Parts of Italy, Kosovo, Nth Macedonia, Greece, Albania, Poland and Germany.

[RB]

We have just returned from another great trip.

Bit of Background-
We have been fortunate to be regular leisure travellers to Europe & enjoy making our own arrangements and have always managed to travel independently. We don’t drive while holidaying there and have typically caught trains & buses to get around. Apartments are our preferred style of accommodation as we enjoy the space, like to prepare our own breakfasts (& sometimes lunch when we get over eating out) & like the convenience of access to washing facilities. Booking.com is our main choice with flexibility of free cancellation, a genius status bonus on prices, cash back via Cash Rewards, and we feel that we usually get good value for money and lots of information after reading reviews, checking google street view etc. This trip will see us use more private car transport as we have a few “must see” locations where public transport links are not going to work for us. Also, we are not as young as we used to be!
Using the search function of the forum seems to indicate that some of the places we visited are not common “stop-offs” so I hope some readers get some insights of them.

 

[RooFlyer]

Nice - how do you do the map, by the way?

 

[RB]

Nice - how do you do the map, by the way?

It is from Travelerspoint.com & then a screen shot. I was not having much luck with Google maps because it seemed to restrict the number of stops that I could plot. Seems useful for having an amalgamation of places you have covered & can do multiple separate trips

 

[kpc]

Been to all those countries but not to all the places

We, like you, normally travel independently...when we researched going to the Balkans, we decided all the border crossings were going to be too confusing and stressful...so we did a small group (17 pax) tour and covered 7 countries (8 if you count Kosovo) in 9 days...it was a bit hectic but we ticked off all the highlights. The border crossings were confusing...the only stressful part was making sure we were on the bus on time each morning!

As we get older and make more travel mistakes, I'm leaning more towards small group / private tours moving forwards especially if English is not spoken.

We just did 6 days independent travel in La Reunion by hiring a car...the whole trip was somewhat stressful and challenging as the locals only spoke French and Creole!