There’s a degree of inherent awkwardness to foreign travel, and we took it up a notch in Albania. Simple conversations, grocery shopping, figuring out other countries appliances. Anything can turn strange, and everything turned strange in Albania. That’s a part of the experience we really enjoy. Since there are virtually no trains in Albania, ourContinue reading “Albania Mania #2”
Tag Archives: travel
Albania Mania #1
January’s (2025) plan was 6 weeks in Greece but flights to Albania were half the price, and if we had a bucket list, Albania would have been on it, so we bought the tickets. Our trips to post-communist countries; Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovenia, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, have been fascinating. In some ways these are new countries,Continue reading “Albania Mania #1”
The Brrrritish Coast
We are predominately off-season winter travelers, so weather has a huge influence on our perception of place. Usually the effect is positive, like when we strolled through an empty, beautiful and warm (inside) Uffizi Gallery in Florence in mid January or not needing reservations to go to the Acropolis, again in January (plus all GreekContinue reading “The Brrrritish Coast”
Final Flâneur in France
Mainly what we do is walk.Part of the joy of our endless fugue through Europe is walking, just walking. Cities and countryside. The pleasure is being startled by ineffable beauty. You turn a corner in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria and see the Tsarevets Fotress on the hilltop.https://chosenfugue.xyz/2019/06/18/into-the-cyrillic-part-1-bulgaria-interior/ You leave the train station in Florence, walk aContinue reading “Final Flâneur in France”
A Date with Lyon
There is the assumption that as we fugue through Europe we are having these incredible meals- street fare, cafes, restaurants, Christmas market tastes, this is wrong. Partly because our of diet restrictions: vegetarian (we do eat eggs and fish), gluten free, low oxalate, or any food starting with letters from the second half ofContinue reading “A Date with Lyon”
Montpellier Cat-a-blog
For Hercules’s twelfth labor, he had to descend into Hades to capture the three-headed dog beast, Cerberus, who prevented the dead from leaving and the living from entering Hades. Our task in Montpellier, France wasn’t dissimilar to Hercules’s, except our Herculean task was to ascend five flights of stairs and guard three hairless cat beasts.Continue reading “Montpellier Cat-a-blog”
Everything Toulouse
Perhaps foolishly, we don’t always know where we are going. Onward to the Pyrenees was the original goal, but a lot of travel days and maybe snow, made it not appealing. Based on ubiquitous travel blogs, we thought Albi, (maybe Patricia thought it was Aldi?) https://www.albi-tourisme.fr/en/autour-dalbi/grand-site/visiter-albi-10-bonnes-raisons/ The city is an UNESCO site (isn’t everywhere inContinue reading “Everything Toulouse”
We Caved
Inspired by Werner Herzog we added to our itinerary. Actually, we are always inspired by everything Werner Herzog does except getting shot www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrRNM9cMBDk, but specifically we were inspired by his documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Forgotten_Dreams so we added on a visit to Grotte de Font-de-Gaume Cave to experience prehistoric paintings. Due to damage from humanContinue reading “We Caved”
A sip of Bordeaux
There were a lot of other Brittany possibilities but since it was off off season visits to the islands or other beaches were not really in the cards. With rain up ahead, we chose to skip Nantes (birthplace of Jules Verne), forego the pottery of Quimper (where would we put it), and sadly did notContinue reading “A sip of Bordeaux”
Brittany Rocks
St Malo was chosen to start our five weeks in France because Patricia remembered it from a book… oh yeah that kinda dumb book and Netflix movie (All The Light We Cannot See), too late we were on the ferry. Sleeping on the near-empty Portsmouth, UK-St Malo ferry was fine, it would not be fineContinue reading “Brittany Rocks”
Chosen Fugue 