Alright folks, there are still a few more stops before we get back to hiking. We are still on the circuit between Prague, Vienna, and Budapest, and somehow we still gotta make it all the way to Stockholm after that before we can get back on the trail. There’s lots to see though, as Eastern Europe is a wacky place of fallen empires and inexplicably large palaces. We got just a few days to see it all, so hold onto your butts and get ready for some Habsburgs. To get to Vienna we took an afternoon bus direct from Prague, arriving late to our Airbnb. Like usual, we just let Google guide us to a nearby cheap restaurant. Unlike usual, what we chose was in the middle of what looked like a permanently installed County Fair. We weren’t brave enough for any of the rides, but it was still a fun place to wander around for the evening. In the morning, we set out on our inevitable free walking tour of downtown. Vienna is truly a fascinating place, with a great mixture of secular buildings, religious monuments, and staggeringly arrogant Habsburg palaces. Some highlights from the tour include the exterior […]
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Basel and Prague Before our arrival in Basel, we considered it to be little more than a rest stop with an airport. Our plan in visiting was simply to recover from our disappointing hike of the Westweg while we waited for our flight to Prague, where we thought the real fun would begin. Accordingly, we knew absolutely nothing about the city except for its location on the map and that it had a campground where we could stay our first night. From Kandern, we took a bus to Lorrach and a train onward to Basel itself, and on the train was the first time we opened up our guidebook to the “Basel” section. With all this in mind, imagine the looks of surprise on our smelly, dirty faces, when we arrived to find an attractive and cosmopolitan city waiting for us. On the short trip from the train station to our campsite we crossed over the border from Germany to France, rode the efficient tram system, and passed all manner of international cuisine and shops. Of course, taking a shower was the highest priority once we checked in at camp, but right after that we were pulling out the guidebook
We are well rested and fully resupplied after our fabulous visit to Stuttgart, now it’s time to get back on the trail. This time we plan to hike a section of the Westweg, Germany’s oldest and (perhaps) best known trail. We don’t expect this to be a high elevation, flashy hike like the TMB through the Alps, but we do expect beautiful hiking through the Black Forest. For those who don’t know, the Black Forest is The enchanted forest, best known for inspiring the Brothers Grimm to write stories like Hansel and Gretel, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White, on top of a whole host of other fairy tales and mysteries. At the end of this magical path lies the Swiss border city of Basel where yet more adventure awaits. So grab your bread crumbs and hold onto your butts, we got a train to catch. The train to Hausach, of course! Well, 3 trains actually, and the first one was so delayed that we missed our connection and spent 2 hours sitting in the desolate little town of Herrenberg waiting. Then on the second train a very stoned Hungarian took my seat and tried to sell me some ecstasy, but
Well, the TMB was fabulous and everything but all that climbing was a lot of work – time for a break! Luckily the magical land of Switzerland is right next door, where all the hiking has been replaced by chair lifts and, instead of a smelly backpack, there’s shopping for high end fashion accessories and complicated folding knives. So hold onto your butts and get your credit cards out, we’re going to the land of Neutrality! First stop is the famous little town of Interlaken. There’s no direct route to Interlaken from Chamonix so to get there we started with a bus to Geneva. Going from Chamonix to Geneva is kind of like going from a resort town to a resort capital. Both are exclusive, expensive, and everything looks like either a bank or ski lodge, Geneva is just bigger. We only spent a few hours in downtown Geneva, which has a pretty harbor with a well placed fountain. We also had lunch at some Swiss hipster cafe with two sandwiches for $40. Yes, $40. This is our life now. After our overpriced lunch we headed for the train station and on to Interlaken. To our regret we found out
Hello family, friends, and fervently loyal super fans! We are back in Atlanta! We had a wonderful trip and so many great experiences – from high mountains to ancient cities and every form of public transport in between. We have been spent weeks without a shower in depravity, and weeks in luxury and comfort. In the end we visited 16 countries! In order – United Kingdom, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Sweden, Norway, Japan, South Korea, and finally Taiwan. Thank you to each and every one of you who followed along with our travels. So many people left us kind messages of encouragement or shared their own experiences, and we really appreciate all the positive feedback. Jon and I get excited every time we get a message and get reminded someone actually reads our stuff. As you know, we have a lot of catching up to do on this blog. I just posted about our hike of the Tour Du Mont Blanc – but that was way back in July! But rest easy because more posts are coming and we eventually plan to record our entire trip here on the blog. At
Tour Du Mont Blanc Alright, listen up you day hikers! This is the big one! The top hike on all the top hike lists. You’d better pack your courage alongside your tea kettle – it’s so serious Jon even had to leave his Dora the Explorer pack behind. This is the Alps now, not some damn Scottish Highlands pub crawl! The TMB is 112 miles, has 35000ft of elevation gain and loss, and spans 3 countries. It’ll wear you out faster than you can check into your glamorous mountain “hut”, conveniently located every 5 or 6 miles along the trail. So hold onto your butt, dear reader, cause that giant Asian hiking group is faster than they look and you’ll be embarrassed if they all pass you on the climb. France We began our TMB hike in the classic spot, going in the classic direction, with clear blue skies and high spirits. Which is to say we began in Les Houches going clockwise and it was hotter than hell and real steep right away. From Les Houches, the first climb is a steady 700m to overlook the Chamonix valley. It was so hot, Jon even took his shirt off at
Carcassonne and Nice, Without a Clue Episode 2 Welcome, once again, to a delightful unplanned detour of two profoundly different cities. After getting off the short-but-sweet GR92 on the Spanish coast, the land of baguettes awaited. Originally, we had planned to simply catch a train from Portbou to Nice on the French Riviera, but we got off the trail too late in the day and the train ride was too long. So, we resolved to find a stopover point between the two for the night and continue on to Nice the next day. To that end, we pulled up our map of Southern France and promptly discovered we knew absolutely nothing about Southern France. There was only a tiny number of places we could even pronounce, and among them there was just one that we had heard of – Carcassonne. So hold onto your butt, dear reader, cause the only thing we know about Carcassonne we learned from a board game about gentrifying the French countryside. We rolled into Carcassonne in the evening by train. That night we did little but drink wine in public and walk to our campground, and even that simple plan took us past the castle.
GR-92 Sometime during Sitges Pride, in those periods of recovery in the Airbnb, I began watching the webcams in the Spanish Pyrenees and scheming my hiking schemes. My ingenious plan was that after celebrating pride on the beach, Jon and I would make our way north thru Spain to the mountains and hike a section of the mighty GR-11, which crosses the whole Pyrenees range. Over the days I picked out a section, made a plan to get there, and it looked down right glorious. But then one fateful morning, to my utter disbelief, against my sincerely held wishes, and with absolute contempt for my ingenuity, all the webcams showed either complete white out or, better yet, fresh snow. Fresh snow. In the middle of June. Ever the pragmatist, I cursed global warming for a hoax and abandoned all my careful schemes – ain’t nobody got gear for that. So it was that with only the barest suggestion of advanced planning, guided by just a few obscure blog posts, we generated an entirely new plan on the fly to hike a little known trail called the GR-92. The trail extends nearly the whole length of the southern Spanish coast, but
All right folks, say a fond dovidenja to eastern Europe and say a big ole’ bonjourno to western Europe. We didn’t plan to visit either of these cities from the start so what follows is our rather improvised exploration. Hold onto your butt, dear reader, we are headed to the Schengen Zone. P.S – for the sake of record, we also stayed a night in Rijeka, Croatia on the way from the Croat coast to inland Slovenia. It was really just to line up the bus schedules and we arrived late and left early, so not much of consequence occurred. Ljubljana Our first day in Ljubljana was a gear and personal maintenance day. We were so dirty from hiking in Croatia that we had to pre-wash our clothes by hand in the sink before washing them again in the machine, and the procedure needed to clean Jon’s shoes was down right industrial. We took a few incidental pictures just hanging out in downtown, but out first day in Ljubljana wasn’t very touristy. The following day, refreshed and (relatively) clean, we returned to our regular programming and found a free walking tour. We learned a little about Slovenian history and explored
Hiking Velebit Mountains Welcome to the Dinaric Alps! (or Velebit Mountains, as the Croats call them). To get here from Dubrovnik it’s easy – you just take an 11 hour regional bus from Dubrovnik to Senj, take a local bus back down the coast, hitchhike up into the mountains, and then hike several hours and a couple thousand vertical feet on a barely marked trail in the rain – and you’ll find yourself, conveniently, at what you hope is the trailhead. Then, from there, follows our tale of chasing rainbows Southbound through Velebit. As a brief reminder, the Dinaric Alps are a Southeastern spur of the main Alps heading right down parallel to the coast of the Adriatic, just a handful of miles from the water. They are much shorter and less traveled than, say, the French Alps, but thanks to that we were able to hike in May with only a few sections still in the snow and almost nobody else around. So hold onto your butt, dear reader, cause the Slavs do things a little different in the backcountry. Day 1 – Road to Zavizan Hut, ~5 trail miles As mentioned, getting here proved a bit of a