All Aboard the Cargo Ship
by Sheila on 21 Aug, 2014 - 2 comments
On August 8th, we set out to arrange our passage across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan. In what retrospectively may have been a poor idea, we walked in blazing heat to the cargo port of Baku (not the same as the ferry port: much further from our hotel and certainly more seedy) where we encountered […]
Oil Money
by Sheila on 15 Aug, 2014 - 2 comments
So far, we’ve been pretty lucky with border crossings. They’ve been fairly efficient and drama-free. Azerbaijan decided to break that trend. Reaching the Georgia-Azerbaijan border wasn’t difficult. Getting through was a challenge of patience – one I ultimately failed. Mom passed with flying colours. Here’s to hoping patience can be acquired over time?? The Georgia […]
Road rules? What rules?!
by Sheila on 08 Aug, 2014 - 3 comments
I never had a good image in my mind of what Georgia is like. In recent history, Georgia’s only impact came with the Russian conflict precisely 6 years ago. My first impression of Tbilisi itself came when then President Saakashvili kept airing live statements beseeching President Bush to send Georgia more military aid. In the […]
Rocks and trees and trees and rocks
by Sheila on 06 Aug, 2014 - 4 comments
Apologies for the lack of updates lately! We’ve been putting in some serious driving hours, and by the time we get to our destination with WiFi our brains are boiled. Time to catch up on Turkey: While in Istanbul, we saw that at least five other teams were in the city intending to visit the […]
Istanbul, not Constantinople
Knock on wood, all the border crossings we’ve had to go through so far have been relatively painless. Crossing into Turkey from Bulgaria, the border was fairly empty and we got everything sorted in about an hour. We told one border official that we were travelling through to Mongolia, and he just shook his head. […]
Bulgaria: Highway to the DANGER ZONE
Upon entering Bulgaria from Romania, we were not greeted with what could be considered the warmest welcome ever. Immediately, we were struck with crumbling reminders of Soviet life and how little the Bulgarian countryside had managed to move forward since. Given the fact that we were driving hours away from the much nicer capital of […]
Paradoxical Bucharest
Backing up to 3 days ago, we decided to take a day to explore what Bucharest had to offer. Unfortunately, the day was extraordinarily hot & humid, so we limited our sightseeing to a hop-on hop-off tour bus that we didn’t hop off of. Bucharest cemented our opinion of Romania as a “confused” country, in […]
Climbing the Transfagarasan
by Sheila on 28 Jul, 2014 - 3 comments
Yesterday, we drove from Sibiu to Bucharest via the now famous Transfagarasan Highway. There is no better way to enjoy 2500m mountains than with hairpin turns going uphill (though Mom’s knees could argue otherwise). Though the mountains were packed with picnickers and tourists driving through, the sheer vastness of the surroundings made the number of […]
Fresh-baked Bread: The Great Seductor
by Sheila on 27 Jul, 2014 - 2 comments
When we entered Slovenia and paid a visit to our friends Darja & Sašo in the little village of Oplotnica, we originally intended to stay for a day. Some cajoling and a barrel of homemade meals later, we found ourselves staying in Slovenia for three days. It was time very well spent! With eternal thanks […]
Pit Stop in Slovenia
by Sheila on 24 Jul, 2014 - 6 comments
A few things have happened since our last post! First, despite the fact that fixing the car used up one of our days in Prague, we did fit in some sightseeing. Such a shame that we didn’t get a chance to see everything, but we hope to come back one day. Prague is beautiful: The […]