After recovering from our travel day we enjoyed the farm stay so much we stayed another day. Achieved nothing. But with the cute dogs, the frogs in the pond, the ping pong table, the trampoline, the swing ball set, the good wifi, the comfy memory foam mattresses…absolutely nobody in our family wanted to move. It was the oasis we needed. The rest. The calm. The peace. The following day we packed up and headed for IKEA. Love their lunch specials,…
We got going from Belgrade about 9am, it was to be a short 2.5 hours over the border to Timisoara. I wasn’t sure what the city had in store for us but I was keen to see Romania anyway. We’d decided against Bucharest as it was just too much driving to the east to then have to double back. We drove through back road after back road. Lots of agriculture. Lots of tractors. We knew we were in the middle of…
We lined up at border control and it took ages! Fortunately, BK had popped into the supermarket before we left and bought pastries so at least we weren’t hungry…one of us needed the toilet though…. The Bulgarian border control lady saw our French number plated car and asked if we were going to France. Us : uhh? Serbia? The Serbian border control man smiled as our passports were handed over “New Zealand huh?” Us : yep 😁😁😁😁 Such weird comments, just…
We crossed successfully into Bulgaria and drove straight for Sofia. Our friends were following us, somewhere. Our first mission was to find someone who sold vignettes- an alternative to paying tolls. Once we found that we felt much better about the cameras on the highways!! Please no fines for us! We arrived at our Airbnb. Realised we were back in the EU so our SIM cards should be roaming and waited for our friends who’d got distracted at a monastery along the way….
We packed our car, went to a baby shop and I bought what seems like our thousandth (and hopefully final) car seat in the past 14 years of parenting so little R could see out the window easier, then we cruised out of Greece. We are embarking on a 3000km road trip. 2/3rds of the way through we’ll need to drop our car off and bus the rest of the way through the final countries before flying home! We’ve been churning…
We landed in Stanstead, one of those annoying remote airports, made our way into the city on an airport express train, transferred onto the tube, then once further enough toward our Airbnb, ubered the rest of the way! Lugging gear in a huge city is not fun but oh the English language! Oh the British accents! It was a welcome relief after 6.5 weeks to be able to fully understand everything! We arrived in an exhausted heap but our hosts…
This is a bit out of order and more ‘real time’ Thought I’d put some thoughts down as we have got to the half way point. Mums are all the same, no matter where you live in the world. Mums are forever dragging kids places, down the street, across the road, into a toilet. Not knowing their language I have been smiling that I feel ya smile at them. We have heard or seen the English language way more widely…
I need to preface this with. We are not catholic, this was purely a challenge. I was hopeful for a time of reflection but not much of that happened. Here’s a few snippets of each day. Day 1 – Doned with our backpacks, the kids having NZ flags attached to theirs. We left the cathedral in Vigo at 9.30am with the first stamp in our pilgrim passports, not another pilgrim in sight. With Mum on a video call we wound out…
An uneventful flight into Porto, we got collected by an Uber. The driver was so engaging, we got a lovely lesson on Port wine. His family has a vineyard that goes back several generations so we were more than interested to hear his point of view on the industry. I’d chosen a compact Airbnb which is right in the city centre, as soon as we arrived we dumped our gear and went out to explore, I mean we explored as…
As I was lead into an office by a police officer, it was clear I was not getting into the country with my drone! Yep it was DJI’s fault I was in that predicament! There were big signs everywhere : DECLARE YOUR DRONE! So I did. The most annoying thing is : I was sure I’d researched each country’s drone laws! 😫 I was texting Mum to keep her in the loop but turns out she wasn’t getting my texts or…