Since I've now heard a few times, in person and through the grapevine, about how my blogposts were missed I will attempt to give some glimpses into my trip. Traveling on your own certainly affords more "downtime" to blog, but when you have a traveling companion the concentrated time required seems a bit rude.
When I booked our Grand Balkan adventure in October of 2019 I was anticipating getting 4 passport stamps and visiting an area of the world of which I knew very little. Touted as a "13-day odyssey through Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, and Macedonia" that would give us a look at the region's most impressive sights, it sounded perfect. One of the things I enjoy about Group Tours is that the tour guides are a wealth of information - from culture, to history, to personal stories and experiences, they are a huge asset when visiting another country (if you came to learn, that is). As many of you know, the pandemic was blamed time-and-again for the cancelation of our tour. They would postpone and I would buy another set of plane tickets, then they would do it again. I have refused to add up all the money I have spent on a tour that never materialized, it would have been far too depressing. When they cancelled again in March of 2022, my aunt and I had both decided we were done. They continued to refuse to return our money and they would only offer travel vouchers, but since our plane tickets were still valid we were stuck. When I saw that they had a self-driving tour of Croatia (only Croatia, not the Balkans), we concurred that this was our best option at this stage of their little game. We had to pay more money, which was nearly unthinkable, but we felt desparate to get out of their clutches so we did it anyway and had them book our rental car and hotels for us.
After many delays and email exchanges we finally got all of our vouchers with less than a week before our departure (can you tell how incredibly disgusted I was with them by this point?). It was then that I realized the company with which I'd booked our tour is more of a travel broker. The vouchers were from a completely different company (in Slovenia), so the tour wasn't their tour, hence they had no control over whether it operated or not! But enough about our travel woes, we had a plan and we were packed and ready on May 23rd for whatever the trip might bring. The bright spot was that the week before our trip Croatia decided to waive all Covid Restrictions! No testing or vaccincations required, no masks, just live your life. Since we transited through Germany there were Covid restrictions on the journey to and from (the U.S. didn't remove their testing-to-return requirements until the week after we returned), but once there it was smooth sailing.
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