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I guess this is a brag thread, but I think people might enjoy the stories and perhaps get some ideas for their own adventures. Starting in 2015 my wife and I took several terrific trips. Being the computer geek that I am, I made maps of each showing our route, transportation method, and number of nights at each stop. I just gathered those maps together and was inspired to share them here.
In 2015 I took a month of vacation and we went to Europe. We flew to London and spent a couple days with nearby friends then took the Chunnel train to Paris. From there we rented a car and drove through France and Germany into Austria. Then we drove to Italy and reentered France, finally ending in the south of France. We turned in our car in Montpellier and flew back to London then home.
Highlights of this trip were awesome Airbnb locations in Paris and Florence, literally steps away from where we wanted to be. We liked Paris, but we absolutely fell in love with Florence. We would go back there in a heartbeat. The capstone of the trip was a week in Cap d'Adge, France at the largest nudist village in the world. That was quite the experience. Our apartment in London was in a wing of a Baptist Church just down the block and across the street from Abbey Road Studios. It was fun seeing the throngs of people who still make a pilgrimage to the crosswalk from the cover of the album and tie up traffic trying to get their own picture.
2015 Map (click to embiggen) The circled numbers are the number of nights at each stop.
Trip pics - European Vacation 2015
In 2017 I took another month and we went back to Europe. This time we flew to Venice. From there we took a van to a small town in Croatia called Rovinj. After that we rented a car and drove to the Plitvice Lakes National Park then drove on to Split. In Split we boarded a boat and spent 7 nights island hopping down to Dubrovnik. From there we flew to Rome for a few nights then hopped on a train and returned to Venice where we flew home.
Once again we used Airbnb for almost everything. The apartment in Venice was nothing short of spectacular with a beautiful view over the Grand Canal. While it wasn't the greatest apartment of the trip, the town of Rovinj was the surprise jewel of the trip. It is gorgeous. Loved it! The drive from Rovinj to Plitvice as awesome. I instructed the GPS to avoid highways and we drove 150 miles of back roads to get there. Plitvice Lakes NP is one of the most wondrous places I've ever seen. It is a series of lakes connected by hundreds of waterfalls, no exaggeration. The water is crystal clear and the 7-ish miles of boardwalks we took to view them were simply perfect. We did have one mishap here. We took a kayaking trip and my wife slipped in the water and injured her knee. It didn't stop the trip, but it hurt and was a worry.
The drive from there down to Split was sobering. Croatia was at war not that long ago and taking the back roads again we saw a lot of old stone buildings with much newer bullet holes. The island hopping cruise was perfect. It was small boat, about 30 passengers, and stopped at a different island every night where we could get off and wander. We made some good friends on that trip, including a pair of women from the island of Jersey who I'll mention again towards the end of this post. Dubrovnik was scenic and our apartment in Rome had a nice rooftop balcony with a view of the Vatican. Fun stuff all around.
In 2019 I took my last month off from work and we went to Southeast Asia. We flew to Hong Kong for a few nights then flew to Bangkok. From there we took a bus into Cambodia ending at Siem Reap where we got to tour the ruins of Angkor Wat. After that we got on a boat and spent a week going down the Mekong River, ending in Saigon, Vietnam. A flight to Da Nang then a taxi to a beach town called Hoi An for a few nights. Then back to Da Nang for a flight to Hanoi. We spent a couple nights there then took a bus for an over night cruise excursion in Ha Long Bay and back to Hanoi for a couple more nights then home.
Whew! Breaking from the past, there were no Airbnbs or rental cars this time. We stayed hotels and while Hong Kong was expensive, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam were dirt cheap and we got some really first-class accommodations for a very reasonable price. Hong Kong was fun for a while. The hike around the mountain and views of the city were freaking awesome. Bangkok was fun in a different way. We stayed right on Khao San Road which is party zone central. Angkor Wat is impressive is as impressive as giant 1000 year old piles of stone can be and quite huge. The river cruise was the highlight of the trip. I think there were 50 passengers and we were the only Americans. It was mostly Australians and Germans. This cruise could not have been more different than the Adriatic cruise. With the exception of our stop in Phnom Penh there wasn't any wandering around off-ship. We did have guided excursions each day, visited a lot of temples and schools and silk shops and fish farms. It was quite educational.
The award for best scenery of any of these trips goes to Ha Long Bay. There are dozens and hundreds of mountains sticking up out of the ocean and the overnight cruise winded around them, stopping a few times at points of interest. It looked something from another world.
I retired at the start of 2020, just in time for Covid. That didn't stop us for long, and at the end of May we hitched up the camper (I forgot to mention I bought a truck + camper before I retired?) and headed east. We didn't come home until the middle of October. There was a lot we couldn't do because Covid had everything closed, but we did get to spend a lot of time around the campfire. Among other things, we spent a month in the Rhode Island area with my wife's family, we got to see the American side of Niagara Falls, and we spent a month in the neighborhood of my family in Kansas before returning home.
In February 2021 we took off in the camper again. This time we went west and were gone 6 months. Everything was starting to open back up so we got to see a lot more this time. We did a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon, went to Las Vegas and had lunch at Hell's Kitchen, went to Yellowstone, saw Mt Rushmore, and a lot more. It was an awesome road trip.
And then there was 2022, aka the year we stayed home. In January of last year my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. She spent the entire year enduring chemotherapy followed by radiation. She did everything the docs told her and a couple months ago she got the all-clear on her mammogram. While we both understand nothing is guaranteed, we are hopeful that's behind us. A bright spot in 2022 was a visit in May from our friends from Jersey that we met in Croatia! Those girls never stop traveling and they were a spirit boost for my wife.
Which brings us to this year and the whole reason I got the software out to make maps again. Towards the end of May we are taking off for a few weeks in England with excursions to Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Jersey to visit our friends who came to see us last year!
2023 upcoming Map
When we get back from that, we're going to take the camper up into Tennessee/North Carolina/etc and look for a place to spend our summers from now on. Either buying a house or finding a place for the camper. Florida summers are getting worse every year (or maybe we're just getting older every year) and it's just to dang hot.
Anyway, that's my humblebrag travel thread. Hope someone enjoys.
Anyway, that's my humblebrag travel thread. Hope someone enjoys.
Good **** man, thanks for sharing! I love the maps.
Some questions =
1. If you could repeat any part of those trips again this summer, which would it be?
2. Any regrets or bad experiences on the road?
3. What one piece of advice would you give to other travelers?
Good **** man, thanks for sharing! I love the maps.
Some questions =
1. If you could repeat any part of those trips again this summer, which would it be?
The island-hopping cruise in Croatia was probably the best overall single week. Small boat, super friendly people, relatively inexpensive, awesome scenery, free beer, while slow-paced and relaxing.
Not so much for me, but my wife wasn't as thrilled with parts of the SE Asia trip as I was. I don't think I could talk her into that again. Even though it was Feb/Mar it was hot. Once off the boat or away from a city, it also was dusty and smelly and primitive with a good bit of poverty on display in some areas. I appreciated it as a horizon-widening experience, my wife not so much.
I think a bit of my fascination with that trip was that I spent much of my high school years worrying about being drafted to go to Vietnam. It really is a lovely country (as are Thailand and Cambodia) but it's definitely 3rd world once you get outside the big cities.
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3. What one piece of advice would you give to other travelers?
Go! The internet has made it so easy to research your dreams and then find methods to accomplish them that I weep for people who want it but don't try. You can find ways to do things on a shoe-string budget and you can find ways to spend big that aren't a waste of money and everything in between.
Also, don't forget the good old USA. Pretty much everyone lives within a couple days drive of somewhere pretty dang different from where they live. For us, variety really is the spice of life so my advice is just go.
I have made a number of slideshow music videos from some of our trips. They're strictly amateur-hour productions, but my wife and I like to sit down once or twice a year and watch them.
I guess this is a brag thread, but I think people might enjoy the stories and perhaps get some ideas for their own adventures.
Anyway, that's my humblebrag travel thread. Hope someone enjoys.
Well done. This someone enjoyed and is inspired. Thanks for sharing. You described it well, "awesome adventures".
One thing I do when we travel is write. I don't sleep that much which means I'm frequently up for a couple hours after my wife hits the hay. Sometimes when that happens I'll have a few beers and pull out the iPad and write about whatever I'm feeling. I like it because the recollections and feelings are fresh. I'd like to post a few, if that's okay.
I wrote this on our last night in Venice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by A slightly intoxicated Skippy
Today was our last day in Venice, and we're ready to move on.
Here's the thing. Dianne and I are tasters. We'll do almost anything once, and many things twice, but we're always ready for our next new "taste" of the world. Thus we've been here three full days, we've had our taste, it's time to move on.
That's not to say we haven't enjoyed Venice. It's a lovely place full of beautiful sights and friendly people. The city is, as far as I can determine, absolutely unique. There are no cars, none, (not counting, of course, the winged Chrysler), and we love that. We wandered about and got lost 10 times a day, and for the most part, we loved that as well. We had delicious meals and delectable snacks. We waved at strangers and made new friends and all along the way reaffirmed our commitment to each other.
Venice is as beautiful as it is dilapidated. It is at once both astounding and ridiculous. It's a city built in what would seem to be an impossible place, and yet here it is. Not just that, it has been here for centuries and it persists. Massive stone buildings are built on wood piles sunk into a salt water lagoon. After a millennia, the very bricks of the buildings flake away at the slightest touch. And yet it stands. In the winter tides sometimes flood the alleys and squares, and the people who live here don't flee, but instead memorialize the event by marking the heights of the waters on the sides of their buildings. To put it shortly, Venice abides.
If there's a downside, it's that Venice is a victim of its own uniqueness. Crowds flock here from all over the world and choke the alleys and squares, sometimes to the point of distraction. This isn't DisneyWorld, it can't expand to adapt to its own popularity. It's a group of connected islands a scant few miles square and that's all it's got. I don't know what it was like 20, 30, 40 years ago, but if the number of visitors is growing every year I don't know how it's sustainable.
Regardless, we leave Venice in the morning. Next up for us is 18 nights in various locations in Croatia. I am especially looking forward to this because Croatia, formerly known as Yugoslavia, was a "forbidden fruit" area in my youth. When I lived in Germany in the mid 70s as a soldier in the US Army, it was a communist country and strictly off-limits. By all accounts it is now a lovely and welcoming place and I am anxious to see it!
I've written these "Dateline" posts on our last night of several stays. London, Paris, the Austrian Alps, Florence, the French Riviera, and most recently, Venice, and this is the first time we've wanted to stay instead of moving on. That's not to say we didn't like those other places, but my goodness, we really, really like it here.
Rovinj is a jewelry box of a town. Many of the gems may be mere glass baubles, costume jewelry but pretty nonetheless, while a few others are genuine treasures, but I can honestly say the difference was lost on us as we loved it all. The atmosphere, the variety of shops, the rocky beaches with crystal clear water, the stunningly beautiful cobblestone streets, the unending selection of eateries, the comparatively low prices, and the wonderful people who seem to genuinely appreciate our being here. All of it added up to a delightful stay.
I can't say that Rovinj is "undiscovered" because it's not. It is a tourist town, through and through. That said, it is vastly different from Venice. It's not choked with trinket shops, each selling the same crap on every corner. It's not infested with brand stores such as Guess, H&M, Abercrombie & Fitch, and so on. There isn't even a McDonalds and that's big! In their place is a terrific variety of tiny local businesses shoehorned into impossible spaces selling stuff that's actually interesting to browse, and they are everywhere. We have an apartment in the middle of this tiny town and within steps of our front door are a dozen plus businesses ranging from restaurants to local artisans to markets and spirits shops. The variety seems to be unending.
I find myself wondering how long this can last. Success breeds ... what? As more people spill out of Venice, driven by the crowds and noise, will Rovinj suffer the same fate? How long before Venchi buys a local gelato shop and rebrands it as their own? How long before the waterfront restaurants institute cover charges, demanding a premium for the privilege of sitting under their umbrella?
How long before the alley corners of Rovinj feature beggars with their cups, offering nothing but guilt as their product?
I hope that never comes to Rovinj, but I fear it's inevitable. Perhaps I'm wrong, though. The local ethos does seem to be somehow different, so perhaps there's hope. This was our first stop in Croatia and we've got another couple weeks in this young, but old, country. I'll be paying close attention as we travel to our next few stops. For now, I feel safe saying we are impressed.
One more, a quickie, then I'm walking away from my computer for a while. First, the picture. This is in Hoi An, Vietnam.
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March 10 • I was out wandering the street by myself this evening and came across this girl with her sign. I asked if I could take a picture and after I did I started to walk away.
It took about 3 steps before I realized I was being a genuine ******* so I wheeled around and went back and gave her a big hug. I told her I loved her and she told me she loved me and we parted with me feeling much better. I hope she did, too.
I have to admit, I did check to make sure I still had my wallet after. The world sucks that way.
Hey Skippy, enjoyed reading about your adventures the past 8 years. You've covered a lot of territory in that time and I like your independent approach. Also like that you do a lot of overland travel. I'll be doing a lot of trips within Europe in the next 6 months from my home base here in Chemnitz before returning to the USA, but it would be a stretch to match all the places that you've visited.
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