Lake Bled is located in the Julian Alps in northwestern Slovenia. The natural landscapes surrounding the lake are amazing. It’s no surprise that Bled was a favorite destination for President Tito, who was spending a lot of time in his villa located on the lakeside.
It was more than ten years back in 2004 that I traveled to Sydney, Australia. I was travelling not on a family vacation or a holiday, but on work. I were there on a software consulting project (don’t want to go into more details of this boring topic), and this was my second trip to the beautiful city. I had earlier spent three months in Sydney, but due to project related work-pressures I was hardly able to explore the city, and neither did I get a chance to really meet anyone there. So this time I wanted to see around the city and make friends there. I never knew that I would be soon meeting and making good friends with a witch in Australia!
Spitsbergen, the main island in the Svalbard archipelago, is arguably Norway’s most spectacular destination. Halfway between the North Pole and mainland Norway, this island is well within the ‘High Arctic’: temperatures never reach over 6ºC and the sun doesn’t set for four months in the summer. Nevertheless, the North Atlantic Current regulates Spitsbergen’s temperatures, making it a lot warmer than areas of similar latitude in Canada or Russia, and allowing it distinctive seasons.
There were only a small number of campsites available at Phantom Ranch at the bottom, so I booked the site one year in advance through the National Park Service. The only dates available were in December, so this was going to make the hike more challenging, because of the possibility of snow and ice on the trail.
The Romantic Road was established after World War II in West Germany to revive the country’s tourism industry. If you think that the road was meant to attract lovers because of the name, it isn’t so. The word ‘romantic’ was used to describe a road that offers wonderful things, which are supposed to light up our imagination. The road was also established based on the route the Romans took a couple of millennium back.