Spend a week in hot and beautiful Montenegro in the beginning of August. Besides driving on the mountain roads, it was a nice and relaxing week. The heat made me stay by the pool or by the sea a lot, so I couldn’t get too carried away with sightseeing (like I maybe sometimes do…). If you have been to Croatia, there’s no that particular “wow-factor” but the views are still breathtaking.
Budva
Sveti Stefan
Tara Canyon
Durmitor National Park – Black lake
Lovcén
Perast
In the second week of May me and mom headed to Italy as her birthday present. The main destination was the hub of renaissance art Florence, but we made excursions to Cinque Terre and Pisa too, and spent two nights in Rome. What a week.
Here are some highlights. The week included lots of beautiful art, towers and of course gelato. I had my small travel cam with me, and oh what joy it brings that I don’t have to carry that heavy SLR of mine. Though I sometimes get frustrated because it’s not as good as my real camera, but as we ended up walking over 10 kilometres every day, the small and light travel camera was for sure the right choice to take along.
My blog posts are kind of rare nowadays, as work and all my other hobbies take up most of the time. So I’d like to post more about Italy later but I can’t promise anything. Another posting topics should be coming up later in the summer too, as I have already booked my next trip for the beginning of August… 😉
Being a dog owner will inevitably affect traveling. During the four years I have had my chihuahua, I’ve been able to travel because I know he’ll be in good care when I’m gone. It just needs more organizing. Always before booking flights or making plans, I have to make sure he will be taken care of. But of course it has also crossed my mind several times, that could I take my dog with?
While I was in South Africa my chihu got really sick, and I felt bad not being able to be with him. But would it have been better for him to be in a very different country, get through long stressful flights and be vulnerable to all the strange diseases and bacteria? I don’t think so. Not to mention that dogs can’t be taken to many places (museums, sights, some restaurants?), which brings more challenge to traveling. So combining traveling and pets isn’t easy, and it’s important to think all the pros and cons, what’s best for your pet? Because it should be always put first.
Anyway, I think that maybe some kind of trips with dogs could be done. And at it’s best I believe a holiday with a pet could be amazing. So next Friday, me and my dog U venture to our first trip abroad together – as far as Sweden. 😀 Sweden is close to Finland, easily accessible and I know Stockholm very well, that’s where we will spend a week. I’m only stressed about how will U react to traveling with a boat? With a private cabin it shouldn’t be too hard as long as the sea stays calm? Another thing is, that we have to visit the vet in Stockholm, to get the tapeworm treatment as Sweden has tapeworms and Finland doesn’t. I’m always nervous about how U will react to different medicine, but it shouldn’t be too dangerous, right?
Anyone here with experience on traveling with a dog? What should you take into consideration when traveling with a pet? Do you think it’s better to leave your dog at home or take him with you?
You can follow U’s adventures on his Instagram account.
A safari was a must for me in South Africa. We traveled over 700 kilometres by a bus from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth to visit the Addo Elephant National Park. It was a clear choice because it was much more closer than the famous Krueger near Johannesburg, and it has the possibbility to see the big 7 instead of “just” big 5. And that’s what we did! It means that besides lions, leopards, rhinos, elephants and buffalos you might be able to spot two more from the ocean: southern right whales and great white sharks. Even though – for my disappointment – I learned that great white sharks are hardly ever seen on the safari. So if you really want to see great white sharks I guess cage diving with them would be the best option, but that’s something I would never want to experience. I would have wanted to see one from a safe distance! 😀
Addo is the 3rd largest National Park in South Africa and the biggest, where you don’t have to worry about malaria – which is a big plus for travelers! We did our Big 7 with Alan Tours, I had heard lot of positive feed back from them and wasn’t disappointed. You can also drive to Addo by yourself, but I believe we wouldn’t have spotted as many animals without our guide, as most of my knowledge about the wildlife in Africa was based on the Lion King. 😉 And if you want to do the big 7 you need to book the marine tour anyway… You can read more about Alan Tours and our safari here. We didn’t see all of the big 7 seven, but I was still positively surprised that we saw so many animals. And not catching all of them on the first time just leaves more a reason to go on a safari again…. 😉
This was the first time I saw whale(s)! And we were told this Bryde’s whale is a really hard one to catch!
We went snorkeling with these cute cape fur seals in Cape Town, but I could’t tag my camera along to the water, so it was nice to see one on the safari too.
I’m back! Time to start going through all of the pictures and remembering all the amazing places we saw in South Africa… But first, a quick peak to Doha, where we had a 10 hours stop on our way to Cape Town.
On the flight there, a Finnish man who had lived in Qatar for 12 years, happened to sit next to us, and we got many useful tips from him. He even offered to drop us off to Souq Waqif, the center of old town with restaurants and bazaar – as our main goal was to go for a dinner and to see a little bit of Doha.
Doha was an exciting experience, but I think a quick stopover was quite enough. Not sure if there would be so much to see for a weeks vacation or so… Or maybe it’s the kind of place that you need time to get hang of it.
In the end we still ended up waiting at the airport for five ours for our connection to Cape Town. You can image our feeling, when we heard AFTERWARDS that there is a free spa/pool and resting spots at the airport, when we suffered on those bad airport chairs all tired and sweaty from the heat… Just a small tip: Instructions about all the services there and how to get to the best spots wouldn’t hurt. 😀 
photojourneylism 