So this is what Belgium looked like when we were actually there:

But strangely enough, if we close our eyes and try to picture it, all we see is this:

Wow. Such a small country, so much amazing beer. How Belgians are not all morbidly obese alcoholics remains a mystery. 

Verdict: Hartmanns win

Hartmanns 18, Earth 7

If you travel enough, sooner or later you are required to go to France. It’s just a rule. But to be fair,I guess it’s a good one. They do have good wine, well dressed people, and some pretty sights.

Since we were coming from Italy, we started out in the south. We arrived via Nice, but don’t expect to see any pictures of it. We had just one day there, and were so exhausted that we had no idea where we were.  The only clear memory either of us has from that day is of eating surprisingly good veggie burgers at a bar called Wayne’s World. Excellent.

From Nice we went north to Avignon. The pope used to live there, he left behind a huge castle that looks great from the outside but turns out to be super boring if you go in. Generally, the city was really cute, and it was nice to get a peak (even if it was just a small one) at Provence.  

From Provence we headed north to Paris, and you know, we did the Paris thing. 

One of the things you’re supposed to see is the Mona Lisa… Really its a lot more interesting to see other people trying to see the Mona Lisa.

Breathtaking.

Verdict. Yes, we win.

Hartmanns 17, Earth 7

In Italy we mostly just ate a lot. There was really good food everywhere. When we weren’t eating, we did go to a few pretty places:

Like Rome….

Florence…

and Vencice….

Our last night in Italy we headed out to Verona to see La Traviata at the Verona Opera Festival, a yearly event that’s held in the city’s Roman stadium. It was easily one of the coolest experiences of the trip.

Verdict: Weight gain aside, Hartmanns win. 

Hartmanns 16, Earth 7

After two consecutive overnight ferries, we finally arrived in Dubrovnik from Greece.

The Balkans were a mixed bag for sure, some of it awesome, some not so much.

We started out with two days in Dubrovnik. It may be full of tourists, but its a beautiful city, and nothing beats swimming off of a cliff next to an ancient city wall.

From Dubrovnik we took a bus down to Kotor, Montenegro. We’d heard alot of hype about Montenegro being the next “big” place and figure we’d check it out. Not so much. They get credit for having a beautiful landscape, but its hard not to look down on a culture where people can walk around all day in nazi t-shirts and not get beat up.

From Montenegro we took another bus up to Mostar, Bosnia, and the fun began. Bosnia is easily the coolest country in the Balkans. Mostar has a really pretty center, and we got to travel out to a few places around Herzegovina, including  valley full of waterfalls that you could swim in.

From Mostar we took a seriously scenic train ride up to Sarajevo. The weather wasn’t great, but we still had a blast. Sarajevo has cute bars, friendly people, and an overall good vibe.

After Sarajevo we headed back out to the coast to catch our ferry to Italy. We spent our last night in the Balkans in Split, Croatia, a port city built on the ruins of Roman Emperor Diocletian’s palace.

Verdict, Bosnia’s awesomeness makes up for Montenegro’s lack thereof, Hartmanns win

Hartmanns 15, Earth 7 

We found this guy who apparently just travels around the world making steady-cam videos. He’s made them of several places that we’ve been on this trip.

We had some really noble intentions of re-reading some greek mythology to brush up before we came here, it would have been cool to have a fresher memory of which god was which and where Odysseus went. But of course that didn’t happen. Even still, Greece was awesome.

We started out in Rhodes, just off the Turkish coast.

From there we took a ferry to Santorini. It’s a really pretty place, all whitewashed towns on the side of volcanic rock, but it’s amazing the way they’ve managed to turn even the sunset into a tourist trap. 

From Santorini we headed to Naxos, an agricultural island with a cute port town.

We rented an ATV and rode around the island exploring it’s small towns. 

After Naxos we went a short distance to Paros to camp out by the beach. We got to enjoy the serious bonus of having a family of kittens living by our tent,  they let themselves in to say hello.

After Paros we said goodbye to the islands and headed to Athens, where we visited the Acropolis and ate a lot of yogurt. 

Verdict: Hartmanns win

Hartmanns 14, Earth 7

So we’re kind of slackers with this blog, whatever. 

From Istanbul we caught an overnight train to Cappadocia, a region of Turkey famous for it’s “fairy chimneys”, phallic rock formations that people lived in for hundreds of years.

We spent a few days hiking around, taking in the surreal space and eating turkish food.

After Cappadocia, we took an overnight bus to Olympos, a beachside community on Turkey’s southern coast. We spent three nights in a treehouse in an orange groove by the beach, and did absolutely nothing the whole time. Awesome.

Verdict: Hartmanns win

Hartmanns 13, Earth 7

If you don’t have an amazing time here you should have your head examined. It’s easily one of the coolest cities on the planet. 

Even though we had less time than we’d planned, we made the most of it. We stayed in Sultanahmet, right behind the Blue Mosque. 

We made it to all the major sights ( Hagia Sophia, the Basilica Cisterne, Topkapi Palace, etc.)

We also ate some of the best food of the whole trip, and bought an awesome lamp at the grand bazaar.

Overall, no complants here.

Verdict: Hartmanns win

Hartmanns 12, Earth 7

We realize that airline delays are a part of modern life, but our experience flying from Bangkok to Istanbul crossed the line from inconvenience into complete disaster.

Imagine a combining a shipwreck, a hostage situation, and the worst wedding you’ve ever been to into one experience, and you’ll start to get the picture. If you care to know the gory details, here is a brief summary of how Egypt Air managed to turn a 15 hour itinerary into a 48 hour ordeal.

June 22 10:00 pm: We get to Bangkok airport to check in, and are informed by Egypt Air that they have no record of our booking and we aren’t on the flight. Because we have a printed receipt for the flight, they are forced to rebook us, they act like they are doing us some kind of favor.

June 23 1:30 am: We’re sitting on the floor at the gate, a 45 minute delay is announced.

June 23 4:00 am: We are woken up from sleeping on the airport floor to be sent back through passport control to an airport hotel for the night.

June 23 9:30 am: We wake up at the airport hotel, kind of confused about where we are and what’s going on. We’re told that a bus will come for everyone on our flight around 2ish. We go down to the lobby to look for food. A screaming lady is hearding everyone from our flight into a windowless ballroom where a gross buffet has been set up. We share a table with a bunch of weirdos and have to make awkward chit chat.

June 23: 2:00 pm a bus comes to take us back to the airport. At check in things start to get really ugly. The Egypt Air manager is refusing to help anyone rebook connecting flights that they have missed, insisting that flights can only be booked in the Egypt office. Since our flight had been rebooked by Bangkok staff the night before, we knew he was lying. The staff are yelling at passengers, some of them take it, some of them crowd around and yell back. When the manager isn’t looking, one of the staff helps book us on a 9am connecting flight from Cairo to Istanbul.

June 23 10:00pm Cairo time (June 24, 3:00 am Bangkok time): After a 10 hour flight, the passengers get corralled into a corridor where Egypt Air staff take several hours collecting our documents and rebooking everyone on new flights. Some time after midnight they give out new tickets and start hearding everyone down to a bus bound for yet another overnight hotel. On the way to the bus we notice that our ticket is not for the 9 am flight we’d been promised but for an evening flight that would cause us to miss 2 of the 5 days we had in Istanbul. Last straw. In the past we’ve used a pretty good good cop/bad cop routine to get what we want. This was our best work ever. We abandoned the bus and charged the airline desk. After about 20 minutes of Alex being calm and Sara being tough, we had first class tickets in hand for a 2:00 am flight to Istanbul.

Verdict: Earth wins. And because this experience sucked across three continents, earth gets 3 points.

Hartmanns 11, Earth 7

Hmmm. Bali has some cool things.

There were a lot of cool masks.

There was a park full of monkeys.

There was some pretty scenery.

And some cool looking temples.

But….that’s not the full picture. There is also an abundance of tasteless over development, tourist traps, aggressive street hawkers, and shameless price gauging. Yes, there are some things in Bali that are appealing, but they just never quite seem worth what you are expected to pay for them. After a while you start to get the feeling that they see foreigners as walking ATM’s instead of people.

What’s most funny about this sign is that even without your period, you can’t go in the temple. What you can do is take an over priced cab to the temple, buy a ticket, and then find out that your ticket only buys you the privilege of standing outside the temple to take a picture. Don’t get me wrong, it’s absolutely reasonable not to open up religious sights to tourists. But if you decide to charge admission and still not let people in, you’re not pious - you’re just a scam artist.

Verdict: Earth wins

Hartmanns 10, Earth 4