Back in the Saddle

And we’re back! We haven’t written any travel posts in years so we’re going to be making a more conscious effort to get back into it. We’re excited to bring more of our adventures to you, specifically getting lost and into trouble.

Coming Soon: Scandinavia!

Croatia? I Hardly Know Ya

Kent and Kari kept trying to do romantic things together, but we always found a way to be a part of them.

Apologies for the late entry but this post was delayed due to unforeseen and unavoidable laziness. So without further ado, Croatia! We last left our handsome heroes in Kotor, Montenegro and the next stop was Dubrovnik, a mere 55 miles north along the Adriatic Sea. We decided to bus, thinking it would only take about an hour and we could see the countryside. What we didn't consider was the border crossing. Since we were entering another country, we had to go through Customs for leaving Montenegro and another Customs 3 miles later for entering Croatia. The hour long bus ride actually took over 4 hours and that was with the bus driver smoking cigarettes the whole time. Ugh. Plus I, of course, somehow lost my bus ticket WHILE ON THE BUS so I had to buy another one because I'm a moron that can't keep their shit organized. For the record, Kent had it. Subtle Canadian sabotage.

Every sunset is beautiful on the Adriatic. Almost as pretty as this Balkan babe I picked up. 

While we're discussing travel lets briefly dive into our flights. Most of our Balkan country hopping was done via propeller planes in 45 to 90 minute flights. Now personally I am terrified of propeller planes. Why are we still using these? THEY'RE OLD TECHNOLOGY. Are these airlines unaware that jet airplanes have been around since THE 1940s? Do we need some kind of giant rubber band to start the propellers? Probably. Is there some giant man that just heaves us into the air and then we cross our fingers we can float to our destination? You know it. Hate em. I'd rather walk thank you. Unfortunately Google claims it would take "90 hours" to walk from Bucharest to Sofia so I was outvoted by my travelling companions who all clearly have a deathwish.

The last known photograph of the reckless travelers before stepping onto the doomed aircraft.
 Rob is in the back, probably smoking his last cigarette.

After preparing my will and notifying my next of kin (Luna), I stepped onto one of these murdermobiles and set course for a new country. You know how the flight attendants on Delta give you attitude when you have the nerve to ask for the actual can of Coke instead of just the dixie cup? "Oh I'm sorry, sir, are you implying this syringe of Sprite won't be enough?" Well these flights hooked. us. up. They were short flights so the attendant barely had time to walk the entire plane before we descended but they managed to quickly hand out treats to everyone. At first I was delighted but then quickly realized that this great food was clearly my last meal before this floating iron lung sputtered into a mountain. Cookies, chocolate bars, pastries, muffins, ENTIRE SANDWICHES. Not to mention all the beer you can drink on a 45 minute flight (challenge accepted). Jesus, we took a 7 hour flight to Iceland once and all they gave us was peanuts. I was pleasantly surprised when we landed still alive and without the loss of any limbs, so despite effectively being death machines, I'm alright with these prop planes. As long as they keep feeding me.

After a traumatic experience like that, you learn new things about yourself.

Anyway. Back to Croatia. Dubrovnik's main attraction is its Old Town, which is prominently featured in Game of Thrones as it's used for the shooting location for King's Landing. This meant that droves of people flock here and try to match up pictures to stand where Cersei murdered some dude or Tyrion fell over drunk. The Old Town was full of restaurants and shops, all of which were severely overpriced and overrun with people. No thanks, Colin Hanks. We spent only a few hours here before deciding to leave the city and go on a speedboat booze cruise of surrounding islands. This was probably my favorite part of the entire trip as it was just the five of us on a private tour.

Kent was voted to be the prettiest of the five of us so he was our figurehead. 

Our driver (captain? head boatman?) spoke approximately zero english, only enough to tell us when he thought we should take a drink and when to get out of the boat. For example, we were pulling up to a new island when he suddenly stopped about 200 yards from the beach, dropped anchor, and told us to swim. Using his keen Canadian deduction skills, Kent figured out that there was no dock and we just had to swim into the beach. Now I thought I was a good swimmer because I dominated my Grandma's pool when I was 12. Turns out that I am in fact, a great swimmer...for about 90 seconds (or two lengths of Grandma's pool) and after that I go downhill pretty quick. It makes matters worse that Katie is a phenomenal swimmer and would be effortlessly gliding in front of me. Luckily the Adriatic is super salty so for the most part your body just floats without treading, but I still found ways to almost drown myself. Sometimes Kari would seemingly purposefully swim behind me just to laugh at me thrash through the water. Such good friends. But in my defense I was pretty loaded on rakija and I forgot that if we swam 200 yards from the boat we eventually had to swim back.

Pictured here we have a 30 year old man, hopelessly under the spell of rakija.
 Little did he know, not five minutes later he would swallow a ton of seawater.

Katie briefly mentioned rakija in her last post but it deserves a bigger shoutout as it was a part of almost every meal. Rakija is the Balkan's go-to drink. There are many different versions of it and every country has their own twist but it basically boils down to fruit brandy, and that fruit could be plums, blueberries, pears, grapes, or even honey. One of their traditions is to do a shot before you eat as it "helps with digestion". Yeah okay. I'm going to start using that excuse for drinking Fireball before noon. Daydrinking aside, it's customary to have a shot before, during or after the meal. One of our servers told us that there was a Serbian phrase that roughly translates to: "When is a good time for Rakija? Now is a good time for Rakija." I'm not going to argue the semantics with you, just pour me another.

Rakija made it very difficult to read clocks like this. It was 3:53pm.  

After Dubrovnik we took a catamaran to Split, and when we weren't lounging on beaches or drinking brandy in the morning, we were exploring the country and my favorite expedition was to Krka National Park. To enter the park we used a ferry, which took us through a large canyon surrounded by large beautiful mountains and trees but felt eerily similar to the boat ride Sam Neill takes in Jurassic Park 3 when he's tricked into looking for that stupid kid. Dinosaur parasailing? Nice parenting, Stepdad. We had no Spinosaurus attacks although I might have preferred that to the siege of mosquitos that followed us everywhere. Krka was positively gorgeous but the trails were skinny and apparently August is peak tourist season so like Dubrovnik, it was also overrun, but it was big enough that we could still find open areas to explore. It was basically a park full of waterfalls, the perfect way to end our tour of Croatia.

Two natural beauties

Of all the countries we visited, we spent the most time in Croatia, visiting four cities and exploring five islands. We chilled on beaches, swam naked in the Adriatic, picnicked in a national park, and gambled with five different currencies on a ship. Croatia brought Katie's country total to 31 and mine to 29, which is simply unacceptable. Expect a quick trip to Greenland to round my total up to a more respectable number 30.

We also learned that we're super strong and don't need a 6th person to make a dope pyramid. 

CM

such wonderful things surround you. Montenegro

 

And so, fair reader, the CanAmericans left bustling city life behind and headed for the serenity of the black mountains of Montenegro. Our apartment was in the center of Old Town where cars cannot drive, so our taxi driver dropped us outside an enormous stone gate, mumbling something in a language we’d never heard before and pointed. So we ventured through the gate and into the odd world of the bayside city, Kotor.

Dobby on your 12th birtday

Our room was situated immediately above the Old Town Pub, so our nights were saturated with the pub soundtrack: some chatter, some laughter, and a lot of bumping bass. One night we heard what sounded like a parade directly below us, so we headed down to check it out. We found only five men, screaming at the top of their voices, watching Montenegro play in the water polo quarterfinals in the Olympics. Their enthusiasm was contagious and occasionally frightening, since when the other team scored they would spit on the ground and slam their heads into the walls. Fortunately they won so we got to be a part of a mad celebration when one of the guys lit a red flare inside the bar while the others danced and sang to their blasting national anthem. Those five guys know how to watch a game. We should all take notes.

Typical game day celebrations

Old Town was only a few minute walk from a beautiful stone beach facing the Bay of Kotor. In some parts of Montenegro, “going to the beach” meant laying your towel on the side of a cliff, so we were glad to have a pebble beach nearby. We watched kids fling themselves off the end of a pier for an hour or so before deciding to give it a go ourselves. The kids must’ve known something we didn’t, because our group left the cold water of the bay covered in scrapes and scratches courtesy of the rocky ground. It was a breathtaking view and a somewhat treacherous swim.

up in the sun they slave away while we're devoting full time to floating

One of the most beautiful things we’ve done on our trip came the next day when we ventured to Tivat, Montenegro to explore the open Adriatic Sea by kayak. The five of us (along with our Montenegrin guide Boyan, an Irishman, and a French woman) took four kayaks out on a tour of the blue caves. We kayaked into 4 different caves, 3 of which could not be reached by big boats, once again making us feel very pleased with our choice to do the less touristy option. This meant we had exclusive access to the “inside out cave” (you back into it so the light pours in in front of you), the bat cave (my personal favorite. A pitch black cave filled with hundreds of bats) and dessert cave (extra treat at the end of the tour, tiny cave where we had to lie flat on our kayaks to get under the rock wall).

exiting the "inside out" cave

The biggest draw of the tour was the blue cave, an enormous cave with clear bright blue water. We snorkeled around the cave with maybe 50 other tourists. The water was shockingly blue and clear and so salty we had a very hard time swimming underwater, but became quite impressive water treaders. If team USA trained in the Adriatic, maybe we could’ve made it to the semi-finals in waterpolo too.

two lovers holding hands in the sea. and chris. 

Montenegro has brought an interesting gear shift on our trip. Everything moves a little slower and so do we. We didn’t take a walking tour, but Boyan our kayak guide shared a lot about his life in Montenegro, so I felt like we received a modern day education as opposed to an historical one. And damn did we see some incredibly beautiful things. From here we move on to Dubrovnik, Croatia by bus. Where I assume we will be welcomed with the Game of Thrones theme song. 

MERMAN!

lovefromkatie

12 Hours in Serbia

romantic pre-sunrise flight

As my handsome spouse has mentioned, one of my life goals was to explore 30 countries before turning 30. We discovered while researching #EuropeanLoveTour2016 that visiting the Balkans was the perfect way to reach this goal. The countries are very close together, giving us short travel days and the opportunity to use 5 different currencies. It also made us think it was a great idea to plan a 12 hour layover in Belgrade so we could “pop over to Serbia for lunch”. So that’s exactly what we did.

luna and i at the belgrade airport

15 August 2016

03:00 wake up in Sofia, Bulgaria

05:30 wheels up
05:13 touch down in Belgrade, Serbia (thanks to the magic of time zones, we don’t miss a beat)
05:27 photo shoot with Luna Flatley
06:08 4 of us arrive at Hostel M to drop of our bags and pee. One smoker waits outside.
06:40 wander to the square thru walls covered in mostly pro-vegan graffiti
07:15 stop at the corner café for pizza. Because they don’t serve coffee until 08:00
09:04 sneak all 5 back into our 4 person hostel to sleep
10:39 stop for coffee at Abydabhuuya café
11:10 begin walking tour with an intimate group of 65

11:40 take a shot of the local liquor Rakija with our 65 new best friends

11:42 learned that we just drank the ladies version, aka the less alcoholic version (eye roll from the progressives among us)

11:45 learned Serbian dance

11:46 Chris foolishly attempts Serbian skipping dance and rolls his ankle on giant cobblestones 

12:10 learned about currency, the alphabet and where to find the “Silicon Ladies”

12:43 head for a cafe in the bohemian artist quarter for our much desired Serbian meal.
13:00 order far too much meat, bread and beer

13:46 hurry back to the hostel to grab our bags

14:16 taxi to the airport

17: 25 wheels up

Serbian street art. #mytitsmymilk

And now we’re in the beautiful bayside city of Kotor, Montenegro. Over a moonlit meal, 5 best friends discussed the wonder of having breakfast in Bulgaria, lunch in Serbia and dinner in Montenegro. That was one hell of a day. 

Bulgaria Hysteria

In this installment of Katie and Chris conquer Europe, we visit Sofia the capital city of Bulgaria. 

Robbie is often shunned into small boxes to enjoy his death sticks

We clearly made a mistake inviting the Canadians along as their suggestions are for things like all day kayaking trips or climbing a mountain. Whatever happened to just sitting? Sitting is the best. Katie was naturally on board to climb Mount Vitosha, so without wanting to seem like the "indoor kid" I agreed to climb the beast. At the top of the mountain is a waterfall so we all brought our swimsuits along in case we had a chance to swim in the lagoon like we did in Puerto Vallarta. Spoiler alert. We didn't swim and the hike was much longer than I thought it would be so I ended up hiking up that monster in a mesh swimsuit. You know what you shouldnt wear on a 6 mile mountain hike? A mesh swimsuit. Classic stupid Chris. 

If this picture was bigger you could see the screaming agony in my eyes

On the hike we ran into two Belgians who were in town for the weekend because their 15 year old kid was in the European Junior Basketball Championships. They jokingly invited us to come along but unfortunately at the time we had a pub crawl planned for that night. After we parted ways we, of course, cancelled our pub crawl, bought five yellow shirts, and scrappily decorated them to cheer for Belgium, specifically for this high school kid (Neils) whom we had never met before. There were about 30 fanswho attended the game between Belgium and Georgia, so imagine this kid's face when 5 of them were loud North Americans, covered in black marker, furiously cheering for Belgian domination. It was pretty hard to miss us. Thanks entirely to our support, Belgium defeated Georgia. You're welcome, Neils.

Our allegiance can so easily be bought. Go Belgium! (and USA)

After our victory over Georgia we created our own pub crawl and picked a couple bars to hit up. My favorite was called Haramba and was located down a hidden backalley. The door to the bar was locked but unlike a speakeasy there was no person manning the entrance to let people in. The only way to get in was to wait until someone left and grab the door before it closed. When we finally slipped in we found that Haramba had absolutely no electrocity and the entire bar was lit by candles, even the bathroom. Every so often a flame would go out and the lone bartender would swoop in immediately to light a fresh candle for us. What a great romantic place for newlyweds Kent and Kari.....and their two friends.....and their cousin. 

I've been saying all along that we should have brought Luna with us.
Although she definitely would have set that bed on fire.

In all of our travels, Sofia was the city where we had the most language barriers, with very few people speaking more than a couple words in English. Usually you can count on young people to help you translate but that wasn't the case here. We were at an open air book market and no one could understand what "Harry Potter" was until I said uhhh "wizard" and then traced a tiny lightning bolt on my forehead. The vendor said no but then took off sprinting and returned three minutes with a handful of Harrys. Schmieg settled on the Sorcerer's Stone because it was one of the lightest. Cut to fifteen minutes later when she suddenly yelled out "DAMNIT SCHMIEG! Why didn't you buy the one that featured the BULGARIANS!" Classic stupid Katie. 

Robbie also found a bunch of comic book first editions.
Unfortunately they're also in Bulgarian

Finally many people have expressed concerns for our safety with this trip with everyone in the world being a dick to each other, but we have experienced nothing but warmth and welcome from the people around us. I think these Eastern European countries rarely get American travelers so they're interested to learn more about us. Specifically how much I can bench press. At least that's what I think they're saying, they don't speak English. 

CM

we eat, we drink, we party. Bucharest.

the gang is back together! #canamericanway

"I won’t bullshit you", our host Vlad said when we asked for recommendations for things to do in Bucharest, Romania. Vlad explained that Bucharest is not famous for its museums or other traditional tourist attractions. Go out to eat, he said. Get a drink. Go to the old town after midnight. “That’s what we do in Bucharest. We eat, we drink, we party. And we party better than anyone”.

our movie themed apartment!

So Kari, Kent, Rob, Chris and I headed out to explore the city with Vlad’s candid advice in mind. Old town was only a few minute walk from our door, so we headed there first. The streets of Old Town were winding cobblestone paths, filled with bars, pubs, and restaurants. We ate at a traditional Romanian restaurant where our server recommended a traditional Romanian meal. We learned this meant several dips, breads and cheeses, and our body weight in meat. It was delicious and coma inducing. We spent most of our time in Old Town. It was nice to be in a busy place surrounded by so many eclectic people and still not feel like we stick out in the crowd. 

This was only the first course. 

So we ate. And we also drank. We found Beraria H, the largest beer hall in Europe, just outside the city center. We ordered “beer by the meter”, 11 pints of local brew on a large paddle. Chris, of course, insisted that our server hold the heavy paddle for an extended period of time so he could get a good picture. It turns out we came to the hall the only night this month without live music, so we headed back to Old Town to get our music fix. Because in Old Town after dark, there was live music on every corner.

We also went on a walking tour of Bucharest lead by our Romanian guide, Anka. We learned about local architecture and communist history and the Romani people. But the information that will stay with me forever (and with you, fair reader, because buckle up, it’s about to get gory) was about Vlad the Impaler, aka the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. 

See Vlad?

 We learned that Vlad liked impaling so much, he’s rumored to have impaled 23,000 people over 6 years, which math tells us makes about 10 people per day. But it’s the impaling itself that’s really gruesome. Anka explained that a spear was inserted into the criminal’s rectum, then their bodies were rotated upright so that their own weight forced the spear carefully along their spine and out somewhere in their face. If it’s done correctly, it won’t pierce any vital organs and the criminal can survive for a few days like a popsicle. Perhaps the worst detail is that the spear would be rubbed down with pork fat for Muslim criminals in an attempt to insure they would not reach heaven. Woof. And this wasn’t just for the worst criminals. So beware, jaywalkers. The end is near.

the room of requirement, only we didn't need anything. 

This is the speed version of goose and my usual exploration, so we were only able to spend 3 days in Romania, but just like Frank the Tank, we had an AWESOME time! We stumbled upon several book, art and antique sales. We tried 2 traditional liquors and 10 new types of beer.  But in our entire visit we only learned one new word: Noroc, Romanian for cheers! And now, onto Bulgaria! #krumkrumkrum

lovefromkt

Here we go again!

...but this time not on our own. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, your favorite handsome duo heads back to Europe for more adventure. Normally we travel Han style, but this time around we'll have some friends in tow. Quick introduction for those of you lucky enough to have never met these duds.

Kent - High school teacher. Dynamite eyelashes

Kari - Katie's favorite. Married to Kent. Killer singing voice

Robbie - Comic book nerd. Owns his own house. 

We'll be ripping through Europe for the next couple weeks, hitting up Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Croatia. By venturing to all these places, it will complete Katie's goal of visiting 30 countries before turning 30.

This will also be a group honeymoon, celebrating Kent and Kari's new life of wedded bliss! I assume every couple's dream is to enjoy romantic five person candle light dinners and no alone time. #EuropeanLoveTour2016

Stay tuned