Shiny happy Dubrovnik

Dubrovnik’s old city is one of the few places where we literally stopped and stared upon arrival, absolutely blown away by its incredible beauty. It is a vision in marble, pristine and shimmering in the light.

The only problem with it really is that you have to pay serious attention while walking or you smack into the back of somebody else that has stopped and is in mid-gawp.


Millions of people over hundreds of years have worn the marble to a very jandal-unfriendly surface

Even the ceiling of our hostel was epic. Once we had settled in, we joined the hordes of tourists for a wander around the battlements. Some of the biggest & best I've seen since Jodhpur.




Aside from walking there was plenty of coffee, massive slices of pizza and jazz bars. Everything you could want on your day out from the cruise ship...

So even though it was beautiful, it did leave us feeling like another cog in the tourist machine.

A Montenegroan

One day we travelled 144 kilometres from Tirana, Albania to Podgorica, Montenegro. Our journey took us seven hours and included furious arguments with two taxi drivers, walking in circles around icy Podgorica for half an hour with all of our baggage and an incident where an irately thrown water bottle hit a parked Mercedes (accidentally! there are so many Mercedes in Podgorica that it is practically impossible NOT to hit one!). Then, on our single non-transit day in Montenegro (which was a Sunday), everything was closed.

It was just not meant to be. But we have a few photographs that show what a lovely place the land of the black mountains is for people other than us. Word in the hostels is that tourism-wise Montenegro is the new Croatia. I would really like to spend some proper time there, despite the above.



The first of many, many millennium bridges in this part of the world

Despite the shops being closed, Soph still dreamed...

From the bus as we passed through a beautiful little town on the coast

We stopped off in this little town on our way to Croatia, don't ask me what the name is...

Moustache spotting in Tirana

We originally intended to spend one night in Albania en route to Croatia. However somebody left our Euro credit card in Meteora so we hung out in Tirana for a few days while we waited for it to catch up with us.

There weren’t any ‘you must see it before you die’ tourist attractions, or any tourist attractions at all really. So we walked the streets, drank lots of espresso, ate many foods with dipping sauces and people watched. It was nice feeling free of the responsibility to learn about things and appreciate them ‘properly’.

Here are the five things that I thought were most interesting: 

1. Albanians are super super super friendly and helpful. Speaking different languages does not prevent them from having a 20 minute conversation with you in the pouring rain. They are just so excited that someone has made the effort to visit their country. 
2. Many of the bleak communist apartment buildings are painted in bright colours and patterns due to a policy of former mayor Edi Rama who is also an artist. The buildings look really neat, and are definitely no longer bleak. 
3. The western clothes from the 1990s are now living in Albania. (The western clothes from the 1970s now live in India, so where are the clothes from the 1980s?). 
4. Despite every Albanian of historical importance having a moustache (except perhaps for Mother Theresa) mysteriously nowadays only about 5 people in the whole country have one. Their absence is curious... 
5. Albania is about to get its first multiplex cinema. This shows how far Albania is behind most developed nations, but I don’t think that it will be for long. It has enormous tourism potential and evidence of significant manufacturing abilities... watch out world!

Our taxi ride covering the length of Albania set us back about a tiny $25, in a Mercedes no less... entering Tirana we discovered colourful buildings, wild wires and fried chicken that almost reminded us of home.
The food was a shot in the dark mostly... sometimes it had teeth!

See the army guy? I didn't... he wasn't too happy about me taking pictures here. Don't even know what the complex was, I just wanted a picture of the clock tower.... honest


Crazy pyramid in the city, designed by the president's daughter or something. Not used for much any more but had heaps of cool graffiti all over.

And then our credit card arrived safely. So we once again flagged a Mercedes and hit the dusty, bumpy road to Montenegro.

Mighty monkly Meteora

We finished our time in Greece with a visit to Kastraki, a quaint little village surrounded by sheer sandstone cliffs. On top of the cliffs perch eastern orthodox monasteries which are known collectively as ‘the Meteora’. In the times before tourists the monasteries were accessible only by undertaking a slippery climb that was fraught with peril at every step. This made the monasteries easy to defend and tested the faith of those who wished to reside there.

The hermit monks who lived there were seriously cool and surprisingly communal. They led political resistance movements, fought in armies, were skilled craftsmen and were significant collectors and creators of literature. They also knew how to have an incredibly good time, judging by the wine cask the size of a living room. We have had to revise our impressions of hermits and monks significantly.


Getting to the monasteries was half the fun... especially scaring the tourists coming off the tour buses when you emerge from the bush covered in half a jungle and panting maniacally.

The views made all the walking totally worthwhile


The monasteries were pretty cool. Unfortunately no photography allowed inside, so you will just have to imagine the room of monks skulls, the floor to ceiling murals and cool monk weapons.

But eventually the monasteries closed and apart from the awesome food there's not much else to report from Meteora.