 required at least 4-5 weeks and Susanna could only get 3 weeks off.
That left #1 and #4 as possibles, but one day I was reading some travel articles and saw a couple of "Holy Shit- I have to see this" spots. And those became the basis of the trip.
so #7 Eastern Europe or specifically Croatia and Slovenia.
We have already been to Croatia but our journey ended at Split so we never got to see the northern parts of the country.
Our last 2 trips through the Balkans involved group tours using Trafalgar and G Adventures. All well and good if one likes to be cooped up in a bus for the better part of the day with a bunch of annoying tourists!( Especially when they are from the USA and sulk when they cant get their own way)
Actually the G Adventures group was quite small and we did meet some really great people during our travels.
In contrast this trip will be a "just us" adventure with perhaps the odd "local tour" to some sites. I did try to find tour agencies covering my proposed agenda but they all wanted to charge me an arm and a leg while skipping many of the places on my itinerary while covering the whole journey in 10 days rather than the 3 weeks that we are taking.
If I haven't put you to sleep already, my plan is to provide a play by play of the places we are about to visit, hopefully with photos if the internet will let me upload them at a decent speed.
As a teaser, I will let you know that our first stop will be in Italy.
Cheers
DD
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