Trip odds and ends and wrapping it up

Odds and ends about our trip, and some imparted wisdom. Also, money talk. 

• We flew on Norwegian Air and loved it. The plans for the trans-Atlantic flights were really nice, with screens at each seat loaded with movies we actually wanted to watch and some games. Food was decent, luggage arrived safely, flights were on time, and the tickets cost significantly less than other airlines. We would definitely fly on them again. Oddly, on both trans-Atlantic flights our crew was Asian. I checked several times to make sure we weren't somehow going to the wrong place. 
• Packing. Here are the clothes that I brought for myself: four shirts, two skirts, a pair of pants, a pair of leggings to wear with the skirts if it was cold, a sweater, a rain coat, a bathing suit, a pair of walking sandals, a pair of nicer sandals (never wore them), a pair of tennis shoes. I got some packing cubes and they were great. I felt like I totally aced the packing thing on this trip; I had just the right amount of clothes, and things all coordinated and mixed and matched and I never got bored. It was so nice to not have too much stuff to lug around. The only down side is that I am wearing pretty much the same outfit in almost all our photos, which who really cares (or notices other than me?).
• Here is the inside of one of the boys suitcases. The boys each brought a fleece, a bathing suit, a rain coat, a pair of water shoes, a pair of church clothes (pants and shirt), and four pairs of shorts and a matching shirts. It was the right amount of clothes. And we put their clothes in sets in gallon ziplock bags to store in their suitcases. This kept things organized in their bags and made getting dressed every morning super easy as there were always easy matching outfits for them to grab. 
  
• We brought this bag of solid laundry detergent pods with us, which was brilliant. They can't spill, they can't burst, and we didn't have to buy laundry detergent at every city we stopped at. 
• No denim allowed. We had to air dry our clothes almost everywhere we stayed, and quick drying clothes are essential. 
• We booked all our apartments on airbnb. There is always a risk factor; until we actually saw each apartment I was a bit nervous that it would be as advertised. But every one was at least adequate, and most pleasantly surprised me. I loved living in neighborhoods where real people lived and shopping at grocery stores and preparing some of our food at home. And it was essential for us to have a clothes washer easily accessible. I only booked apartments that had a decent number of positive reviews and it worked out great. Most were a bit further from the main attractions than I had envisioned when booking, but we made it work. 
• The question everyone wishes they could ask but doesn't: how much did it all cost. Money feels weird to talk about, but it is also one of the central issues when thinking about travel so I'm just going to put it all out there in case you're wondering if you could do something similar. Once we got to Europe, it cost $7400 for the 32 days. It broke down like this: $1680 on food, $840 on activities (entrance fees, tickets, etc), $1960 on transportation around Europe (transit tickets, car rental, tolls, gas), $200 on souvenirs and shopping, and $2720 on lodging. The Euro was relatively weak against the dollar while we were there, and that was a nice surprise. Getting to Europe is not cheap, but will be very variable for where you are travelling from. East coasters would have a big advantage there. We ended up driving 12 hours to LA to get cheaper plane tickets, but they still cost about $1100 each. (Note: on the Norwegian Air site, you could choose which currency to pay in. We looked at the cost in a bunch of different currencies, and for some strange reason there were large discrepancies in how many dollars it would cost us. We ended up saving almost $800 by paying in Polish zlotys instead of dollars. And it was totally on the up and up; we didn't have to do anything sneaky to make it look like we were in that country or anything.) So our total was around $14,000. I'm not going to tell anyone that $14,000 is not a lot of money, because it is. We saved money for several years and I teach classes largely to fund our travel. I'd think someone was crazy to put a trip like this, clearly an unnecessary luxury, on a credit card. And yet I think for us it was worth it; I'm glad we spent the money. And while it is a lot of money, if we had bought a nice truck a few years ago instead of a basic Subaru, or owned a boat or some four wheelers like many people do where we live, it wouldn't be that hard to spend that amount of money on other things. I have no problem with people spending money on things that they value, be it a truck or nice car or bigger house or whatever. But I do think if many people really wanted to forgo other things to travel, they could amass the money. 
• We were moderately frugal on the trip. I don't think we could have done the trip for much less money. We cooked a decent number of meals at home (note: I think grocery shopping for daily food in different places is one of the fun and informative experiences of travelling and shouldn't be neglected even if you've got money to burn.) We stayed in modest apartments on the outskirts of the most desirable areas. There were economies in scale in lodging, but food, transportation, and tickets still got multiplied by six people. Travelling with a gaggle of children is expensive and there weren't that many discounts for kids. And here's something important about a trip like this: it's going to cost more than you think it will when you're budgeting at home. If going over by a few hundred dollars on something here and there is going to crush your spirit, don't go. Stressing about every single penny can suck the joy out of a long trip like this. There are ten times a day you are going to have to spend money on things, and if it pains you every time it's not worth it. On the other hand, there were several things we just decided not to do because it was going to cost us like $100 and we didn't think it would be worth it, some of which are on some peoples' "must do" lists - Predjama Castle, Budapest parliament building, Szecenyi thermal baths in Budapest. It's a constant balance between pretending you are made of money and spending like crazy because everything is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, or travelling all the way to Europe and then not doing anything because you want to save money. 
• We primarily used Rick Steve's guidebooks. They were really useful and had great ideas. We did get the strong sense that they are written for rather outdoor adventure-averse people. Things that we wouldn't think twice about he often described as fairly treacherous; examples that comes to mind are swimming at Krka national park or Lake Bled. He was also a very poor judge of rating the difficulty of hikes. We found him a better judge of city experiences than the outdoors.
• We could drink tap water in all the places we visited. 
• A term I didn't know before our trip: schengen. Many European countries are "schengen," which means essentially that there are no borders between the countries. You show your passport when you enter a schengen country and then don't need to show it to go to another one. Hungary and Slovenia are schengen, Croatia and Bosnia are not. This was only an issue because when we got off the plane from LA in Oslo, there were two lines, one for people continuing to schengen countries and one for people not. We had no idea what they were talking about. 
• We didn't have working cell phones for our entire trip and it was fine. 
• Travelling with kids. Not sure what advice to give here. You should expect that your kids will have the capacity to be interested in interesting things. Ours love swimming and pretending that they are parkour stunt men when walking through cities. They are fairly underwhelmed by scenery. We never brought electronics with us when we were out exploring. They do much better when they are not hungry. They like figuring out public transportation and navigating us around. Ours had a hand game called 007 that they played when waiting for trains, etc that occupied them. Our kids were very loud and we were constantly telling them to keep it down both for common courtesy and to not draw too much attention to ourselves as American tourists. The four year old Ben got carried most everywhere by Nephi, but the others were good walkers. Your family dynamics and kids might be totally different. 

Feel free to ask me any other questions you might have, either in the comments here or in real life if you know me. 

Oslo and the trip home

We flew out of Dubrovnik in the early morning and had a six hour layover in Oslo. Not really enough time to see the city, but who knows when we'd ever be back? So we tried to see what we could anyway. We got some lunch at a traditional Norwegian place that the internet loved and strangely were literally the only people there. I was surprised that Norwegian food is very meat and potatoes, with some fish thrown in. Also, Norwegian food is very expensive.

Then we walked through the city to the National Muesum. We were there on a Sunday afternoon and the city seemed very, very quiet. Almost deserted. Is this normal for Oslo? I have no idea. I was only there for a few hours.

The National Museum was absolutely amazing, and we literally had like 25 minutes to see it all which was a total tragedy. We were like, "Boys! Look, it's a Rodin The Thinker statue! Stand by it!" *Click* "Ok, keep moving! Look, a Degas sculpture! Don't stop!"

The main draw it holds is one of Munch's The Scream paintings. We admired it (briefly, of course) but were not allowed to take photos in that room. Here's a recreation.

National Museum, I hope we can come see you again some day and give you proper due.

We did make it back to the airport in time for our flight home, which was a relief. The whole time in Oslo was rushed and a bit frantic and stressful, but I'm still glad we saw what we could.

We glanced out the window on the flight home and saw Greenland, which was very cool.

We flew into LA at sunset and caught the city looking surprisingly beautiful.

And we were home. Well, almost. Back in the US of A.

Everyday life

A few photos of our trip that remind me of quirks and our everyday life for a month.

Here is our luggage that we packed and lugged around a lot. Six roller bags and five backpacks, all with plenty of space in them. All our belongings for a month, and we never ran out of stuff. Why do we own so much stuff at home again?

On the plane ride there.

We spent a decent amount of down time in our apartments with the boys on screens. It's just how it was.

Did I mention I cooked squid one night? Yum.

Our apartment in Ljubljana.

Our apartment in Rovijn.

The gelato place in Trieste. Soo hard to choose.

Schweppes Bitter Lemon: delicious soda of choice. Strangely, not available in the US.

Everywhere we stayed had washers but no dryers (with one exception). Lots of air drying and strategizing about laundry.

Water shoes drying.

The lovely patio of our Dubrovnik apartment.

Breakfast staple: delicious fresh cheap bread with Nutella. I know we have Nutella it in the US now, but in the US it counts as a dessert. In Europe it is a no-guilt breakfast.

Also, chocolate cereal for breakfast. I mean, it is called "Muesli", not something dumb like Coco Puffs. Healthy European breakfast food.

Here was the van we rented for about two weeks. I thought we'd stand out driving such a big van, but there were lots of these vans everywhere we went.

Dubrovnik

Dubrovnik is a walled city on the Adriatic in Croatia. It is a major tourist destination and with good reason. It is really gorgeous.

The first thing we did in Dubrovnik was walk along the city walls, along with all the other million tourists. It gave us a nice overview, and we saw where people were jumping off some cliffs. Which was the second thing we did in Dubrovnik. And maybe the highlight of the whole trip for the boys. They were really high! And everyone else jumping off was, like, 25 years old. Isaac is eight and very brave.

I was pretty proud of my brave boys. Did I jump? Ummm, have you met me? No. Here are some more views from the walls:

This is how Ben spent most of our trip - on Nephi's shoulders.

The city itself is very lovely to wander through.

We discovered Cockta here, a Yugoslavian classic soda. It was really quite tasty!

One afternoon we spent swimming at this beach, just outside of the city walls.

One morning we took a boat to the nearby island Lokrum where the boys played tag in a hedge maze at an old monastery.

There was a small lake in the middle of the island where we swam for awhile. Joseph made a bunch of his signature cairns.

The island was full of wild, roaming peacocks, who are very loud birds. Joseph was not afraid to get right up in their face for a good photo.

We went to considerable trouble to get this photo of our family with Dubrovnik in the background here.

On our final day we hiked up the large hillside, Mount Srd, above the city to the old Napoleonic Fort Imperial at the top. There is an expensive cable car that you can take up there, but if you visit, my advice is don't take it. The free hike up is a steep 30 or 45 minute climb along a well marked path with really interesting stations of the cross relief sculptures along the way. We really enjoyed it. At the top is a museum about the siege of Dubrovnik, part of the same conflict that ensnared Sarajevo. The Serbs spent two months bombing the city, for no real reason other than to be big jerks (or so the museum said). The city is a cultural treasure and was of no strategic importance, and they did an enormous amount of damage. All the bright red roofs are ones that had to be replaced from the bombing, which was a good chunk of the city. The Croats held Fort Srd, however. There are great views from up there and we really enjoyed the morning.

That afternoon we packed, and on the last evening of our trip we enjoyed the beautiful city in the evening light and got some gelato.

The view at sunset from our bedroom window in the apartment we rented.

Dubrovnik was a beautiful end to our trip. It was heavily touristed but it didn't matter. The air and sea breezes felt good here, the city and sea were gorgeous, the apartment we rented was beautiful. I thought by this time of our trip I would feel worn out and bored, but I felt rested and re-energized by our few days here. We loved you, Dubrovnik.

Kotor

Our next big stop was Dubrovnik, but on the way we went a bit out of our way and spent a few hours seeing Kotor in Montenegro. The trip there was one of the wilder adventures of our trip. Before we left home I printed out detailed Google Maps directions on how to drive from city to city, as well as downloaded all the relevant maps onto our iPad. (Do you use the app City Maps to Go? We love it. You can download maps of apparently any area of the world and not have to worry about cell or internet reception. The maps have always been accurate for us and they saved us many times on this trip.) Turns out, if you're going to be driving in Europe, don't bother with Google Map directions. They tell you step by step what streets to turn on, and there was nowhere that we visited where they thought street names were important to label. Every intersection just told you what direction the next village or city lies, if there are any markers at all.

Well, getting out of Sarajevo at all was quite dramatic; it has city traffic and a non-Western flair for not being super into traffic rules. Also, not a lot of signage. But Nephi drove like a champ and we eventually headed out in what we were like 90% sure was the right direction, heading off for the wild hills of the Republic of Srbpska. This was really rugged, mountainous, beautiful country. The road was very windy and narrow, and drivers were not overly concerned with staying in their lane around turns. For some long stretches we weren't really sure where we were or if we had missed a turn, and it was all a bit exciting. Eventually we made it to the border with Montenegro, which was almost comically strange. We were driving along a two lane road wondering if were were going the right way when suddenly in almost the middle of nowhere the border station appeared, a tiny little building adjoining a covered station that looked like a big truck had rammed into it at some point with supports that were all crooked and buckled. I thought about taking a photo but really didn't want to do anything at all that might agitate the border patrol people. So we handed our passports over to some men with guns who disappeared with them for awhile before reappearing and handing them back and shooing us through. But I felt at that moment how vulnerable we were. (And this reminds me of the time we bribed the Bosnian police a few days earlier! Apparently it is illegal to drive in Bosnia without your headlights on. We got pulled over by someone who spoke no English. He was completely uninterested in our rental car papers or drivers licenses or anything. It was very confusing until Nephi pulled out five Euros and he waved us on our way.)

Anyway, we finally made it to Kotor, and it was just as stunning as advertised. You can see how deep the Bay of Kotor is, with the town at the very back. It was a very secure place.

The whole bay is flanked by steep mountains. Fjords, really.

The town itself is directly against a steep mountainside and has amazing city walls that surround the town and go up the mountain.

You can see from the photos that the weather wasn't great; there was some rain and clouds as we arrived, so we decided to get some lunch and hopefully wait it out.

The rain got CRAZY while we were eating - a total downpour, with incredibly dramatic claps of thunder and lightning. The whole town is made of beautiful white (non-permeable) stone, and with all the rain the streets just became rivers of water. It was quite an experience!

But the rain passed eventually and things cleared up for us to wander around the city a bit. It was really a beautiful place. But it did feel like a 100% cruise ship stop. In fact, there was an enormous cruise ship parked right next to the town that seemed like it was about as large as the town itself. I thought it detracted from the experience.

We went into a few churches with really interesting art.

And that was the end of our afternoon in Kotor. But not the end of the adventures in driving! We decided to drive around the other side of the bay on the way to Dubrovnik. The guide book did warn that the road was a bit narrow, and yes indeed it was! I was absolutely AMAZED by Nephi's maneuvering our large van along these streets with the bay literally one foot off the edge of the road on our right, large vans and cars and trucks coming at us in the other lane clipping along at 40 mph, unconcerned pedestrians everywhere with what seemed like an abundance of baby strollers, and a stone wall along the other edge of the street. Wow, it was intense. But Nephi was unphased. And then we took a ferry across the bay and had a relatively uneventful drive to our final stop: Dubrovnik.