Home again
18 days later, I'm back home.
To get to Paris, Manning and I took a bus from Sarajevo at 10pm on August 16. We arrived in Split (Croatia) at 4:30am on August 17. After watching the sunrise over the water, we took a bus to the airport in Split, where we waited a few hours to take a 9:30am flight to Bratislava (Slovakia). By the time we had our bags and felt organized, we decided to give up on doing anything productive with our 5-hour layover (like seeing the city, for instance), and ate lunch at the airport instead. With enough coffee and reading supplies, the layover was really no big deal, especially since we got to sit in a nice grassy area for a few hours.
We took at 5:15pm flight to Paris and made it in the apartment around 8:30pm. It was somewhat painful to get up for work this morning at 8:30am (I did sleep on the plane and bus, but only in small pieces), but I'm actually glad I did it. I felt happy to walk around Paris again, and got excited that there are new flowers on the trees, new things to look at, and an entire city of closed restaurants and galleries (that will remain that way until the end of the month).
Almost every single day of the trip, I remarked (sometimes out loud, and sometimes to myself) that I was living the best days of my life. Every new place and every plan exceeded all my expectations, and it was wonderful to have all that time with Manning to just enjoy ourselves and not worry about work or anything else. I climbed castles, swam in clear water, ate and drank everything that was offered, hitchhiked a bit, saw a waterfall, climbed an actual pyramid, visited a small town Bosnian village fair by accident, and even had the time to become a bit of a regular at a Sarajevo coffee shop. The hospitality was overwhelming, and the feeling of being safe was something I couldn't get over. You really can take a bus to a small city or town, have someone approach you offering a room in their house, and pay a few bucks for a decent night of sleep without even once thinking it might be a bad idea to get into a stranger's car and be driven to some random home they assure you is a good part of town. That really exists!
There are many stories to tell, and pictures to share. And as always, it's wonderful to be home in Paris. Especially because in Paris I have so many more shoes! Oh man, 17 days with only flat sandals for a footwear option made me want to put on my 4-inch platform boots to do my walking tour today (I wore sneakers instead).
To get to Paris, Manning and I took a bus from Sarajevo at 10pm on August 16. We arrived in Split (Croatia) at 4:30am on August 17. After watching the sunrise over the water, we took a bus to the airport in Split, where we waited a few hours to take a 9:30am flight to Bratislava (Slovakia). By the time we had our bags and felt organized, we decided to give up on doing anything productive with our 5-hour layover (like seeing the city, for instance), and ate lunch at the airport instead. With enough coffee and reading supplies, the layover was really no big deal, especially since we got to sit in a nice grassy area for a few hours.
We took at 5:15pm flight to Paris and made it in the apartment around 8:30pm. It was somewhat painful to get up for work this morning at 8:30am (I did sleep on the plane and bus, but only in small pieces), but I'm actually glad I did it. I felt happy to walk around Paris again, and got excited that there are new flowers on the trees, new things to look at, and an entire city of closed restaurants and galleries (that will remain that way until the end of the month).
Almost every single day of the trip, I remarked (sometimes out loud, and sometimes to myself) that I was living the best days of my life. Every new place and every plan exceeded all my expectations, and it was wonderful to have all that time with Manning to just enjoy ourselves and not worry about work or anything else. I climbed castles, swam in clear water, ate and drank everything that was offered, hitchhiked a bit, saw a waterfall, climbed an actual pyramid, visited a small town Bosnian village fair by accident, and even had the time to become a bit of a regular at a Sarajevo coffee shop. The hospitality was overwhelming, and the feeling of being safe was something I couldn't get over. You really can take a bus to a small city or town, have someone approach you offering a room in their house, and pay a few bucks for a decent night of sleep without even once thinking it might be a bad idea to get into a stranger's car and be driven to some random home they assure you is a good part of town. That really exists!
There are many stories to tell, and pictures to share. And as always, it's wonderful to be home in Paris. Especially because in Paris I have so many more shoes! Oh man, 17 days with only flat sandals for a footwear option made me want to put on my 4-inch platform boots to do my walking tour today (I wore sneakers instead).