Our original plan was to zip around the corner from Venice and slide down the Adriatic coastline towards amazing Dubrovnik while taking our time along the way to enjoy the seaside. From Dubrovnik we planned to cross over the mountains through Kosovo and into northern Greece. Scrap that plan!… Kosovo it seems is still considered to be somewhat of a hot spot and after being warned off by a number of very reliable sources we decided to completely avoid the area and altered our malleable plan accordingly. So, from Venice we did zip around the corner slightly, but only as far down as the northern coast of Croatia for a night, and then turned north east for a speedy autobahn drive to Budapest, Hungary for a quick visit. We were quite impressed with Budapest and spent the better part of two days exploring the sights on both sides of the Danube. I never knew that on the west side of the Danube is the city of Buda looking east across the river at the city of Pest. The two are linked by a number of impressive bridges and now collectively make up what is known as Budapest. We did the Big Red Bus tour as things are a bit spread out and really got a good feel for this still merging tourist Mecca. Despite the thirty plus degree heat, we were determined to try the local Goulash soup and we weren’t disappointed at all, who would guess that cold Hungarian beer goes so well with it. From Budapest we turned south for another autobahn slide through Serbia and Macedonia to Thessaloniki, Greece. We did however encounter a few unexpected twists in this quick slide south. Along the way we drove through Hungary, Serbia, Macedonia and into Greece each with long wait border crossings (going in and out). We drove through 10 highway toll booths with significant wait times as well (costing a total of about sixty dollars Canadian). One autobahn accident with a 30km traffic back-up and a little construction to boot. All-in-all, I would guess that we spent about 6 hours in lineups. Because of the added time we couldn’t complete the drive in one day and ended up on a dark rainy mountain road very late in the evening and too close to the border of Kosovo. We decided it best to stay the rest of this night in an isolated but busy hotel parking lot with designated area for motorhomes along with a few other tired RV travellers.
After the turmoil of Yugoslavia breaking up with the years of unrest that followed, much of this part of the world is still considered “Emerging” and the depressed economic conditions of some towns and villages that we saw, can attest to that. We thought we might stop for a night in Belgrade, Serbia but the feeling we got driving in on the freeway through many rundown buildings and endless graffiti unfortunately turned us off wanting to stop. I know you’ve heard this before but… It’s times like this that you’re reminded of how fortunate we are to be living in a country like Canada. Crossing into Northern Greece we were also surprised at the number of closed businesses and slightly run-down areas. Hopefully Greece’s damaged economy will completely bounce back soon and when we drive south towards Athens we’re hoping to see some evidence of that happening. Greece is beautiful and fascinating in every way possible and we’re really looking forward to exploring as much of this amazing country as we can. For now we’re sitting in a slightly over cramped and lively oceanside campground just below Mt. Olympus. Warm water, colourful lights, great restaurants, shops and people activity to entertain us until we decide to move along.

Road Ramble:

It’s surprising how many pictures we’ve taken so far and how quickly they all add up. We are now in the neighbourhood of about 4000 saved pictures and someday I’m sure we’ll look at each one of them at least one more time, unless the kids want to see them a few extra times… (I hear what you just said Cameron!). Our basic Nikon camera has been working great and other than burning up the battery charges rather quickly we haven’t had any real photo technical issues, until recently when trying to download photos for this Blog. Lucky for us I don’t think it’s a camera problem, it seems it has more to do with a bad SD memory card instead. Unlucky for us, I think we’ve lost a number of pictures including some from Budapest and our drive south to Greece. Can you hear the crocodile tears hit the motorhome floor. I do plan on bringing the SD chip home with me though and hopefully our good friend Dave, who is the master of all things computer, can magically retrieve some of the lost and locked up photos inside (Yes, that was a “heads-up” Dave). Unfortunately however, this Post is therefore minus a few interesting photos that Margot was quite excited about of Budapest and the drive through Serbia and Macedonia. Just incase you are interested, At some point I will talk about the details of our basic camera and photo management in the Nuts & Bolts section.