Red Clogs here, reporting in from Belgrade, Serbia, en route to my beloved Vienna. But today’s featured destination is actually a lesser-known place 250 miles east of here….Bulgaria – where I just spent a memorable 8 days.
There are things that go together – a nap in a hammock, mountain goats on rocky inclines and peanut butter and jelly. Or Fluff. Or Nutella.
There are also things that definitely do not go together – snow angels in summertime, knee replacements and stilettos, ice cream sundaes with fish sauce.
Two things which should never be paired are red clogs and a frozen tundra encircled by a furious sea. And yet they were. And yet they were.
To ring in 2024, the Red Clogger made her way down, down, down to the world’s southernmost city.
Japan is decked out in full autumn foliage as the red clogs transit across the island of Honshu. We’re winding down our global travel lollapalooza and due to an Airline Situation, we have added 3 days which officially brings us to…Around the World in 90 days!
It’s my fourth visit to Japan, and the goal for this final segment was to take in the vibrant fall colors, disappear into the mountains (balancing out bustling Seoul and Tokyo), and explore new places that were not overrun with tourists.
It’s day 6 of a one week visit to Uzbekistan and I’m on the Afrosiab train criss-crossing the country from Bukhara to Tashkent via Samarkand. I could be on Amtrak except that the landscape is different – first desert-like, now more trees and lots of black cows, brown and white horses and occasional herds of goats. I see people picking cotton in the fields. Oh, and there’s the added benefit that the train staff keeps coming by to offer tantalizing treats – fresh fruit cups, strawberry or vanilla ice cream, and a cart loaded with snacks like Pringles, Lays, and Milka chocolate.
Hello from 10,000 feet altitude in Jebal Akhdar, Oman. Much cooler up here – a mere 83 degrees – than the 105 (feels like 115) that we experienced yesterday in the Wahiba Sands desert.
One consistency about our “Around the World in 86 days” trip is that each day seems to whiz by in a flash of impressions and experiences. There is so little down time. I’ve missed writing to you about Greece and Qatar (both of which were high points), so I will have to get back to those. But for today, I want to tell you about Oman. And to shake things up, we’ll have a little Q&A.
Today’s update on Croatia features something new and different – partial support from a guest writer who is sharing the red clogs. With all good intentions, I had planned to write brief posts from each country that we are visiting on our Around the World in 86 days adventure. And just like that – I’m now 3 countries behind. So with full rights to his content, I am leveraging a bit of my husband’s weekly email updates to his Men’s Coffee Group so that I can attempt to catch up!
Do you remember the BEST birthday party you ever went to? Maybe it was your own. Or a friend’s sweet 16, a relative’s sassy 60, or something in between? This past weekend I attended the best birthday party ever. On the occasion of a 175th birthday!
Hello from the hamlet of Lutzenberg, Switzerland. We’ve just arrived for the first leg of our “Around the World in 86 days” extravaganza. Having spent much of the…
Have you ever wondered what might have happened if only you had made a different decision? A few weeks ago, I tumbled headfirst into That Place and while…
“Man muss die Feste feiern wie sie fallen”. This reminder, one of my mom’s many hand-me-down German expressions, was reverberating in my mind as the cursor hovered over the “Buy tickets now” flag on my laptop screen. It was not the first time I’d booked a Christmas Markets trip. In winter 2021, when Covid should have been no more than an unsettling memory, skyrocketing incidences of the virus shuttered the beloved annual holiday markets tradition for the second consecutive year. And now, the cursor seems to plead with me, it wants to get the job done. What use is a cursor, if not to click? But I was torn. If I proceed, will I be disappointed yet again? (and left with more annoying airline credits with increasingly ridiculous rules for use). Would the markets even be open? How would we fare at our rapid pace in a cold, wet environment where…