The Far Southwest: Greek and North Macedonian Border Villages Our first day trip from Sandanski took us around an hour southwest of the city where we would collide with Greece and North Macedonia, weave in and out of more than a dozen modest villages, bear witness to dazzling carpets of ruby red poppies, and climb to a significant medieval stronghold…
The Extraordinary Village of Melnik To celebrate Greg’s 47th birthday, we chose to have an overnight escape to the seductive teacup-of-a-town called Melnik, which we first visited on a whirlwind hour-long dash and drink in 2019, thanks to the inconvenient buses we had to catch from Blagoevgrad. This time, catching a direct bus from Sandanski, we were thrilled to spend more…
Day One: Kovachevitsa, Leshten, Gotse Delchev & Ognyanovo It didn't take long to realize that Sandanski may be slightly more challenging when it comes to public transportation than other parts of Bulgaria, so in order to get to the other side of the Pirin Mountains and continue to have our freedom, we rented a second car for another overnight SW…
From Sandanski, it was time to head 9 hours northeast to our next one month perch in Plovdiv, which we’d be splitting between a private apartment and a housesit. Now, one might look at this nine-hour chunk of time and think…that’s absurd in a country the size of Iowa. It kind of is, considering we weren’t even crossing half of it.…
Bulgaria's "Little Jerusalem" Gem of Asenovgrad Only 25 minutes by train southeast of Plovdiv, settled at the foot of the Rhodope Mountains one can find a small city of 50,000 known as “Little Jerusalem,” due to its more than 100 religious sites in and around the town. What was originally a Thracian settlement, it was named after Tsar Ivan Asen…
Day One: Plovdiv to Smolyan (Including: Bachkovo, Orehovo, Mogilitsa, Gordo Canyon, & Ustovo) From Plovdiv, we settled on a plan to take an exploratory trip south to tackle some of the sights and villages in the gorgeous Rhodope Mountains, which we can now say, is arguably the most fetching and varied of Bulgaria’s four major mountain chains. The day began by…
Before we would depart on our third and final road trip in NZ, we had three nights to sleep in a real bed and relax a bit in Christchurch. By this time, however, we were already growing quite fatigued of the fast travel we’d been under for the previous two months. While in Christchurch, we stayed in a budget-thrashing shared…
Day One: Christchurch to Marfells Beach Campsite (~4 hours) Our third and culminating roadie in New Zealand was much anticipated because we finally ditched our tent and camping supplies we’d been hauling around since we first found it as street candy in Melbourne and lovingly collected at NZ’s opp shops. On March 8, we fetched an all-in-one adorably packaged Jucy…
