This post will be mostly pictures because it was impossible to take notes on some of these. Enjoy! Building that was a tea/teapot shop last century is now a wine shop. As we walked through Old Town, there were many alcoves with small shops scattered around smaller apartment complexes. Vilnius runs a Christmas Train that…

Vilnius Old Town is a labyrinth of cobblestone streets and has many of the over 40 churches and chapels in the greater Vilnius metropolitan area. One of the first chapels we saw was part of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage network, The Way of St. James, which is still high on my bucket list once…

My quest for the best Christmas market EVER continues in 2025 as I embark on a four country tour of Christmas Markets in the Balkans. I booked through GateOne, the same company I did my Spain/Portugal tour with last year, because they move at a slower pace and I wanted to see if I can…

As a welcome break from my convenience store cuisine, my current innkeeper Flora has been popping over every day or two with a home cooked meal, with a plethora of veggies from her garden and plenty of the olive oil she tapped from her olive trees. The downside to these gifts is I always get…

I’ve been rotating between the tiny market down the road to get cold drinks with the “Your Market” convenience store a short uphill hike from the apartment and the longer trek up and down “Mt Everest” near the water. It’s been raining in Saranda and the road and cobblestone sidewalks were slicker than I liked,…

Corfu, Greece is just a short ferry ride from Sarande’s promenade, so I decided on a quick day trip. There were two options, a “fast” ferry at 35 minutes and a “slow” ferry that took about an hour. Which one you go on depends less on price (fast is 10 euro more) and more on…

Last night was my first full night (4 hours) of uninterrupted sleep since I left Seattle. Flora’s house is super quiet after the last call to prayer from the Mosque one street above at 9pm and the barking dogs have settled down. The two balcony doors have screens and the apartment was my ideal sleeping…

Albania doesn’t have Uber or Bolt, or any of the other ride services where you can get a quote for your ride BEFORE you get in the car. I’m sure there are honorable and honest taxi drivers, I just never seem to meet them. In Tirana, there is a taxi stand right outside the airport…

I usually don’t do anything too taxing on my birthday. I consider it a personal holiday and tend to avoid work or anything too regimented. It just so happened that the apartment I had rented in Split wasn’t available through May 10th, so I went ahead and booked my travel to Albania, figuring travel is…

I’m a slow mover on the water – wooden canoes, paddleboards, and sailboats with the sail down rocking gently on the surface, are my perfect speed. I’d debated for over three weeks about visiting Hvar because there were only two options: A ferry/catamaran that was relatively expensive for a 45 minute trip or the only…