Welcome to hell my dear, watch your step

Sihanoukville, Post Apocalyptic Hellhole

April 20, 2025

So as I’ve written before, Sihanoukville has lots, LOTS of unfinished and abandoned buildings that blight the place, giving it a rather creepy feel. It’s also still a poor, developing country, with many people struggling to get by. And while wages and the standard of living has gone up with all the development in Sihanoukville, it has been quite messy process. These photos are attempting to capture some of the harsher realities of that “progress” and how residents continue live in their ever changing environment.

The real Sihanoukville doesn’t shine until after the sun sets

Life in Sihanoukville

April 18, 2025

I wrote this up last year and it was sitting on my computer so I figured I’d post it now. A year later it still sums up the place pretty well, a lot of development, but also a lot of unfinished buildings. A lot of casinos doing well in the prime locations, but also a lot of casinos that hardly anyone seems to go to. Poker continues to get slightly worse. All the pictures are from this year.

The not-so-nice part of town. Interesting skyline though

It’s certainly changed A LOT since before Covid hit. The city itself is much more complete. Most of the big projects that managed to get funded through the pandemic, like the high rise condos, have finished. At the same time there are many many that got scrapped, leaving huge concrete skeletons dotted around the city, giving it a kind of creepy vibe. So much money wasted on starting some of these building projects! That’s Chinese development for ya. But really it’s hard to grasp how quickly things change here being from the US or western countries. The photo below would have been mostly red dirt and scrubland and maybe some shacks not long ago.

So yeah, you’ve got your very new and very nice casinos and high rise apartments, and plenty of nice modern, indoor shops. And despite all the unfinished buildings just sitting there, there’s also a bunch of completely new projects going on. The city is always building something. Driving along the major arteries, most of the shops on those roads are now behind glass doors with air conditioning. It used to be that almost all the restaurants and shops were open air set ups with fans blowing everywhere. Not anymore! Nowadays there are also familiar chains like Starbucks, KFC, and Dairy Queen, among other Chinese chains. There’s even two indoor shopping malls now. So this is development! Although many of these places are not particularly busy, they’re designed for the Chinese, not so much the Cambodians. The philosophy seems to be, Build it and they will come!

The new U Mall. The apartment complex I stayed in is on the right.

All of the main roads are now nicely paved with sidewalks, which is definitely a massive improvement from a few years ago. One of the big things they did was carving out a new road to connect all of the coastline. There used to be a wooded hilly section with a few western guesthouses, with only walking trails and a trail down to the waterfront. All of that got demolished to build a road with a large promenade, and the area behind the road will become a giant housing development.

Although the promenade area is just completely open with no trees, no shade, it’s hot as hell during the day, nothing to do or see, and nowhere to sit except for the sidewall. Like that’s the best you guys could come up with?? Add something to make it look nice! It doesn’t come alive until the sun sets, the food vendors set up shop, the tents gets set up for night market, and there’s a makeshift outdoor concert area as well. But it seems like an opportunity missed, because it’s just a really plain and kinda ugly space. Nice public spaces are just not Cambodia’s strong suit. All of the country is like this. In the parks department especially, it’s awful, beyond pathetic. In Sihanoukville there might be one tiny city park with grass in the entire town. The best public places to hang out are usually the pagodas and Sihanoukville has shockingly few of those.

None of this was here 5-6 years ago! The slightly cyberpunk lights are a nice touch

You’re not supposed to drive scooters on the promenade! :0

the massive development going on the background

Here’s what it looks like after the night market all weekend and the street cleaners apparently had the day off

They did a pretty nice job with it though, having grass and all

The road getting to the out of town beaches was also totally redone. It used to be that you had to go inland to get to the out of town beaches, on rough dirt roads with potholes everywhere. Now it’s just one nice big wide paved road running along the coast, plied by trucks and SUVs with lots places to park. The annoying thing is they knocked down all the little guesthouses and restaurants that used to be right on Otres beach. This was where lots of foreign tourists would hang out, and they had some pretty cool creative restaurants, cocktail bars, nice lounge chairs facing the ocean, occasional live music - It was a nice scene, but now all of that is completely gone.

This is what the coastline looks like for a few miles. The boardwalk is nice for a jog though!

If you want to be at the beach you have to bring all your own supplies, towels, blankets, food, drinks, umbrella etc. I suppose this is better for Cambodians, because that’s how they do the beach, family style with big groups and setting up camp basically. But currently I don’t have much reason to get out to the far beaches anymore. All the beaches are pretty same samey now.

Here’s getting wayyy out of town at Ream National Park

Also worth noting the scale of development, that way outside of town near the airport they’re just starting to build an entire lifestyle community (or whatever) for the rich people called Bay of Lights, and it’s going to have a Greg Norman golf course! Damn. And a lot of the coastal land really far outside of town inside Ream National Park is also all bought out by Chinese developers. Pretty sad. It’s a NATIONAL PARK. But I really don’t know where they’re gonna get all these rich people to move in from to buy this upscale community housing kinda in the middle of nowhere.

New building near Otres beach. No idea what it is. Feels like some giant corporate headquarters of a company owned by a supervillain. I don’t like it.

I’m currently staying in one of the high rise apartments. It’s one of three towers, all are 35 stories high, it’s got a gym but no pool, and the residents are 98% percent Chinese if I had to guess. Once again, the Chinese don’t care for pools and sunshine and swimming. It’s been a really wild transition in Sihanoukville from not having hardly any building over a few stories high to having tons of buildings 35-40 stories high! That’s how China rolls. So the housing situation has definitely eased up. For $25/night I’ve got a basic studio with a balcony, decent view, washing machine, small kitchen with a fridge, microwave, and two burners, blasting AC, and a tiny (but nice) bathroom. The thing that makes me laugh is the bathroom door opens into the bathroom, and doing so blocks off the counter with the sink, and there is so little room that the only way to close the door once you’re inside the bathroom is to step into the shower (or be seated on the toilet). If they just made it so the door opened outwards they wouldn’t have this problem!

Anyway, it’s in a nice busy location, two of the best casinos for poker are walking distance, the brand new mall is right across the street, street food carts are everywhere, as well as a few Chinese restaurants and Indonesian restaurants (apparently the Indonesians are the new players in the real time online gambling market), there’s massage places, there’s also a beach within walking distance, but it’s a private beach owned by a resort (it used to be public a few years ago, which is annoying). Of course being a white guy I can basically just walk right in, no questions asked, and go to the beach, and have it all to myself. Like I said before, the Chinese will not touch an unshaded beach during the day with a 50 foot pole.

Although I’d rather go a mile down the road to the Novotel beach club, which has beachfront but also a really nice big pool with lounge chairs and umbrellas. I get my $4 smoothie mango passion fruit smoothie and swim and read for a bit. There will sometimes be Russians here swimming and using the lounge chairs, that’s about it.

Reading my book at Amazon Coffee on the beach

So a normal (or more than normal) day looks something like: wake up, do some stretching, grab my laptop and either go to the beach or the pool club, read, swim, get a bit of sun, go to a coffeeshop to screw around on the laptop, do some photo editing, hit the gym, try and catch the sunset somewhere - either relaxing at the beach or driving around on the scooter looking for interesting photos. Come back to the apartment, shower, get something to eat - usually casual Chinese or Indonesian food (I love the Indonesian buffets) and then hit the poker tables from 8pm onwards. If the games are good I’ll play until 3-4am, if not I’ll leave early. I leave early quite a bit these days. Here’s some of my usual sunset spots:

View from the bridge you could see in the above photos

Looks like a pretty good view, just don’t zoom in too much to see how many concrete shells there are!

Occheutal Beach, the main beach just outside of town

Every place is photogenic when you’ve got the sunset colors coming out

As for poker, unfortunately the mid-stakes games are nowhere near as good as they used to be, which seems to be the trend just about everywhere. The big $2/5 game I was playing in last year has been changed to 2/3, and plays nowhere near as crazy. The Chinese who run the games are also less willing to let foreigners sit in the good games as they used to be. A lot of times if there is a good game there’s no seats of course, and none will open up for hours until the fish gets busted. And there’s just way more pros around town, it used to be all the Asians were Chinese, but now you’ve got a bunch of Japanese and Korean pros in town too. Sihanoukville has been ‘discovered’ I guess you could say.

There was a famous French poker player Vlogger guy who recently did a bankroll challenge in Snooky where he supposedly ran up his $1,000 to $100,000 or something, it most likely didn’t happen like that and was just made for clicks, but now there’s these friggen groups of young French guys flocking here to run it up, all inspired by that damn vlogger guy.

The game most barangs (white people) play, is a $1/1 game with a max buy in of a lowly $300, is run by a French and English guy. I know a few players who I used to play with in bigger games from a few years ago and now they’re grinding out this game. Ugh. There are still some juicy high stakes games, but they’re very swingy, and the rake here is just crazy high.

DV Casino, which has most of the poker action

It’s so incredibly common to walk around and see players holding 10k brick of cash at the baccarat tables

So anyway, the poker is very mediocre now, still beatable of course, but nothing like the before-times. Anyway, I guess if poker isn’t going all that great, I’d much rather be in Cambodia where my standard of living is can still be really high for making a very mediocre amount of money. I can drown my tears at the Novotel beach club, full body massages, and tropical sunsets.

Now the photos that I put in this post are mostly to show some of the positive developments in Sihanoukville. And the nicer parts also happen to be places that I personally spend most of my time at, so it’s a bit biased naturally. My next post is going to be doing the exact opposite, going specifically for shots that make Sihanoukville look like some sort of dystopian hell hole. And boy oh boy does it have a lot spots that really fit that vibe!

New Hampshire

February 16, 2025

Like many things in the region, New Hampshire was named after a place in England, the county of Hampshire. The first European settlement was a group of English fishermen near Portsmouth, three years after the pilgrims landed at Plymouth. It was kind of a tricky place to live as the frontier between the British and French colonies, plus Algonquin Indian claims in the central and north, and then throw in a bunch of border disputes with Massachusetts in the south. It also had a thriving slave trade, as it did not impose a tariff on slaves, just as nowadays it does not impose a sales tax. Or a capital gains tax!

New Hampshire isn’t the most interesting state, but it does have the White Mountain National Forest, as well as the tallest mountain in New England, Mount Washington. And while it’s not the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi, it’s the most geographically prominent. It would be too late in the season for me to hike it, it’s not supposed to be overly difficult, but it has the most deaths out of any mountain in the US! Which is pretty crazy, part of it is the sheer number of people that do it, and I guess it can get quite dangerous if the weather turns, and most people come pretty unprepared, thinking it’s just an easy walk up. So anyway, the White Mountains was on my to-do list.

I stayed in the largest city in New Hampshire, Manchester, which has a population a bit over 100,000 people. It’s got a small casino and card room there, as well as a bigger room 20 miles down the highway. The reason the other room is bigger is because it’s closer to the greater Boston area. Manchester also gets a lot of presidential candidates, as New Hampshire is the first in a series of presidential primaries. It’s more important for the amount of media it receives, not the actual primary itself. A few towns, like Dixville Notch open voting up at midnight, which is always covered by news crews and reporters.

The morning I would wake up early and drive to the White Mountains I stopped at the Red Arrow diner, which is a famous spot for candidates to stop in for a photo shoot. Every single seat has a little placard with famous politicians that sat there. Considering I was up at 6am and nobody else was there, I took Joe Biden’s spot, which was also Vivek Ramaswamy’s haha. Nothing like some eggs and hashbrowns smothered in cheese and chili with a cuppa Jo to start a long day.

So before this trip started I was thinking the White Mountains would be some of the best fall foliage on the trip, as it’s the most famous for leaf peeping. But I did not realize that this far north, and at higher elevations, I was wayyyy past peak. Oops. So I’d have to temper my expectations for getting any nice photos. But still it’d be a nice day of hiking and waterfalls. As I got further into the mountains it was apparent there was a good bit of snowfall last night, the first one of the season. Excellent! Instead of oranges and reds, I’d get white in the white mountains.

First stop was the Flume River Gorge, a hugely popular spot during peak foliage, with tickets and a time slotted reservation system at all. But I wouldn’t need a ticket this late in the season. I got there right around 9am when it opened, and much to my chagrin, a big sign saying closed for the season! Weak! Literally one day too late, aghh. But there would be lots more places on the list to stop by with only one full day in the park. I drove like ten more minutes and found some different trails to hike. Everything was looking very peaceful and hardly any other people around. A very nice morning to be doing some of the short waterfall hikes, albeit a bit slippery.

Kind of nice having these places all to myself

The smaller waterfalls were actually nicer to photograph

Once I got over to the eastern side of the park in the afternoon, it was like teleporting from winter back to autumn. All the traces of snow were gone, the trees still had leaves, there was still a bit of fall color around, so basically back to what it was like for the 98% of this trip. In this part of the park there’s more towns nearby and there’s a few covered bridges around, which are always a crowd pleaser. Actually my first covered bridges of the trip! Woo hoo. I get why people like them, they’re old, usually historically significant, kind of romantic, brings you back to a more quaint, simple time, etc. Personally I’m not going to go out of my way to see them, but if they’re right off the highway, sure!

Covered Bridge! I wish it was covered in snow though

The old railway line. Some guy’s unleashed St. Bernard came charging out of the grass, barking it’s head off, I honestly thought it was going to attack. Scary as hell. Leash your friggen dog if it’s gonna act like that to people walking by. And then of course he does the whole, ohh he’s so friendly, wouldn’t hurt a fly bit. GTFO.

This one is a functional, in-use, covered bridge, even more exciting!

One of the better waterfalls stops along the popular Kancamagus Highway.

The mountains don’t look especially pretty when the trees are all dead and there’s no snow on them, heh

So that was one big loop driving around the White Mountain Nat’l Forest. After that I headed over closer to the coast in Newburyport MA, which is right on the border of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, at the entrance of the Merrimac river. I also spent a few hours in Portsmouth NH, pictured here…

Bridge into Maine. I’m kind of annoyed I didn’t make enough time to get up to Portland, ME. Oh well, next time.

And that was about all for the sightseeing on this trip. Poker ended up being pretty meh. I played in two crazy games in Manchester, where people were drinking and splashing money around, lots of all-in’s, people running up big stacks, and wouldn’t you know who ended up losing in those games? This guy. There goes all the profit for the trip. Extremely frustrating. Then the very last night I played a bigger 5/10 game in Springfield MA and lost $2,000, including the biggest pot of the trip, maybe $3,500 where I flopped a straight, and the guy goes all in with just a naked flush draw, gets there on the river, of course. Fun way to end the trip.

So in three weeks I lost $2,000 plus the maybe $4,000+ of expenses. So yeah, pretty massive failure of a poker road trip. I came back to Illinois the day of the election to cast my vote, I shoulda just stayed in Springfield. Of course just to add insult to injury I cashed out some BTC to bet on Kamala, because I really did not want to believe that this country could really elect this guy twice, but obviously banking on Americans to do the right thing is a complete suckers bet. Lol me.

Finishing with some Halloween photos from Salem.

I can’t wait for 2025.

Massachusetts

February 11, 2025

I really didn’t spend many nights in Massachusetts, as I was skipping Boston this time around, those hotel prices are steep! It’s a pretty expensive state in general, which makes sense as it has the highest income per capita of any state (although quite a bit behind Washington DC). I wouldn’t have guessed New Jersey was #2 though! Driving along the coasts where all the rich people have their houses, you can definitely feel the old money. Although more like ‘normal’ 1% wealthy, not oil baron wealthy like Newport!

I managed to pull myself out of bed early and start driving from Providence over to the southern part of the Cape. I didn’t have much of a plan, I figured I’d stop at the usual NE stuff, lighthouses, beaches, windmills. The first windmill I stopped at you had to drive a bit through a neighborhood to get there, and man these small coastal towns are just very idyllic, large all-white houses, perfectly manicured yards, lovely old trees overhanging the newly paved road, the sun poking its way through the branches, the smell of freshly fallen leaves. Like out of a movie. Very nice, I tell myself the people are probably massholes though. I mean it’s not fair to live in a place like this and not have some irredeeming qualities to balance it out. Spellcheck is telling me irredeeming is not a word, which I’m just going to ignore.

So anyway, I pulled in the tiny parking lot for the windmill, which is also has its own tiny sliver of beach. On both sides of that beach are “Private Beach” “No Trespassing” signs, which are a pretty common sight around these parts. Not much to see here, I took a photo and was on my way to the far southeast part of the cape, Chatham and the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge.

It’s a weird spot. I guess the the beach trail got swept away by erosion and now you’ve got to go through private property to get to the part with the trails. There is a road that goes through, but you can’t take it because rich people say no, so you’ve got to walk, and they’re very adamant about not going off the pathway. And there’s a ‘visitors center’ tent called Friends of Monomoy, which I’m not sure if it’s primary purpose is to give information or for the old retired people with too time on their hands to keep watch on the tourist visitors. I didn’t spend much time here. I stopped for some chowda in the cute small town of Chatham.

The rest of the afternoon I’d be driving along the Cape Cod National Seashore, which stretches all along the eastern side of the Cape, although you can’t actually drive along it as most of it is dunes and marshes and grasslands, so you have to keep going inland to the main road and then back out to the coast again at various points. It’s very raw and pretty! And another perk of being in the off-season, non of these places charge entrance fees like they do in the summer, where a full day of beach hopping would get quite costly! During the drive the clouds moved in and the wind picked up giving it that moody type of vibe.

The whole far northeast part of the cape was very pleasant driving, as it seems to be mostly public land, not many houses and subdivisions around. Lots of different beaches, although they all start to look pretty similar at this point. The road through the Cape finally finishes at Provincetown, pop 3,709. That’s the year round population, the summer population swells to 60,000 according to wikipedia. It’s kind of an interesting town, it was known as an artists colony in the early 1900’s, and now has a reputation for being a very pro LGBTQ type of place. It’s also expensive as hell, I looked at room rates, as it’s a good 2+ hours to get back to Providence, but the hotel prices are crazy. I didn’t really have any time to do anything in Providencetown besides catch the sunset and eat some fish and chips, but it looked like a nice spot!

So that was a very jam packed day! Cape Cod is a pretty big place! Later on in the trip I stayed up north in a town called Newburyport, which has a nice downtown and is conveniently located a few train stops away from Salem, which is jammed basically all of October, but especially a madhouse on Halloween of course, when I’d be going. Here’s some photos from the northern part of the state…

Rhode Island

February 10, 2025

Time to get in a full day of driving. Rhode Island is tiny, but it packs a punch! First stop was a very New England thing, visiting a lighthouse, the Point Judith Lighthouse specifically, built in 1816. Big changes happened in the mid 1800’s when the horn was switched to a whistle. Driving north from here you get to Narragansett, founded in the mid 1600’s and named for the tribe that eventually displaced by the colonists. It gained popularity as a beach resort in the 1800’s, which has remained until today. Although it wasn’t exactly beach weather in October, but there were still a few intrepid surfers out there in wetsuits.

looks like a better spot to read than to surf

Next up, Jamestown, which is on an island (Conanicut), not to be confused with the Jamestown VA. This one isn’t all that exciting, it seems to have a lot of grazing land for cows, but also the killer 1-2 punch of a lighthouse AND a windmill. AND a cute old-timey looking fire station. Not a bad place to drive through.

Seriously, everywhere you stop in the fall is just kind of low key gorgeous

First windmill of the trip, very exciting!

Probably like $500/night to stay in that hotel, prices around here are whack.

Awww just look at those old timey fire trucks

From there you cross the bridge into the main tourist attraction of Rhode Island, Newport. Now we’re talking classic New England old money! This place has it in droves. In the 1700’s Newport was known as a place with freedom of worship, which drew in a more international, enterprising type crowd, including a large population of Portuguese Jews. Shipping and trade flourished. One of the Portuguese Jews, Jacob Rodrigues Rivera developed the manufacture of sperm oil, which kept the young men in town very busy, out in the ocean hunting sperm whales. Newport basically had a monopoly on candles and oil in the colonies. And because there wasn’t enough money to go around, Newport was also a major port in the slave trade!

You know you’re getting into Newport when…

The Revolutionary War sucked for Newport, but in the 1800’s the Old China Trade with the Qing dynasty was going well, and lots of wealthy families decided Newport would be their summer residence. By the turn of the century it was the place to be for the rich, with many of the wealthiest families like the Vanderbilts, Astors, Wideners building huge ass mansions and spending their summers there. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy had their summer residences in Newport as well. So it’s a hoighty toighty type of place, full of rich people stuff like country club golf and tennis and it’s called the sailing capital of the world.

I just had enough time time to catch the sunset downtown, where there’s a bunch of big piers with shops and restaurants and stuff. I decided the splurge a little bit and went to the most popular lobster roll place, $30 for a little lobster roll, ha! And that’s from a casual, counter service place. It was damn good though. But still, friggen Newport.

Apparently this place is a zoo in the summer. Not so much on a weekday in Oct, fortunately

After that I made the hour drive up to Providence, dumped my stuff at the hotel and hit the casino. It’s a bit smaller in scale than than the Indian casinos in Connecticut, not much to look at. It also has that dimly lit backroom gambling hall vibe that I don’t really like. The poker room is tucked away upstairs, and honestly not all that much action, being midweek and all, not surprising. I’d have 3 nights here. Which would leave me one day to take a trip out to Cape Cod and one more day to see a bit more of Rhode Island. The overwhelming feeling from those road trips, it’s nice to be rich!

Just some random old cabin I saw driving around

Connecticut

February 7, 2025

I’ll start this part of the trip with some poor decision making. At first I thought I’d cross through Manhattan and stop somewhere downtown on the way up to Connecticut, but it seemed like too much of a PITA, so instead I thought I’d bypass almost all of Manhattan, and then cross over through the Bronx via the George Washington Bridge. Terrible choice! Traffic looked okay when I checked out at 11am, but by the time I got there it was basically gridlock on all roads leading to the bridge. It did feel very New York though, shit traffic, people cutting each other off, laying on the horns etc. Fun.

I wanted to stop on Arthur Ave, in the Bronx, which is a street full of old school Italian places. It took a few laps of driving around to find a parking spot, and then I popped in a more casual pizza place for that Classic New York Slice and some garlic bread knuckles. Pretty tasty! Worth the effort? Probably not. I also thought about stopping at the botanical garden, but $36? Come on. I ended up walking around the massive Pelham Bay park in the late afternoon and then continued on after sunset. I was kinda kicking myself for not ending up somewhere with a city view at sunset though. Alas.

So Connecticut has two large Indian casinos, both with poker rooms, the Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, and they’re 15 minutes apart. I picked a hotel down the road from the Mohegan Sun, as I’d read Foxwoods has been more dead as of late. I don’t have a lot to report, as this part of Connecticut isn’t overly interesting, lots private property, big houses on the coasts etc. I did go to the beach, as the weather was great, 70’s, but still too cold for swimming.

Just stopping at whatever places that catch my eye from the road

I thought this thing was abandoned, nope!

I also did some poking around on google maps and there was a place on the coast not far away called the Seaside Sanatarium, which is just one of things that catches your attention. Upon some googling it was built as a center for heliotropic (light therapy) treatment for children with tuberculosis in the 30’s, when they thought a lot of fresh and sunshine could actually cure tuberculosis. Eventually that therapy technique became obsolete as drugs were developed and eventually the building was acquired by the state’s Dept of Mental Retardation in 1961. It didn’t have stellar track record, with lots of reports of mistreatment and abuse. It was eventually abandoned in the 80’s. Pretty creepy!

It’s kind of a weird spot, a nice waterfront where people go to walk their dogs, and sitting right there are two big abandoned building that are all fenced off. As I was milling around taking some photos I noticed some teenagers approach it, duck down near a big bush outside of the chainlink fence and re-appear on the other side and walk into the building. Well, if they can do it, so can I! So I squatted down by the bush and there was a nice triangle section of cut fence, and in I went.

Nothing like exploring an abandoned sanatarium in late October for some extra spooky Halloween vibes. The upper floors weren’t too scary, because there was a lot of natural light that came in from the cracks and holes in the boarded up windows. But the basement, now that was extra creepy, and I didn’t have proper light with just my cell phone. I didn’t linger there too long.

not overly creepy with some natural light

Once I got out, I was sitting on one of the benches, and the two teens came over to say Hi. I guess there were the local urban explorers and they come here all the time. I guess every once in a while the cops stop by when there’s a complaint and they have to make a swift exit. Fortunately that was not this evening. Apparently there are loads of places like this in New England, and an abandoned mental hospital 20 minutes away that they suggested I check out. They were interested to see if I’ve ever done any urban exploring in Gary Indiana, as I guess there are lots of abandoned buildings there to investigate. I’ll look into it haha. All in all, a pretty interesting evening!

Another nice spot in the area is the coastal town of Mystic Connecticut, home of the 1988 Julia Roberts RomCom, Mystic Pizza, and that pizza place does still exist! The town is pretty tiny, but it’s got a nice museum, some art galleries, and nice bougie restaurants. I found an oyster bar with $1.50 oysters and half off chowder for happy hour, excellent. If you sit at the bar, they shuck the oysters right in front of you. I’m not a huge oyster fan, but when you’re in New England and they’re being shucked in front of you, and the guy is talking about how they’re harvested and the subtle taste differences between the varieties, it’s definitely gets you in the oyster type of mood. The chowder was delicious too, not the usual thick white chowder, but a thin clear broth, where there is extra importance placed on the quality of the seafood. Mmm.

Another good stop is the submarine museum, that features one of the first American submarines, Bushnell’s Turtle, used to attack a British warship in the Revolutionary War. It wasn’t very effective, it was used go up to the warship at night, manually attach an explosive to it, and float away without being detected. It was a bold idea, but never actually worked as planned unfortunately. Fun story though. The main attraction is a walkthrough of the USS Nautilus, the US’s first nuclear powered submarine, it made the first submerged trip across the north pole, decommissioned in 1980 and made into part of the museum. And the whole museum is free!

As for the poker, it was okay, the games weren’t particularly exciting, I probably finished up $500 or 600 for the 3 nights I was there, so basically just paying the bills. But no complaints. A new state checked off the list. Well, one complaint, I really don’t like places that have lighting that feels like you’re down in a dungeon, which is what the Mohegan SUN ironically felt like. Fortunately there was plenty of sun outside the casino for late October in New England. It would be onto the next state, Rhode Island, and the Bally’s Twin River casino, somewhere outside of Providence.

East Coast Poker Road Trip

February 5, 2025

I haven’t played much poker out on the east coast with the exception of a few days in Philadelphia and a week in Boston, but there’s a whole bunch of smaller rooms in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire that I thought would be interesting to check out. In fact I’ve never stepped foot outside of a big city (Philly, NYC, Boston) in that whole upper east coast region, so it was a bit exciting to me to still have essentially an entire region of the US that I’ve never really seen or explored. Well that’s not totally true, we went up to Maine on a family trip 25+ years ago, but the memory is a bit hazy.

As someone who is not a planner, I made almost zero plans for this trip. I booked my first two nights in Pittsburgh and started driving. I-80 from Chicago to Pittsburgh is not the most exciting stretch of highway, so I made no stops until late afternoon once I crossed the border from Ohio into Pennsylvania. Although I do kind of regret not stopping in Cuyahoga Valley National Park outside of Cleveland (which I’d never even heard of) but all the colors of the trees looked great when driving past it, and the reviews I read after driving past it were very positive!

I stopped at some small state park maybe 15 minutes off the highway, northwest of Pittsburgh, to get in a quick hike and admire the fall colors. It wasn’t anything overly memorable, and my hike had no real views of anything, but you can’t ask for too much when you just start googling “State Parks Near Me” when you’re on the highway. It was fine though, always nice to get off the highway for a bit, and basically everywhere looks some degree of ‘nice’ when it’s mid October in Pennsylvania.

The room I booked was a bit odd, it was through a private host on Booking.com, it’s labeled as a hotel, but it’s actually a big old house where the owner rents out the rooms individually and the common room, kitchen, and bathroom are all shared. So basically the same as an Airbnb shared house. It was in a quiet neighborhood, big trees everywhere, plenty of room to park on the street, the house was definitely showing it’s age a bit, but with a certain about of rustic charm. And the best part was I was the only person there, so I had it all to myself for less than half of what a hotel would have cost. The owner let me in, showed me around, gave me some food recs, gave me the room key, and I was on my way to the casino. But first stop was the famous Primanti Bros for a sandwich. I got the capicola (aka the gabagool) with egg, which was a tasty, pretty unique sandwich with the french fries and coleslaw, BUT the meat to coleslaw ratio was just too slaw-y, so I can’t give 5 stars.

The poker action was at the Rivers Casino, same company that owns the one in Chicago and a few other places. It’s not nearly as crowded as Chicago (well almost nowhere is) and the highest stake game is $1/3 blinds with a $500 max buy in. Around midnight some guys who had been drinking sat down and the table got really good, people running up $2,000+ stacks, the type of game you can’t leave. And I didn’t. I played till 6am, finished down a few hundred dollars, couldn’t hit any hands in any big spots. Story of my year. Screwed up my daytime tourist plans to boot. Yay.

The next day I woke up for late lunch at a nearby neighborhood café, and then had to choose between the botanical gardens or the Warhol museum, the Warhol museum is more unique to Pittsburgh, so that was the winner. I liked the museum, there was definitely a lot more to Andy’s career than the soup cans, like decades more, haha. That closed at 5, which gave a me a bit of time to walk across the bridge, see the downtown, and get to The Point for sunset. A nice little afternoon. I certainly wouldn’t have minded a bit more time in Pittsburgh. As for the poker I got stuck a bunch of money and then grinded my way to get back even. So not the greatest start. Onto Philadelphia.

I figured I’d get off the highway for most of this one and see some of the central Pennsylvania hill country, less affectionately known to some as ‘Pennsyltucky.’ I picked a turnoff that would take me to a section of the Ghost Town Trail, which is called that because I guess there’s some abandoned mining towns along the trail, although whatever sectioned I picked didn’t seem to have any, hmm. I really should do a bit better research beforehand. The colors were nice of course.

I also drove around some of the small towns, and if you’re trying to get the vibe of small town America leading up to the election, jeeez-us, these places are insane. It’s like each house is trying to out-do each other with how big of a Trump sign they can put in their yard, or on the side of their house, garage, whatever. A giant cardboard effigy, sure, why not. It’s legitimately scary how much these people love Trump. The locals are friendly though, or chatty at least. I stopped in a sub shop and in the time it took to make a hot roast beef I learned all about the owner’s employee, who is fresh out of prison, for apparently killing a pedophile, and now he’s like 20 years behind on modern technology and hates texting. Alrighty then. Back on the road for most of the afternoon with a sunset stop in a state park somewhere a bit outside of Philadelphia. This was a worthwhile stop.

I booked some motel for two nights near the Parx casino, which is in Bethlehem PA, maybe 40 minutes east of downtown. Like most US casinos, its not located in the most exciting of places. But Parx is the largest poker room in the northeast, if you’re not counting DC, and a damn good place to play. I’d also have one afternoon to bum around Philly, which is pleasant enough. My museum of choice was called the Mütter Museum, which has a bunch old medical equipment, wax models, but the main thing is the well preserved anatomical specimens, skeletons and organs and stuff stored in liquid in jars, most of which were from rare conditions resulting in morbidity of the patient. Definitely a creepy place!

From there I mostly just wandered around the city, making sure to get to the old parts of town where there’s narrow cobblestone alleys and nicely restored buildings and homes that probably cost a gajillion dollars even though they’re really small. And a Philly cheesesteak for dinner of course. Although I didn’t make it down to south Philly, which I guess is where the old school, famous cheesecake places are at. Next time. Next state up: Connecticut.

A quick trip through Greece

December 13, 2024

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.

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.

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

December 12, 2024

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.

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.

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…

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

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

December 12, 2024

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.

Art installation from a Japanese dude called the Cloud

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

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

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

December 11, 2024

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.

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.

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 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.

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!

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.

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

Kosovo

October 20, 2024

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

October 18, 2024

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.

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

September 29, 2024

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.

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

September 20, 2024

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

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!

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.

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…

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.

Montenegro

September 16, 2024

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!

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!

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.

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.

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!

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

September 14, 2024

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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!

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

Sarajevo

September 10, 2024

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

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.

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!

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.

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

September 3, 2024

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.

If you zoom in, you won’t see any people

Split and the Islands

August 29, 2024

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.

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.

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.