Lorrie in Europe

 Well, Pristine, Kosovo (pronounced Prishtina) has been a bit of a roller coaster.  LOL. Our arrival with the two young men coming to the rescue of our taxi driver in finding our accommodation was just the beginning. On the upside, we have an elevator (thank god as we are on the sixth floor) so that is a treat but I neglected to notice that there is no air con in this unit when I booked it.  Aggggghhhhh….that is usually one of the first things I look for.  On the upside, it cools down pretty well at night so we haven’t really had too much time here when we would have put it on anyway.  Although I would have used it yesterday when we got back in from walking for about a hundred miles in a hundred degrees! (I may be exaggerating just a bit but honestly it was smoking hot and we really did walk for hours). In truth, we walked so far and it was so hot that when we stopped at a caffe where we’d normally have a coffee…..this time it was a coke as cold as they could ge...

 Holy!  Where did that week go?!  The last time I wrote anything in here we were still in Montenegro and I totally missed our entire time in Shkodër, Albania and Prizren, Kosovo.  We are currently booked into our two bedroom apartment in Pristina, Kosovo for the next three nights.  So, I guess I’m going to have to do some backtracking! First of all, it has surprised us that few haven’t gotten stamps in our passports the past couple of borders we’ve crossed.  Neither Albania nor Kosovo have been putting stamps in.  Might have something to do with the ongoing dispute with Serbia about Kosovo being recognized as an independent country???  Not sure….. We LOVED Shkodër where we also had a two bedroom apartment that was massive (for $25 CAD each/night).  It might have seemed so massive in part because at some of our previous places there was actually no room to even walk between our beds let alone turn around in the room.  LOL. But we loved Sh...

 We’ve arrived in Podgorica, Montenegro after a pretty long bus ride but it was a really pretty trip along the coast so that helped the time pass more quickly.  Crossing the border into Montenegro was pretty quick too.  We just had to wait for the bus in front of us and then when it was our turn everyone had to get off the bus, go one by one up to the customs window (this is Croatian customs by the way-as we’re leaving the country you have to check out).  Once passports were stamped at this window it was a short walk across the border (just a couple hundred yards) to the next customs window where once again passports were stamped.  This time it was the Montenegrin customs officers checking us into the country. The coast of Montenegro is pretty but honestly, I did’t see anywhere that called me to stay there.  The beaches are small and rocky (that seems to be the norm everywhere here) and there are way too many people!  Everything is crowded….houses are ...

 Well we’ve taken a little sabbatical from all things techno for the past couple of days.  But….we are back now.  :-) We left Sarajevo at 10:00 on the morning of the 26th (Lynda’s 75th birthday) with our driver Kemal.  We knew it would be a 5’ish hour drive to get to Cavtat in Croatia so the plan was that we would take a short coffee break before we crossed the border out of Bosnia & Herzegovina.  It was a lovely little stop where there were only locals including a few gypsies (the first we’ve seen in our travels to date). Kemal explained that it is common for locals to give the kids a few marks as they’ll be trying to get enough for an ice cream or some other treat.  It became clear very quickly that we’d have to give each of the three kids their own coins as there was seemingly no love lost between them.  LOL. Kemal took care of it in their own language and everyone went away happily.   It was a beautiful drive!  A similar one to that w...

 Sitting on the bed in our TINY room in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina typing this on my lap.  LOL. This room is the smallest we’ve had so far and yet it has a character all its own.  We are directly across the lane from an Irish Pub where the singing and carousing goes on late into the night.  We were super grateful to discover that the windows on our room when closed virtually lock out ALL the noise!  Our two tiny beds are each against a wall and there is just enough room between them to side step to the end where you can actually turn around.  Yep….it’s pretty small!  And the other interesting thing here is the shower (which is also tiny) where the shower head is stuck to the wall at about hip height.  What kind of tiny people stay here!? LOL. Alls well that ends well though and we can both say that we are clean (enough at least)  Oh ya….and the stairs up to our room are just one flight but….it is like a ladder with rungs that are doub...

 Holy!  Where did that week go?!  We haven’t really covered a lot of ground geographically since my last post but boy oh boy have we seen and done a LOT!  Tonight will be our last night in Croatia for a bit but we really feel like we’ve experienced a fair bit of it.  We loved our time in Zagreb where the little courtyards down seemingly random alleys were home to caffes and bars (just for drinks) as well as bakeries and other businesses.  Our accommodation being right across the street from the Canadian Embassy was kind of cool - we got to see the Canadian flag flying every time we went out (we were there 3 days).  We located the BEST bakery right at the end of our block and a perfect caffe for coffee where we could take our baked goods to eat with our cappuccino at a sidewalk table while we watched the world go by along with a lot of other people. One thing we’ve learned during out time in Croatia is that (particularly along the Dalmatian coast) there...