I left Uzice and headed off to explore the southwest corner of Serbia. I drove through some really amazing mountains on some really fun, twisty and turning roads. My tiny little booger car has turned out to be a fun ride. I also have to say that Serbia has turned out to be a lot prettier than I expected. This place is downright beautiful! For this portion of my trip, I chose Novi Pazar as my base. Serbia is somewhat…
I left Donji Milanovac fairly early and drove through the beautiful Serbian countryside south. It seems that most of the big highways in Serbia are toll roads, so I’ve been sticking more to the back roads and passing through lots of smaller one road towns. Now that I’m out of the big cities I see a lot more Yugos on the roads and parked around. I thought briefly about stopping to take a pic of each one, but I wouldn’t…
It was a fairly long travel day leaving Novi Sad. First, a mile and a half walk to the bus station followed by an hour or so bus ride back to Belgrade. Then a half mile walk to a bus stop where I rolled the dice and took a free ride across town (shhh!). And then I did something I always swore I wouldn’t do, I rented a car. Most of the places I want to go visit these next…
Just a quick one hour bus ride northwest of Belgrade is lovely Novi Sad, the capitol of Vojvodina, the autonomous province in the northern part of Serbia. It has all the beautiful architecture and cobblestone streets, but without the loud hustle and bustle of Belgrade. I arrived in the early afternoon, checked into my hotel and started exploring. Shortly after setting off it started raining, a lot! I was pretty soaked by the time I stopped for dinner, but at…
Holy crap… I’m at it again! I can’t believe it’s been a year and a half since my last international trip! What is a wanderer with cabin fever to do while waiting for the rest of the planet to come to their senses? This wanderer just said “whatever” and now, holy crap… I’m in the Balkans! At the time of planning, two of the countries I’m visiting on this trip were only two out of the six in the world…
Lebanon is a pretty small country, and for that reason it’s easier just to base yourself in Beirut, which is right in the middle, and do day trips from there, so that’s exactly what I did. After exploring the city itself and some of the interior I spent the rest of my time exploring some of the historic towns along the coast, a coastline of which every inch is developed and inhabited. There’s really no clear division from one town…
Greetings from Lebanon! I’ve left the relative calm oasis of Jordan and landed in loud, fast paced, chaotic Beirut. The very first thing I noticed about this place is that the Lebanese are hands down the most insane drivers in the world. No joke! The taxi ride from the airport to my hotel was absolutely terrifying. It’s gas all the way to the floor or brake all the way to the floor, weaving around everyone and everything, and three times…
After an easy ride from Feynan, provided by my hotel, I landed in the town of Wadi Musa, a town that apparently was largely built up only due to it’s proximity to Petra. Lots of hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops, tour buses, selfie sticks, you get the idea. My head was still pounding from my hikes in Dana and Feynan so I pretty much went straight to bed and slept all day and through the night after taking some “Jordanian herbs”…
As I said in my previous post, Karak is just a quick one night stop for me on my way south. I woke up early in Madaba and had to first take a bus back to Amman and then transfer to a bus heading to Karak. It was all fairly easy to accomplish, though I get strange looks and genuine confusion from locals when they find out I want to take the bus instead of paying a small fortune for…
A couple of easy buses from Irbid and now I’m in Madaba, just a bit southwest from Amman. Madaba is a fairly quiet town and has the largest population of Christians in Jordan. That’s not to say the Muslims don’t have a presence though. Every morning the Imam’s call to prayer can be heard everywhere as in most towns, but here it’s immediately followed by the ringing of the church bells. Most of the sites and cities throughout the region,…