August 2023: Türkiye, Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Albania
Meet up
I'm back in Sydney for a couple of months while working on open-source.
In the area and want to catch up? Get in touch!
In August me and my girlfriend continued travelling, getting to 4 new countries: Türkiye, Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Albania.
A typically morning was waking up and trying to piece together the details of where we even where, we were moving fast after Greece.
We did a quick detour in Türkiye, then the many cramped and sweaty bus getting around the Balkans.
I was surprised to still manage to get 109 hours to work on open-source, but I was starting to feel the burnout of managing work and travel.
Open-source
The highlight of the month was getting out Unhead v1.3 which included some significant performance improvements.
I continued work on Nuxt Scripts, trying to figure out the scope of the project and how it would work.
The rest of my time went to maintenance of Nuxt SEO.
🇹🇷 Türkiye
Our first day in İstanbul was massive, exploring all the stunning Mosque's. You can easily hit up 5 mosques and only walked a few kms.
We stayed in a locals neighbourhood and hit up the family-run restaurants. I didn't know at that point, but I'd be eating some form of "kebab" and drinking Turkish coffee every day for the next month.
Safe to say, I also took advantage of the Turkish sweets.
After being thoroughly mosque'd out, we headed to the famous "balloon" town Göreme within the Cappadocia region.
Göreme is stunningly scenic little town that is an Instagram tourist haven and in turn is a bit of a tourist trap. But we still enjoyed it!
We did a full-day hike through Rose valley, coming across impressively well-endowed rock formations, historical abandoned cave churches and a friendly dog who guided us.
This was one of my favourite hikes, we had the trail almost entirely to ourselves, it was scenic and exploring the caves with our new dog friend was fun.
The balloons were expensive, so I decided to skip. But I did hear good things and the ground view itself was pretty impressive.
🇧🇬 Bulgaria
Bulgaria was the start of the Balkans for us, which meant I was in for a lot of cheese pies and more kebabs.
We did a quick couple of days in Plovid, which had a nice old town and some interesting Roman ruins. Then we were off to the capital city Sofia. It had some interesting architecture and a nice park.
From Sofia, we went to do Seven Rila Lakes hike, which was one of our highlights.
The hike is a chair lift, followed by a 3-hour ascent to the peek. Along the way you'll see 7 lakes, each at a different altitude.
It was a fun hike, everyone had brought their dogs along and had picnics at the lakes.
You get to the peak, and it's a stunning view - if the clouds aren't blocking it.
🇲🇰 North Macedonia
We spent a couple of days in Skopje, a city characterised by an excess of modern statues and monuments. Many of them artificially made to look historical.
A nice day trip from Skopje is Matka Canyon, you can do some nice hiking, lake swims and kayaking.
The rest of our time in North Macedonia was spent in Ohrid, a beautiful lake town. It seems to be the holiday destination of choice for anyone in the Balkans who doesn't have easy access to the coast.
Every night we were there, there was a festival on the lake, with fireworks, music and rides.
🇦🇱 Albania
We didn't know much about Albania beforehand, we had heard good things from other travellers though and we were excited. They told us about the friendly locals, and it was beautiful nature.
Our first stop was Gjirokastër, Albania. Gjirokastër is a UNESCO world heritage site, with a classic old town and castle. We got a good workout climbing up to the castle, which had some nice views.
We also did a day trip to the Blue Eye, which is a natural spring that is a stunning blue colour. You can jump from a few metres up into the water, which was fun.
From there, we hit the coastal town of Himarë. Himarë is one of the remaining chill beach towns in the Balkans, that hasn't been completely overrun with tourism development.
Our last stop for Albania was the Northern town of Shkodër. From Shkodër you can go and stay in the Albanian Alp town of Theth.
We spent 4 days in Theth, doing the Volbona pass hike and chasing waterfalls. It was really cosy and relaxing to be surrounded by the mountains, it was a good recovery from the fast pace of the Balkans.
September Plan
- 🚌 Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, Czechia