A quick trip through Greece

Like Italy, I was mostly going to be passing through Greece and not really getting the full Greek experience, but I still had six night before flying out. The first evening was in Ionnina, which seemed to me like a very nice city! It’s right on a lake, you can take boat trips, there’s restaurants and coffeeshops overlooking the lake, all of which seemed to be pretty popular, there’s a castle, a very old mosque,  a museum, etc. So definitely a nice spot to spend the night.

Fortunately in between Ionnina and Athens is a place I really wanted to see, Meteora, where all these monasteries are built high up on towering rock columns.  Although unfortunately the one bus that goes there didn’t leave until late afternoon, so I’d have to do two nights there instead of one, which I know is just terrible to have to spend an extra night at one of the more interesting places on earth.

The views from afar when you’re in the bus are pretty wild, there’s a big wide central valley, and these huge gray bulbous rock forms basically go straight upward from the flat plain, seemingly out of nowhere, towards the heavens if you will. I can see why religious folk found such a special calling to the place. To me it looks like one of the worlds in Super Mario Bros. Once you get dropped off in town, the rocks really do tower right over everything.

It was late enough that all the monasteries would be closed, but the sun doesn’t go down until 8pm, so I still had time to catch the sunset. I found a scooter rental place, I think I was supposed to have an IDP (International Drivers Permit) but they let me rent it after I explained I’ve put thousands of kilometers on rental scooters and knew how to drive one. Excellent. I guess they get a lot of first timers. The main section of Meteora with all the monasteries is just a few miles long, which you can do it as part of a 10 mile loop from in town. But you’ve got to go straight uphill, so having the scooter was perfect.

There’s two viewpoints that everyone goes to, so they’re not exactly hard to find. These places are crowded! There’s even tour buses that drive 5 hours from Athens to see Meteora for a few hours and then drive 5 hours back. But it really is an absolutely amazing place to catch a good sunset. Although this time of year is dry season and there’s no clouds in the sky, so as a photographer you’re not really going to get any epic shots, you’re mostly just waiting for that 30 second window right when the sun starts dipping below the mountains in the background. But killer photo or not, it’s an undeniably magical place. It’s not every day you get such a killer mix of such deeply religious sites and raw nature. 

As for the monasteries, apparently a monastic community was formed sometime in the 1100’s and eventually became a popular place for ascetics. In the mid 1300’s the Monastery of Great Meteoron was founded on Broad Rock, which was perfect for monks, as the only was to access it was a huge ladder, which could be drawn up anytime, and they were free to live their life separate from the political upheavals at the time. In the 1400’s as the Ottoman Empire threatened Greece, more and more monks came to meteora and many monasteries were built up on the rocks, about 20.  There’s 6 left today. In many of these monasteries everything was hauled up by rope and nets, which were only replaced “When the Lord let them break”. Fun times back then. Nowadays there’s just a small handful of monks that inhabit the monasteries.

The next day I’d have all day to explore the monasteries with the scooter. Although I made one big mistake, sleeping in! I figured I’d have all afternoon to see them, but what I didn’t take into account was that’s when all the tour buses arrive. The first monastery I arrived around noon, and there was just a small line. Once I left around 1:30, the line was all the way down the steep zig-zaggedy staircase and wrapped around the rock column. Maybe the ladder system wasn’t such a bad idea. It looked like the other monasteries were like this as well.

The next one I went to (pictured below) was probably a 40 minute wait, baking in the hot sun, sandwiched between two different groups of school field trips. Not for me! Don’t get me wrong, the monasteries are really cool, but once you’re inside it’s mostly just the same type of Eastern Orthodox iconography that I’d seen so much of across the Balkans. After that very claustrophobic experience I was happy to ride my scooter around the countryside a bit and admire the views from afar and read some more of the history on my phone.

the roads are perfect

I had a late lunch of moussaka and dolma at a restaurant up in the hills, stopped at a smaller monastery, and then hung out around town for a bit before riding back up again for another sunset photo. And that was about it for Meteora. The next morning I walked over to the bus station to buy my ticket to Delphi, where the oracle lived, it was the only bus of the day, and it was sold out! Agghhh you idiot. I suck at buying things in advance. So that was a pretty big bummer because now my only options were to stay another night in Meteora and only have 2 nights for Athens, or skip Delphi and go straight to Athens. I really had done all I wanted to do in Meteora. So Athens it is, Delphi will have to wait for another time, sigh.

It was 5 hours to Athens, and they dumped us off at a bus station that really is in the middle of nowhere. The bad part of town if you will. I walked the 30 minutes to my airbnb, and this part of town certainly was pretty dumpy. But really it’s just a poor part of town where all the immigrants live, it’s not like its scary. Some parts felt like I could have been in Syria for all I knew. My airbnb was on the border of the nice parts of town and the ‘bad’ parts of town. Ok more of the bad part of town. It was a sweet place though, new, well decorated, corner room with huge windows and blackout curtains. After the sun went down I could walk down the street and have shawarma or kebabs and smoke shisha for next to nothing. If I wanted to smoke some shisha in the tourist part of town it’d cost 25-30e. Here it’s 5. Love it.

So, I had two full days to check out Athens. To be honest two full days was more than enough, you could easily knock out all the main touristy things in one day if you wanted to. And honestly, most of it is just not that impressive! Most things are so old and in such states of ruin that it really takes a strong imagination to picture these places in their glory days. Especially after coming from Rome on this trip where so many things are in such great shape. Of course those buildings aren’t over 2,000 years old either. But still. And the temple of Zeus was completely covered by scaffolding. The Parthenon, I mean it’s nice, but you can’t go in it or under it or near it, there’s a jillion people around, it just doesn’t do it for me. I enjoyed the ancient Greek history museum more.

My favorite part of town was actually a neighborhood called Exarcheia, which is the very leftist, anarchist neighborhood where all the government protests end up happening.  I thought the tourist areas were kind of lame. On many of the blocks here literally everything is covered in graffiti. Businesses, apartment buildings, street signs, everything. It’s wild. It’s like the entire neighborhood is just one big piece of street art. There’s a large police presence, but the neighborhood has been cleaned up and gentrified quite a bit from what it used to be, and now there’s lots of hipster type shops, guitar stores, record stores, V60 pour over coffeeshops, trendy food options, and plenty of bars and live music at night. Really cool place. Athens reminded me a bit of Belgrade, a bit run down, lots of graffiti, not a ton of stuff for tourists to do, but it seems like a fun spot to live. It just has an energy to it.

Anyway, I spent my last evening with big plate of souvlaki, tzatzkiki, pita, and a greek salad, had a drink on a rooftop bar overlooking the Parthenon, smoked my 5e shisha, and called it a night. 1pm flight to New York, an overnight in the airport (ugh) and then a redeye to Chicago. Lousy itinerary, but international flight prices are not what they used to be. They suck you in with super cheap getting out to Europe and then get ya on the way back!

But Rome to Athens overland was complete! And a success! No major setbacks, no injuries, no major sickness, no big transportation delays, nothing stolen, etc. Although I always have to lose something on a big trip, I did lose my $100 pair of headphones. And my inflatable travel pillow. And a bunch of socks. I’m never sure where they all disappear to. But not too bad all things considered. I averaged 20,000 steps for the whole trip, which seems pretty good when you factor in how many travel days there were. I set my record for single day steps at 61,000, so we’ll see if I can ever top that one. The budget came out to about $90/day, which was pretty decent with the first month being in Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia, although it was certainly more hostel time than I would have liked.

Goodbye Greece

As for the downsides, a lot of places were a bit more touristy than I would have liked, which I knew going in, and Europe in general just doesn’t hit that hard on the exoticism and excitement factor for me. While it’s and undoubtedly a nice place to travel with the mountains, beaches, old towns, mix of religions and cultures, ultimately I do like to travel in places that feel a bit more adventurous, with cultures much more different than my own. It sounds crazy to most people, but I don’t think I would care for an extended Western Europe trip all that much. Instead East Africa and/or the Middle East I think might be next up on my list… Almost a full decade since I’ve been to Africa!

And to finish here’s a few shots from JFK’s TWA Hotel

Albania - Sarande and Gjirokaster

Next up, the city of Sarande. Felipe and I waited by the side of the road (in the rain) and eventually caught a minibus to take us there, a few hours south. Albania really needs to get more big buses with actual bus stations, their whole minibus system kinda sucks and is not handling the recent influx of tourists very well. Some people waiting at stops further down couldn’t even get on the bus because it was so crowded and would have to wait another hour and hope there would be room on the next one. Good luck I guess.

While Himare was more a small town, Sarande is definitely more a real city, perched on the hills overlooking a large bay. It has a beach, but I wouldn’t go here for just the beach as there are so many other nicer ones in Albania. But you can rent scooters here and there’s lots of cool places to explore that are nearby. Although Felipe had no desire to rent one, so I’d be off on my own during the day.

For good sunset viewpoints, just find the unfinished buildings, always a winner

I’m still not totally sure why there are so many unfinished buildings, but it sounds like there’s very little regulations and you can just start building and then leave it as long as you want and not get taxed or anything. I guess a lot of people also don’t realize how much the whole finished project is actually going to cost.

So this is what I’d been missing on this trip! A cheap, extremely efficient way to get around independently, aka a scooter. It makes life so much easier. First stop was Ksamil, a bit more of a resort, beach club town where almost almost all of the beaches are private. Although you can still find a few spots you don’t have to pay for. At the most popular (and prettiest) bar/restaurant/private beach, the chairs were 30 Euros, and they were mostly full, which is always kind of surprising to me, but people do indeed pay the 30E to have their own sun chair and umbrella. It wasn’t even sunny out! However I was happy to chill at the rooftop bar for a bit and get the best view in the house.

Next up was the archeological site of Butrint, which was originally a colony city in Ancient Greece, but reached it’s height in the Roman period when it was designated as a city for war veterans by Caesar in 44BC. It was then expanded by Augustus after that. After many centuries it fell into a state of disrepair surrounded by malarial swamps and was awarded to Albania after it became an independent country in 1912, which was hotly contested by Greece. It became a UNESCO world heritage site in 1992. The whole site is big enough that once you get away from the entrance you can have certain sections of it all to yourself, which is a neat feeling when you’re walking through a place that has almost 3,000 years of recorded history.

From there I took a weird little barge/ferry thing that is attached to some cables across the river and spent the rest of the afternoon riding around the countryside. It was extremely pleasant riding, pastoral scenery, mountains in the background, nice roads, few cars, just perfect. The last spot on my list for the day was the blue hole, pretty similar to the one up north in Theth and popular tourist attraction. All the other tourists have to park and then walk 2km up the road or pay to take the trolley, but if you’ve got your own bike they let you ride up there yourself, for a small fee of course. Excellent.

After having spent time in central Florida and seeing all the natural springs there, these ones in Albania don’t exactly do it for me. I took a few photos and left. But by far the most amusing part of the experience was that some of the locals were wading into the water near the spring head, while there are multiple No Swimming signs posted. There were some older German ladies who were very unhappy with such blantant rule-breaking and they were yelling at the men to get out of the water. The guys were mostly just laughing it off and ignoring it, and then one of them walked around the edge and dove right into the middle of  the spring head to spite the old women, which was met with a chorus of yelling or applauding, depending on which camp you were in. Oh those Germans, telling people off in their own country is just never gonna work.

There it is! The infamous blue hole

After being thoroughly underwhelmed by the blue hole I returned back to Sarande to catch the sunset. There was a carousel on the boardwalk that was nice for photos, and I got some nice post sunset colors as a bonus. Then it was off to meet Felipe for one last Albanian meat-fest dinner, which was just alright. Pork loin was overcooked, one of our dishes was liver, and man, liver is just not my favorite. I think Albania does better meat dishes when it’s in kebab/meatball form, or in soups and stews and casseroles. Or stuffed into peppers or eggplant.

This is what I’m talking about, Tave kosi

And you might be thinking that since Albania is a muslim country that they wouldn’t eat pork, but that is not the case for most Albanians. The muslim countries in the Balkans are very non-religious in general, but Albania is probably the least religious of them all. During Enver Hoxha‘s rule, he even banned all organized religion in 1976, making it an atheist state.

Carousel on the boardwalk in Sarande

The next day I’d take the minibus to the old town of Gjirokaster, which popped up in the Byzantine Empire in the 1300’s and is famous for it’s big ole fortress which dominates the skyline. Although once you’ve seen the fortress, which is huge, that’s about all there is to do in town besides eat, but it was a nice way to spend my last night in Albania nonetheless.

 Although I had to finally have one bus mishap before leaving the country! I read that there was one bus to Greece that left at 6:30am, so I got up nice and early, walked straight down the huge hill and went to where I was told it was supposed to leave from, the big traffic circle. Well there was nothing there and nobody I asked knew what I was talking about. After 30 minutes of walking around I called it quits and had to walk back up the huge friggen hill with all my stuff and went back to bed.

These Albanian buses with no actual bus stations and no information posted in English are very frustrating! Eventually I ended up taking a taxi to the border, where I was told a bus comes once you’re on the Greek side. And thankfully that was good information because it would have really sucked to been stuck at the Greek border! The bus dropped me off in the lake town of Ioannina (Yannina). And to finish, here are my photos from Gjirokastër…

very impressive

It’s got an American spy plane up there too, sure why not

American and Albanian accounts differ as to how it was forced to land in Albania.

The clocktower with a pretty nice backdrop

randomly cool door somewhere outside the fort

the really old part of town

Overall I really liked Albania, it hasn’t been overrun with tourists… yet, but it’s definitely getting there, especially the Theth-Valbona part. I felt like it had the best combination of everything in one country, the mountains in the north, the beaches in the south, it’s got lakes as well, there’s the old towns of Gjirokaster and Berat (I didn’t go to Berat though), the nightlife in Tirana, fascinating history, it’s good value for money, etc. They also generally like Americans, which is always a bonus. It really rolls up all the usual things you can expect in the Balkans into one tidy little package!

Albania - Tirana and down south

Unfortunately I did not have long to stay in the capital city, Tirana, with the end of the trip looming I’d just have an afternoon and evening to see the place, that’s it. I took a bus from Shkoder to the city bus station, and then a local bus which dropped me off at the main plaza, Skanderbeg Square, named after a famous military commander who led the rebellion against the Ottoman empire in the 1400’s. There’s nothing really in the square, a lot of concrete, but it’s a nice place to relax for a bit. I found a cheap room and then did my usual wandering.

I was hoping to get to a museum called Bunk Art, which is some art installations in one of Albania’s 4,000 bunkers, but it was already closed. Enver Hoxha, Albania’s communist and very authoritarian leader from 1944 to 1985, built all these bunkers around the whole country to defend against imperialists, revisionists, counter-revolutionaries and to be prepared for end of the world scenarios. These bunkers are all over the Balkans, but Hoxha really took it to a new level. In today’s dollars the costs would be in the billions, and one can only imagine how different it would have been if all that money was invested into the Albanian people, education, infrastructure etc. Instead they got a bunch of concrete things stuck in the ground.

The entrance to Bunk Art

Art installation from a Japanese dude called the Cloud

I like these trees

As it got closer to sunset I moseyed my way over to the Pyramid, which was opened as an Enver Hoxha museum in the 80’s, then became a conference center after the fall of communism in ’91, it was used as NATO base in the 1999 Kosovo war, and now it’s a youth center for computer programming and robotics. Anyway it’s been a lot of different things, it’s the city’s most famous building, and it’s a good spot to catch the sunset. And we had a really nice one that evening!

The pyramid! It’s really isn’t particularly impressive

lot’s of new development

Tirana is certainly not the most exciting city for tourists, but it definitely seems to be an up and coming place. There’s plenty of new construction, and just lots of people out and about, hanging out in bars and cafes etc. I went out to eat some traditional food in a bazaar with a bunch of restaurants and outdoor seating and the place was packed. I walked around the nightlife district for a while, and those few blocks were really hopping. Trendy bars, everyone dressed up, lines out the door, definitely a very healthy nightlife scene.

As I was walking home I was headed back towards the main square you could hear some very loud techno beats, but looking at the square, there was nothing to be seen. Eventually I saw a ramp that goes below the square, like a parking garage, and apparently there was a big concert going on beneath the square. Ahh what the hell, I’ll check it out. I guess a pretty famous DJ from the UK was in town and it was a pretty big deal. I paid about $20 (I was expecting it to be more) and went down the ramp. Electronic music in a jam packed, underground, bare bones concrete structure just gave off so many stereotypical Eastern European vibes that I had pictured in my head! So that was kinda fun to see for an hour or two, but I certainly did not have the energy to be staying there all night.

The next morning I was off to a beach town of Himare, in the south, but man getting out of Tirana was a process. The traffic near the bus station is just brutal. I took a city bus to get to the bus station, which took forever, the bus out of town was late, and the silliest part of all was that you need to go straight out of the bus station exit to get on the highway. But there is a concrete divider there, so you can only turn right, go a few miles down the road, make a U turn, and then come back. So it’s like 30 minutes of gridlock traffic, just to get you to the exact same spot you were at, in front of the bus station. It’s wild. A lot of Albania’s roads are just not designed for this amount of cars, but whoever designed that set up should be canned.

But anyway, a few hours later I was away from the city life, sitting in a tent overlooking the ocean. I opted for a campground about 10 minutes walking from town, perched on a nice raised outcropping. There’s no beach, it’s rocky, but there’s places filled in with concrete where you can lay out or put a beach chair, and there’s ladders to get you in and out of the water. Really nice, chill spot. And the tents are pretty big and come with electricity. I met an Argentinian guy who also knew some people in town that he did the Theth-Valbona hike with, so we had a nice little group of people to explore some of the nearby beaches and go out to seafood dinners with. As with most places in the Mediterranean, the water is that really vibrant color of blue-turquoise that you see in photos. No sand on the beaches though, just pebbles.

The town of Himare, view a few minutes away from the camp ground

One of the nearby beaches, the climb down involves ropes, not for the feint of heart

Another beach nearby

We did get ourselves and into trouble one night, the Argentinian guy (Felipe) and I were walking on the forested coastal path to find a good sunset spot. There’s a few unfinished or abandoned buildings along the coast here, and usually you can walk inside them and explore a bit. Albania is full of them. There was also an abandoned hotel up on a hill, perfectly overlooking the water, definitely the best sunset spot. It had a chain link fence around it, but there was also a pretty clear way to scramble up the hill a bit and get around it, so that’s what we decided to do. It’s the Balkans, people don’t care about this kinda stuff, there’s no one around anyway, right?

That rocky outcropping is where the abandoned hotel is

Well we start scrambling up a bit, and there’s exactly one single house in the vicinity, at least 100 yards away,  and this lady  saw us and starts screaming at us. Really letting us have it, not like a ‘hey, you can’t go up there’ scolding, more like WTFFFF are you doing, calling us pieces of shit, and much worse than that. Ok Ok, Jeez, we’re coming down! So we went back down, kept walking and found a different spot to watch the sunset. But to get back we would have to walk by this house, and we both had a feeling this lady was going to be waiting for us.

And sure enough, there she was, hanging around her front gate like a powder keg, just waiting to explode. We were clearly in the wrong, but no apologies were enough for her, so she just kinda went off on us for a bit, telling us she should call the cops, telling us to never come back, calling us a bunch of names etc. She asked us if we’d ever do something like this in our home countries and Felipe said maybe, and that just really got her going haha. He has no class, his family has no class, his country has no class etc. So eventually after repeating “we’re sorry” a jillion times and it’ll never happen again, we made our exit down the path, while she kept yelling at us to Get outta here! After we were already in fact outta there. 

So that was a fun story about being very bad, no good tourists. Probably the angriest a local has ever been at me while traveling! I’m assuming she or a family member owns or used to own the hotel and they’ve fallen on hard times, which is why it’s now defunct, and so it was very personal for her and really struck a nerve. But damn, that was psychotic. Good thing people don’t have guns in Albania!

As we’ve worn-out our welcome's in Himare, off to the next beach town!

Albania - North

Well I feel kind of bad for not finishing up the blogging for the last 2.5 weeks of the trip, so here we go. I took a 5 hour bus from Kosovo to the town of Shkoder in Northern Albania. That was the easiest border crossing of the trip, which I guess makes sense since the vast majority of Kosovo is ethnic Albanian. Shkoder is a quaint little place, situated in between the mountains to the east and Lake Shkoder to the west.

There are lots of places to rent bicycles, as that seems to be the main way to get around town, as well as cycle around the lake, which is exactly what I did. Well the lake is large enough you can’t exactly cycle around it, you’d have to cross the border into Montenegro, but it is a really nice out and back ride. Probably the most interesting feature was a little island just barely off the coast, that has a large unfinished 3-story building, with a bridge crossing the water to get to it. It’s fenced off, but there’s a guy with a food stand there, and if you pay him $1 he let’s you go through the hole in the fence. It’s kinda creepy and cool at the same time, and probably the best views on the lake!

Shkoder is pleasant enough, but the real reason most people go there is to get up into the mountains and do the famous Theth-Valbona hike, which I think is the most popular touristy thing to do in the whole country. The famous hike is only about 5 hours long, but the whole trip is a loop that involves a few buses, the hike, and ferry. I opted to go to Valbona first, reverse of the usual order. To get there you take a bus to Lake Koman, then take a ferry though the long winding alpine lake, where a bus picks you up and drives you another hour to the small mountain town of Valbona.

Apparently most people buy these bus-ferry-bus tickets ahead of time in Shkoder as a combo ticket, but not I! I showed up at the minibus stop at 7am and was able to just buy a single ticket to the lake. At the lake there were two ferries, but everyone, and I mean everyone was getting on one ferry, and the other had just a small handful of people on it. I verified they were going to the same place, at the same time even, and then bought a ticket for the one with nobody on it of course. I guess all the people who bought their tickets in town were all packed like sardines onto this one ferry, not even enough room to sit down. Haha suckers.

suckers and losers

I’m always jealous of the people with their big travel camper vans

My ferry was awesome, it was pretty freezing cold up top, so there was plenty of room to go down to the bottom cabin and warm up and then back up again, or to the viewing deck on the back of the boat, wherever. It was great, the scenery was fantastic, at some points you were surrounded on all sides by gray craggy cliff-faces, almost felt you were in the fjordlands or something. After 3 hours of cruising we finally stopped and they told me to hop in minivan waiting there with a group of Germans. I felt a little bad about this, as it was pretty clear the van was arranged for only them, and then they just threw me in there, oh well. I was the biggest person so I actually ended up getting the front seat, heh.

View driving in from the front seat :)

An hour later I was at my homestay in the village. If you can even call it a village. There really is not much in Valbona, there’s one convenience store in town, and that is being very generous, it’s a little wooden box that is very much under supplied and run by a teenager who gives you attitude if you ask him any questions. Seriously if anybody bothered to open a real convenience store here they’d make a killing off all the tourists.

There’s one stand alone restaurant and the other restaurants are part of a hotel or guesthouse. The rest is just mostly old houses and cabins, many/most designed to accommodate tourists. But it is sandwiched in between jagged mountains on both sides, so the setting is really quite wonderful, there’s just nothing to do. Now normally with homestays they make dinner for you and it’s one big communal thing, which I was looking forward to, but I guess my place wasn’t crowded enough to do a big dinner, so they arranged for all the people staying there to go down the road a bit to a restaurant.

See how pretty it is? This was the view a few minutes from my homestead

So that was kind of nice. At the homestay I didn’t really meet anyone because everyone was talking in German, but at least during dinner the German majority would switch over to English to accommodate me and a French guy who were the lone non-German speakers. Seriously Germans friggen love Albania, I don’t know if they’ve done a big tourism advertising campaign there or what, but it felt like 2/3 of the people I met in Albania were German.

Dinner was you’re typical fancy-ish European style affair, white tablecloths, slow service, have to order everything ala carte etc. My fish said it came with potatoes, which actually meant it had one small potato sliced in half, haha. It came with A potato. Most of the group had just finished their hike from Theth to Valbona, so I got some good intel on the hike and what to do in Theth, which is all pretty straightforward anyway. Originally I was originally planning on staying two nights in Valbona, as there was a specific hike I wanted to do, but the weather forecast was looking bad the following day, and even worse the day after (the day I had planned to do the Valbona-Theth hike) so I decided to skip town and do the hike to Theth the next morning. I had to eat the cost of the room for a night though.

the most exciting photo on my hike

The Valbona-Theth hike might be a challenge if you’re out of shape, it’s 8 miles in between the two towns, with a lot of elevation gain to get over the pass, but really it’s just 4-5 hours of hiking if you’re in decent shape. When I left the homestay it was a good 2 miles of walking on the road before getting to the trailhead, weather was overcast and foggy. And it would basically stay that way the whole hike! Plus a bit of drizzle here and there. So there were absolutely no views to be had, just a total whiteout. Bummer. On the plus side, it didn’t really rain. If I had waited one more day, I definitely would have gotten soaked.

view from the pass, oh yeah

Theth was a charming town though, it actually feels like a town, not just a single road like Valbona. I found another homestay there where I’d stay for two nights, as there was another hike I wanted to do in Theth, despite the bad weather forecast. The nice thing was the weather actually cleared up for like 30 minutes before sunset that evening, so at least I was able to get some nice photos walking around Theth, not just total bleak gray skies. And we had one of those big communal Albanian dinners that I had hoped for, and only half the group was German!

I love those old stone houses

Really nice church built in the late 1800’s

The next day I did the hike out to the Blue Eye, which is a small waterfall and natural spring up in the mountains. It’s supposed to be a great spot for a swim, but not in this weather. Although at least the rain held off until I got to the Blue Eye, where there is small cafe that serves snacks and drinks, no seating inside, but some covered areas outdside where we could wait out the peak of the downpour. The rest of the way back was a mix of clouds and rain, so I was pretty thoroughly soaked by the time I made it back to the guesthouse. One more group dinner and I was off on a bus to Shkoder the next morning, and then onto the capital, Tirana.

crystal clear water

The blue hole, at least someone went for a swim!

Kosovo

It was a quick two hour bus ride from North Macedonia into the capital of Kosovo, Pristina. Pronounced Prishtina. They get annoyed it you say it wrong. At the border, the woman who looked at my passport asked if I had Albanian roots. Uhh, what? Apparently I have an Albanian name! Someone on the bus asked what my name was, and agreed that it could be Albanian, haha. Weird! So once in Kosovo I booked another apartment, this one overlooking the central park in the city. It was maybe $35/night. Both Macedonia and Kosovo are the most inexpensive Balkan countries I’ve been to so far. My lunch was a soup from the place downstairs, 3 Euro for a huge soup, and then they brought out some salad and bread as well, it was basically for a full meal.

The thing about Pristina is there is almost nothing for tourists to do. I mean it seems like a decent place to live, there’s plenty of coffee shops, restaurants with outdoor seating, people out and about, but there is really nothing noteworthy to do. Of course there’s always wandering around and taking photos! It would a be a good time to get a haircut and do some laundry.

I did like wandering around Prishtina, it’s a very young city (as well as a young country) and the English is surprisingly good. I assume this is because Kosovo has had a lot of western and American influence in the forming of their independence (2008), especially the bombing of Serbia to keep them from invading and slaughtering ethnic Albanians in 1999. Ethnic Albanians currently make up 93% of the population in Kosovo, although there still are a few pockets of Serbs.

It was interesting seeing the US influence in Pristina, my apartment was located on Bill Clinton Blvd, there’s a statue of Bill Clinton, and another of Madelein Albright, there’s a Route 66 cafe, an Taste of America bakery, shops that sell American doughnuts, etc. This all feels a bit odd in a Balkan country where there is usually not much American representation outside of the odd ex-pat bar or something. People are also a bit warmer, I got asked multiple times where I was from (this also hardly ever happens in the Balkans) and if you say you’re American you always get a big friendly response!

So even though there wasn’t much touristy stuff to do, it was still a nice two days in Pristina. Plenty of coffeeshops and cafes to stop by. The architecture is kinda interesting, a good mix of Soviet styled buildings, some brutalist architecture and plenty of new, modern ones as well. There’s a quite a lot of construction going on, as Pristina seems to be getting a good amount of foreign investment. They

I also had a night to spend in the 2nd largest city inKosovo, Prizren. It is known to be more of the cultural capital, as it has history from the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman eras. It drizzled almost the entire time I was there, so I didn’t exactly do a whole lot here either. Pictured below is the famous Ottoman bridge from the 15th century. And in the photo after that you can see a church from the 12th century on the far left. After my one afternoon here it was off to Albania…

Skopje, North Macedonia

I didn’t have much time for North Macedonia, just two nights in the capital, Skopje. Booking.com now has a lot of private hosts on the website now to book apartments to compete with Airbnb (and less fees) so that’s what I did, got a one bedroom apartment near the bus station. The owner wasn’t around, so he had his cute little old mom come by and show me the apartment and give me the keys, there’s not many digital/keyless entries in the Balkans! She could speak pretty good English, which is pretty uncommon for the older people around the Balkans, and she knew of Michael Jordan from Chicago, ha. I hadn’t cooked much lately, so I walked down to the grocery store and bought some chicken breasts and seasoning packets to whip up for an early dinner, as I hadn’t eaten anything on the bus all day. I wasn’t paying close attention to the time, so I missed having the chance to go out and find a cool spot for sunset as I was a good 20 minute walk away from downtown. Agh, I hate that!

Oh and by the way, the reason the country is officially called North Macedonia is that it’s been in conflict with Greece over the term Macedonia, as Greece has it’s own region that is also called Macedonia, (before there were borders it was all part of one larger region) so they really really don’t like another country being able to exclusively use that as a name, as many Greeks consider themselves ‘Macedonians.’ And another cause of consternation is that Alexander the Great was from Greek Macedon, the city of Pella, and Macedonia has basically appropriated him to be from their country, as you can see his massive statue in the main square. It wasn’t until 2019 that Macedonia signed the Prespa Accord to end the decades long conflict by being officially called North Macedonia.

View from just outside my apartment. Perfect skies for a sunset and this was all I could get

I did make it to the old town just after sunset and got some okay photos. It’s another Ottoman era old town with the mosques, hamams (bathhouses), bazaars and all that jazz. Always a good spot to find a shisha cafe. The Baazar is generally where the ethnic Albanians live, who make up 17% of the population, as opposed to ethnic Macedonians.

I ended up a popular outdoor restaurant and ordered one of the more expensive things on the menu, the lamb platter. In the photo it is has a full rectangular tray of thick lamb cuts, a giant heap of fries, coleslaw, tomatoes etc, it looked great. After like 30 minutes my meal came out, a plate of a few small, grizzly pieces of lamb, no fries, no tomatoes, and a small scoop of slaw. LOL. I honestly couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I asked my waiter about it, I don’t think his English was so good, so he flagged down someone else to talk to me. He said the french fry machine was broken, they just ran out of tomatoes and were getting more, and as for the lamb looking nothing like the photos, well it’s just a photo! Hahaha, okay. No apologies, no discount, that’s just the way it is. Ahhh the Balkans. Usually when they don’t have something they do this weird thing where they don’t tell you up front for some reason and just replace it with whatever they have and bring it out to, and you just have to be okay with it. Not omit it completely! Anyway that was by far my worst meal in the Balkans and the one restaurant I reviewed on Google.

The next day I took the bus out to the Matka canyon, which is just 10 miles outside of the city! Although the bus takes over an hour to get there. Once you’re inside the canyon you can either hike it, take a boat trip, or rent a kayak. I hadn’t done any almost any kayaking, so that seemed like a good choice. There’s a trip to a cave about two hours round trip, so that was a pretty nice way to spend a beautiful sunny afternoon.

Matka Canyon

That evening I took a stroll on the other side of the river, and wow, it is a whole nother world! It was pretty surprising to see, massive new buildings with the large Roman columns, towering statues, with the crown piece being Alexander the Great on his horse in the middle of the square. Oh and there’s pirate ships in the river! hahaha. I guess this was all part of a downtown revitalization program starting in 2008. It’s get’s a lot of critcism because everything looks just kind of cheap and kitschy, and there’s a push to take out the pirate ships, which are supposed to give you the ‘feeling of antiquity’ but don’t make much sense. There’s three of them, two function as hotel restaurants and the last one is still there but it’s ripped up and abandoned. Of course in true Balkans style they’ve just left it sitting there rotting and you can take the pathway onto it and explore it’s trash and shattered glass filled shell!

I kind of liked the pirate ships! And the ridiculous statues! If you don’t know what to expect going in, it kind of takes you aback a bit, definitely raises the eyebrows. But hey, it’s memorable! Definitely more memorable than your standard downtown area. I mean I get it if the locals don’t like, it’s pretty corny. But as a tourist just there for a short time, I thought it was pretty cool.

Alexander the Great dominating the main plaza

So that was my quick stop into Macedonia, of course I wish I had more time to see some other places around the country, but you can only fit in so much in 2.5 months :p

A small detour into Bulgaria

Leaving from Nis, Serbia to Sofia, Bulgaria would be a longer trip than expected. Not because of any bus delays, or bad traffic, it’s just that the Serbia-Bulgaria border is a total zoo. Buses were piled up in a long queue and most people were just milling around outside waiting for the extremely slow process of getting them through. On some of them the Bulgarian border people searched the cargo holds, which is the first time I’ve seen that in the Balkans. Our bus was 4th in line and took 1.5 hours to get through, but there were probably 10 buses in line by the time we left, so it could have been worse.

And because this bus left at 4pm it wasn’t until after 9pm that I arrived in Sofia and made the 30 minute walk to my hostel. One of the first things you notice is that Bulgaria uses pretty much all Cyrillic for their writing, no English, unlike most other Balkan countries. Fortunately I remembered the Cyrillic alphabet pretty well from traveling around Central Asia a few years ago. And once you know it, the Cyrillic alphabet actually makes the pronunciations make much more sense than using the English alphabet, because in the Balkans whenever I see the English alphabet I want to pronounce the letters like I do exactly in English, which means I butcher words left and right. For example Nis, you would assume it’s Nees but if you saw the Cyrillic it’s spelled with ш at the end, which is an SH sound, so you know it’s pronounced ‘Neesh’. Knowing the Cyrillic, there is no ambiguity, each letter has only one way to pronounce it. And fun fact, most people assume Russia invented the Cyrillic alphabet, but nope, it was Bulgaria!  Hence their fondness for it.

The name of the place I was staying was called “Many Rules, No Party Hostel”. So they get right to the point! It was highly rated and reasonably close to the bus station, so that works for me. Although I’ve been in many hostels that could successfully convey they were not a party hostel much more tactfully than this place, which decided to hammer you over the head with it. The Bulgarian way I suppose. I managed to check in before 10pm (and avoid the late fee of checking in after 10pm) and sign up for the Rila lakes and monastery trip, which I guess would just me and one other person.

Rila Monastery

I woke up at 7:15 to have some breakfast before the 8am departure and there was also one other person in the kitchen, also wearing hiking gear, so it wasn’t hard to deduce that this person would be on the same trip as me. A late 20’s American girl, who was from Georgia, but was living in California, and about to be teaching in the Czech Republic. I was just relieved it was someone who spoke decent English, it was a bonus to meet someone I had a lot in common with.

It took almost two hours in the minibus to reach the Rila Monastery, which is the largest and most famous one in Bulgaria. The country’s heart of Eastern Orthodoxy as they say. Even though it is geographically isolated in the mountains, visitors from other countries have bestowed upon it many lavish gifts throughout the centuries, as you can see in the museum.  It has been functioning continually since the middle ages, although much of it burned down in a fire in the 1833, it was rebuilt in the style of the Bulgarian National Revival. They also serve fried dough covered in powder sugar for 50 cents and coffee for 70 cents, which was the type of revival I needed after only eating a banana and yogurt for breakfast.

From there we drove another 45 minutes up into the Rila mountain range to do the famous 7 lakes hike. You get to cheat a little bit by taking a chairlift up to the trailhead and down again when you finish. Our driver, who didn’t speak almost any English did a translation on his phone that said “I leave at 6pm”. So we certainly knew what time we had to be back by or possibly be left in up in the mountains!

The hike was really nice, a 6 mile loop of alpine lakes in a pristine mountain environment, whats not to like? It wasn’t very difficult compared to other hikes I’d done in the Balkans, but it was lots of nice scenery packed into a small area. The clouds would roll in that afternoon and that would be the last time I’d be seeing the sun in Bulgaria! By the time we took the chairlift down it was drizzling slightly and quite cold, something I’d get used to.

Once back in Sofia it was now a cold rain, which is how I will remember the capital: chilly, gray skies, a constant never ending drizzle. Which is also somewhat of a match to the personalities I ran into in Sofia, cold and aloof. The worst English I’ve seen in the Balkans, the exact opposite of helpful to tourists. At the supermarket I had trouble with the fruit and veggie weighing machine (which is the same everywhere in the Balkans, you type in the fruit or vegetable’s specific number, weight it, it prints out a barcode, and that way the cashier doesn’t have to any of that), but for whatever reason I couldn’t get the thing to print and had to flag down a middle aged woman who worked there, it felt like I killed her dog. She stormed over to the machine, angrily mashed the buttons, put the printed barcode on the bag, and quickly left without even making eye contact with me. Alrighty then.

The cold rain would basically continue unabated for every single waking hour I was in Sofia, but I guess it was a decent photography opportunity to get some nice reflections and umbrella shots. The only touristy thing I did the following day was stop in the National Museum, which was maybe $6 to enter, and of course completely fine to take photos on your phone, BUT if you had a real camera it was $15 to take photos. Uhh what? I mean I couldn’t care less about taking photos in a museum with my DSLR, but there were just a lot of things in Bulgaria that rubbed me the wrong way.

The final evening I visited the huge church, the ‘Patriarchal Cathedral of Saint Alexander Nevsky. Gorgeous cathedral, could do with better lighting though! Alexander Nevski was a Russian Prince and the cathedral was built to honor the Russian soldiers in the Russo-Turkish war of 1878, which lead to Bulgaria being liberated from Ottoman rule.

The way it was so dimly lit gave off a bit of an eerie feeling

I left the option open to stay 4 nights in Sofia, but after seeing the bleak weather forecast, I felt that 3 was plenty, and booked a Flixbus to Skopje, the capital of N Macedonia. 7am bus. I wake up at 6, get moving by 6:15, get to the bus station by 6:45 (it’s drizzling of course) and stand by the international part of the terminal. At 6:52 I go in and ask the lady from the one bus kiosk that is open about my bus, she tells me to go to the other side (across the street, 2 minutes walking). I get to this side and I still don’t see anything that looks like my bus. It seems to be the domestic terminal, there is zero English anywhere. I ask a bus driver, he points me further down, there’s only one bus at the far end, but that’s not it. I run into the terminal and ask at the kiosks, they don’t speak English, but point me to the one young guy who does, he says to go back to the other terminal!

It’s 6:59 now, there’s only a few buses even in the parking lot. I’m asking random people and nobody knows anything or just says No English, No English. By 7:15 it’s clearly game over. There’s one other S Korean guy in the same boat as me, trying to figure out how find this bus. We both have to book a new bus 3 hours later, 30 euros down the drain. I’m not positive, but pretty sure this bus didn’t even exist, and dealing with Flixbus customer service was beyond futile, so I think I may attempt my first ever credit card charge back ever. Exciting stuff!

So I must say, Bulgaria was not my favorite country!

Serbia, Well mostly Belgrade

Belgrade is not everyone’s favorite city! I’d heard some very mixed reviews, drab, ugly, people were not friendly, not a lot to do, etc. But I’d also met a lot of people that really liked Belgrade, and it’s fairly well known to have the best nightlife in the Balkans, if not Europe. I was happy to go and check it out for myself.

First photo of the visit, the cool trams on the main street right outside my room

Interesting tunnel below this building

Some new and some old buildings

Right off the bat I’d be getting out of my early to bed, early to rise sleep schedule. But it’s not from going out partying, it’s from fantasy football drafts at 2 or 3 am! Not ideal! That first night I was just struggling to keep my eyes open, I did zero research, and I’m pretty sure my teams are going to suck this year. Oh well. At least the hostel was nice, air conditioned, dark, etc and it was no problem sleeping in until noon.

The first day I had no plans whatsoever, just wander around and pop in coffeeshops, my very first do nothing day of the whole trip. With the lack of overtly touristy things to do, Belgrade is a fantastic city to do nothing! Belgrade definitely has a certain vibe, old buildings in muted grays and browns, graffiti everywhere, things not always maintained well, definitely feels a bit gritty. But it’s a very lived in city! There’s a lot of people outside walking around, taking the public transit – cute looking older trams, shopping, sitting in cafes, etc. And there are tons of little funky neighborhood cafes. No Starbucks or Caribou Coffee around! And all the cafes seem to double as a bar once the evening rolls around. So after being in so many touristy old towns it’s a nice change of pace to be in a non touristy place and just blend in with the locals.

Lots of funky little cafes and restaurants like this with sidewalk seating

So after a very lazy afternoon I ended up in the downtown area for the evening, nothing especially memorable, the building are a bit bigger and more well maintained than in the rest of town. All the restaurants with outdoor seating were pretty packed. From there you can walk over to the fort, which is a good spot to catch the sunset over the Danube. Although it was kind of interesting to see that the riverbanks were surprisingly undeveloped. I would have thought there would be a lot more going on along the water, but not really. And I must say, the skyline of Belgrade is just not very impressive, sorry Belgrade!

Sunset on the Danube

After staying up for another poorly executed fantasy draft, day two would be quick trip inside the national museum, and then the rest of the renting a bicycle. Outside of the city further along the Danube there was an old town that I’d check out, plus there’s some nice paths along the river. Although they let grass everywhere go completely dormant in the summer, so dry, patchy, yellow grass isn’t the most eye-catching. The old town was lame, I stuck around for a quick coffee and walked up the spire of the old church on the hill to get a nice view looking back towards Belgrade.

Zimun old town

The rest of the afternoon I spent biking around New Belgrade, which was built shortly after WW2 in a fury of construction activity, so much that young men and boys were recruited to provide free labor as part of their civic responsibility. In true communist fashion, the living areas didn’t have names, just Block #’s, so Block 37, Block 62 etc. I actually really like the old Soviet era stuff, it’s pretty trippy. I could totally see myself doing some sort of ex-soviet era tour in Russia if Russia ever stops being jerks. Anyway, I guess it’s cheap to live in New Belgrade, and it you can tell it’s safe, plenty of young kids around playing and doing their thing with no parents around. Too bad more of the US isn’t like this…

Soviet housing blocks in New Belgrade

Late evening at the housing blocks, lots of people outside, kids playing

So that was a pleasant afternoon, that evening I’d end up going out with two people from the hostel, an American from Boston who sounds British, and a Chinese girl studying in London, who also sounds British. In just our neighborhood, there are few kinda eclectic pubs with lots of Yugoslavia era antiques, old electronics, propaganda posters, stuff like that. I like these places. They also have some craft beer bars and cocktail bars, everything basically. I had to stay out until midnight as that was my 39th birthday, and my new friends bought a round of rakija shots, mmm. Birthday dinner was Serbian hamburgers, big ole sausage patties cooked fresh and put on a bun with onions and sauce. Turning 39 in style!

Next up was a day trip north to Novi Sad, which was the northern capital of the autonomous region of Vojvodina, controlled by the Austro-Hungarians for a while, so the architecture is a bit more European, baroque and art nouveau, etc. At the bus station in Belgrade there was a ticket machine where you pay with a credit card, which I did, and nothing happened. I thought maybe the card didn’t go through, even though it said it did. I flagged down the one person working there and he supervised me do it again, and the same thing, nothing! Argh! The guy said the printer was broken and he told me to get on the train, and drop his name, Zoran Stefanovich to the ticket collector and I wouldn’t need to pay for another ticket lol.

So when the ticket collector comes, I do just that, tell him the machine was broken, and that Zoran Stefanovich told me to tell you him name. He looked at me like I was idiot, shrugged, made no mention of what I just said, and asked me to pay the $5 for the ticket, lol.  So anyway I paid for 3 tickets on this stupid train ride. It was a really nice train though, something you don’t get hardly any of in the Balkans! Novi Sad was nice, very chill, European pastel colored architecture etc. Not exactly a lot to do though. I found a shisha place in the town square to read my book.

I forgot to mention that in Belgrade I made it to the Saint Sava Cathredal, Sava being the founder of the Serbian Orthodox church in medieval Serbia. This was supposed to the be the approximate site where his casket was burned on a pyre by the Ottomans in the 1500’s. The cathedral had started being built in the 1930’s but stagnated until the 1980’s when it got proper funding despite the communist leaders traditionally being opposed to it, and the huge dome on top was finally placed in 1989. Model after the Hagia Sofia, it’s the largest church in the Balkans. I googled it and according to wiki its only like the 75th biggest church in the world, which is hard to believe, because it seems pretty friggen massive.

And I also stopped a few nights a few hours south of Belgrade in a town called Nis (Nish), which was a pleasant enough place, not tons of touristy stuff to do though. They do have a skill tower, built by the Ottomans in 1809 after the battle of Cegar, during the first Serbian uprising, composed of about 1,000 skulls of the fallen rebels. Although very few skulls remain nowadays. There is also a WW2 memorial just outside the city built for the 10,000+ citizens of Nis who were shot or executed during the war by the Nazis. Serbia was the only part of Yugoslavia under direct control of the Nazis, which led to an uprising in 1941, which the Nazis quashed by executing 10’s of thousands of Serb civilians, in addition to the Jews that were already being sent to concentration camps. Such very turbulent histories in all the Balkan countries.

Sunset from the fort walls in Nis

odd mix of old and new

skull tower

Bubanj memorial park

Montenegro

There are just not enough old towns in the Balkans, the small town of Kotor has another nice one. Although by now I’m just about through with them, I think I’d spend about all 20 minutes in Kotor’s. But fortunately the town has the benefit of being at the tip of a beautiful bay and sandwiched in between rock walls on both sides with plenty of hiking, bicycling, and swimming opportunities around! I arrived at 2pm and it was off to find a good place to swim. Not very difficult! I certainly wasn’t going anywhere near the old town while the huge cruise ships were still around.

Everywhere on the bay is pretty damn scenic

Eventually that first evening I was off to the old town to get to the famous hike to the fort overlooking the bay, which you have to pay 15 euros for the pleasure.  About a 45 minute hike, a nice spot for sunset, although it slips below the mountains rather early. The fort was built in the 6th century during the Byzantine empire, then eventually controlled by the Venetians, then the Ottomans, then the Hapsburg Dynasty, then the Russians for a bit before going back to the Austrians after the Congress of Vienna in 1814. Then it was taken over by the Axis powers in WW2 before being liberated in 1944. So a lot of history!

brief stroll through the old town

After walking back down from the fort that evening I did some cooking and met other people in the hostel and played some cards, no poker though! People were impressed with my one pot meal, sauted onions, peppers, carrots, sausage, reduced with some red wine,  add in some water and goulash broth mix, lentils, cook it down over 30 minutes and violia, you’ve got yourself a stew! And lunch and/or dinner the next day. And the one pot meals are always nice so you’re not taking up too much room in the communal kitchen. Cooking is nice to have something besides the usual grilled meat platters!

The next morning I caught the bus about 7-8 miles down the road to a cute little stoney village where there’s fancy boutique hotels with $6 cappuccinos and boats that take you out to the the two churches in the middle of the lake. Nothing exactly amazing, you walk around and say, ‘yep it’s a church’, but the location is quite alright. That afternoon I rented a bicycle, which was a pretty fantastic idea, and rode through the villages and found nice spots to swim.  That was all before the clouds rolled in and I got stuck in a solid downpour for the last mile. That was actually the first heavy rain of the whole trip!

the storm clouds blowing in

Next up was Durmitor NP, which I’ve heard is one of the more underrated hiking destinations in the Balkans, so I was eager to check it out. I booked a private room in a hiking hostel, and was basically out the door with my pack the moment I arrived, off to see double lake, perfect distance for a late afternoon hike.  Nothing amazing, but also just two miles from town. The place I was staying was one of those pretty social hostels where everyone hangs out outside on the all the picnic tables. It’s honestly amazing how many small groups of young Brits and Aussies are in some of these hostels, they’re everywhere! It really does seem like western Europe has gotten a bit too crowded and expensive in the summer and more and more people are choosing eastern Europe as an alternative. I guess I was expecting more an older crowd in a hiking hostel far from the more happening scenes along the coast, but nope!

The next morning they organized a shuttle for some of us to get to one of the hikes, 4 Brits, a Kiwi, and myself. The scenery in this part of the park looks a bit like how I’d imagine the Scottish highlands, green, shrubby, and windswept with no trees, plus some odd sheep hanging around. It was definitely a bit different mountain scenery than I was expecting, but still fantastic. Lots of the hike was up high along ridgelines, so the scenery was pretty much non-stop the whole time hiking. The very last 15 minutes there’s a nice bit of scrambling, with some cables to hang on to, just to add some extra adrenaline rush for the final stretch. You are rewarded with some incredibly 360 degree views of the whole park. And soon we met the trail dogs at the top who, make this trip every day! They also came down with us for a bit, but got bored quickly of the slow and clumsy two legged things.

the road to the trailhead

pretty good start to the hike

peak bagging doggy

Panorama from the top

about to do the cables on the way down

So all in all in was a fantastic six hour trek. Now the tricky part was getting home, we’d have to hitchhike from the trailhead. I asked some older (apparently German) couple at the trailhead and I asked if me and the Kiwi girl could get a ride, he looked like was he going to say no at first (those German sensibilities) but our winning smiles won him over, and they let us hop in. Our hiking crew then went out that night for dinner, for some classic Balkan food, yay. You just can’t go wrong with the mixed grill, some sausages, grilled pork kebabs, French fries, salad, bread, red pepper sauce, etc.

The next day I could have hiked with a big group, but I’d rather just wake up early and have the mountains to myself rather than wait on a bunch of slowpokes. This hike was about 14 miles, there and back, but with a loop once you get out of the treeline and into the alpine section of the hike. It’s unique feature being an ice cave. You follow some ropes down on steep, slippery ground into the cave where it stays freezing all year round. Now what you see on your everyday hike. Also the nice thing about today’s hiking was the absolute lack of people, I only saw a few a people the whole day, while the hike yesterday was pretty slammed with people, being the most popular hike in the park.

I like these old huts

The last day I rented a mountain bike and did some cycling around the countryside outside the park. There’s a few different things to do, a chairlift to take you up a mountain, a canyon viewpoint – the canyon is apparently the deepest in Europe? And also a lake for swimming (it was too cloudy though) that also had some herds of sheep around it. I was getting kind of close to sheep and one of them is kind of staring me down, so I stop and assume everything is alright. Then it starts walking right at me, and now I’m briskly walking backwards trying to make it clear I’m no threat. He really looks like he wants to charge me, and those horns are looking sharp! I’ve now probably gone 50-60 feet backwards away from the lake, we are nowhere near the sheep anymore, and this asshole is still following me and glowering at me, making grunting noises. I am pretty much freaking out at this point, getting gored by a sheep was not one of the things I had on my checklist for the day! At some point it finally left me alone, but that was by far the scariest part of the whole trip hahaha. I’ve seen youtube videos of villagers in India getting attacked by a pissed off ram, it does not look fun!

This is the one I pissed off!

More animals taking an interest in me

So anyway the countryside was really nice, I finally found some people more my age at the hostel to hang out with, a couple of Belgians and an Aussie. We went out to the fancy restaurant, which is like 15-20 euros for a main instead of 8-15 or something, veal tenderloin in mushroom sauce for me, pretty tasty! Next up would be the longest travel day of the trip, 9 hour bus ride to Belgrade, Serbia. Don’t forget to print your bus ticket! One of Montenegro’s weird (annoying) quirks is you need a printed bus ticket. It’s 2024, come on!

Still More Croatia: Dubrovnik

Time to get back to the tourist hordes! Dubrovnik, the city that has exploded in popularity over the last decade thanks in part to being the filming location of King’s Landing Game of Thrones. It’s hard to believe the first season came out 13 years ago! I was booking kinda last minute and found a not particularly well rated hostel in the middle of old town, but the location was pretty fantastic, so sure. It was completely unmarked, just an old iron door going through a brick wall to get you there.  I had to stop at bar to use the wifi to message him because I couldn’t find the door for the life of me, and of course a small beer is like $9 or whatever. It was one of those one person run places, that are quite common in the Balkans, where someone turns their apartment into a hostel, which can have some very hit or miss results, depending on how much work they put into it. The place was run by a man about my age, and he slept in one of the dorm rooms, ha. Kind of a funny guy, he shook head in disgust when I told him I was doing the GoT walking tour haha. I know I know, everything around here is basically a tourist trap or whatever.

crowds not so bad around sunset

couldn’t find my hostel, but I did find this cat

Even though it packed, the old town is really fantastic! You wouldn’t even know a large chunk of it was damaged from the civil war in 1991 and the fight for Croatian Independence. Kind of like Venice, it’s crazy hot and overcrowded from the all the cruise ships during the middle of the day, but very pleasant once the late afternoon sets in, and even better once dusk hits and the lanterns turn on. I took a little walk outside of the old town to get a nice view of the sunset that evening, getting my first glimpse of Blackwater Bay on the way there. 15 minutes later I was on a jaggedy outcropping, and like everywhere in Croatia I kind of wish I had brought my swim trunks, because it was a pretty spot on the rocks where lots of people were enjoying the water and and the changing color of the sky, and looking back was a nice view of the fort.

Fort Bokar, attached to the old town on the left, Fort Lovrijenac on the right

sunset spot. it’s rocks, always rocks

The view looking back towards town

Back at the hostel I met an Indian guy from Delhi to go wander around the town with. Walking around the alleys of Dubrovnik is a lot fun with the dimly lit tunnels, it really gives you that real Medieval feel! It also turns out they were having the last night of their summer music festival, it was a full orchestra performance right in the main plaza, just a few minutes walking from the hostel, so that was cool to see. Even as much as traveling in mid summer season kinda sucks, the benefit is there are lots of festivals and events and live music going on.

what century are we in?

I liked this girl’s spot

The next morning it was off to the Game of Thrones walking tour. I showed up at the meetup spot at 9am, paid my 28E, plus the 35E for the Dubrovnik day pass, which gets you access to a bunch of spots for 24 hours, and we were off with a group of 15 or so. First stop was Blackwater Bay, which is a small scenic cove nestled between the old town and the Lovrijenac Fort. The guide had here flip book to show you specific scenes, like Littlefinger walking out there with Sansa.

Blackwater Bay!

Next up was Fort Lovrijenac itself, which was the Red Keep, kinda. They’d shoot the inside of the Red Keep in there, like the tournament for Joffrey in season 2, but for wide angle shots from around the city, the Red Keep just kinda showed up wherever it looked the coolest. And all CGI’ed up of course, so it really doesn’t look that much like the fort.

You’ll just have to imagine Stannis and Davos in the Battle of Blackwater Bay (the actual battle wasn’t filmed here though)

Once we were in the old town, we saw where lots of smaller scenes were shot, and then arrived at the Jesuit steps, the scene of Cersei’s walk of shame. Apparently they wanted Cersei (well her body double) to start walking from inside the church (naked obv) but the church wasn’t having that. But the city did agree to the nudity walking through the town. Another interesting part is they filmed in summer, peak season, so they had to shell out a lot of money to clear out their shooting locations. For this one, they paid restaurants double their highest grossing day, and same with hotels and airbnbs, for them to be all shut down. Yikes! Even in places like Blackwater Bay, where you can rent kayaks, they’d have to pay for a the whole day of kayak rentals to clear them out of there. Lots of stuff like that. Almost every other show or movie that shoots in Dubrovnik does it in winter.

So the tour was pretty interesting! Although I must say, it’s definitely a money maker for whoever runs it. Our group collectively paid over $400 for 1.5 hours to be lead around public places with a  flip book. Our guide used the be a translator, now she just does this full time in summer months. The tour also had an addition to be taken by boat to the island where the Iron Throne is located, but I didn’t care that much for a photo op. The tour dumped us off in a GoT gift shop of course!

Now it’s the middle of day, it’s hot as hell, what to do? Swimming obviously! There was a bar a few blocks away that goes through the city outer walls and takes you to a little rocky outcropping, where there’s beautiful spot for a bar, as well as stepped entry into the water to swim. No food, just very pricey drinks, but you’re paying for the scenery and water access. This is what Venice needs, some places to swim!

This is what it looks like at sunset

That evening I walked the city walls, which really is fantastic. They charge something wild, like 30E just to walk on the friggen walls, which is why everyone gets the 24h city pass for 35, which gives you access to the fort and some museums too. And walking the walls around sunset really was fantastic, it’s a must do. Seriously Dubrovnik is stunning, I took a lot of photos from up on the walls! Although for me, 2 nights is definitely enough. Especially as I was moving onto the next super touristy old town, Kotor Montenegro!

Free museum with the day pass

up on the walls

it really is a picturesque place

cool spot for a basketball court

These bars right on the outside of the walls are just super cool

The opposing view from this circle

Sarajevo

I’d had about enough of hostels and booked myself an airbnb studio in Sarajevo, about halfway between the old town and the bus station. Although I didn’t realize I’d have to walk straight uphill to get there. The downtown area of Sarajevo is only a few blocks wide, which are flat, but it seems like every residential area is somewhere up on a hill from the city center. The airbnb owner was friendly, it was a pretty new place, she made sure I knew how to use the espresso machine and where the closest coffee shops and grocery stores were. On this whole trip, no matter where I stay, I’m always a few blocks away from a grocery store. In Europe it’s basically always this way.

After waiting out the first big rainstorm of the trip, I finally got around to checking out the old town. It’s a pretty interesting city, you first pass through a part of town that looks more European with churches and baroque architecture, as they were controlled by the Hapsburg dynasty from the late 1800’s to WW1, which definitely left it’s mark. Then a few minutes later your feet hit the cobblestones of the old town, which is from the Ottoman era (1400’s to late 1800’s) with lots of mosques and bazaars and domed building typical of the style.

definitely has a different vibe than the Croatian cities

the bazaar

random apartment I liked

Sebilj Public Fountain, from the Ottoman Era (1753). These are Arab tourists

It is pretty unique that the Jewish synagogue is literally across the street from the central mosque, which is just a few minutes walking from huge Catholic and Old Orthodox cathedrals. Which means that the city has lived with a large degree of religious pluralism for a many centuries. Apparently in Islamic areas they had specific laws for governing Christians and Jews, who had to pay a tax, and were basically 2nd class citizens, but freedom of religion and being able to build synagogues and cathedrals was legally allowed. In Christian controlled parts of Europe, there weren’t any specific laws in place, so treatment of religious minorities varied a bit more from place to place, but was considered to be generally worse.

Catholic Church

Eastern Orthodox Church

So even though it’s cliché, it’s certainly true that Sarajevo basically fits the definition of a city where East meets West. After wandering around for a bit I stopped by a place that had some Bosnian style dumplings (every country seems to have their own slightly different style of dumplings), this one was bathed in a thin cream sauce. Plus I added some goulash to go with it. It’s nice being able to try out some different foods without every basic dish costing 15E like in Croatia! And then I was off to a shisha place that had live music. Bosnians love the shisha cafes, they’re always jammed at night. But then again, the bar district a few blocks away in the ‘european’ part of town was also crazy busy. Maybe Bosnians just like to go out!

Over the next two more days I’d be taking it pretty easy. When I travel, cities are mostly to relax and stop in cafes, bars, local spots etc, I really like these canteen style lunch spots where you can just pick and choose whatever you want, and they’re super cheap. I did venture into some of the museums, which you can basically pick which atrocity you want to learn about.

My first stop was to the interesection where the archduke Franz Ferdinand got assassinated in one of the most poorly planned, unlikely to be successful assassination attempts that did somehow work out - pictured above. Next was the photo gallery museum about the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995, where 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were systematically murdered over the course of few weeks and 25,000 women and children displaced. So yeah, a lot of the museums in BiH are not exactly for lightening up the mood. It’s still crazy to think that happened less than 30 years ago.  And it was in a NATO protected area. Good work there, NATO.

The other museum was the National Museum, which teneded to favor things like ancient artifacts, Ottoman life, and a huge collections of stuffed dead animals, as well as collections of dead animals in glass formaldehyde jars. So I guess that’s a bit less morbid!

nice realistic depiction of the organs

kinda creepy!

I was hoping to take a day trip to go hiking in Sarajevo, but man, getting out to the wilderness areas is just not easy! You mostly need to have your own transportation, (just like the US I guess). I was just hoping there would be some buses or something, but nope. So what I ended up doing was booking a bus to a nearby city called Konjic, which is a popular outdoor adventure spot for Bosnians, nestled in the mountains. It’s popular for rafting, but from what I’ve seen from Croatia, rafting in summer in the Balkans is like class 2 rapids, tops. So I’ll pass on that.

View of Konjic from my balcony, not bad

The first afternoon I was there I did make it out to Josip Broz Tito’s bunker, who ruled Yugoslavia from 1945-1980, and they did everything they could to make sure they were going to survive a nuclear strike! He spent billions on this thing, carved out into the mountains just south of Sarajevo, designed to protect him and (only) of 350 members of his inner circle. So it was a pretty fascinating place. Very functional, but extremely sterile. They certainly did not have any interior decorators. And because it’s Bosnia, there were no buses going there, the place that rented bikes didn’t have any (what?) so walking the 3 miles there and then back would be what I would do. But I’ve gotten used to doing a lot of walking…

So the next day I had a hike in mind that I really wanted to do, which was mostly the reason I was staying in Konjic. But I had to start super early, before the taxis would be out, up at 5am to do the 6 mile walk to the trailhead. Which to be fair was a really nice walk, especially when the sun start rising at about 6am. From there it was a few hours straight uphill, over 5,000 feet or a vertical mile, before I got to the highest point of my hike. I did run into a big Bosnian hiking club, which I was basically stuck behind for a while, so I made friends with a few people with me at the back of the queue, very friendly people! I remember talking to someone about the Bulls, and I said it was definitely a good time to be a Bulls fan in the early 90’s! Which then immediately felt awkward about considering what was going on in Bosnia in the early 90’s.

Those mountains are looking pretty far away

The old stone farmhouses were pretty neat

But anyway the hike was gorgeous, the trail once you made it past the treeline was a loop in a rocky, alpine amphitheater, and was really really suberb hiking. A lot of effort to get up there, but worth it. There was also a hiker’s hut which you could sleep in, that is if you had your own sleeping bag/pad/stove/food etc, and man I really wish I had some more gear instead of doing this monster hiking day. It’s so much nicer to sleep up in the mountains than to do a super long day hike.  But I did need to get back by dark, so down I went. For the last 6 miles once I was on the road I stuck my thumb out for the very few cars passing by to try and hitchhike, but nobody stopped. So I was resigned to pump out the last of it on foot, on mostly flat downhill road at least. All in all the day turned out to be over 60,000 steps (new record!), which I think is about 25 or 26 miles maybe? So kinda crazy day. For dinner I order a massive plate of shish kebabs, salad, fries, bread, sauces, large beer, the works. So that would be my last day in Bosnia! Overall it was a country that I really liked!

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Time to leave the coast of Croatia! But first a little history lesson. The country is named for the two historical regions, the northern 2/3 being Bosnia and the southern 1/3 being Herzegovina. What the name does not tell you, and honestly I did not know this, but nowadays the country is basically split into two autonomous entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina – 51% of the country, and Republika Srpska – 49% of the country. (I obviously would have guessed that the two autonomous entities were Bosnia and the other Herzegovina, but nope!)

These newish regions, which are more like an east/west divide (but not really), are from the 1995 Dayton peace accords to stop the Serbia/Bosnia wars, as well as the Croatia/Bosnia wars, in which Bosnia was mostly the victim. I would be staying in the BiH part, but it’s perfectly free to travel in between the two. BiH is predominantly muslim while SR is predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christian. And then there’s plenty of croats around as well, which are Roman Catholic. On the whole, the country is over 50% muslim, and the term Bosniak refers to muslims living in the country. It’s a complicated place.

From Split I’d be heading into Mostar, which is the largest city in Herzegovina. The 3.5 hour bus trip was more like 5 hours, it feels like Bosnia is a little bit more casual about bus punctuality, and just things in general. The bus driver assistant person who was sitting in one of the front seats was leaned all the way back had his legs splayed up on the front railing, which in some places might be considered a tad bit unprofessional, but not here! We were getting in kinda late, maybe a bit past 11:00, which at bigger hotels it’s no problem obviously, but some of these family run guesthouses and hostels you feel like you might have to wake someone up out of bed to check in late! But it was fine, the owner was still up. I even had to time to go find myself a snack, burek, the popular Balkan pastry with meat or cheese in it.

First thing I noticed was the prices, much cheaper than Croatia. In Bosnia they use the mark and 2 marks = 1 euro. Which works out kinda similarly with prices, as Bosnia is generally about half the price of Croatia (or more), so in Croatia a decent meal would cost 20 Euros, or it would cost 20 Marks in Bosnia (10E/11$). I’d definitely be eating out more in Bosnia!

Bosnia’s most popular dish, like much of the Balkans, is the cevapi, small grilled sausages served in something like a pita, but more fluffier and bready. Plus you get usually get some onions cucumber and your choice of sauce, a white cheese sauce (kajmak), or a red pepper sauce (ajvar), both are pretty tasty. These cost about 10 marks or $5.50. Another popular meal is stuffed peppers, or actually stuffed anything. If they can stuff it they will, things like eggplants, zucchinis, onions, cabbage are things you might see on menus. There is a stronger Turkish influence on the food, which is a good thing! The meal above rightt, which is a stuffed pepper, stuffed zucchini, chickpeas, rice, plus some bread and complimentary tap water (it’s actually really nice to get free tap water in lots of Europe, they’re super stingy about giving people free water) was 8 marks or $4.50.

If I had to guess, these women are tourists

Bosnia, outside of Sarajevo is still a pretty traditional, relatively conservative society. In Mostar you see more full length dresses on women, usually older women, sometimes with a light headscarf as well. For the younger people, they pretty much dress however. Religion overall is not take very seriously in BiH though, most people are religious in name, but the vast majority of Bosniaks don’t follow the Quran very strictly and pray 5 times a day or anything like that. It’s pretty Europeanized. I’ve read that if anything the Serbian Bosnians are more religious than the Bosniaks. Mosques are mostly empty except during holidays and major religious days. Almost all the burqas you see around are tourists from Arab countries, which does drive a decent amount of their tourism. But the mosques and some of the Ottoman architecture definitely give Bosnia a bit of a different flair than other Balkan countries.

looking down the river from the old bridge

view of the old bridge from a little rock outcropping

As for Mostar it’s signature feature is the old bridge that stretches across the river, which used to be one of the oldest of it’s kind, built in the 1500’s. It was unfortunately blown up by Croatian forces in 1993. It really shows you how senseless these wars in the early 90’s were, not just the killing, but also targeting the other country’s cultural heritage. Pretty sad. It was rebuilt in 2001 after two years of research how to rebuild it the traditional methods, using similar rocks from quarries and also from the same rocks gathered by scuba divers from the river.

Mostar is certainly a cute small town, with quite few scars, although not exactly a lot to do there. I took a short trip out of town to a dervish monastery from the 1500’s poised on the river on a rocky outcropping. It’s also a popular spot to eat along the river. The one thing I liked was there was a good selection of salads (and not meaning some slice of tomato and cucumber and cabbage), there were greek salads, couscous salads, bulgur salads, woo! So that was my excitement for the day.

Another thing that I really like about being in Muslim areas is their affinity for smoking shisha. I would say drinking and pub culture isn’t as popular, but the shisha culture is certainly alive and well, with a few different cafes littered around the old town. It’s definitely the young persons hangout, which to be fair isn’t exactly the healthiest thing to do be doing at a young age, but hey, probably beats college binge drinking! And the cost is super cheap, 4-5 Euros, I bet it would cost 5x that on the Croatian coast. So it was a nice, relaxed 2 night trip to Mostar, I got some nice shots of the bridge, and next up would be the capital Sarajevo.

Split and the Islands

Next up was Split, back to tourist central. I booked 2 nights here, probably should have just booked one. Same drill: nice pretty, cutesy, old town, absolutely filled to brim with people. Once you walk around the old town for an hour, you’ve basically seen everything. It’s most famous feature is Diocletian’s palace, the Roman Emperor who built this palace for his retirement in the early 300’s AD. The word palace is also misleading because about half of the old town makes up what once was his palace, but you wouldn’t really know that from just walking around, as everything is interconnected. I stopped in some tourist agencies to enquire about a multi-day island hopping trip, but most of those trips were pretty booked up, and if I wanted to get on one, I’d have a to wait a few days, plus they wanted a single person surcharge, as the bunks are for two people, so I’d end up paying like 50% more. Yeahh, not doing that. It’s easy enough to hop on the ferries and get to them yourself.

I do love the arches

So for my one full day in Split I did the usual, find one of the swimming spots during the day. Split is on a little peninsula, and at the far end there’s a tree lined park area with a rocky shore where people find a flat spot to put their towel , which is kind of challenging because all the nice flat spots get taken early. But as always, the water is gorgeous, looking over the bay, with mountains in the background. So that’s where I hung out for a few hours before eventually walking to the other side of the peninsula, which is the more popular, happening side. Designer clothes, 8 Euro beers, the gravel beach has sunbeds that cost 30E to rent out each, and most of them were taken. It was hot as hell, so I did stop in the bar/restaurant for a beer and did some people watching, but I was happy to get out of there pretty quickly.

The cool beach spot

That evening I took a bus outside of town to the Klis fortress, which is up high on it’s rocky outpost is extremely difficult to attack. But even so the town of Split and surrounding areas have been conquered at many different times in history, the Venetians, the Ottomans, Austria-Hungary, the Germans/Italians etc. These Balkan countries have had a pretty rough go of it. I’m currently reading a book on the Balkans from 1800 to present, and it’s basically just a long list of various  factions competing for power, someone getting power, killing lots of people, displacing lots of minorities, making some alliances, backstabbing, other groups taking advantage of any possible power vacuums, more killing, raping, pillaging etc. And it only gets more depressing the further you go, I thought WW1 was bad, WW2 was much worse, and there’s still the Yugoslavian Wars to go.

But anyway, I was a bit split on Split, it’s a gorgeous city by any measure, but just not for me. Next up was taking the ferry to Hvar, probably the most popular tourist island in Croatia. Once again, a gorgeous old town, and people just put their towels down right on the limestone pathways touching the water and sunbathe and have a swim. I keep saying this, but everywhere in Croatia is swimmable. You might as well just live in your swim trunks. The hostel I was at was up on a hill, which is not a pleasant walk during the middle of the day, but the amount of open space and the views made the small trek very worthwhile. Plus they had a big BBQ dinner thing going on that evening, which is always nice. I met some cool people there. We hit the bars for a little bit afterwards, Hvar is known as a party island, but I was happy to pull a Ryan Wiet, be home by midnight :)

My one full day there was just doing a bit of island hopping. Hvar is actually a huge island, but there are some smaller, nicer islands a short boat trip away, and you can take water taxis to get there. But honestly there isn’t THAT much difference between these islands, mainland Hvar, or really anywhere else in Croatia. Rocky coast, blue water, very pretty, etc etc. But just look at photos, it’s super nice!

And after one more night in Hvar it would be off to Bosnia for the next week.

Croatia: The Istrian Peninsula and Plitvice Falls

First stop, the Istrian Peninsula, which is the far western part of the country close to Italy. I booked a ticket to a cute little town called Rovinj, but just wanted to visit for the afternoon, en route to a larger port town called Pula. I read online that there’s lockers for storage at the bus station, which is why I made the pit stop, but then when I asked the lady at the counter about the lockers she waved me off saying “finished, finished”.  Alrighty then!

I’ve definitely started to notice that people working in bus or train stations, or the bus drivers themselves, are not very customer service oriented haha. The older they are, the more likely they are to bark a few words at you and then shoo you away. So now I was in Rovinj, it’s very hot, and now I have to see the city lugging around my big backpack with nowhere to put it.  It’s like 95 degrees and the old town is hilly. Great.

Rovinj old town looking on from the harbor

One of the side streets. Those stones are slippery!

First impressions of Rovinj was that it was definitely aesthetically pleasing, white brick buildings and cobblestone steps, lots of boutique shops and romantic looking cafes with outdoor seating wherever there was shade. And the coast was a shimmering deep blue color. Walking the streets felt a lot like Italy especially with all the Venetian architecture, but also kind of like a lower grade version of Italy. If anything the food prices on menus were just as high or higher than in Italy, which was surprising. Apparently inflation has been really bad in Croatia, and given what locals make per month, the food prices seemed pretty crazy in that context, I’m not sure how locals afford it, and it sounds like they mostly just don’t eat out that much, especially in coastal places in the summer, especially especially in tourist trap old towns! The Croatian coast is geared towards extracting as much money out of the summer tourists as possible, and given how popular Croatia is nowadays, business is gooood.

So upon getting there I hiked up the hill to church in the middle of town with all my stuff, dripping in sweat, and it sucked, so I decided that was enough walking for the time being! I did read on someone’s blog that they really liked a bar called Mediterraneo, and you could hop in the water right from their waterfront terrace, so that seemed like a good place to go. Once there I was able to thrown on my swimsuit, stash my bags in the corner, have a drink (for only $11) and go for a swim. This is the nice thing about Croatia, there’s always somewhere to swim, this specific part of the Mediterranean in the Adriatic Sea is just so calm (and blue) you can hop in wherever and not be worried about big waves or tides or ripcurrents, the temperature is perfect. The tricky part sometimes is navigating the slippery and possibly sharp rocks getting out. The whole coast is pretty rocky, and if there is a beach it’s more like gravel, not sand. But anyway it was much nicer scoping out the town from in the water than sweating like a pig on land.

That was a good way to kill a couple hours and then hopped back on the bus to my final destination, Pula, where I booked two nights. Pula was pretty similar to Rovinj, although a much bigger city. But if you stayed in the old town, which is where all the tourists stay, you wouldn’t really know it. The city is famous for it’s very well preserved Roman amphitheater. Of course just having been in Rome it wasn’t as exciting to me. I also found out that ferry across the sea to Zadar only runs 5 days a week, and one of the two days it didn’t go was on the day I was planning on going, so I just decided to book one more night, which kind of felt like a wasted travel day, because there’s just not that much stuff to do in Pula besides finding a spot on the coast to go swimming. That’s most of Croatia I guess, old towns and swimming! Don’t get me wrong, the old towns are top notch, the swimming spots are really really pretty, but as I will soon find out, it does start feeling a bit same-samey.

So Pula was kinda meh (and I only say meh being a total travel snob) I had two pretty chill days there, I hit the coastline both afternoons, and then eventually took the ferry to Zadar, and from there the bus to the famous Plitvice waterfalls. Someone recommended a good hostel in the nearby town, where they’re really good about organizing group activities for the people staying there, which is kinda nice. The first evening I was there some people were going on the kayaking tour, so I signed up for that one, and then there was an organized group dinner at the place down the street for traditional Croatian food, so sign me up. The group was a good mix of people, some Americans, some Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, one French, one Italian. They have these huge meat platters that are good for splitting among a few people, so we ordered a few of those, it’s tough to go wrong with a meat platter in the Balkans! Can’t go wrong with meat and bread :)

The next day most of the people at dinner were on the kayaking trip, so we had a pretty good group going. The rafting was done with inflatable tandem kayaks, and it was most flat water, but interspersed with small waterfalls and slides that kayaks handled really well. Also lots of good spots for jumping in. It was enjoyable, but really not the most exciting trip. Towards the end we passed though a weeklong hippie type electronic music festival where everyone was camping out and chilling out along the river, it looked like a great time. And let’s just say that clothing was very much optional. European attitudes about this sort of stuff are definitely a bit different than American ones!

That night was hostel run lasagna dinner + brownies and ice cream, which most people participated in. These group dinners are really good ways to get large chunks of the hostel sitting together and talking which is certainly becoming more difficult in the modern social media age. And the long picnic table seating helps too. And having board games and playing cards readily available. And a market a block away to buy drinks. But I had to be up early in the morning to get to Plitvice Falls before the big midday/afternoon crowds come. Being that Croatia has so many tourists nowadays they can basically charge what they want, Plitvice is 40 Euros, which feels kinda like a FU price, but is what it is. The entire park is pretty big, so there are about 15 miles of hiking trails going around all the various lakes, so you can spend the whole day there at least.

The lakes are basically terraced with rock formations called tufas, a
”Tufa is a hollow, porous rock created from the deposition of dissolved calcium carbonate in the water by plants, algae and mosses” so that’s what creates the terraced waterfalls. It’s pretty neat, although something quite common in Southeast Asia, and the color of the lakes is some really pretty shades of blue and turquoise from the mineral content, dissolved calcium carbonate or whatever. Although unfortunately summer season is the dry season, so the waterfalls are basically at their lowest flow, and it honestly wasn’t overly impressive. It felt more like a pleasant day hiking around some lakes as opposed to being one of the supposedly top waterfalls in the world kinda thing. But maybe I’ve seen enough of the best waterfalls traveling to make me a waterfall snob also….

In wet season these falls would expand into different streams all over the place

So Plitvice was fine. Checked off the list of must-do things in Croatia. The next day we had a bunch of people looking to do something, so the hostel organized a trip to see an abandoned airbase/hangar and then we’d go to some swimming hole. I was under the impression that this abandoned hangar was like something we’d stop by, see for 5-10 minutes, snap some photos, and move on. No, no, no, the place was  huge! The entrance feels like something in a Bond movie, where the bad guy has his evil lair in some massive hidden compound in the jungle. And then once you’re inside the main tunnels fork off into different directions, and then from the main channels there’s a whole bunch of smaller tunnels to work your way through. The place is genuinely creepy, rubble, broken concrete, rebar, and graffiti everywhere, it seemed like it would be a great spot to have a crazy rave party.

This photo really does a terrible job at showing how absolutely massive this underground airbase was. We walked around for two hours and didn’t see everything.

Photo stolen from the internet. This place was soooo cool to explore

But some of the rooms in the smaller tunnels are actually somewhat decently preserved, you can find things that look like gear boxes, oil drums, huge silos, sleeping quarters and bathrooms, and just all sorts of industrial looking stuff that I have no clue what it is. And everything is pitch black, so we were just using our lights on cellphones for light, while the volunteer from the hostel had a small lantern. But we definitely could have used some stronger lights. We spent two hours in there in exploring and didn’t even see the whole thing. And we were the only ones there! I like how nothing was roped off  or closed off by the government, and the whole place is just completely free to roam to whoever wants to do so. No way  that happens with an abandoned military base in the US!

So that was really cool. That was my favorite thing in Croatia actually, certainly the most unique. Give me the abandoned cold war era underground bunker all day vs the cutesy, touristy old towns! I’m gonna have to go to Russia now and see more stuff like this, haha. So after that we loaded our shuttle bus and went to the swimming hole just outside Plitvice Park. There were already some people there, but we got some good local intel, and if you walked 20 minutes down a hidden path there was a small waterfall with a rope swing and swimming area, and we had that spot all to ourselves. It was perfect. A non-touristy day in Croatia! Felt good.

Ljubljana

The most difficult capital city to figure out how to pronounce in Europe! From lake Bohinj took a bus and got dropped off at the Ljubljana bus station, 1.5 miles to my hostel. Once again no hotels for $100 or less, Slovenia ain’t cheap. I coulda walked but it was an easy, straight shot on the bus. The great thing about Ljubljana buses is that you can just tap your credit card and go. No cash, no specific bus card, super easy. Why can’t all buses be like this? The hostel was fine, small, clean, two French guys and an Israeli guy in the room, one .was trying out being a digital nomad where he’d spend two weeks per city, work 9-5, and then have the evening and weekends to see the city. Ljubljana seemed like an interesting choice, because you can see most of the city in  one day. I booked 4 nights in Ljubljana, which was a bit much, but I wanted to do two day trips to some caves.

That first night I wandered around the old town, I’d say it definitely has that generic, old timey European feel that people like! Accordion players walking around and all that. You can basically see all of it in two hours if you’re just walking. At the very center is a castle on the hill that really ties the place together. Eventually I found a street market with lots of stalls set up, so I stopped at the Slovenian dumpling stand, strukjli, which were small dumpling filled with cheese and topped with goulash. Pretty tasty! Eventually some thunder clouds rolled in setting up some dramatic skies for photography, which is always a plus. And somehow it didn’t rain.

The next day I rented a bicycle from the hostel to see some places outside of the old town. And honestly there wasn’t a whole lot going on! Very suburban, quiet neighborhoods, pretty relaxing for a bike ride, but I wasn’t exactly finding a lot of cool places to stop. Although I did fid a popular, well rated Cevapi place, which is like mince meat sausages served in something like a fluffy pita bread with onions and a dipping sauce. I like the ajvar, which is mostly a red pepper sauce, I think with some eggplant and tomatoes in there too.

Getting back into old town there was a funky, eclectic outdoor art space called the Metelcova that was fun to walk around for a bit. It also had some interesting groups of people sitting around drinking and doing some drugs. Next up was a museum, I was either going to do the National Gallery or the modern art museum, but I’ve done enough history related stuff in Italy, so the art museum it is. Nothing to write home about, but a good way to kill an hour or two. Just outside the old town is a huge park, the Tivoli Park, which turned into some pretty steep gravel paths in the interior of the park, it was not the relaxing ride like I expected!

Day two would be taking the train to the Postnoja Caves and the Predjama castle, about an hour away, plus 30 minutes walking. Slovenia has one of the largest cave systems in the world and apparently where the study of cave creatures began (biospeleology) back in 1689 when the underwater cave salamder, the olm, was discovered. It looks basically the same as an axolotl and can live for a 100 years and can go 10 years without eating. Wild. But anyway, to get into the main chambers of the cave you take a 15 minute train ride in, which is a first for me! So that was kinda fun. It certainly is an impressive cave, huge chambers, towering stalagmites, the works.

From there a shuttle bus takes you to Predjama castle, which is built into a cave. Also very cool to see. An extremely difficult castle to attack, and I guess in the medieval ages when they were under siege there was a tunnel through the cave out the back where they could smuggle in food and supplies undetected. So whoever designed this one can give himself a big pat on the back. From there it was a shuttle bus back to the caves, 30 minute walk, 30 minutes waiting for the train, and over an hour train ride, so quite the time consuming day trip! But having 15 hours of daylight helps.

The next day would be something similar, but even longer. I was taking the same line, but a few stops further, 1.5 hour train ride, plus a 45 minute walk to a different cave I wanted to see, the Skocjan Cave. I had to leave at 9am for a reserved spot at noon. You have to book this one a few days in advance because it always fills up. With some delays it was almost two hours on the train, plus the walk. Good thing I have my 700 page book on the history of the Balkans to burn through. Although when the ticket lady came around I was shocked to find the price of the train was 15 Euros! Yesterday my fare to Postnoja was 1.30 Euros, and now this train going 3 stops further was 15?! What?! I guess yesterday was a Sunday, and they give you discounts on weekends, and you have to buy the tickets on the train, because the ticket booths aren’t open on Sundays. So I did the same thing on a Monday, and got whacked with a 5 Euro fee for buying it on a train. And I guess this was an international train, not a local one? So I was a little salty about that, paying 12x what I paid yesterday, ha.

At this cave you can’t take photos, so you just have enjoy the experience in the moment and use your memory. Lame. But the last cavern of the cave is very memorable! Just a massive massive cavern, completely underground, with a river running down below. It’s the largest underground cavern in Europe.  It’s lit with lots of orange tinted lights, and it really gives you the Mines of Moria in the LOTR vibes, where Gandalf and the Balrog go crashing into the abyss. And the walk out of the cave is great too, weaving your way through various caverns and tunnels and small waterfalls.

Walking through the caverns on the way out

The ride home would be a bit complicated, I guess there was some construction going on, so I had to take a bus (run by the train company) to a different train stop, ride the train for a bit, and then take a different bus into Ljubljana. Yikes. So all in all it was about 2 hours of caves and over 6 hours of getting to and from the cave. So yeahhh, not totally sure if it was worth it. It does make me miss being able to rent a scooter in SEA for $7/day and being able to drive myself to wherever the heck I want! I was starving by the time I was back in Ljubljana, so I found a traditional restaurant to eat a good ole hearty stew called Jota, and their specific Slovenian sausages, Kranjska Klobasa, mmm. Nothing groundbreaking, but very tasty, especially their horseradish sauce. And then I had a beer at 90’s rock bar that played bands like Liimp Bizkit, Korn, and Disturbed hahaha. And that was about all for Ljubljana. 4 nights there was plenty. Next up would be Croatia, where hopefully I’d have less adventures in public transportation!

Slovenia: Lake Bled and Beyond

From Venice I booked a bus to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia and from there hopped on another local bus to Lake Bled. The freely crossing of borders thing is pretty great! One thing I learned very quickly is that Lake Bled is not a cheap destination, definitely no hotel rooms for under $100 or even really close to that, so it looks like hostel time. 45 Euros ($50) for a 4 bed room in someone’s house basically, and as for my room, their basement. It was arranged so that shower and toilet were together in the bathroom, but the sink was part of the bedroom, and there was no mirror.  Alrighty then. It was one British girl and two Dutch guys in our cozy little room. I must say, after staying in some hostels in Japan and Taiwan and other places in Southeast Asia, the hostels in Europe feel old and outdated and generally just kinda suck.

walking around the lake

The lake was beautiful though. The sun was shining, the water was a nice color of turquoise, the temperature was perfect for swimming, tons of people were out with their kayaks or stand up paddle boards (SUPs), or biking around the lake. I found a café on the lake to brush up on my Slovenian words and polite nicities as well as try their famous crème cake, kremsnita. And what an awkward cake! The top layer is hard, and you can’t get through it with a fork, so you basically have to smash all the crème out trying to cut through it. I mean it was tasty, probably a bajillion calories, but it’s a strange feeling when it seems difficult to eat cake. The person who came up with the ‘it’s a piece of cake’ expression was surely not eating kremsnita!

For the sunset I walked the two miles to the far side of the lake where the church in the middle of the lake is, and where there are some good viewpoint to hike up to. I picked the highest one, it was definitely worth the 30 minutes of straight uphill to get there. It really is a gorgeous lake. Of course by the time I got back to the house, the tiny kitchen is full, the family room is full, there’s just not enough room in this place to accommodate the amount of people staying there. I ended  walking down the street and having a burger, and that place was hopping because it’s the only casual type spot in the whole town open after 9pm (closes at 10). For being such a popular tourist destination, the city of Bled is shockingly dead after dark! The nearby hostel bar seemed to be the hangout spot.

the highest viewpoint

The next morning I was up at 4:45 to get to the viewpoint by 6am. And it was cloudy, nooooo. But I was already up and out the door, so maybe we’ll get lucky. By the time I got up there, I was maybe the 7th or 8th person. I guess I didn’t really have to get there at 6am factoring in the extra time it takes for the sun to come up from behind the mountains. But 6:30 came and went, then 7am, and still all clouds. There was one break in the clouds, and with some luck the sun would come right through it, and fortunately that’s exactly what happened! Go sun! For about 15 minutes it popped through that hole, the rays brightly shining through the land below. Magnificent. A lovely morning. And then back to bed.

there’s the sun

That afternoon I went down to lake with the Dutch guys to get some sun and rent a SUP to cruise around for a bit. It was a very relaxing rest of the day. Although it felt too early in the trip to be having a relaxing day. The first couple weeks of a trip I’m in high energy GO mode, so the next day I’d go for something more ambitious.  There’s a famous hike that starts from the highest road pass in the park, going straight uphill to a 360 degree lookout point, that’s what I wanted to do. Now the tricky part was figuring out how to get there. Turns out I’d have to take a bus to the nearest real city, Jesenice, and then from there a bus to a touristy ski town at the foot of the mountains, and then from there a shuttle bus to go up to the pass, which only runs in July and August. I think I spent an hour on the bus website looking up timetables to get my timing right. I was off early on the 7am bus from Bled.

On the way there things were coordinated exceptionally well and it only took 2 hours to get to the pass, which was basically the best case scenario. Good logistics planning is very satisfying. It really was a great hike, and you could branch off into a few different trails for different lookouts. One of them was a Via Ferrata trail, which is a protected hike using metal footholds and steel railing in certain spots that you can clip onto wearing a harness to protect a fall. Next time I go to the Alps, I’m learning how to do this, looks like a lot of fun!

close to the top of the hike

Shot from the bus on the way there

The sheep hiding from the sun. If you parked here you just have stay longer!

Glacial lake that was freeeeezing

I did some other side hikes and then came down to catch the next bus back. Now if I had done the appropriate planning ahead of time, I could have hiked to a mountain hut from the pass, and then to another mountain hut, and ended up at Lake Bohinj, which is the lake I’d be staying at the next day anyway. But I did not do this, the mountain huts were already all full, so I’d have to do the 3 part bus journey again to get home. I did stop at an alpine lake for a swim, a very short swim as the water was shockingly cold, and then hung out in the tourist mountain town for a bit. And then caught the bus to Jesenice. And then from there I just kept waiting for the bus to Bled, and after 45 minutes it didn’t come, so I hopped on a bus to another nearby city, and from there a bus to Bled. So 7 buses in total! Yikes. And as a side note, I really need to learn Slovenian pronunciation, because the bus drivers are getting real confused when I try and tell them what city I’m trying to go to…

The next day I was up early as usual and took the bus to the nearby Lake Bohinj and dropped my stuff off at the hostel. From there I took another bus to the big waterfall, and that would be the start of the 7 lakes hike, although I didn’t have enough time to see all 7. And what a start to this hike! 1,000 meters/3,300 ft up the sheer face of a rock wall. It actually wasn’t as dangerous as the internet made it out to be, but there were a few parts where they have cables to hold onto if needed. Getting into hiking shape real quick. Lunch was at a mountain hut situated at double lake. I was kinda bummed out to not be staying at any of the mountain huts though. Although less bummed after ordering an $8 strudel and it dry and crappy and made with preservatives, miss me with that price:value ratio.

Savica waterfall

One part of double lake

Other part of double lake with the mountain hut in the background

From there it was another few hours to hike out to a different spot, where I could get a shuttle bus back to Lake Bohinj. Of course I missed the shuttle bus by 10 minutes because the shuttle pickup point isn’t at the trailhead, it’s way down the road, so now I would be waiting for over an hour for the next one. And now it starts raining, yay. I love the compounding mistakes. Fortunately a Czech couple with two kids decided to stop their car and see if I wanted a lift, yes please! The wife hopped in the backseat with the kids, and they gave me the front seat for the 30 minute ride into town. They were doing a two week road trip through Austria, Slovenia and a bit of N Italy. So that totally unexpected and was super super cool of them.

Lake Bohinj

The next morning I rented a bike and rode around the Lake a bit and that was basically all for my time in the mountains. Off to the capital, which I definitely had to google how to pronounce, Ljubljana. Loo-be-on-ah. And here’s a few more pastoral photos from the countryside…

aww what a cute tractor

Venice

Same church, different angle

After a very pleasant (and expensive) 4 hour journey on the high speed rail, we arrived in Venice. Walking out of the train station you really feel like you’ve just transported to a whole nother world. It’s really quite magical stepping out on the grand canal with the old buildings pressed right up against the water and the speed boats whizzing by with the gondolas working their way along the periphery and the smaller channels. It really is like no other place on Earth. Although some of the excitement fades a little bit when you have to wait 40 minutes in a long line to catch the next taxi boat. But once you’re finally on it, what a nice ride, about 30 minutes to my stop. I wish all taxi trips from the train station to the hotel could look like this!

The Grand Canal

My hotel was a two minute walk from St. Mark’s Basilica, so a pretty great, central location. Although in hindsight I would have rather stayed a little further out in the less touristy parts of Venice, because every restaurant by St. Mark’s costs you an arm and a leg. The hotel lobby and the room were covered with golden wall paper, old antique furniture and paintings of Venice on the walls, definitely a cool vibe, although the hotel was certainly outdated. Fine with me. Free breakfast also. I took a little nap to start because it was hot as shit and walking Venice in the middle of the day with all the people and the cruise ship passengers out and about is not my idea of a nice time. The sun doesn’t set until 8:40, so I’d have plenty of time to get my wandering in when the sun got lower and the light was nicer.  Same as Rome, it’s so much nice in the late evenings and early mornings.

gondolas gondolas everywhere

I’ve read it doesn’t really matter where you go in Venice, basically everywhere is beautiful, and yeah that’s basically true. I just haphazardly picked a direction and went on my way. Venice’s little islands are connected by a whopping 400+ bridges and it’s real treat hanging out on the bridges for a bit and watching the gondolas slide through the water underneath. I can’t even imagine how many gondolas are in this city. It’s amusing watching them get into traffic jams sometimes because the city is just so jam packed with tourists this time of year. Every once in a while you’d see a gondola paddler not wearing the classic striped shirt, like is it even a real gondola ride if the guy just has on a white t-shirt? I say no.

Take a look at this guy, white t shirt??

On the other hand, it really isn’t hard to get away from the crowds either. 15 minutes walking to outskirts where the locals live, away from the main tourist channels and there really aren’t many people around. I walked around a place called Sant Elena on the far east part of town, which is probably a 30+ minute walk from St. Mark’s square, and it was like a ghost town. This was on a Sunday evening around dusk and it felt like it was deserted, definitely kinda eerie.

The Sant Elena neighborhood

I want this house

Can you tell I like the hanging clothes?

I was hoping to do the two main tourist activities, St. Mark’s Basilica, and the Doge Palace, but being caught up in doing stuff in Rome I kinda forgot about the booking in advance thing. So there was no way to do Doge Palace, and instead of $5 ticket to get into St. Mark’s I’d now be spending $40 for another audio guide walking tour. Ugh. And then when they assign you into groups there seemed to be a bunch of young, well spoken tour guides around, and yet once again I got the old 5ft Italian lady who can barely walk. Agghgh.

St Marks at sunrise

The church was definitely interesting to see, but these audio guide tours just really kinda suck. Anyway, the interior decorating was much different than St. Peter’s basilica, with a mix of gothic and Byzantine styles.  Lots of mosaics! Lots of gold mosaics, often depicting things from the old testament. Apparently in the 9th century Venice was hoping for more prestige than their current, boring patron saint, St George was getting them, so some enterprising individuals took St. Mark’s body (the Evangelist) from Alexandria in Egypt, stored it under some pork to get by the muslims, and brought it to Venice. Now they have a way cooler and famous patron saint. Adios George! And as Venice got even more rich the church in its current form was renovated in the 11th or 12th century. They say Venice would reach it’s peak in the 14th century.

As for meals, just like in Rome (and everywhere in Italy I guess), you feel like you can’t just have something quick and easy like a piece of pizza or  sandwich when there’s so many local specialties around. There’s a classic shrimp and polenta dish, bigoli in salsa, which is like thick spaghetti noodles in a sardine sauce, there’s dried and salted cod, squid ink risotto, and appetizers called cichetti which are toasted pieces of bread with lots of different stuff on them. It get’s a bit pricey trying everything! The nice thing was that eating outside of the St. Marks area was much more chilled out, plenty of open outdoor tables, and 30% cheaper. I really should take some food photos though. The only thing I didn’t really care for was the squid ink risotto.

The 2nd night in Venice some storms rolled through, so I was able to take some nice shots right at dusk, although I really could use a tripod. It was refreshing to have some clouds! Every single day in Italy was sunny, blue skies, almost no clouds, which I can’t complain about, but for the best photography you really need some clouds and moody skies! The next morning I was up early again and greeted by some lovely pink and orange tones in the sky before the sun came up. A very nice way to end my 6 days in Italy! I was running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off to maximize those 15 minutes of pre-sunset colors :)

The clouds are moving in

ruh roh

Winged Lion of St. Mark and St. Theodore

Nice morning for a wedding shoot

there it is

Overall thoughts on my short time in Italy:

Italy is very very very nice. It’s beautiful, it’s clean, it’s safe (mostly), the food is great, etc. And I’m definitely glad I got to see Rome, one of the most well preserved, historic cities in the world, and Venice, certainly one of the most unique cities in the world. Two must see spots checked off the list. And I kinda wish I would have thrown in a very quick trip to Florence just to take a quick glimpse. But really, I wouldn’t want to spend that much more time in Italy. I had just about reached my museum and church quota from Rome and Venice.

I guess my rule of thumb when traveling is that if the general crowd is all couples, honeymooners, and families, it’s probably not going to be somewhere that really fits the vibe I’m looking for. People dressed up in designer clothing? Nahhh. Large crowds? Nope. Long lines and booking things well in advance. Mmm no thanks. I mean I would definitely go back to Italy, but it would probably have to be with a girl, and hopefully not in summer season, and hopefully when I’m more flushed with cash. The good news is that if I ever have to get a real job doing 1-2 week vacations (which is looking increasingly likely after this year) I’ve still got almost all of the normie vacation spots in western Europe and the Caribbean that I haven’t been to yet.

 In hindsight it probably would have been good to delve a bit more into Roman history before coming. But really, I’ve never been a huge history geek, and I’m not going to pretend to start being one just because I’m in Italy for 6 days, like lots of people seem to do. On my last day in Rome I did a catacomb tour and there was one American family on the tour and it was like they felt obligated to raise their hand and ask about every inane question that crossed their mind. Which is normally fine to an extent, but when you’re asking about what type of oil was used to light the lamps, or how they cut the rocks, and holding up the tour at every stop, you’re starting to go too far. Nobody cares. The tour guide already has an hour of facts and stories and dates ready that you’re just going to forget next week anyway! But unrelated to that tangent, if you actually are a huge Roman history person, you could easily spend weeks in Rome and never get bored.

Another thing about Italy, which might be blasphemous to some, is that Italian food doesn’t exactly blow me away. I mean the food is at a very high standard, it’s fresh, it’s tasty, it’s not loaded with preservatives and sugar and corn syrup. But it doesn’t wow me! Sometimes it feels kinda boring. I’ve had some meals traveling around in Asia that have really floored me, a big WOW experience. Honestly I don’t get that from Italian food. Of course I’m not eating in high end restaurants in Italy, but still. I think Western European cuisine on the whole is a bit bland sometimes on the whole. Give me the spice!

So while I was happy to see Italy, I’m thinking lake Bled and going up into the Julian Alps and Triglav National Park in Slovenia is more of what I’m looking for  in this trip. Lots of hiking, stunning scenery, swimming in lakes, not feeling like a total schlub for wearing hiking shoes, shorts, and a t-shirt!

And here’s just a few more from Venice

Last few days in Rome

I still had two more days in Rome, with one major tourist activity planned per day, the Colosseum and the Borghese Gallery. I was still keeping my ‘up at 6am’ schedule going, because it really is the best part of the day before the tourists and heat comes out. The next morning I decided I’d go photograph the Colosseum at sunrise. It’s actually somewhat difficult to get a good angle shooting the place because all the elevated places you’d want to be to capture the sun coming up behind the Colosseum are part of the Forum, which is all fenced off. But I still got something pretty good! From there I walked around the outside of the forum a bit, wandered through some more neighborhoods, stopped for a cappuccino and pastry, the usual stuff, and then hit the Capitoline Museum at 9am open, which is on the top of the hill overlooking the forum.

 It was one of the first museums (possibly the first) in the world opening in 1734. It has a statue of Marcus Aurelius out front on a horse (a copy, the real one is inside) which survived the Christian destruction of many Roman statues because people thought it was the Emperor Constantine, who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. It was a very nice museum (obviously museums in Rome set a very high bar) and hardly anyone there when it opened. Perfect. After that it was time for a quick bite at the market, some very tasty amatriana pasta, and a siesta. I ended just walking home, as usual. At first I really thought I was going to be taking the bus or the metro everywhere, which is part of why I stayed where I stayed, but the buses are hot, crowded, not always on time, there’s traffic etc, so if I have a 15 minute bus ride or a 20 minute walk, I’m walking. Even if it is 95 degrees outside.

well you can kinda see Marcus on his horse

After the nap I went to a church that was built on top a church that was built on top a church. So three levels, two below ground. Pretty interesting and a good way to beat the heat before making my way to the Colosseum. The Colosseum was the one place I was hoping to take a guided tour, because otherwise you’re just looking at a big old stadium and thinking hey that’s a nice looking old stadium. Which is what happened because the guided tours were all booked out. Although I did do my research on it ahead of time and learned some cool tidbits and saved some more stuff in my phone. One thing that surprised me was how often animals were involved, I guess 9,000 animals were killed in the 100 day opening ceremonies in 80 AD, and then 11,000 were killed in a festival in the next century. So yeah, they really liked killing animals, the more exotic and dangerous the better. At least the crowd didn’t like it when they killed stuff like elephants and giraffes.

view from the upper level

After that it was off to Forum, which still has a lot buildings pretty well preserved and some that are just some columns still standing. Cool place, although it definitely takes some imagination in parts.  But yeah, you do really get the feeling of impressive ancient Rome was at its zenith. After spending most of the afternoon in the sweltering heat it was time to take a shower, get some pizza, and find a sports bar to watch some Olympics. I will say eating dinner alone in Rome is kinda awkward. They don’t want to give you the outdoor tables which might be “reserved” because those are more in demand, and they don’t like one person taking up a two person table, so they throw you in the back of the restaurant, which I guess is the least desirable spot. Well whatever. I also decided I like the pasta better than the pizza in Italy.

The last day I did my usual early morning walk and then hopped on a bus to the far south part of town where I’d rent a bicycle to ride the Appian Way, which was one of the most important military roads into Rome, starting from 300 BC. On the route are some ruins, mausoleums, and churches with catacombs, as well as lots of pleasant rural scenery. I stopped in to do a catacomb tour, which was kinda neat, and also a good way to beat the heat, because the riding was hot as hell. In the afternoon it was off to the famous Borghese gallery, which hosts some of the most famous ancient sculptures in the world. It was pretty interesting, definitely a lot more intricate work going on in some of these big elaborate sculptures than the usual head and shoulders bust or the naked guy standing there sculpture. but I forgot about getting the audio guide, so I was flying blind for a lot of it. Anyway, I thought three full days in Rome was a good amount of time to see the main stuff without feeling too rushed. It really is a lovely city. I’m sure I would have enjoyed it more if I was more of a history buff!

But I will say, one of the things that impressed me the most about Rome was how it was much much more than just a historic downtown district. It’s not like so many cities that have their lovely little old town tourist area and the rest of the place is kinda drab. Literally everywhere you go is full of history and amazing churches and sculptures, gated walls, catacombs, aqueducts, and just nice looking architecture and old buildings. It’s the whole city, a living history.

The Appian Way. You do not want to bike on the cobblestones!

Prosephina being abducted by Pluto and taken into the underworld (Bernini)

David about to take down Goliath (Bernini)

Daphne the nymph escapes Apollo’s advances by turning into a tree (Bernini again)

And these were just the shots I took walking around town…

scooters whizzing everywhere in Rome

getting the morning paper

fish legs?

fountain in front of the Spanish Steps

Every other blocks is some amazing architecture

view from up on the hill around sunset (Pantheon)

A nice way to finish up Rome

The Vatican

Visiting the Vatican is an experience. A very annoying experience! I mean I knew it was going to be crowded as it’s peak summer season, but yeesh. So for starters the week before leaving I tried to buy normal tickets but those were all sold out so I had to shell out a bit more and pay for an audio guided tour, whatever that is. My slot was for 3:30pm and when I arrived the whole scene in front of the entrance was a complete zoo. There’s one line for people with guided tours like mine and then there’s a much longer line for people with regular tickets, so maybe it’s good I got the guided tour. Of course there’s no shade in the lines and everyone is just out there baking. I got there a bit early, so I still had 30 minutes to kill before check-in at 3:15, so I did what lots of other people were doing and having a sit on some stairs in between buildings in the little neighborhood across the street. Every 30 seconds some entrepreneurs would walk up and try to sell you water.

At 3:15 I get in line and fortunately ours is quick, just 10 minutes to get in. From there I make my way to the guided tour area where they tell you a number to go to, and from there you meet in your group and get your audio guide. It’s not like we are some exclusive group in the 3:30 time slot, there’s probably a dozen groups just like mine, all about 20 people deep. After some mild confusion our guide finally comes, and older, soft spoken Italian woman, which isn’t exactly ideal for an audio tour. How it works is she speaks into her  microphone and it gets transmitted to our earpiece thingy, because with so many people in the Vatican museum there’s no way you could hear your guide normally.

A bit after 3:30 our group heads out, but first we have to get in line to scan our tickets, and then rather than starting the tour we walk for 10 minutes to a big room which has some big screens on it and gather in front of one. Because there is no speaking in the Sistine Chapel, we are  going to get a lesson on the chapel on this screen. And oh man is this boring. This lady manages to make everything as absolutely bland as possible, like if I didn’t actively try and focus my attention my mind would just wander off because it sounded like Ferris Bueller’s Economics teacher. I felt bad for the family who brought their two young kids who had to sit through this. They just took off their earpieces and sat off to the side.  But seriously, bringing young kids to the Vatican, how miserable for everyone.

We finally set off, thank god, and work our way up a bunch of staircases, and it just super slow moving trying to keep everyone together. Unlike most museums where there is a bit of wide of open space, most of the Vatican museum is in hallways, of course they’re some of the most beautiful, ornate hallways you’ve ever seen, but logistically getting so many people through these pretty narrow spaces is not great.  You basically can’t stop anywhere, you have to keep the flow moving. And of course that doesn’t stop some people from stopping to take photos and jamming everywhere up. There’s even workers who sit there and their whole job is to yell at people for stopping! The whole thing is wild. And in the meantime our guide is pointing out stuff about various things along the way, but most of the time you don’t know exactly which thing she’s talking about because there’s stuff all over on both sides of the hallways, and you only have a few seconds anyway to look at before the tide of people sweeps you further out.

There has to be a better way to run this thing! The Vatican was probably my least favorite museum experience I’ve ever had. I felt like I learned almost nothing, while being actively annoyed the whole time being herded around like cattle. I hardly even took any photos. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a gorgeous place, covered head to toe in such intricate paintings and sculptures, but not for me. And I’m sure our guide is a sweet woman and knows a ton of history, but man talking the way she does is just not very conducive to being an audio tour guide. Anyway we finally get into the Sistine Chapel where it’s no photos and no talking, and I mean it’s pretty cool, but most of the stuff is on the roof and it’s far away and kinda dimly lit, and there is so so much going on it’s hard to keep track of. I kinda wish I watch some youtube videos to prime me a bit before coming. I stayed in there for maybe 15 minutes and then I was pretty happy to get outta of there. Really not my cup of tea. Cool staircase when you’re leaving though.

I was so worn out by the whole thing that I thought about just skipping St. Peter’s Basilica and going home, because I really was not in the mood to wait in a long line and it was already past 6:00, but When In Rome. I made the 10 minute walk over there. The lines were long, but only like 20-30 minutes long, which is nothing for St. Pete’s, very doable.

Wow. Definitely worth it. The place is just unbelievably massive. Photos don’t do it justice how much it just opens up when you step inside. And even though there were a lot of people inside it doesn’t feel all the crowded because you’re able to spread out, and everyone feels so small compared to the massive columns and incredibly high ceilings. It really makes you appreciate the talent and craftsmanship of these people from hundreds of years ago. So I ended the day on a high note. After figuring out a bus to get home it was shower and pasta time. I went for some carbonara, which is a type of pasta I rarely get in the US for some reason, but it was really good, very rich and filling, it basically put me to sleep after being up since 5am.  

When in Rome

After by far the worst poker year I’ve had in by 30’s it’s time to take a break. Obviously I’d prefer to travel after a nice little upswing, but that sort of thing doesn’t seem to happen this year, and I need to keep my sanity. For longer trips I still have a few entire regions that I’ve never set foot in, so it’s time to knock another one off the list, the Balkans.

I’ve heard lots of good things about the Balkans from other travelers, especially in recent years, which means it’s time to go now before it gets too popular. Or it’s probably too late. But either way it seems like Western Europe is getting expensive and crowded enough that more and more people will keep heading further east in the near future. I think Bulgaria and Romania are next up on the chopping block. So looking at flights to the region, there was one clear winner, a $300 flight from Chicago to Rome, bag check included, via TAP Portugal. Unfortunately it involved a 4.5 hour layover in Lisbon, but we can deal for that price. So the trip will start in Rome!

After about 20 hours from leaving the house in Naperville, I finally landed in the Eternal City. The airport isn’t really near the city center, but fortunately they have a train you can take for 15 Euros. Btw whenever I mention the Euro, you can tack on an extra 10% and that’s what it is in dollars. I figured I’d be hopping on the buses and metro a lot, so I decided to stay close to the central station, Termini. And of course it’s cheaper. Getting off the train, the station itself is very nice! Leaving the station its pretty apparent it’s a more run down part of town, the buildings are older and still charming, but lots of grit and graffiti. Some unsavory people hanging around the station. Pickpocketing happens quite a bit in Rome, but mostly to those who aren’t very aware of their surroundings.

Ground level is kind of a weird mix of classic Italian cafes with outdoor seating and immigrant run convenience stores and cheap merchandise shops. Anyway this is all fine with me, it’s not like I’m here on a romantic getaway. I find my building, get buzzed in, it opens up into a nice courtyard with a turtle pond and then you have to find your guesthouse (among several on the property). I guess they’re not big on signage here. The room is pretty simplebut has all the basics, the aircon works great (very important) and the big wooden shutters opens up into the courtyard. Everything looks nice, but outdated, feels like Rome.

All I want to do is sleep at this point, its 8pm already but I’ve got half an hour until sunset, so might as well and go for a little stroll my first night in Rome while the light is still nice. There’s a big beautiful church, although they’re restoring the part of it, and there’s some cute little restaurants around, but overall it seems like a pretty quiet part of town.  But as soon as it gets dark the restaurants turn on their lights for the outdoor seating and that’s when people start coming out, pretty pleasant. I wasn’t in the mood for a sitdown, so I grabbed a slice of pizza and went to bed. It should be noted that Roman style pizza is a thicker crispier crust (not the super thin crust like Napoli pizza) and it’s in rectangles (kinda like Detroit style Pizza) and you can pick the size you want and they weigh it. I think I like it better than the thin floppy crust. But anyway, it was bedtime for me, down by 9:00.

Eight hours later I’m awake, and I’m pretty sure I’m not falling back asleep. So what to do? I’ve heard the famous Trevi fountain is an absolute madhouse during the day, so why not walk over there for sunrise? (6am) One thing I noticed by looking on google maps is that everything is much close together than I had originally thought. I figured I’d for sure be taking the metro over there, but it’s only a 30 minute walk, and I’ve got time to kill, so walking it is.  There’s actually a decent amount of activity at 5am with the garbage trucks and produce delivery trucks going around. I get to the fountain at 5:30 and there’s a lot of people there! It’s still dark out for Christ sakes. It seems to be a mix of people who stayed up all night and people like me who got there super early. I must say it’s a very very nice fountain, but the amount of hub bub around it is pretty wild. I figure I’d keep on walking around a bit more until it got a bit brighter outside.

Walking around Rome in the early morning is pretty fantastic, the weather is perfect and there’s hardly anyone around. The architecture in the city is exquisite, and there’s some sort of massive old church, or monument, or statue on like every block. You really never know what you’re gonna get, but it’s gonna be old, white marble, and opulent. These are things that would be a big deal in any other city, In Rome they hardly even qualify as a tourist attraction, they’re just there, a normal part of the scenery.

I looped back to the Trevi fountain, its even more packed at  6am, the whole front row is basically girls in nice dresses getting they’re photos taken. Yeahhh, this place is not for me. Time to keep on moving, the Pantheon is calling my name. And of course the walk over there is just super pleasant, weaving through the cobblestone alleys that occasionally open up into little piazzas with cafes, none open though.  Italy is not a wake up early country, I certainly wouldn’t be finding any coffeeshops open at 6 like you would in the US.  Anyway I stumble into a big beefy structure with grand pillars out front, yep that’s it! Almost nobody there. If you arrive a few hours later there you’d never be able to take a clean photo with the throngs of people out front waiting to get in. And that would be me actually!

I won’t bore you with too many more details of how the walk went, but at one point I went through a neighborhood that had an arch, an aqueduct, and some huge pillars standing right there, a restaurant was almost under the arch and apartment building backed right up to the pillars. Just super cool. I finished up with going inside the Pantheon which opened up a 9am with lines down the street. But they moved quick at least. So the first morning in Rome was a very enjoyable experience, very much unlike the afternoon experience, the Vatican museums and Sistine Chapel….

the dog park

Every random church is gorgeous

Capitoline Hill

Joining the fellow tourists at the Pantheon

the famous roof, it’s too big to a get much of a photograph!