K- The theme of our final few blogs is basically going to be the same - ancient and medieval cities, beautiful countryside, local markets and good food and wine. I could really just cut and paste the place names. However, for our own historical record I will continue to blog as accurately as possible. Our first stop after leaving Colondannes was La Rochelle, a seaport on the Bay of Biscay and an important harbor since the 12th century. It is a pretty town with beautifully maintained architecture and impressive fortifications. As we so often do we spent the evening walking around before enjoying a kir or two. We then retired to a traditional French Irish bar to watch Euro 2012 - another great thing about being here was to follow the football in countries that cared ... read more

K- I studied French at school between the ages of 11 and 18 but to say I was rusty would be an understatement. However, we were about to spend 5 weeks en France and I was determined to dust myself off. First stop therefore was French school. My chosen destination for this potential humiliation was Montpellier (yes, autotext - the French one is spelled this way!), the capital of Languedoc-Roussillon. It is a very pleasant city on the coast of the South of France with a huge student body (around 70,000) and approximately 16 language schools! My chosen establishment was Ecole Klesse. And to immerse myself more thoroughly I was to stay with a host family. Ulp. Both decisions were fantastic ones and I thoroughly enjoyed my time here. Classes were fun and relaxed with a ... read more

K - our final overnight ferry of the trip brought us from Split to Venice which fully lived up to its hype. Yes it was crowded and packed with tourists but despite this I found that St Marks Square and the Grand Canal fully lived up to their billing. We didnt go into the Doge's Palace, we were just too cultured out, but instead spent hours walking around the small streets finding little bars selling cicchetti (Italian style tapas) and spritz (a campari and prosecco cocktail). This is the type of culture we really enjoy. On Day 2 we took the vaporetti over to the Lido which has a very different vibe to Venice. We didn't sit on the beach there but took a look and it was completely empty. Given the number of sunloungers I ... read more

K- We visited Sarajevo in late May and found it a real multicultural city with an actual demarcation on the pavement in the Old Town (Stari Grad) between "East" and "West"! The 15th Century market area in the "East" town of (Baščaršija) originally had over 12,000 shops crammed in to a tiny area. There are still several hundred today along with many restaurants selling the local speciality foods such as cevabi (spiced meatballs served with flatbread, sour cream and onion). In many ways we got the East meets West flavour we had expected in Istanbul but didnt really get - probably because Stari Grad is much smaller and more compact. For many years Sarajevo was of course infamous as "war torn" or "beseiged". It is easy to see why it was possible to beseige the city ... read more

K- It only takes about 4 hours to go all the way up the Montenegro coast from Albania to Croatia so we decided to base ourselves in Budvar, a beach town about half way up the country and do some day trips. My definition of luxury after a year of traveling is spending more than one night in a hotel (closely followed by a backpack of clean laundry) so the fact that we could spend 3 nights in one place immediately endeared Montenegro to me. We didn’t know much about Montenegro before we got there but found it have a lovely coastline and some small, walled cities which are common in this area. The photos pretty much speak for themselves. We did not explore the interior because we had just made it back from the Albanian ... read more