We are Back: Some Stats from the Trip

We are back! A lot of people have been asking me how much a road trip like this actually costs, how many kilometres we drove per day etc., so here are some stats:

The final itinerary:

Day-Date:Place

1-20.: Ljubljana-Sofia, 950km/9h

2-21.: Sofia-Gallipoli,Troia, Sleeping Edremit, 700 km/9h30min

3-22.: Pergamon, Çesme, 336km/4h40min

4-23.: Ephesus, Pamukkale, 311km/3h40min

5-24.: Gokova, Fethyje (Oludeniz),243km/3h

6-25.: Mt. Olympus (Çirali beach and fire), 235km/3h40min

7-26.: Antalya, Konya, 383km/5h20min

8,9-27.,28.: Urgup (Cappadocia), 240km/3h

10- 29.: Sleeping Erzincan, 500 km/5h

11-30:  Van, 548km/6h40min

12-31: Tabriz, 330km/4h20min

13-1.: Zanjan, 300km/3h

14- 2.: Zanjan- Alamut Castle, Qazvin, 420km/6h40min

15-3: Qazvin, Kashan, Esfahan, 460km/5h

16-4.: Esfahan

17-5.: Esfahan, Perseopolis,  Shiraz, 450km/5h

18-6.: Shiraz

19-7.: Yazd,  Chak Chak, Ardakan, 500km/6h

20-8.: Abyaneh, Tehran, 670km/8h

21-9.: Tehran

22-10.: Rasht open air museum, Kiashahr, 368km/4h40min

23-11.: Tabriz, 500km/8h

24-12.: Armenia-Meghri, 150km/2h26min

25-13.: Tatev, Noravank, Khor Virap,  Yerevan, 371km/5h30min

26-14.: Garni Temple, Sevan lake, 70km/1h

27-15.: Vanadzor, Tbilisi, 230km/4h

28-16: Batumi, 370km/5h

29-17: Ordu, 380 km/5h

30-18: Safranbolu, 586 km/6h40min

31-19: Esenyurt (Istanbul), 440km/4h40min

32-20: Niš, 692km/8h

33-21: Ljubljana, 750km/7h

TOTAL kilometres: 14300

Numb of car issues: 0 (Elza was a good girl this time)

Kilometres per day: 446,9

Expenses: 

Fuel: 300 EUR/person (most expensive in Turkey, about 1,2 eur/l; cheapest Iran, about 0,18 eur/l)

Visas/Carnet de Passage/Tax for importing car to Armenia: 50 eur/person: 54 eur/person+20 eur/person= 124 eur/person

Accommodation: 

Couchsurfing: 24 nights

Paid: 8 nights-64 eur/person

Free camping: 1 night

Tolls, food, souvenirs: 213 eur/person

Hot Air balloon in Capadoccia: 120 eur/person

TOTAL: 821 eur/person

Total per person per day (excluding visas, car documents and the hot air balloon): 19,1 eur

Total per person per day : 26 eur

Most expensive country per day: Armenia (around 32 eur/per person per day)- yup, the import tax ruined our budget plan here

Cheapest  country per day: Iran (around 8 eur/ per person per day excluding carnet and the visas): yaaay to the 18 eur cents/l diesel price

Road Trip to Turkey, Iran, Armenia and Georgia

It’s been two years since our last road trip, so when I was discussing the ideas for this year’s summer holidays with the girls, the idea was pretty obvious-let's just do another one. We participated at a competition run by Dunlop Slovenia to try to get our trip funded, unfortunately didn’t manage to win (big congrats to Boštjan for winning), but still decided to do a shorter version of the road trip. 

For a whole month we will be driving around Turkey, Iran, Armenia and Georgia, enjoying the food, the culture and sunbathing on Mediterranean, Black and Caspian sea coasts. In theory, we have most of the trip planned, but let’s see how that works out in practice;).

This time, our team is slightly changed. As Petra couldn’t make it, Tinca will take her role as the third musketeer ;). 

Big thanks to Teva Slovenija for the sandals they gave us for the trip, to Zulu Zion for the lovely socks and to the mechanics at Vulkanizerstvo Stane, who did some last min reparations on Elza, the car, on Friday night. You guys are amazing!

We’ll try to write posts and publish photos as frequently as we can!

Lu was sad that we were leaving

Our theoretical plan

Sabrina, Tina, Urša

Scotland It Is!

This June it was time for another short road trip. Petra flew in to Birmingham on Thursday night and we set off to Scotland the next morning.

Our first stop on the way was York. York is a lovely little town with a nice old centre. There were so many cute shops all around, which we just couldn’t resist, so we ended up buying ourselves a cool souvenir-Jack Daniel’s vests. I don’t have any photos, but they really do look pretty awesome. We also tried having a picnic in the park, but ended up running for cover to our car as we were attacked by a flock of young geese.

York

 Geese Invasion

 Welcome to Scotland

Melrose Abbey

 The next stop was Edinburgh, which definitely did live up to our expectations both in terms of the nice architecture as well as the number and variety of shops. And yes, we did some shopping AGAIN. Who can resist Primark anyway?

 Adam Smith, the father of modern economics

 The weather looked pretty grim to start with, but it turned out to be much better than we expected and we got quite a bit of sunshine. It did tend to start raining whenever we were trying to find a place to camp, but that didn’t bother us too much-I think we must have broken all the records in terms of speed/agility of pitching the tent/getting the car ready for sleeping.

After Edinburgh we visited Cairngorms national park, where we camped next to one of the lakes. Surprisingly the midges issue wasn’t that bad at all, and we though that everyone who was warning us about them was exaggerating a bit. WRONG! When camping a few days later we literally go eaten alive. It is impossible to do anything when the midges are out. As soon as you stop they are all over you and you can imagine the joy of pitching up a tent in these sort of conditions.

Cairngorms

After Cairngorms we drove up to Loch Ness to see Nessie, but all we saw were a couple of pheasants and a rabbit. Initially we weren’t planning on going further north, but because we were ahead of our planned itinerary we decided to explore the NW Scottish coast. The NW is in our opinion the most stunning part of Scotland. With its mountain passes, bays and grasslands it is very similar to Norwegian SW, which we explored a few years ago, and is very,very picturesque.

 Loch Ness

The NW Highlands

When driving to the Isle of Skye, we mentally prepared ourselves for its infamously bad weather. What we got instead was clear sky and sunshine. We decided to do a short trek up to the Skye’s most famous sight-the Old Man of Storr. The sun was on the wrong side, so the pictures are not great, but oh well, I guess you can’t have everything.

Isle of Skye-Portree

The Old Man of Storr

The Cullin Ridge

 Eilean Donan Castle

Our last stop before driving back to England was Glasgow, where surprisingly, we did not do any shopping.

 Classy Glasgow

We ended our trip with a celebratory dinner in Cosmo's in Coventry. Sooo good!

Scotland is such a nice destination to visit and I would recommend it to everyone, who likes nature. It is ideal if you can visit it by car, because the coach/train can’t take you to all those hidden bays and mountain passes which make it so special.

The Valencia Trip

Soooo, we are back from another road trip, this time to Valencia, Spain. Because all of us were quite busy this summer, we decided to do only a short 5-day trip to Spain, where Sabrina will be spending her Erasmus year.

We took off on Monday evening (after a day and a half delay, because of some last minute university responsibilities) and spent the first night on a petrol station in pouring rain somewhere in Italy. 

On Tuesday we drove to Monaco with hopes to admire some expensive cars and to flirt with the members of the Grimaldi family.  We saw loads of the former, but our ambitions to become the new members of the Monaco royal family disappeared after we still didn't manage to meet anyone important in our 2h stroll across the town. We continued to the classy city of Nice, which turned out not to be so classy at all, especially after a biker crashed into the back of our car and a petrol station vendor ripped us off by selling us a wrong package of fuses for the front headlamps (they are from the Balkans, they wouldn't notice pfff). We reached  Marseille just before midnight and parked in front of a non-existing camp, which address we found on the Internet. We ended up sleeping in a wood on the outskirts of the city together with another caravan. 

Monaco

Nice

On Wednesday it was time for a casual stroll around Marseille and some "minor" ultra-last-minute university responsibilities. Our plan was to leave Marseille by two in the afternoon. At 10 in the evening we were still sitting in a local McDonalds trying to upload some files. So we spent another night sleeping in our wood in outside the city and headed to Andorra next morning.

Thursday was pretty hectic. We drove nine hours to get to Andorra (trying to avoid toll roads, recession you know) and parked in front of the government office just to make sure that the car was safe. We were both impressed by the beauty of Andorra's landscape and the incredible organisation of the capital la Vella. We then drove another six hours to get close to Valencia where we were intending to sleep. Getting there was quite a challenge, because something got wrong with the car's gear stick and we drove the last part of the way using only 2nd and 4th gear (and pushing the car if we wanted to reverse).

We slept on a beach just in front of Valencia and after a warm bath in the Mediterranean sea reached the city centre on Friday morning and finished our short trip with the victory avocado.

*UPS*