A nightmare beginning for this trip

Hopefully it will improve but at the moment we feel we are in a nightmare trap.  We have found out to our horror that no rental car company in Greece allows you to hire a car to take out of Greece. Thankfully we found that we could hire a car in Albania and will be allowed to go to Montenegro and Croatia but not to Bosnia.  So we have booked a car from there for a fortnight and then will return to Greece and hire another car to do some of Greece.  The airline only allows hand luggage and you have to pay EU47 per piece of baggage you want to take with you.  We will fly to Tirana from Athens to pick up the car and start our journey.

Having done a lot of travel we have found the start of a journey problematic at various places.  We remember with equally bad memories the difficulty in obtaining car insurance in America as we were not residents. We overcame that.  Then we had the problem with the pink slip in our last week there and having to wait for it before being able to sell the motor home. We also dealt with that obstacle.

We hope that like on all our other trips, the problems are solved one by one and we end up having a wonderful holiday and great memories with the bad ones receding as we enjoy the journey. We need to always remember that the journey is the destination.

Setting off for the Balkans

We are now back from our wonderful, almost four months of travel around far north Qld and the NT, with Rob and Denny Dunsterville and are preparing for the next stage in our adventures this year - to the Balkans.  We set off on 4 September and meeting our NZ friends Mairi and Brian Fitzsimons in Athens on 6 September.  We are hiring a car together to travel through northern Greece to Albania, then to Montenegro, Bosnia/Herzegovina and Croatia as far as Split.  Then we will turn around and drive back to Athens, say goodbye to the Fitzes and fly off to Rhodes for a fortnight of our favourite bridge holiday with the Brits and the Scots.

For people who follow our blogs, watch this space.  We are flying China Air and having a stopover in Beijing both towards and back from Europe.  Once we arrive in Beijing and provided we have access to wi-fi, I will post some photos of Beijing.