European Adventure Home Time and Final Thoughts

We arrived into Auckland fine and whizzed through passport control and customs with our carry on bags. The domestic terminal though was in chaos. Flights being delayed and cancelled, people sent home, then recalled, Wellington particularly impacted due to wind and Blenheim by an engineering issue. We had to check our bigger bags for the smaller plane to home. They accepted the bags and we waited to see if we would get to fly home or not. Messages from Nelson suggest weather there is crap too, heavy rain and low cloud but not too windy. It's supposed to improve later in the day. 🤞

A few final thoughts on this trip. You could describe it as "the trip of a life time" which is true. But I don't want to rule out doing something even better in future. Just not the near future.

My favourite part of this adventure was definitely the Greek Island hopping part. We loved Santorini and Naxos in particular, but also enjoyed the other islands as well. 

Second place goes to the Prague, Český Krumlov, and Bratislava leg. Brno too was very interesting but the apartment tainted that stop. 

Third place would be the very start of the trip, our time in London followed by the week in Budapest. We really enjoyed visiting both those cities. 

The one destination we would return to in the future would be the island of Naxos. We would be motivated to visit new places rather than repeat places we have already been so it's the only one that would get a repeat. 

If we were needing to avoid Schengen days again we would opt for:

- Kotor and the areas around there.

- Ohrid and perhaps check out Skopje in North Macedonia as well.

- London or somewhere else in England for a short time like we did this time.

- Istanbul because it was great and we could spend more time there still. Probably check out Antayla as well in Turkey.

We wouldn't rush back to repeat the places visited in Albania. However, for this trip it was a good country to clock up non-Schengen days and Sarandë gave us a great option to exit out to Corfu.  That helped us to escape the worst of the summer heat.

So what happens next then? Good question.

When we quit our jobs we said we were taking a year off from working, but a year is a very long time. We are not ready to "retire early" and we cannot keep traveling the world due to responsibilities at home. We are in agreement that we are going to enjoy being home for at least the next 6 months. We both may look to do some work over the summer. I don't want to return to permanent work though so I'm going to look at something part-time or a short term contract. 

I would like to think a shorter (4 to 6 week trip?) next winter, to a new destination, might be an option. However, that depends on a lot of other factors. One being my ability to sell the idea to Sarah. We will see how that goes. 🤔

We had a lovely welcoming committee of Emma and Kate at Nelson Airport. 😍 It was a nice surprise to see our neighbours Kerry and Anne at the airport too.  We had last seen them in Croatia! They just happened to be on their way to Wellington. 😁 

Another furry member of the family was happy to greet us at home. ❤️

You might be surprised to learn that I like numbers!  Here are a few number stats from our trip to close out this trip:

14 countries visited

47,725 kilometres traveled

140 nights away from home

138 nights in a foreign bed 

2 nights at 30,000 feet

30 apartments/hotels

12 flights

8 long distance trains

11 long distance buses

5 ferries

5 taxi rides (including Uber and Grab)

2 sick days

1 hospital visit

1 marital disagreement (yes, just one and it ended quickly - I think🤞)

1,583,231 steps (or about 1,160km)

Well that's all folks! To those of you that sent us your well wishes, left comments, and managed to read any of my ramblings: A big thank you! To anyone who read the whole thing I salute your perseverance and wish you a speedy recovery. 😂