And that’s pretty much what’s been keeping us occupied these past few weeks that we haven’t been blogging. What started out as a temporary hiatus designed to give our full-contact-blogging related injuries time to heal, morphed into an all-out effort to nail down the specifics of our life going forward – or at least for the next eight months.
What made this particular stretch of our itinerary so challenging is that we decided to significantly slow down the pace of our travels this fall. And while normal people might think that would make planning easier, in reality it hasn’t. We’ve struggled mightily to find suitable apartments in desirable locations to rent for an entire month at a time. One month leases are mostly unheard of in the U.S., which is exactly where we’ve been trying to find them.
We were also attempting to incorporate a number of good travel deals into our plans, all which came with various restrictions. We’d find a great airfare deal only to discover that the car rental we needed would cost double if we flew on those days; or the apartment we wanted wasn’t free on the days we could use our frequent flyer miles to get there; or – when all those things seemed to finally fit – we’d learn that one element of our carefully crafted plan had mysteriously become unavailable, sending our entire itinerary into a cascading failure.
That is until now.
Next Stop: Greece
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When we head out from our current home base in the New York City area at the end of the month we’re bound for Greece. Two weeks in the islands, three day in Athens, and a road trip around the Peloponnesian peninsula.
Extra-Long Layover
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When we learned that airfare from Athens to Dubrovnik, Croatia, was the same whether the layover in Rome was four hours or four days, the choice was obvious. The only question we have now is how many bottles of Italian wine we’ll be able to drink during that time.
Settling in to King’s Landing
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After a rushed schedule through Greece and Rome we’re looking forward to kicking back for three weeks in Dubrovnik, a city so pretty it serves as the filming location for the capital city in the fantasy epic Game of Thrones. After relaxing in the real-life version of King’s Landing for a bit, we’ll dip down into Montenegro and scoot over to Bosnia-Herzegovina before returning to Croatia where we’ll spend the month of July exploring more of the country and its islands.
Northern Italy and Switzerland
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A ferry from Northern Croatia will bring us back to Italy, only this time our port of call is Venice. Planning ahead means we’ll be lodging in a prime location near St. Mark’s Square at a reasonable cost. Then its on to Verona, Lake Como, and other locales in northern Italy before making our way further northward into the Swiss Alps.
Unexpected Destination
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When researching flights from Switzerland back to New York we discovered a great promotion run by Iceland Air where they allow travelers to make a seven-day stopover in Reykjavik at no additional cost. Because Iceland Air also had the lowest fares for our preferred travel dates and destinations, we’ll be plunging into the Blue Lagoon while on route from continental Europe to the U.S.
Old Favorites
Someone once asked if “Everywhere Once” means that we’ll only visit a place a single time. And while that’s mostly true, we really see it as Everywhere (At Least) Once. And so we’ll round out 2015 in some much-loved locales. October in New York City. November in Asheville, North Carolina. From there we’ll road trip to Key West for a sun-soaked December.
And after we ring in the New Year in Key West? We have no idea.
