Holy crap, guys. Istria is the BOMB! It is the northwestern region of Croatia, heavily influenced by Italy, and home of the largest truffle ever discovered. We spent four nights there, and we were sad when we had to leave. After a long day at Plitvice and driving, we arrived in Rovinj and settled into our apartment. Our host, Claudia, gave us a ton of restaurant suggestions, both local and throughout Istria. We told her we wanted to eat truffles…
After parting ways with our friends Eric and Lishan and beautiful Dubrovnik, we spent the good part of the next day making our way north to Zadar. We decided to stay in Zadar for 3 nights to explore the city and the two nearby national parks, Krka and Plitvice Lakes. We wasted no time getting out of town to Krka in the morning to check out the waterfalls and wildlife. We had two big observations of our visit there: Spring is just about to hit….
We were pretty psyched to head to Dubrovnik, the city that King’s Landing from Game of Thrones is based on. We weren’t disappointed. Dubrovnik is a beautiful city surrounded by beautiful water and mountains. Dubrovnik is located in a part of Croatia that is separated from the rest of Croatia by Bosnia and Herzegovina. We opted to take a bus down there, and we ended up getting to stop in B&H for ten minutes (cool!). After our four and a…
There’s not a ton of touristy stuff to do in Split during the winter, which is all the more reason to slow down and enjoy the place for what it is. We’d been looking forward to our stay at Le Meridien ever since my co-worker Dave recommended it last summer before our trip even began. Once we arrived into Croatia on the early morning ferry from Italy, we headed straight to the hotel and quickly made ourselves at home. Since…
We had been recommended to visit Puglia while in Italy, which is the region that is the “heel of the boot”. We had two nights after leaving Sicily before we needed to be in Ancona for our ferry to Croatia, so we decided we’d visit Bari. Bari is on the coast and houses the bones of Saint Nicholas. We made the long drive from Sicily (it took us about 8 hours with stops) and settled into our apartment in the…
We’ve had a chance to experience the Italian driver on our road trip. Drivers here go way too fast, they text while driving (which you’ll know because they go about half their normal speed when composing a message), they don’t stay in their lanes, they forget to switch off turn signals, they tailgate… I could go on. So after braving the overly narrow roads of the Amalfi Coast (and witnessing a pretty bad accident in our rear view mirror), we…
After our time in Roma, we picked up our sporty little rental car and headed down to Sorrento. Sorrento is known for limoncello, but also being in proximity to Naples, has very good pizza. We spent two nights there and enjoyed the food and the sights. The pizza was fantastic (we recommend Franco), the pasta was tasty, and we were introduced to the second best pastry in the world (next to cannoli, of course): sfogliatelle (“svoy-a-tella”), which has layers and…
It turns out flying to Europe from Australia takes a long time. In our case, 2 red-eye flights with a layover in Abu Dhabi, and 24 hours later we were in Rome. The good thing about travelling west, though, is that you become an early riser instantly due to the jetlag. Landing early in the morning, and seeing as we were in the neighborhood, we swung by good old Trevi Fountain on the way to our guesthouse. Normally the attraction is swarmed…
Before we even flew to New Zealand, we were required to have an outbound flight due to visa rules. We ended up having to do this at 4:30am before our flight to Auckland, so made a quick decision that we’d come back to Australia after our time in NZ and explore Sydney since Shawn’s never been. We arrived midday and checked into our Airbnb with our lovely hosts, Jessica & Ben and their amazing dog, Zoey, in the super hip neighborhood…
After two awesome weeks exploring New Zealand with Morgan in the campervan, we said our goodbyes to Sister Bear and Amanda and I continued our journey back to Auckland. We had arranged a relocation rental with Jucy, which meant that in exchange for bringing one of their cars from Christchurch to Auckland, our wheels for the journey were free, including a tank of gas and ferry crossing. The one thing we really wanted to do in NZ was the Tongariro…