The Accursed Mountains and other Albanian adventures

August 2018 

From here on, the posts for our summer 2018 journey are based on notes I wrote during our travels, rather than once we'd finished, so they may be a little more piecemeal.

-Michael

Exhausted we landed in Tirana, Albania. The first thing I noticed was how green it looked after the brown and dry Greece and Turkey, and how tall the hills were nearby. It felt quite different.

A few days in Istanbul (not Constantinople)

August 2018 

After a short delay we were on our fairly short flight to Istanbul, a destination that had been on Mike's bucket list for some time.

It's all Greek to me! 2: Milos, Syros and Athens

July-August 2018

Milos

Our ferry from Folegandros to Milos was a massive car ferry, so it was thankfully a lot smoother than the journey to Folegandros.

No, that's not our ferry. Just a nice little boat in MIios.

It's all Greek to me! 1: Santorini and Folegandros

July 2018 

The day after we finished work, we flew out of London to start our two month backpacking journey home.  A lot of it we kept track of with a journal which we'll post here with a few edits and tweaks. So let's kick off!

Santorini

As I write we're sitting in a warm hotel courtyard in Pyrgos, a town on Santorini.

We just managed to catch a fabled Santorini sunset just in time when we arrived, and wandered the little streets on foot in the heat before getting a couple of beers to relax. It's 9:30pm and still balmy. 

Wrapping up life in the UK

February-July 2018 

Well, that's it. All good things must come to an end. Nearly three and a half years in London, and it was a blast.

Our eventful trip to Iceland was our last European excursion before leaving London. We made sure to spend our last few months in the UK enjoying it as much as we could.

The land of ice and snow (and an engagement!)

February 2018 

Iceland had been on the list for a long time. In February 2018, we finally knocked it off. And in spite of the absence of the Northern Lights, it did not disappoint. Quite the contrary in fact!

Latvian New Year

December 2017-January 2018

After late landing from Bulgaria, we had a very brief night back in London to feed Lord Fred, then set off the following morning for Riga, in Latvia, to see in 2018.