Skopje to Sofia (Bulgaria)
Our last day in the bus started out uneventfully as we left Hotel Ibis in Skopje ontime, bound for the Bulgarian capital again. As we made our way along the highway, Biliana gave us a present of a Penguin tours "buff" that Bronnie and I modelled in the bus and as we made our first toilet stop at a s...
Ohrid to Skopje (Macedonia)
Comfy night in Ohrid and a delightful sunny morning, albeit chilly, with still some tiny snow remnants on the ground met us at the hotel. Prior to getting on the bus, I couldn't resist but have a quick walk along the shores of the lake, seeing the snowy mountain caps across the lake, over to the old...
Tirana to Ohrid (Macedonia)
Another day, another breakfast at the hotel (variable quality) and onto the bus, today going from Albania to North Macedonia, quite happy to be clear of the chaos of Tirana drivers! After a toilet break with regulation hounds, river scenery and cheap snacks at the servo, we made our official first s...
Prizren to Tirana (Albania)
The morning broke to a beautiful snowy streetscape, so I popped out a bit early to get some photos of the streets, local dogs and scenes in general. Once we were underway, we headed through windy roads (concentrate please Boris), snowy hills, mountain tunnels and cool stuff. A border crossing, never...
Pecaj to Prizren (Kosovo)
After a fun farewell from our comfy hotel by a number of friendly big doggos we headed for the nearby Decani monastery. As with lots of things in the region, it was a bit weird as we arrived to find that the monastery was under major guard by Serbian soliders, even though it is inside modern Kosovo....
Kotor to Pec (Kosovo)
After a slightly noisy night with sounds of the street through the night we set off from Montenegro through into another of the Balkan countries. Kosovo. First along the road though was a view of a lovely former 5 star island hotel that as Kosovo has emerged from communism that some friction over ta...
Plat (Croatia) to Kotor (Montenegro)
Comfy night and lovely ocean views at brekky before we headed for another of the Balkan countries today, Montenegro, literally the black mountains. We are still quite bemused but do understand some of the challenges that face the former yugoslavia region/need to delineate countries when there is cle...
Trebinje to Plat (Dubrovnik)
After leaving Trebinje in the morning, we crossed the border out of Bosnia (non EU) back into Croatia. As we passed the border crossing passport check (still all have been faster than our first into Serbia) we soon glimpsed the Adriatic. A wonderful sunny day met us as we dropped our luggage at our...
Sarajevo to Trebinje
After a second nice night in Sarajevo watching a series called the Are Murders (Sweden) we left Sarajevo and its bullet riddled buildings behind and headed towards the town of Trebijne overnight with two stops along the way. Before arriving in Mostar, we stopped at a scenic riverside for a toilet st...
Sarajevo...a sad and proud history
Today was a full day in Sarajevo that we spent in 2 halves. We elected to go on a tour with the same guy, Halid who took our whole tour group for a shortened tour of the city yesterday evening. We set off in a minivan, first passing by an area called "sniper's alley" where there was a sculpture of m...
Serbia to Bosnia (Sarajevo)
After a comfy night (window open, air conditioner on after a hot night the night before), we breakfasted at the hotel where we were looked after by what we think might have been a local school's hospitality class...all good. 9am onto the bus and off towards Bosnia. Unlike the Croats etc, Bosnia did...
The Balkan tour begins
Something of a culture shock for we comfy travellers as we started our adventures in the Balkans. Sofie, the capital of Bulgaria with about 1.5 million inhabitants most certainly shows the effects of having been heavily influenced by inexpensive Russian supplied building materials with a lot of plac...
Travel Croatia to Bulgaria...via Germany???
Today was the rescheduled flying day from Dubrovnik to Sofia to meet up with our Balkan Kaleidoscope tour for the next 12 days. A very early start after the ridiculous neighbours kept us up with shouting, banging and just being insensitive. If I was braver I'd have confronted them, but alas I am not...
3 days in the Old City of Dubrovnik
No great need for separate posts for the three days from 26-28th March, a nice change of pace from the hectic recent times, really since Ireland through Iceland and into the first day or two on the Adriatic Coast. Spoiled with a fabulous view from our fourth floor apartment, the week saw us settle i...
A rainy day explore
A nice quiet morning and then a stroll down to the old city for lunch again. This time a tuna steak with sesame seed coating burger for more, and a second dose of calamari (spicy) burger for Bronnie today. We went for a bit of an explore around the old city tourist shops, up the steep laneways to th...
The old town Dubrovnik
After a well earned sleep we ordered an uber and headed the 30minutes along the pretty Croatian coastline overlooking the Adriatic sea until we arrived at the Biker's Cafe as instructed by our next host (AirBnB) and followed her directions to our apartment. It is an interesting change to see more tr...
Travel day. Iceland to Croatia...big day.
A big travel day was on the cards when the alarm sounded at 4:10am this morning. Rolled over in bed to find Bronnie was missing!!!!! The gentle sound of snoring from the bathroom was a relief. The night-time cough in bed (maybe the mattress was triggering) got too much so the poor thing had retreate...