After a marathon of ferries, we still had trips on a train and city bus to reach our final destination. We found a farmhouse outside the city of Perugia that is now a hostel. The place is super nice and has great views of the rolling hills. They have decided to maintain a little of the farm atmosphere, complete with a few horses, geese, ducks, chickens, a dog, and of course you can’t keep the farm cats away. These cats were huge, we wondered if one of them was half …

For the last five days, we got to catch up with a friend who volunteered for the Peace Corps and was placed in Albania. The high speed ferry from Corfu only takes thirty minutes and Lesley met us on the other side for lunch. The town where we landed, Sarande, is quite touristy, including a promenade along the water. After lunch and a 40 minute bus ride (20 kilometers) to Ksamil, we settled into her apartment and walked around town shopping for dinner. We were excited that we could cook …

Our trip from Zagreb to Corfu involved a slight detour to a third country, Hungary. After a seven-hour train ride to Budapest, we had a few hours to figure out how to get to the airport. Fortunately a train goes there from the station downtown, unfortunately it leaves from the other train station. So, we had to get some cash, figure out the trolley system to get across town, and get on another train. We got to the airport right before they closed the check-in counter, and got through security …

Only four months behind Mike, Heather can check off her seventh continent. We had to track down a cold beer to celebrate the occasion. Being in a predominantly Muslim country, we didn’t have a lot of choices. We found an “Irish Pub” located inside the Hilton. Heather actually had wine and Mike tried a Luxor beer.
Our first day out we took it slow and meandered around the Egyptian Museum. The place is huge, more like a warehouse than a museum. The impression we got was that the first archaeologists to …

Only our second land border crossing of the trip: China to Hong Kong. Despite being a part of China, Hong Kong maintains separate border controls. It also has its own money, they drive on the opposite side of the road as the mainland, and English is widely spoken, after all it has only been thirteen years since the Brits left town.
Something we noticed right off the bat, private companies print money here. The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, or HSBC, is a large bank we have been seeing …

The main destination in New South Wales was Sydney, but the first stop was the Blue Mountains.

Feeling that the name was a bit familiar, we looked into it and found out there are at least ten mountain ranges in the world known as the Blue Mountains. This one was probably unique in that it had a city named Katoomba, which is where we spent the night. The town was quite pleasant, we even found several places serving high tea with all the traditional items. We were mostly there to see …

Since we’re casual fans of several types of beverages, and because it’s been raining for several hours, I thought writing about food and drink would be a good way to pass the time until dinner.
We’re in El Bolsón right now, a small town in the mountains where we came to relax for a few days before heading back to Bariloche. This section of the country seems to be the place for beer, there are five or six local breweries in Bolsón, but I’ll get to that later. I suppose …