My last destination in Eastern Europe! I’m here in Veliko Tarnovo, the old medieval capital of Bulgaria (before it moved to Sofia in the 19th Century). It’s in the green, forested mountains of the central north part of the country, and its setting is quite dramatic (and not dissimilar to Luxembourg City). The pretty, Read More
Crap name, cool city. Plovdiv is the city that Sofia isn’t – a manageable size, clean, green, and generally "nice". It’s a few hours east of the capital and I desperately needed to get out of Sofia so I made a beeline stright for it. I checked into a hostel and then went for, Read More
While Sofia can definitely be missed, Rila Monastery should not be! It would have to be one of my highlights of the trip thus far. Rila Monastery is a functioning Orthodox monastery tucked deep in the lush, green mountains a few hours south of Sofia (built there so that the Ottomans wouldn’t find it, Read More
I finally made it to Sofia after a fairly horrendous journey from Sarajevo. After a full day of bus travel through the mountains of Bosnia and Serbia I made it to the town of Nis (pron. “Nish”) in south-east Serbia by 6pm. I was hoping for a quick connection to Sofia (which I thought, Read More
Sarajevo was yet another must-see on my Balkans tour. I wanted to learn more about the four-year siege that the city withstood from 1992-1995, and I also wanted to see how the situation was today. The bus ride from Mostar to Sarajevo was a good one along turquoise rivers and lakes, through narrow valleys, Read More
If you think back to the Balkans Wars of the 1990’s, you’ll probably recall the story of Mostar as a shining example of its futility… The town is to this day split down the middle into Croatian (Catholic) and Bosnian (Muslim) halves, which fought each other during the war – real neighbour vs. neighbour, Read More
Any place given that title by none other than Lord Byron himself has to be worth a visit! I’d heard mixed reviews about Dubrovnik – beautiful, incredibly touristy, overrated – but I just had to see for myself. And anyway, it’s yet another World Heritage Site to tick off my list! 🙂 I teamed, Read More
Instead of heading straight from Hvar to Dubrovnik, I caught another ferry to the island of Korcula, halfway between the two. It had been recommended by a few different people I’d met and I wasn’t yet ready to leave the coast, sun and sea behind just yet. I was greeted at the boat by, Read More
With the northern part of my Eastern Europe trip behind me, it was time to hit the Balkans. After so many stinking hot days in all the cities I was desperate to find a beach to lie on and a sea to swim in and so I made a bee-line straight for the island, Read More
From one of my fave places in Europe to another… I spent a long 12-hour travel day on a EuroCity train from Ceske Budejovice in the Czech Republic to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. The train took me through the beautiful Central Alps of Austria and then into the Alps of eastern Slovenia. I'd, Read More