La Grande Vadrouille ENG

It's already Christmas!  Hard to believe we've been on the road for almost five months! Time has just flown by… The Christmas scenery is very different this year: olive groves have replaced fir trees, and baklava has taken the place of the traditional log on the table. Despite the lovely weather we’ve had overall for the past two weeks, a full day of rain was forecasted right on Christmas Eve. While we had planned to meet up with other fellow travelers for a Christmas on the beach, it all fell through😞. So we adjusted our plans a bit, and they ended up coinciding with those of Sarah and Renaud, a young couple from Rennes (who also lived in Quebec for four years) whom we had met in Nafplio. After a wonderful day walking around the Giavola lagoon, we got together for a small festive evening a little ahead of time. A wonderful day and evening. Since we’ve been slowly but surely exploring the Peloponnese, we’ve crossed paths with many, many four-wheeled nomads like us. We must ad...

 The migration continues southward , we finally got the sun back!!!!  But we had to cross three countries and got soaked again quite a bit before we reached that point… The first of these countries was Albania, where we left you last time, hoping for more enriching experiences. In fact, we had absolutely no expectations about this country we knew nothing about. Albania actually only became an independent state after the Second World War and immediately found itself locked in an ultra-rigid communist dictatorship that isolated it from the rest of the world for 45 years, from 1946 to 1991. So it seemed like a good idea to begin our exploration with the capital, Tirana. From the moment we arrived, we were surprised by how modern it is, with its tree-lined streets and trendy cafés. As we did in Sarajevo, we decided to take a guided tour to better understand and once again, it was a good idea. Tirana is not exactly what you would call a “postcard city,” but thanks to Jani we were a...