Spent my first day in Berlin on a fantastic free walking tour. Met a great couple from Wellington, NZ, Graeme and Margaret, on the tour and they made me promise to look them up if I ever got to NZ. They were both well researched about Berlin (I was not) and so whatever facts our guide missed, they filled in. Loved Graeme's abbreviations...said he was done with ABC's..."another bloody church!" Too funny! We saw the usual sites including Brandenburg Gate, Berlin Wa...

I stood outside my hotel and waited for a taxi to Montenegro. I was starting to lose hope when a Mercedes taxi loaded with five guys stopped and the driver asked if I needed a ride to Ulcinj. I paid 5 Euros, squeezed myself in, and half an hour later crossed the border. Found a nice room at a pension and walked down to the beach. Ulcinj is a nice, quaint little beach town but every inch of sand was covered with oil-slicked bodies. Apparently it's the beach of cho...

Albania Mania! Loved it from beginning to end! Met a really nice girl from Albania, Aleksandra, on the ferry from Corfu to Saranda. She and her parents helped me find a great hotel on the beach with a balcony, ocean view, and pool for only 25 Euros! Dozed, caught up on the Olympics, and watched swimmers frolic in the ocean below (from my supercomfy bed) for several hours. When I finally emerged from my hotel to do some shopping, I received plenty of friendly but ...

The superfast hydrofoil to Rhodes only took two hours and we quickly found a decent room in Old Town from a woman at the dock. Next day we decided to get as far away as possible from the obnoxious drunken hordes in Old Town and headed by bus to uncrowded Gennadi Beach. It was scorching hot, no umbrellas, and the stony beach was so hot that several restaurants had built wooden paths almost to the water's edge to spare beach goers burned feet. The water was great t...

We took a bus from Burgas to Istanbul. The scenery changed abruptly from corn and sunflower fields to rolling brown hills dotted with mosques as we approached the Turkish border. Customs/Immigration took a while as the bus was packed, we needed visas (one more line to wait in), and the x-ray machine's conveyor belt was acting up. As we approached Istanbul it was easy to see just how sprawling a city it is. I was expecting L.A. type of sprawl but this was much mor...