Dueling Backpacks

Day 489 (October 30, 2019): M á laga, Spain Another day, another port stop. It took us a while to get up, eat some breakfast, and get properly slathered in sunscreen before hitting the streets of  M á laga  for the day. The pier for the cruise ships was far out into the water, so we had a long walk to get to shore.  M á laga  was a much larger city than Cartagena , and it seems to be a bit more tourist oriented. There was long stretch of sandy beach out to our right and an equally long row of beachfront high-rises. And despite how late in the season it was, people were still hanging out on the beach and a few of them were even swimming.

Day 488 (October 29, 2019): Cartagena, Spain It was a weird feeling to get on that cruise ship. On the one hand it was sad to think that this was the last leg of our trip, but on the other hand we were thrilled to get on board and have nothing to do for a couple weeks. The thought of slowly heading towards home was appealing. As strange as it seemed, we were excited to be stuck on a boat for 14 days. It would be the longest we had ever stayed in the same place during this entire trip. After unpacking our bags in our cabin, we would only have to pack them back up again one last time when we disembarked in Florida. We also had zero travel plans left to arrange for the first time since we left home. Everything was set and we were on our way home.

It’s difficult to distill our time in Europe down to a few comments, but we certainly saw our fair share of town squares and old churches and we sat outside at countless cafes. Most of our time in Europe was spent within the Schengen Area, where there are no passport checks between countries and the currency is most often the Euro, but not always. Overall, it was fairly easy traveling. Especially after having come from China not too long before, traveling through Europe was a breeze. There are always delays, complicated logistics, and moments of intense confusion to figure out, but in general we had fewer of those moments traveling through Europe than other places we had been to on this trip.

Day 485 (October 26, 2019) – Rome, Italy Our trip to Rome was just like the last time we were there seven years ago – a whirlwind. Rome was expensive for us, so we only booked two nights. It was just enough time to make sure we got there on time to catch our cruise home, allowing ourselves an extra day just in case anything went wrong along the way. Fortunately, we arrived from Trieste without delay, and that gave us a day and half to see as much as we could of the city.

Day 483 (October 24, 2019) – Trieste, Italy We arrived in Trieste by bus. There was a train from Ljubljana , but the bus was less expensive and faster. Shortly after crossing the border into Italy we could see the ocean again, way below us and off in the distance. The bus followed a winding highway down the steep mountain slopes all the way down to sea level. As soon as we got off the bus it felt like Italy. Narrow streets, even narrower sidewalks, lots of mopeds on the road, and cars parked askew half-way onto sidewalks. We arrived before we could check into the apartment, so we grabbed a seat at a café to pass the time. Trieste was a very impressive city from our café table in the center of town. A large canal ran right through the center of town and opened to the ocean a few blocks away. Sitting along this canal and surrounded by stately buildings, it was a very picturesque spot to be.

Day 480 (October 20, 2019) – Ljubljana, Slovenia We struggled pronouncing the name of this place for the longest time, but I think we figured it out while waiting for our train to depart Zagreb . If we pronounced the j’s like i’s it seemed to be close enough. When spelled like Liubliana, it did not look so intimidating of a name to approach. The train ride was relatively short, but beautiful. It passed lakes, mountains, and farmlands at a rapid clip the whole way. We stopped at the border between Croatia and Slovenia to get our documents checked. There was a small army of border agents who got on the train to manage the paperwork. We weren’t stopped for very long. The efficiency of it all seemed to be a reminder that we were leaving the Balkans and returning to the parts of Europe that felt more familiar to us. I still remember the woman who checked our passports. When she saw that we had previously spent time within Europe’s Schengen Area she informed us very politely that we...

We have continued keeping track of our expense, even though we have not shared them since Georgia , which was nearly three months prior. We decided that breaking down expenses by country did not make sense for our travels through Europe. Countries were too small, and we did not always spend a great deal of time in each of them. We found that our travel costs by country could be more influenced by our transportation expenses than anything else, especially for shorter stays. Instead, we broke our Europe travels into three segments: costs from travel within the Schengen Area, costs for travel outside of the Schengen Area, and expenses incurred from our cruise home. This entry is for our travels outside the Schengen Area, which included Serbia, Montenegro, and Croatia, which for simplicity we just call the Balkans.

Day 474 (October 15, 2020) – Zagreb, Croatia Agh, why did we leave the coast? was our first thought on arriving in Zagreb. We had taken the train from Split . It was a very modern train, only two carriages long, but it traveled at a decent clip to cover the 250-mile distance. This trip from Slit to Zagreb was the Croatian equivalent of going from sunny southern California to the gray and dreary Northeast. It was cold here. We had to dig out more layers from our bag to keep us warm on the walk from the train station to our Airbnb apartment. This was also the very first apartment of our entire trip that had heating and that we felt a need to use. This isn't, of course, considering all the times we didn't have heating and would have really appreciated  it. We had a good time in Zagreb, but I kept thinking while we were there, we could have been at the beach right now…

Day 470 (October 10, 2019) – Split, Croatia Off mainland Croatia are thousands of islands scattered in a broad arc across the Adriatic Sea. The thing to do in summertime is to hop from one island to the next, which is made very accessible by a huge network of inter-island ferries. We thought about doing this ourselves, but we were a little late in the season. In October, many of the ferry routes were running limited service, and by November many would cease entirely until the spring. We'd also already had our island hoping experience across Thailand’s Andaman Sea , so we felt like we weren’t missing out on too much.

Day 466 (October 6, 2019) – Dubrovnik, Croatia At some point on this trip we got tired of bus rides. When we were planning the last leg of our trip around the Balkans, we were really trying to use train lines to connect the dots on our travel map. We found train journeys more relaxing, entertaining, and convenient than sitting on a bus for hours. So rather than thinking of where we wanted to go, we were instead thinking, where can the train take us? Well, we soon realized that the trains around the Balkans were not like their central European counterparts. It was near impossible to plan an itinerary entirely by train. There are sections of track closed for construction in random places (like the short distance between Novi Sad and Belgrade ), and disputes between countries have effectively closed certain international routes (like the connection between Zagreb and Sarajevo). As a result, we ended up on a handful of buses.

Day 462 (October 3, 2019) – Kotor, Montenegro M ontenegro kept surprising us. Budva wa s beautiful, but Kotor might have been even more so. Kotor was only a short bus ride up the coast and while it didn’t have the beach appeal of Budva, it had some spectacular scenery and a really charming walled town. It was a nice place to spend some time.

Day 458 (September 29, 2019) - Budva, Montenegro It took us absolutely forever to get to Budva, but it was entirely worth the effort. The trip involved a 12-hour train ride, an overnight stop in the town of Bar, and us waiting at a bus station for two hours before finally catching the hour-long bus ride from Bar to Budva.

Day 454 (September 25, 2019) – Belgrade, Serbia In full disclosure, it is the beginning of May 2020 as I write this. Since being in Belgrade, our trip has come to its close, we spent four months at home, and I even started a new job. In some sense, Belgrade feels like a lifetime ago, but then I look back at the pictures and it feels as if it could have only been a few weeks ago. So before our memories of Belgrade and the entire rest of the trip fade too much, I wanted to finally finish up this blog. Now that I’m working, I expect that this is going to take a while, but better late than never.