OK, so it’s almost time to get back on the road after spending the past few weeks chilling out and recuperating in Kentucky. Early on Thursday afternoon we take a short flight to Baltimore before heading out across the Atlantic, via Iceland, to London Gatwick. Almost echoes what we did back in February, only this time Reykjavik is for just a few hours – it would have been nice to have an overnight stay as we missed out on puffin season back then.
As soon as we land on Friday its off to Newquay on the south coast for a friends wedding, something I’m super excited about as I haven’t seen a lot of the guests in many years. I know its going to be a messy event so Andrea and I have been gradually adding alcoholic drinks to our diet! After a quick three nights we head back to Gatwick where we fly to Geneva – this is where Andrea gets a weeklong vacation, at least if thats what hiking around Mont Blanc can be described as.
Our interim Eastern Europe/ Middle East Route
We begin just outside of Chamonix in the French Alps, and cover around 110 miles as we hike through France, Italy and Switzerland, hopefully arriving back in Chamonix by the following Sunday. The Easybus will not wait and we have to get back to Geneva to collect our next mode of transportation – a long term rental Peugeot 2008. Due to the 62 day duration it’s actually known as a buyback and ends up being far cheaper than renting through a regular company. Short term ownership of the car gives us a zero deductible fully comprehensive insurance policy for almost every country in Europe, something that makes me very happy after the way I’ve treated our personal vehicle, Going Broke, over the past year!
Sixty two days sounds like a long time but we have no idea how much of Europe we can cover in that length of time. The above map is a guide, and with the only reservations we have thus far being 2 nights in Munich for Octoberfest and tickets for a tour of Auschwitz, our itinerary is very open. There will also be the unpredictable European autumn weather to contend with.
Upon returning the Peugeot on November 20th we immediately fly to Athens, surprisingly a part of Greece that neither of us have visited, and hopefully void of tourists this late in the season. From there we’ll have around a month to see the sights and sounds of Greece and northern Turkey, leading us nicely up to Christmas. We’ll leave Istanbul to spend the holidays in England with my family and the New Year at Edinburgh’s Hogmanay celebrations, eventually arriving in Cyprus after a direct flight from Edinburgh. Making our way across the divided island will bring us to Turkish administered Northern Cyprus, and from there to mainland Turkey. Once back in the European/ Asian border country it looks like we’ll have a ton of things to do to keep us busy.
It’s kind of up in the air after that and I’m really hoping we have time to head to Israel and Jordan for a couple of weeks – the only constraint we have is that our flight home departs Frankfurt on March 4th, taking us not quite home, but to Cuba for 8 days and then through the Bahamas to Florida. Then the fun starts, with us having to move the contents of our 10×15 storage unit into a uhaul before the long drive north… (that is unless we’ve fallen in love with Istanbul or a whitewashed Greek island)
September 3rd 2015 – March 12th 2016
