We approached our last country in Europe with excitement and apprehension. We were stoked to have our big group of friends coming to meet us in Oslo for a 3 week portion of the trip, but it also meant that our year-long journey was nearing its end. We first
Switzerland was in the original Radical Sabbatical itinerary because it was a bucket-list trekking place for us. We had started looking into Switzerland because of the Tour du Mont Blanc (TMB) which is the most popular backpacking circuit here. In our research and planning phase though, it became clear
We visited the Netherlands three times during our Radical Sabbatical because it was the best hub for parts of Europe and especially our Tanzania leg. This meant we could drop off our backpacking gear at a storage unit instead of lugging them around Europe for the next two months and
Going on safari was one of the driving factors behind Radical Sabbatical and the whole year-long journey essentially blossomed from this seed. It is emblematic of one of the purposes of this trip, which is to share experiences with each other that have shaped us in the past. Rory’
Although we were quite gutted to leave our beloved Croatia, we were both excited to visit Greece, a new country for both of us. We spent our first few days in Athens and on our first morning we visited the sprawling National Garden and roamed around the streets admiring the
Our Croatia journey started in Dubrovnik. We rented a car and even on the half hour drive from the airport, the views were overwhelming as we looked down on the coast and Old Town of Dubrovnik with a setting sun. With only 2 days in Dubrovnik we were up early
We had just exited the French Riviera trek a few days ago and we had planned to train directly from Nice, France to start a 6-day trek along the Italian Riviera and Cinque Terre. However, we were still quite sick and couldn’t muster the energy to hike so
We took a train to France from Amsterdam. (We will travel to The Netherlands two more times and will post the visits all together) We are big train fans! What a nice break from the chaos of an airport. You can show up 15 minutes before your departure, no TSA,
As much as we love Spain, our time in Madrid was pretty much just a bounce off to the rest of Europe. We were there for only about 72 hours, so this will be brief. We took a red-eye from Bogota to Madrid on the luxury airline Plus Ultra.
To be completely transparent, we didn’t have Colombia on our original trip itinerary but after a lot of ticket research, it turned out that Bogota was about 3 times cheaper to fly out of to get to Europe compared to all other South American cities. So, we decided to
We apologize in advance for the length of this post. We were here for nearly two months and had a hard time editing down. TL;DR: The Andes are dope. We decided to combine Argentina and Chile into one post not because we think they are not deserving of their
Originally, we had planned to stay a full month in Guatemala. However, after some trepidatious itinerary planning, a 10-hour bus ride looked inevitable to see the Caribbean side of Guatemala. We are ashamed to say that as we enter our mid-30s, the idea of a 10-hour bus
The night before we left for Guatemala City, we were poolside in Mazunte, Mexico sipping mezcal when we got an email alert from the U.S. embassy in Guatemala City issuing a shelter-in-place order because gangs had taken over three prisons and were killing police in the streets.
Please pardon this post for being late. We have been out of Mexico for some time but just found a film lab to develop rolls in Buenos Aires. We left the United States after the holidays and headed straight for Mexico City. We first visited Mexico City in 2019 during
After three months of travel in Australia and New Zealand, we were happy to come home for Christmas and see our friends and family (and also have a proper kitchen to cook in). We flew from Sydney to Honolulu and had 48 hours to restock supplies and see our friends.
When we decided that Australia was going to be the second leg of our trip and we started looking into potential itineraries for a road trip, the sheer size of the continent was overwhelming. So, we decided to spend the majority of our time exploring the island off the Southeast
We spent about 5 weeks here and although it was the most rain in the past 2 months in recent history for the country, we came out unscathed (albeit soggy) and experienced what felt like a very authentic Kiwi Road Trip. We flew from Honolulu to Auckland, took a ferry