As I said in my We’re Home post, we had high expectations for Bansko and they were exceeded. That remained true throughout the remainder of our one-month stay. In many ways, our last two weeks were a lot like our first two weeks, except for our two-night trip to Plovdiv, which I wrote about in…
Category: Europe
Pleased with Plovdiv
Our third Christmas gift of the year (following the sports/event badminton match in Vietnam and the science/attraction animal cafes in Japan) was a two-night trip to Plovdiv covering the categories of arts and overnight. Plovdiv was an obvious choice for this, having been selected by the EU as 2019’s European Capital of Culture. It has…
Sophisticated Sofia
When we decided years ago to do a long stay in the Bulgarian town of Bansko, visiting the capital city Sofia was an afterthought. We knew we’d need to enter Bulgaria through Sofia, so we might as well spend a few days checking it out. But having not loved the Romanian capital Bucharest when we…
Bansko: We’re Home At Last
Now that I’m caught up on posts from our Asia leg, I’m eager to share about where Chad and I are currently, Bansko, Bulgaria. We’ve been here for almost three weeks now, but I’m going to focus this post on our first two weeks and two days. This one-month stay was a long time coming….
FAQ – What Did We Learn on Leg 15?
Leg 15 was another short one (similar to Leg 13 in 2023), but we still managed to learn a few things during our eight weeks in Europe. Here are my top three lessons to share: It can pay off to fight the power The EU has relatively strict airline rules for delayed and cancelled flights…
FAQ – How Did Our Abbreviated Leg 15 Add Up?
Like Leg 13, we ended up having to adjust this leg to accommodate family health issues. With the added time in America (where we have free accommodation in a family home), I was able to give us a very generous budget for our eight weeks on the road for Leg 15. Here’s how the numbers…
Oui, Paris!
Chad and I ended Leg 15 with four nights in Paris, which were really a perfect cap to the trip. We fell in love with Paris all over again. Our prior Paris trips have all occurred in August when it is very hot but also quite magical. In mid-November, Paris was cold and rainy, but…
Marvelous Marseille
We’ve been home about six weeks now and I keep telling people that Marseille is a completely underrated city. The city is full of beauty, from its architecture to its charming street to its sweet parks (which it could use a few more of) to its many views of the Mediterranean Sea. We truly enjoyed…
Day Trip to Avignon
Our day trip to Avignon was even better than our trip to Aix and we really fell a little bit in love with Avignon. In fact, we plan to go back for an overnight or few day stay sometime in the future. The train ride to Avignon is about twice as long as Aix at…
Day Trip to Aix-en-Provence
A third of the way through our month in Marseille, we took our first day trip. We chose Aix-en-Provence because it shows up on most south-of-France day trip lists and because we had chosen a Thursday, which coincided with one of their market days (which are Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday according to what I read). …