After publishing 90-odd blog posts, I have to confess my enthusiasm for documenting our travels has hit a wall. So we’ve decided to switch things up. Instead of continuing to follow our DETOUR template, our posts will be more photo-centric, with some brief commentary to support the visuals, and rather than dropping into your inbox…
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After spending a month in Southern France, we still had time to fill before heading back to North America for Christmas. Weather-wise Tunisia is still very pleasant in mid-November (22°C / 72°F) and just a short hop from Nice. Various explanations exist for the origin of the name Tunis, the capital of Tunisia (established in…
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For the last three years, when the days grew shorter and the mercury began a slow slide down the thermometer, we’ve made a beeline for the Iberian Peninsula, alternating between the coasts of Spain and Portugal. This year we opted to spend a month on the French Riviera, specifically the resort town of Juan-les-Pins, nestled…
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We are leaving the heat in Crete and heading to the more temperate climate of Southern France, by way of a 4-night detour through northern Italy. When we’re changing locations it’s often a toss-up whether the price or duration of a flight is the more important factor. All of the flights out of Crete to…
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We had just a tiny taste of Greece years ago when we stopped in Athens as part of a Mediterranean cruise, so were very excited to find a super cheap flight from Cyprus to Crete – now we have the chance to experience the largest of the Greek islands! While stone tools that can be…
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We are nearing the end of this year’s “Schengen Shuffle.” After touring the country of Georgia we still hadn’t reached the requisite 90 days outside the Schengen Zone to enable us to return in the Fall. We were delighted to find an inexpensive direct flight from Tbilisi to Larnaca, Cyprus, a member of the EU but…
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After spending six weeks tootling around the country, we completed our Georgian experience in its capital city Tbilisi. Favourably located at the crossroads between Europe and Asia, Tbilisi was a hub along the Silk Road, the network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Naturally, powerful empires throughout…
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I am happy to report that Batumi was an anomaly – the rest of Georgia is wonderful and quite the adventure when self-driving. I won’t go into the specifics of Georgian driving habits again, you can find those in our previous post, but will share the rental agent’s reaction when we returned the car. Speed…
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For 29 days we navigated our way across roughly 2000 kilometers / 1242 miles of Georgian roadways. We will have a full report next week, but for now here’s a taste of what it’s like to drive in this former Soviet republic. We rented a car through LocalRent, an aggregator working with small companies that…
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The Eastern European country of Georgia may not be on your radar – it certainly wasn’t on ours – but it frequently pops up as an “undiscovered gem.” Since we were revisiting Istanbul this year it worked well to hop over to this country bordering the Black Sea, and determine for ourselves whether that idiom…
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