200 Day Summary
Another 100 days have gone by already. John and I visited all of the Balkan countries, which wasn't our initial plan, but we were so impressed by each one that we wanted to see them all. Our plans have changed many times and that has kept our travels exciting and new! We have had many challenges, but nothing we couldn't face and laugh about after. Our patience has grown tremendously and we just let everything fall into place! I personally have started to take more risks and have tried out some adventure activities, such as paragliding and flying in a hot air balloon (but I am still a nervous plane flyer.) These were once in a lifetime opportunities, which we would not want to regret! In the last 100 days we have been to 13 more countries (1 unrecognized), taken 11 more flights, 41 bus rides, 13 train rides, 11 car rides, hitchhiked 10 times and travelled on 1 more boat. We have slept in 46 more beds, and have participated in 2 wine tours. We fortunately have only had to pay a total of $2.90 so far to go to public bathrooms and have supported our banks with 19 cash withdrawal ATM fees!
Albania was different from any of the Balkan countries we had seen. It is a hidden gem full of beautiful places. Berat, the city of a thousand windows is quite unique. Albanias coastline is becoming touristy and is ready to show Croatia what beautiful beach towns should look like. We enjoyed both beach towns with their white, sandy beaches full of friendly domestic travelers.
We tried escaping to Serbia from every possible direction. It made no sense from Montenegro, was not allowed from Kosovo and there weren't any cool places around the Macedonian border, but we found an entry point from Bulgaria, to our surprise. We visited Niš, the birthplace of Constantine the Great, instantly liked the place and stayed a few nights to see more of it. We saw a concentration camp, shopped around the local markets and enjoyed the friendly locals.
Bulgarians that we met were rude and aggressive at times to tourists, but it's easy to generalize when only staying at a couple places. Sofia was unattractive in many ways so we escaped to the overrun beach resort town of Sunny Beach for a week. The pool at the hostel was exactly what we wanted and we spend many days just laying around. We also finally got to see Armin van Buuren a trance artist, perform right on the beach until the early morning hours.
Egypt was supposed to ease us into Africa and we got the whole experience. John got his Scuba Diving certificate in the chill town of Dahab, by the Red Sea and Ashleigh got to see the amazing underwater world as well, by snorkeling. We relaxed at a nice resort, before taking on Cairo, Africa's biggest city. We couldn't last longer than four days, but met some friendly locals and saw the Giza Pyramids. To get a break from the big city we headed as far south as we could to take in sights along the Nile, including Abu Simbel near Sudan and the town of Aswan. We spoiled ourselves to an overnight luxury cruise down the Nile to Luxor, where many more temples and tombs required our attention. To sum it up we flew over the city in a hot air balloon and took a romantic ride on the Nile in a felucca sail boat.