Population 160,000 and the second biggest city in Croatia, Split is a fantastic city. The old town was built by Roman Emperor Diocletian in the fourth century as his retirement palace, and over the centuries houses and shops have been built into the palace complex. Krka National Park and the colorful waterfalls make a good …
Beep beep beep beep beep That pretty much summarizes our 12-hour bus ride from Sarajevo to Zadar. This wasn't honking, it was an internal sensor that made ear-splitting noises intermittently the entire drive. I looked for a pattern to make sense of it so that the mystery would not drive me crazier than the noise. …
We took the train from Mostar to Sarajevo. The tracks run along the river with steep green gorges on both sides. It rained pretty hard for most of the journey, but the last twenty minutes the sun came out and we had lovely views. Sarajevo was under siege from 1992-1996. Many buildings are still bombed …
We bring the rain. We have been rained on in 44 separate countries this trip. That is a 90% success rate of getting rained on, but we won't melt. The forecast for the next ten days is all rain within a 200 mile radius. Thankfully we had 1.5 days of sunshine in Mostar, and that …
I read 4,500 pages of local history before arriving. Unfortunately the historian developed other hobbies and didn't finish the narrative, but HBO took up the slack and filmed the documentary Game of Thrones here. It is really fun to walk around and see places of such historical significance. They had great hairstyles back then, and …
As we approached the Albanian border, I saw this sign at the guard kiosk, "15 euro per dite per ne mal të zi." I ran it through Google translate and got "15 euro per day for blackmail." There is an official price for that? I then realized that "ne" should have been "në" and the …
Everything I had was in my bag, and it was gone. Someone mistakenly stole my pack off the bus and left in its place an identical Decathlon bag with a stranger's gear. I noticed the guy with the matching bag as we boarded the bus and I thought Twinsies! But it didn't occur to me …
We enjoyed four days in beautiful Santorini. A ferry ride across smooth seas brought us to the island, and a bus took us up a steep mountain road from the harbor to Thira. Our first morning we hiked along the caldera edge to Oia and enjoyed the superbloom of colorful flowers. We planned to take …
Nine months into our journey and we have traipsed through 43 countries and walked 2,275 miles. I am writing from the island of Santorini with 5 more countries on the itinerary. We plan to work our way north through the Balkans with our final stop in Croatia. However, plane ticket prices back to California will …
Our plane landed on Crete and the first thing we noticed was the snowy mountain range just behind the cute Venetian city of Chania. We weren't expecting that. Our next city on the island was 30 miles east, or two hours by bus: Rethymnon. We are a bit early for tourist season so we got …
We Won't Melt 