Europe trip 2023

After our friends left for London we stayed in Split but moved a little further south of the city on the coast. The views and sunsets were amazing. We spent a few days catching up on laundry, schoolwork and rest.

 

We found a fortress high high high on a hill. We decided we’d climb it, so off C and I climbed while BK got left behind helping little R. A looooong 45 minutes later we reached the top. After a quick stop to take photos we headed back down again to the car where we had left the water and snacks.

 

After 3 weeks in Split it was time to move on. 3 weeks is the longest we’ve spent anywhere since moving out of our home in mid December. We headed to the south of Croatia but as we went we had to drive through a small part of Bosnia to get to the back into Croatia. Bosnia was beautiful, a lot of people (including me) still have pictures in their minds from the media of war torn Bosnia, but the small part we saw was really not like that. We stopped and had a picnic lunch, then carried on our way. Our passports were counted as we went into Bosnia but they didn’t even open them to check they were actually OUR passports. However on our way out BK’s passport was stamped, I assume it was because he was the one driving.

 

We arrived at our destination of Cavtat, pronounced ‘sarve tat’, it is a bit south of the city Dubrovnik and a bit north of the country Montenegro.

 

Our first day there we ventured to Dubrovnik. BK had been told by a colleague in Split to expect it to be like Disneyland and yep it sure was! If you weren’t a tourist you were selling to a tourist.

 

C and I walked around the city walls, it was expensive, but great to have some one on one time with him plus the views were amazing. We reunited with the other half of the family and had a picnic lunch overlooking the cute little harbour and a bit of walking around the streets, hello Christmas shop! BK went and retrieved the car from its parking spot faaaaaaaar away so the rest of us didn’t have to do anymore walking.

 

That evening we went into Cavtat and walked around the old town as the sun was going down, it was very pretty.

 

The following day we drove south to Montenegro. Luckily Peugeot Eurolease had given us the correct paper work when we picked up Rouge because they wanted the car’s papers plus our passports to get in. As we were following our GPS, it wanted to put us on a ferry to cross a small patch of water! After a quick check we were allowed to put our car on a ferry and checking the price I drove Rouge onto her first ferry ride 😎 only a short 7-10 minutes then it was off to the city of Kotor! After another few hours of walking the old town I was officially done with ‘old towns’ so we headed back to the ferry via a picnic spot for lunch and headed home. We had purchased a pre-made lasagne for dinner and BK encouraged C to take care of the family dinner and offered to be his sous chef. It was a great dinner of lasagne and home made garlic bread. Well done C!

 

So that was the south done in record time and it was time to start the journey north. The next stop was Zagreb, which is the capital of Croatia. We arrived at our Airbnb with the actual host being the daughter of the family however she was out of town for two days so she had left her parents to look after us. They lived downstairs and were amazing. On the first day they helped us move in and answered all my questions, when their dog got too excited and jumped up little R, she burst out crying and the Mum rushed out with a banana for R. On the second day the Mum made us homemade buns with chocolate or marmalade inside them! Team Knowles scoffed them down in a split second, yuuuummmmm! On the fourth day the Mum brought up my washing for me.

By this time the official host was home and I happily told her if she was missing parents at the end of the week they were packed in my bag and coming home to NZ with me! Haa!

 

In Zagreb I took the kids to the zoo, it wasn’t world class but for NZ$11 for all 3 of us no one was complaining. I also took them to a technical museum, I thought of my Uncle Tom the whole time. It was full of engines from marine to aircraft to mining. It showed how solar power and wind turbines work. Amazingly fascinating! I even saw an iron lung (which is a thing polio survivors lay in to breathe).

 

The last full day we walked around Zagreb. We went on a funicular, otherwise known as a cable car, it’s the shortest one in Europe, it took a whole 40 seconds 😄😄😄. We walked through a tunnel built during WWII, saw a few churches, had some bakery food and an ice cream…healthy! Then we bought some flowers for our amazing hosts and headed back to our apartment. Our host made us fudge and a chocolate cream cake on the day of our departure. Yum!

 

It was the most amazing month in Croatia. Everything we had dreamed of and more. We are so glad we went to there to rest before carrying on with our trip. Such kind people, so many supermarkets and the scenery, just stunning! We lived like locals and apart from a couple of days when we paid for big toll roads, we lived on the same budget as we did in Asia. BK achieved some good project work and topped up the bank account while he was at it. I also booked and paid for our flights home later on in the year so we now have an end date to work toward.

 

Now, the budget. Obviously Asia and Europe costs are VERY different but if I’d worked on my new Europe budget per day I would have come out at $3404 under budget for the month in Croatia, pretty ridiculous! Mid month BK and I realised we didn’t need the full Europe per day amount so decided that we’d do it on the Asia budget so…the official budget…

Croatia – $404 under
Total budget – $912 under

Lets just say the spare happily paid for our flights home.

 

Till next time!

 

Claire

We picked up our 2018 Peugeot 208 in Geneva, Switzerland and started driving. Wow the highways here are expensive but amazing! Europe appears to be just one big never ending highway. On our first day of traveling we spent NZ$153 on tolls, half of that was to go through the Mont Blanc tunnel. This is an amazing engineering feat which is 11.6km long and has a ton of rules including the slowest speed you can do (50km/h) as well as the fastest speed (70km/h). There are also blue lights along the walls to show you what they expect your following distance to be (150m).

 

At 2pm we stopped at a service center and booked accommodation for that evening, yep that’s the latest we’ve ever left it but we didn’t know how far we’d get that day. However we turned up to find the host had not got the Airbnb email to say we were coming so we prepared the apartment together. She suggested a pizzeria down the road for dinner and we are so glad we took up that suggestion. It was amazing pizza!

 

After a good night’s sleep and brekkie provided it was back on the road. We weren’t far away from the border to Slovenia and everything looked very Russian to us. We had our passports stamped into Croatia, got back on the highway and headed down the coast, Salmonella Dub cranking. Then our GPS directed us inland which we thought was odd but we didn’t have any better ideas so we followed it and as we went more inland we went up and up and up and the snow got thicker and thicker and thicker and our speed came down as we crept along a big snowy highway. We made it to a service center for a nice lunch then carried on as the road looked ok but after a while we saw signs saying the highway was closed. So we get off but the GPS got confused so we had to manually navigate, oh what a hard life to have to use a map!!! 😄 We continued on our way and saw a truck tipped over, literally centimeters from falling down a very high cliff, luckily we were up against the bank. On our way we go again and soon we noticed the traffic coming to a standstill at the bottom of the gully but didn’t think much of it as we were due to turn back onto the highway before then. However it turns out the highway is still closed and another truck has tipped over, so we wait 2 hours for it to be cleared (by a digger shunting it, which takes 5 minutes once it gets there!) By this time we’ve well in truly missed the check in time for our Airbnb and low on petrol so we stop at the next petrol station, send a quick email our hosts to explain our situation and we are on our way to Split, Croatia! An hour later we are checked in. The next morning we’re told we were lucky to get in as they closed the roads behind us.

 

We spend the next 6 days resting and relaxing. We do school work and take walks to the park. BK and I practice our suburban driving on the wrong side of the car and on the wrong side of the road. We take naps and I do lots of laundry. BK find an amazing co-working space and gets some solid days of work done.

 

We then move into central Split and I collect some friends from the airport who’ve flown in to spend Easter with us. We explore the old town which has the oldest cathedral in the world that’s still in use and has not been completely rebuilt over the centuries. We were very fortunate to come across the starting of Catholic mass on Good Friday and saw boys and men singing through the streets (which are actually very small walk ways between buildings which a built quite close together!)

 

We also explore the Krka National Park and wander our way around the waterfalls for a few hours. I got my first injury, I slipped on some stones and grazed my knee! We also spend some time stuck at our Airbnb because it rained and everything was shut for Easter!

 

The day before our friends left, the sun came out and it was a beautiful day.

BK kindly offered to stay home with the children while the rest of us went to Brac Island which was a sleepy little island as the summer season hasn’t quite started yet but it’s very pretty. We found a restaurant, have lunch then made our way back to the mainland. 7 glorious hours away from our kids was just what I needed. Being with them 24/7 can be quite challenging.

 

After that it’s time to say goodbye to our friends, they’re off home to London but we’ll see them again in Rome.

 

Till next time,

 

Claire