Plot Twist: Twist Two

I mentioned a while ago that I decided not to go trekking in Nepal, and thus had a spare block of time from August through mid-October. Well, I have finally decided what to do with it!

Originally, for Europe, I had two weeks in Greece, a week in Germany, and a week in Italy scheduled. As of right now, I’m sitting on a train in Bulgaria, after spending a week in Greece!

My new itinerary is focused on the Balkans – they really are incredible, and the transit has been excellent. I can tell I’ll be able to get a lot in! I came from Greece to Bulgaria, and then I’ll go to Romania, then Hungary (Budapest), then Austria (Vienna), then Croatia, where I’ll meet up with my friend Holly!

Holly and I will take the ferry across the sea from Dubrovnik to Italy (seriously… there’s a ferry to Italy. How cool is that?!), and then make our way across southern Italy from Bari to Naples and the Amalfi coast.

After that, I’ve got a bit of time that’s open that I’m still planning. I’m likely going to either spend more time in Italy, then go to Germany, or I’ll leave Italy right around when Holly does and go to either France or Poland.

From there, I’ll head to Germany – I want to check out Berlin and Glashutte, and maybe Neuwaschtein Castle? I know I’ll be there for Oktoberfest, but alas… I don’t like crowds and I don’t like beer, so I probably will skip it!

After Germany, I head back to Italy to meet my mom in Venice. I’m so excited to do north Italy with her! We’ll go from Venice to Florence to Tuscany to Rome. I have so wanted to see all 8 wonders before I turn 30, and I’m so excited that my mom will be by my side for wonder #8 and that dream coming true.

Then, I was going to fly back with her, at least on the same transatlantic flight, but they wanted more for the one-way transatlantic for me than her whole round-trip ticket! So alas, I booked a ticket out of Rome right around the same time so we can at least go to the airport together.

I’ll head to London for about two days, and then the best price/time combination I could find home was out of London straight to Fort Lauderdale.

I land back in the States October 10! Get ready! It’s been such an amazing journey, but I’m also so excited to go home.

And now you have the recap of the journey to come! The blog has been getting more and more behind me – I’ll be back in the States and you’ll still have plenty of stories to read for quite some time!

Believe it or not, this blog is now just at the halfway point of my trip. So you have almost as many more stories to read as stories you’ve had so far! I write them and program them in ahead of time, so you’ve got lots of stories (and pictures) to come!