I’d read great things about Lake Ohrid on the blogs of other full-time travelers, so it was a no-brainer for us to stop and spend a few days there as we made our way to Albania from Bulgaria. It definitely lived up to my high expectations. The lake itself is huge and beautiful and the…
Category: Europe
Tirana: We’re Home?
We’re halfway through our stay in Tirana, so it is time for my customary “We’re Home” post. Unfortunately, we don’t love Tirana, so it doesn’t feel much like home, other than our wonderful Airbnb. Chad asked on our walk the other day if it was really worth it to do this post or do just…
Scoping out Skopje
One of our goals with this leg was to not do any flights other than our flight to Europe and our flight home. We knew we’d start in Sofia and end up in Rome, slowly making our way via buses, trains, and ferries. Our other constraint was a desire to be in Europe for about…
Bansko ✓
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…
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…