Croatia, Europe, France, Italy

Sneak peek at our Europe 2015 Trip!

I was planning to blog during our trip but sunsets very late in Europe at 9:30 PM that by the time we got back to our hotel, it was at least 10:30 PM and then head to sleep. We are in Alberobello, Italy right now – a little more than half of our vacation and wanted to share some “sneak peek” of our beautiful trip!

We arrived our first stop – Dubrovnik very late at night thanks to an hour flight delay! We were amazed by this view:

We stayed up on the hill, the climb of 200+ stairs definitely burned the yummy meals we ate but rewarded with incredible view! This was the morning view:

Next, we went on a day trip to Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, too bad it was very cloudy or else the photos would be more pretty!

We routed back to Zagreb where we visited Plitvice Lakes National Park, we wished we had more time there! That concluded our time in Croatia – beautiful country and surprisingly to us that all the people we met speak very fluent English!

We headed to Marseille, France to pick up our rental car and exploded Provence area! Arles, France was challenging to drive in with many limited access streets that required code to get in, many one way streets, and extremely narrow roads! I should have booked a place outside the old center! The reason I picked inside was to get some night photos of the amphitheatre:

Carcassonne, France is a real life fairy tale medieval town!

More to come……stay tuned for updates on this post!

19 thoughts on “Sneak peek at our Europe 2015 Trip!

  1. Wow! Great previews of your trip and I can’t wait to see your pictures. I would like to know more about Carcassone, France as I would like to see more of France than Paris. Is this place near the coast like Marseilles?

    1. Nilda, Carcassone is 3 hours drive away from Marseille but you can do a big circle like we did: Marseille-Arles-Carcassone-Avignon (as a base to explore Luberon villages)-Aix En Provence (as a base to explore lavender fields up in Valensole). Brush up your French before heading down to Southern France, hardly anyone speaks English even the waiter/waitress! But we survived by knowing chicken, pork, beef, shrimp in French haha!

  2. Breathtaking! can’t wait to see your pics! what gear are you using? did you use miles and points with this trip. would you recommend chain hotels than boitique hotels?

    1. Thanks! We bought our Canon 6D and 5DIII with us and two lens: 24-70 mm and 16-35 mm. I did use United miles for open jaw and one free stop over: Boston to Zagreb to Marseille and Milan back to Boston. Ticket prices during summer to Zagreb cost a lot so the fixed miles of 60,000 miles for an itinerary like this made such a great redemption value! For larger cities I preferred chain hotels; we were upgraded to a business suite at Westin Zagreb! Smaller towns/villages, I like boutique hotels or even bed and breakfast 🙂

      1. Was it hard to book the open jaw? how far did you book in advance? you have POWER GEARS! i have Canon 5D II. gotten lazy to carry it on my travels these days . have you been to Europe during Autumn?

        1. Hi Tes, it was very easy to search and book in United.com website but I did booked as soon as the return flight was available – 330 days out since it’s the summer peak travel time. I know the 5D plus lens are heavy but totally worth it! I haven’t been to Europe during autumn yet, that’ll be my next year’s travel time. I have been to Europe in mid-March, end of May, end of June, and end of July. End of July is definitely too hot, even end of June is hot if you head southern Europe…..and end of May weather wasn’t too stable.

  3. Love your trip report! When will you be posting a full story? I can’t wait. Especially to see Alberobello/Trulli ?

        1. It depends on how heavy and expensive your camera is. It doesn’t make sense to buy a light and not steady tripod for a very expensive DSLR camera since you don’t want to risk that it’ll fall and damage your camera. We have the Benro C2683TV2, it’s made of carbon fiber so it’s not that heavy but very steady 🙂

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