Six final stops in familiar, convivial France, is how we rounded out Z2A2, taking our total hotel/BNB count to 39! ~5 per week. A cracking pace for the oldest backpackers in Europe.

Alternative titles for this final blog included:

• Strategic dehydration
  • When you have 39 pillows, 12 boat trips, 7 hire cars, 4 budget flights, 3 car transfers, 2 trains and 1 canoe ride, plus many hours on foot over 8 weeks, you do tend to manage the outflows by controlling the inflows and dink a little less water than you should under the summer sun…or at least replace it with Champagne/wine/raki
• Sunflowers
  • Due to us starting out in Paris before heading to the country side and driving past fields of bright eyed sunflowers in full bloom, and then, almost 2 months later, heading back to Paris, driving in the country side past all the worn out, weary, sunburnt and droopy sunflowers after a hot European summer…a perfect analogy for our own transformation
• Money Throwing
  • Second only to “How is that a park?”, the most common phrase between us must have been “let’s just throw money at the situation”
• Belt tightening
  • Covering multiple bases, one foreseeing our near future to overcome the “throwing money” and secondly, to describe the literal belt tightening due to 8 weeks of a bread based diet (no pain, no gain as we say in France)

From our elusive Z in Zadar we flew Ryan Air to Marseille, sans applause on landing.  A town we’ve avoided on all previous 6 trips to France based off Lea’s experience 20+ years prior.  However, partially due to a 600 million Euro investment as part of the European Capitals of Culture program in 2013, other measures to pedestrianise the waterfront and encourage tourists into the once scary old town, and partially due to the sheer relief/disbelief we’d successfully passed through so many pain points to be back in France, we found Marseille to be delightful! We did one of the best walking tours of the trip, James got to drink Pastis for aperitifs, Lea ordered the most expensive fish soup we’ve ever had, before muttering, “I’m not really sure I like fish soup”…The waiter’s orders for her to add more garlic and MORE CHEESE into her FISH dish (after weeks in Italy smuggling my parmesan under the table) was enough for her to fall in love. Vive la France!

Another day in France, another protest. Lea had scheduled us a Catamaran boat trip out to the Calanques national park and, confident trains and buses were at least cancelled to where we were picking up the boat, we stood on the Marseille docks next to a ferry watching the protests kick off earlier than expected and watching the ferry staff sit, smoking and staring back at us.  We couldn’t help but worry this was just another (albeit elaborate) part of the protest, but suddenly, a mere 2 minutes before scheduled departure, things kicked into gear and we were off!  We spent a stunning day at sea, swimming, drinking house rose, lunching at anchor next to a nudist beach/rock (continuing the run of disappointment in the viewing options at said beaches) and talking with a cop from Queensland to remind us our days jobs back home really aren’t that hard.  We closed out our last night in Marseille watching very serious street pétanque competitions, reminding us of our early days on Rotto circa 2006.

From Marseille, we slowly made our way to Bordeaux in our final car, an MG3 we had to beg to get instead of the “free upgrade”, and along the way:

• We stopped for a wander around picturesque Montpellier, looked for a light salad lunch, but stumbled into and waddled away from the best duck confit we’ve ever had
• Dined at the markets in Beziers
• Played the board game “Carcassonne” on our balcony in Carcassonne
• Lea ate duck, duck, goose over 3 days in France…it actually ended up being: duck, duck, goose, chicken, duck, duck, duck over 6 days
• Got in a strange conversation in Carcassonne when explaining our next stop was in Sarlat. Pron: Sar-lah. Or apparently not. After Lea’s best Sar-lah yet (instead of usual Sar-lat) was met with no response to the shop owner (living 2 hours from said town and never having visited) only to reply “Ohhhh, you mean ‘SAR-lah’, zis is difficult for you”… “Euh, yeah mate I think she just said ‘Sar-LAH’…” “Yes, of course, but no it’s ‘SAR-lah’..” This continued for some time and totally cost her us buying more cheese…we still bought enough cheese
• Managed to see 3 light shows in 3 towns over 3 nights, as we happened across a random water/light show in Beziers, walked the walks of Carcassonne at night (planned), and saw lights on a church from our balcony in Sarlat (SAR-lah), after watching hot air ballons float past, and wandered down for yet another breathtakingly detailed show over the cathedral/church (nobody really knows the difference)
• James walked into a stinging nettle bush minutes into his break from driving after heading to town through ever narrowing streets and through the first old town gates of trip (on second last driving day).  Now I’ve heard of stinging nettle, I didn’t think I’d ever seen it before, and I certainly didn’t recognise it at the time, but f**k me if every plant I saw for the rest of the trip didn’t look like stinging nettle!
• We got grounded in a canoe on the Dordogne… in rain…and finally got in our paddling groove after many a-“your other lefts” (groove=floating with a glass of wine looking at the cliffs and castles and letting the river do the work)
• Saw immobile geese in fields looking like they’d had too much too eat
• Sat immobile on our balcony in Domme after eating too much of some parts of geese that have had too much to eat…and wondered what was next in line in the food chain to eat our fattened livers
• Got to finally say (or try to say) “brouillard” as we woke up to fog over the Dordogne valley
• Posed with panache at Cyrano’s statue in Bergerac (and, no, nobody told me to say that)
• Managed to check in on time to our flat in Bordeaux after a tense-tete-a-tete-via-text by a lady we were told “doesn’t speak good French”, to which we replied, “parfait! Nous don’t either”.  Then watched the doubled over sunset at the mirroir d’eau
• Met up with our Croatian travel buddies in our FINAL stop, back in Paris for the 3^rd time in 2025 and ate rotisserie chickens in our Parisian home
• Explored some new spots in Paris, and shared some favourite old spots with our first time friends
• Had our Opera Garnier experience cancelled…because of more strikes (having experienced strikes on each of our 7 visits to France, we’re beginning to think we’re the problem)…but watched the most amazing sunset over Notre Dame, the Eiffel tower and Sacre Coeur instead
• And spent half our final day watching enterprising <traveling people> hustle crowds with the ball and cup game under the Eiffel tower…drinking Champagne, and then, drinking more Champagne watching the lighting crack over the city from our balcony.

Finally, after 39 pillows, we made it safely back home, where, thankfully and comfortably, European pillows are just for decoration…and to absorb a few tears as the memories and realisation that it was all over flooded in*.

* Editor’s Note: We had the most incredible experience exploring new parts of the world on Z2A2, and while we absolutely love travelling and chasing the grape together, we also realise how lucky we are to have each other and the lives we have made for ourselves back home.  I’m so very privileged to always be the first person to read these blogs and watch James count how many times I laugh, before I then unfortunately have to remove “most” of the funny parts so we can publish this online.  Most importantly, I want to say thank you to my amazing husband and travel buddy for taking me on a second Z2A adventure – I’m more in love with you than ever.  And when’s the next holiday??

See all about Z2A2 here: Z2A2

And don’t forget the Z2A2 updates: Z2A2 list

After a final Albanian lunch in a castle where we got to visit Shkoder in our Skoda, we crossed the border and entered the warm and comfy embrace of the EU, once again, for more shenanigans in the Schengen…again.

It’s amazing what a (very, VERY hard) border can do over a historically short period. Our earlier travel buddy had commented how tall he’d felt in Albania, but as soon as we crossed into Montenegro James felt like Gulliver entering Brobdingnag…google it.

We had just under 2 days in Montenegro, but from that, we could make a case to call it one of the most beautiful countries we’ve ever visited.  Now, you can call it sampling bias if you want, sure…your prerogative to present rational arguments to an irrational blog, fine, but, to be fair, we’ve never visited a country for the first time and thought, “OK, let’s just go to the shittest looking places first up so we can properly judge this country”, so I think our snap judgements are well calibrated.

From Montenegro we ventured to some original Z2A spots in Croatia, first to meet friends in Dubrovnik, a town Lea has seen change now over 3 visits spanning more than 20 years and to set sail from Split after an unexpectedly short detour to Bosnia.  We:

• Sunsetted at aptly named Buza and Bard bars (I’ll let the reader decide whether this prose is more appropriately described as Buza or Bard) on cliffs outside the walls of Dubrovnik, overlooking the ocean
• Drank beers while walking the (now €40, previously practically free, previously previously still rubble) city walls while watching and cheering people playing basketball below us.  We only cheered when they sank a shot…we only cheered once…we drank a full pint…they weren’t locals
• Visited a stunning winery, recently crowned Europe’s most beautiful winery…..SURPRISE!
• Drank beers at Kravice waterfalls in Bosnia
• Missed out on visiting Mostar due to protests against the EU, SURPRISE!
• Witnessed a wine glass spontaneously split down the middle in Split (yes, this did happen, and no, it wasn’t one of ours…thankfully)
• Watched how quickly friendly service can change when you, somewhat, jokingly ask if they Split bills
• Spent a night at sea after swimming in the blue waters of the Adriatic all day
  • Docked on Brac for the night, where our skipper pointed to the town and told us to go to the white building for dinner (NB: they’re all white, but in Goran’s brain it was pretty clear he wasn’t saying the cream, the bone, the off white or the ivory…or even, antique white USA…it was the white. The brain of a good sailor…at his mercy, we knew definitely not to argue with the guy on the ropes…pun intended)
  • Were amazed how tight the boats were docked together in the marina over night, each being on the other’s side forever more…I guess that’s what fenders are for?
• Visited Froggyland in Split at the demand of our young travel buddy.  Never been? You should, and not just because of the proximity to the best cevapi, but to admire how rich someone must have been to spend their life (probably killing, then) embalming and posing dead frogs into human situations…it was very clever, and if nothing else, a ribbiting experience Froggy Land!
• And noticed a big change from 10 years ago when Dalmatian stew was all the rage in Croatia, but now noticed a shift towards Dalmatian tapas…the local chefs clearly taking the same Dalmatian Tapas…101 course.

After parting ways (temporarily, yelling “see you in Paris”, and sounding like over privileged arseholes) with our new travel buddies (incidentally 10 years on from when we were supposed to be travelling together on Z2A1, the change explained by the fact we visited Froggyland this time), we had a few more nights in Croatia, in new places for both of us.  We:

• Waited for an underground carpark in Sibenik, and witnessed a car being loaded onto a tow-truck at the exit, blocking the entry as well…the truck couldn’t enter all the way so we assume the car had also been pushed to the exit. Now, sitting at a bar watching this scenario could have triggered a case of schadenfreude, but sitting in traffic with cars piling up each way knowing I was up next, led to something closer to twin-tourist-driver-telepathy as I also felt like vomiting just watching the scene unfold
• Found an amazing winery (spoiler alert), where we had one of the best tasting experiences with a show. The show being another English speaking tourist from <redacted> complaining about the wasps. Because they were allergic to bees. They don’t smoke, and don’t like to travel with an epipen….  The situation was met with a sympathetic/on point “you don’t like wasps and you come to Europe in summer?” From the waitress and a “Haven’t you read Z2A1?” from James Z21 ciggies v WASPs
• Waited 20 minutes on a stationary bus to see some more falls after mutually high-fiving the perfect planning and timing skills (NB: the walk DOWN to the falls would have only been 10 minutes)
• Walked the 2kms on a wooden boardwalk with no handrails (apologies for the redundancy of mentioning lack of handrails #europe) to see the falls, where we were one errant backpack or weaponised stroller or native English speaking tourist from <redacted> who can’t read simple directions…in English…or European defending their space away from certain death/really annoying injury/getting really wet
• Hiked 45 minutes back up from falls in 100% humidity or more to avoid previously lived bus delays and ensure we made it to lunch…at a winery (worth it, despite the wet shirt, as they’d been timing the bread in the oven for each table’s arrival)
• Got buzzed by the airforce as they performed manoeuvres over Zadar and past our balcony for no apparent reason other than for our mensiversary
• Were amazed at the price of deodorant, causing Lea to postulate: “I guess that’s why nobody wears it here”. That’s your one, Lea. Just kidding…she was way over one, as was I (see above)
• Spent 4 hours on a 200 year old, newly varnished, timber boat full of people smoking (skipper included) to visit the Kornati islands and argued with a 25 year old German over who was more excited to get the all you can drink wine. He was. He really was.
• Were relieved that Ryan Air doesn’t (yet) weigh passengers after seeing the impact that 6 weeks travel had our bags when weighed in on their, I’m sure, perfectly calibrated scales
• And left Croatia, once again, amazed by how easy, friendly, beautiful and tasty everything is, just a little poorer than the last time #euros

See all about Z2A2 here: Z2A2

And don’t forget the Z2A2 updates: Z2A2 list

After four weeks of familiar French, hand-spoken Italian and whatever is going on in Maltese, we moved on from Lea and James time to pick up an unlikely, but surprisingly common travel buddy to take on some new Baltic state experiences for all of us.

Any worries about language issues were soon extinguished exacerbated as, in our first taxi ride, James ended up needing to speak French to our Albanian taxi driver as he took us out to see an atomic bunker built during the cold war, but also, soberingly, used within our lifetime.  Now, thankfully, mostly used as a way to make money from printing “mind your head” signs.

For our good deeds over 2 nights in Tirana, we were committed to a single night in Prizren, Kosovo.  Nobody at the bnb, no phone coverage for any of us…no worries?  Nope…some worries.  Our host, thankfully, showed up, but then led us into the basement where 3 men were brandishing gas axes; helped us log on to the house wifi to get some contact with the outside world only for James’ phone to scream it’s been hacked; and then noticed each bedroom had its own shower, causing us to ruminate over the possible other uses of our apartment above a Kosovarian gym…so, some worries indeed.

One of the benefits of a beautifully integrated and understanding culture (which we were assured it is) is that, after a lovely night wandering the town, we were woken to the sound of not only church bells, but calls to prayer…dogs howling…and roosters cock a doodle doo-ing…and the beautiful sight of our rental car in one piece in an otherwise now empty basement.

From Kosovo we ventured to the capital of North Macedonia, to Skopje it out…it was a nice town and they’re spending a fortune beautifying the centre with neo-neo-classical buildings (to be finished in 2014…) that are worth seeing, but I can see why Mother Teresa moved to Ireland. The highlight of Macedonia was Ohrid. A rare opportunity to see a stunning town on a lake, almost ready to be flooded with (foreign) tourists and to genuinely be part of the problem by destroying the affordability for locals whose families have called it home for centuries.  Over 2 days in Northern Macedonia we:

• Got to hand over our passports at the border, before driving on to a shack at the side of the road to hand over €50 cash to purchase extra “green card” insurance to drive in Macedonia (our 2 lots of real insurance didn’t count), and walk back to customs to mercifully receive our passports back
• Took a sunset cruise over the soon to be boat laden lake
• Made fun of Lea for thinking she mistranslated another surprise festival as a “folklore music festival” instead of the more likely “folk music festival” (NB: she was right…of course)
• Had a fluent Macedonian speaker from New Jersey buy us raki (rakia, rakija, rakiya??) shots by convincing him we were Australian quoting Crocodile Dundee for the second time in a month (and second time in 43 years)
• Took an interesting taxi ride to a winery in the middle of nowhere in the middle of Macedonia that was closed (which left us all wondering who of us was the alpha ready to step up to get us out of trouble…I mean, 2 of us knew it was Lea and best not ask where she was laying her bets)
• Followed up said taxi ride with a FIVE HOUR wine tasting, including like 6 wines in 4.9 hours and 4 raki shots in 0.1 hours…each with a different herb steeped inside, leaving Lea disappointed she bothered asking James (who also had to help with her raki) why they called the straw in the last one “donkey nettle”.   I know I don’t need to write this, as you all know ee-aw, ee-aw-ways calls it donkey-nettle…
  • Side note: James asked a simple enough question of: “when does it rain here?”, to be met with the stone cold reply of: “when there are clouds”…I really can’t stand smart arses (Editor’s note: he means other smart arses, see “ee-aw” comment)
• Took a boat ride through a canyon to enter the deepest underwater cave in Europe…possibly.  They assured us it was, likely. I mean who can prove these things right? The scientists couldn’t for one thing
• And found another subtle way to drop in that we were Australian to engender smiles from the owners: “we don’t get woins loik this in AUSTRALIA mate” 

From Macedonia, we were back to driving in Albania where:

• We lost faith in our online maps while realising we were totally reliant on them, and the fact that the street signs were no longer in Cyrillic didn’t help
• Drove through “abandoned” Albanian oil fields
• And, had to explain to our companion why James was hesitant to pay the price required to refill at the Kastrati petrol stations.

Our favourite Albanian town was Berat. The first night spent having dinner in the back of someone’s thousand year old house, such a great experience where you might have guessed, the owner did shots of raki with everyone as they paid their bill…and with a “lucky” bunch of Australians, who were told to wait back, did a couple more… We then had lunch the next day above the town, watching embers rain down into our drinks and food, and rather than be nervous, be thankful we could drop that this “happens all the time back home…in AUSTRALIA” 😉 before being forced into raki shots in a way that made us nervous to continue these announcements going forward…the nerves didn’t last long (see below).

Then, after spending ~40 weeks over the last decade in Europe, there was still an experience James was yet to have…a haircut.  All the barbers of Italy, France and even Seville over the years had yet to tempt him in, but it was in Albania, on a 35 degree day in Berat that it all changed.  While sweating profusely, being handed towels by the barber whose tools were likely rusting in the salinity that was my hair, and being stared down by a family of four waiting Germans, who muttered along like an angry barber shop quartet out of the Sound of Music, I lost my European barber cherry.  Thankfully with no bleeding.  We had been confident of a successful outcome as a fellow traveler had once told us that most of the time in the Balkans, men were either cleaning their cars or doing their hair.  Not sure where his facts came from, he may have just fallen asleep watching Grease on the flight over.

Surprised not to get free raki after the haircut, we found a bar and first chance dropped the Aussie bomb, and was straight away offered free raki by the bartender…James insisted the kind young man joined in.  He did, but with vodka, as he hates raki (as I’m pretty confident everybody does).  As he skulled his vodka, on what turns out was his third ever shift, it became clear that he could not have been more than 17 years old, explaining why he hadn’t yet developed a pallet for raki.

We enjoyed a fascinating taxi drive to the middle of nowhere for another “wine tasting”.  A quick tour of the vineyards, cellars etc was followed by an equally quick tasting of 4 wines with 40 or so of our new closest friends before we got to the main event…yep, raki “tasting”.  At least 4 shots in quick succession were demanded, as one poor guest was picked out, for making a joke to the head honcho, that in the same position James would have done in a heartbeat, to make a new toast each time, ensuring he couldn’t hide his raki anywhere as some tried to do (at threat of being refilled and forced to make another toast).  Lea, for instance, managed to hide much of hers in her water glass (as James found out the hard way).  We felt bad for the toaster (he was sitting with us) and would have preferred the peski instagramer (that was filming everything before being Berat-ed by aforementioned honcho) to be called out instead.  Our traveling companion, perhaps high on raki, or over excited from sitting next to the young Dutch girls all night decided the night was not over, so we found our favourite 17 year old bartender (of which we actually had a few in Berat) for more cocktails and yep…raki tequila shots…raki is terrible.

Our final night was spent in the beachside town of Vlore, in the biggest electrical storm any of us had ever seen, on the biggest balcony for a 2 bed flat anyone had ever seen.  Our companion did 3/4 of the driving for this part of the trip, however, due to impacts of tequila (above), James was required for the morning shift before handing over the keys just before the onset of said storm.  With most locals pulled over on the side of the highway to wait out the weather, we drove on!  Not perturbed by having barely recovered from being hit in the head by a cricket ball, complaining of tingling fingers, occasionally driving in the wrong lane (in good weather) or his barely recovered hangover, he powered on and as you may have guessed based on me writing about it, we made it!

After Vlore, we dropped our mate off at the airport back in Tirana so James got his wish of one last drive from an airport to the centre of a capital city with Lea saying how lucky we’d been not to be pulled over (10km from the final destination!!), instantly ushering in a new wave of cops to stand at nearly every corner tapping a pull-over paddle in their hand waiting for their next sucker on our way in to town.  Due to Albanian plates, we assume, we made it back bribe free.  However, our exit from Albania with the assistance of Milos, our Montenegrin driver, was a little different. After Milos was pulled over, we got to hear an amazing conversation in English where the Albanian cop accused him of driving 131 in a 90 zone.  After being taken away for some time, he came back beaming that he avoided the €300 fine as he knew it was a scam and demanded proof of him speeding, which didn’t exist. It was a short section of 90 amongst other 130 areas, seemingly designed for this purpose.  James thought it was lucky they didn’t have the proof, as he’d been monitoring him nudging past 150 where the imaginary cameras were positioned…this win deserved a raki shot for sure.

We’re so lucky to have been able to travel around this beautiful part of the world that’s coming into its own after such a difficult century…or more.  Nestled between Greece, Montenegro and Croatia, there are beaches, mountains, lakes, towns, wines, castles, amazing roads, incredible people…and raki…that are sure to be on the radar of many more moving forward.

See all about Z2A2 here: Z2A2

And don’t forget the Z2A2 updates: Z2A2 list

Almost 2 years to the day from saying “let’s never travel further South in Italy than Rome again”, here we were, the same not-sointrepid travellers, in Southern Sicily…closer to Africa than to Rome. As we’ve come to expect, where there are ferry terminals, there are no rental cars, but to avoid another STEINART pickup incident, we decided to take the seemingly safer option of staying overnight in Pozzallo before “training” to Syracusa the following day.  

After a mostly uneventful night in Pozallo, with another surprise festival, we were lucky that our host had helped book a “taxi” to the train station the next day to help us through our next pain point.  Now, we don’t speak much Italian, and our driver certainly didn’t speak any English, so when locked in a strange car in Sicily supposedly heading to the train with someone yelling “Traino…NO!!” over and over, we started to pick up a few things and needlessly mumbled to each other, “Oh f***…I don’t think this guy is taking us to the train station”. After another few “Traino NO!! Capito?s” and some “Ah…no capito, sono Australianos” later while trying to show our train tickets, and at the same time as furiously googling wtf is happening with Trainos in Southern Sicily, we finally responded to the next “Traino NO!! Capito?” With, “Si, Traino….NO” After being dropped without instruction, not at a traino, but at a buuus stop in the middle of nowhere, still sceptical, we decided to walk ourselves to the traino station, only to find out the driver had anticipated such antics from crazy Australianos, waited around the corner and near ran us down with a final “TRAINO NOOOOOOO!!!”  Turns out he was right and trainos were indeed a no-no and we seamlessly boarded a buuuus, which, you wouldn’t believe it, departed 17 minutes early!!! (Again, again.) We had an extra long buuus ride to to ponder our original idea to walk the 30 minutes to wait at an empty traino station for a traino that was never to arrivo. 

We made it!! We sweated around Syracusa, picked up our car (after a suspiciously long wait for it to be cleaned…see later) and took 30 minutes to drive 1km to park in the same town, had an amazing lunch being served booze by children for the first time since B2P, drove to our first agrotourismo where we had a lovely night, fresh air, a dark room and comfiest bed of the trip…… but at the same time also had a small child being tortured in the room next door just past the paper thin ancient walls.

Also in Sicily we:

• (or I) was in awe of how Lea’s U-turn and hairpin simile game had developed: half a maccas sign coming up…the other half of a maccas sign coming up, a fishing hook, half a W-turn next, then the other half, oooh a couple of bobby pins on their way, top of an ‘S’, bottom of an ‘S’, half the side of a ‘B’…”which side?!” screams James, praying for the vertical side….
• Spent amazing nights in the very South to see the ancient Agrigento, and the very North to see the spectacular Cefalu
• Drove to our first town in the foothills of Etna only to hear an air raid siren blast as we exited the car…only later did we find out this was a normal occurrence multiple times a day.  This, along with the seemingly continuous church bells, random day time fireworks and regular thunderstorms were surely designed to keep everybody calm.  A strategy successful in Pompeii, based on the calm expressions one can witness on the casts of the dead bodies
• Discovered the locals left full, vertical water bottles on their door steps to stop cats from pissing on them…a truly superstitious people hey are, as everyone knows you’re supposed to lay them horizontally in the garden, or just don’t butter their feet if you don’t want them around
• Set out to hike Etna only to get tangled up in vines
• Savoured our view of the volcano with its lovely <insert opposite of phallic> silhouette.
  • Lea, unaware James would one day write the above line, commented that the clouds on each “cheek” looked like fluffers…to which James said they must be doing a good job, she’s blowing right now! And she really was! But no sirens?
• And found some of our best meals to be: our first autogrill panino, street arancini, a random stuffed bread with cheese and ham thing, and a roasted chicken with an accidental side of lasagne.

Sicily was really pretty calm…at least compared the semi-organised shit show that was trying to get off the f***ing island.  I’m not sure there is such a thing as “organised chaos”, but there are definitely arseholes trying to bully an Aussie with white knuckles while 3 lanes moved to 8, then back to 4, only for those 4 to be lined up in a race for one lane to get on a boat as workers yelled at you to drive faster!

Once finally on the mainland we:

• Started in the big toe, drove past the tinea, across the bunion, along the arch and and finally to the ankle blisters
• Had our first pasta in Pizzo and pizza in Pasto (only half that is true)
• Got shamed into ordering more pizza than we needed on an incredible night around about one of the plantar warts in the arch* (*Editors note – the second pizza was the best!)
• Drove like James Bond through Matera (if he’d panicked at the sight of the first car park and then walked 20 minutes in the sweltering heat to get to the town)
• Visited Alberobello with its unique houses of cylinders and cones that were literally trulli beautiful….google it.
• Learned that all the olive trees on the continent are dying off due to an introduced bacteria (note to self: invest in olives)
• Looked out over said olive trees, the Adriatic sea and towards our next destination of Albania from our rooftop in Ostuni, while eating take away pizza
• Discovered that although 200+km/h didn’t seem so fast to be driving at 30, and 160+ at 37 was fine, 130 feels pretty damn quick now at 43, having way less to lose, and,
• Speaking of driving:
  • No indicators are used here. I assume because everyone knows where they’re going and it’s none of your business
  • There is still no adherence to speed limits, which are also basically unknown to all
    • Safest method it to go as fast as the cheapest car you can see, as they probably can’t afford the fines
  • EVERYBODY drives with their hands out the window…after all the driving in Italy I’ve done, this is the first I’ve noticed it, perhaps as with experience it’s the first time I dared take my eyes of the bitumen…or gaps where bitumen should be
    • We don’t know why they do this. Is it to talk to other drivers? Is it for the inevitable high fives they’ll get as they drift into your lane? Either way, it’s a massive risk to put losing your hand at risk and ending up mute
      • Which really reminds you of why mobile phones never took off over here until facetime was invented
  • Oh…and parking: read the title
• Our final drive had several firsts:
  • Our first toll ticket that didn’t work, which was super fun, but everyone lined up behind us were super compassionate about our predicament,,,
  • Our first prepaid toll which we weren’t prepared for + <read second half of previous point>
  • After discovering on the first day of 8 days with our hire car that we did’t have a spare wheel and wondering how that could happen, then sweating every pothole in Sicily and South of Naples without either mobile reception or a spare wheel, the agency checked for a spare wheel upon return. The FIRST time in over 100 car rentals we’ve seen this.  Nothing was said other than “you have full cover….goodbye” #southofrome #sicily

After getting rid of the 4 wheeled car, we caught a shared taxi into Naples to have 4 more hours there.  3 more than last time and 3 more than needed.  In all seriousness, it was up there with the best 4 hours we had in Italy.

We loved everywhere, Corfu, Etna and Puglia the best. Don’t go to Italy in August ‘they’ say, and don’t go South of Rome ‘we’ say, but we were so lucky and blessed. To sum up August in Italy: there are people everywhere, nobody knows where they want to go, but they sure as shit don’t want you to get there first.

See all about Z2A2 here: Z2A2

And don’t forget the Z2A2 updates: Z2A2 list

Our first new country of Z2A2 was up next, Malta.

But before we even took flight, we pretty quickly changed our opinion of Cagliari airport, as we moved on from Lea’s afore mentioned best sandwich of the trip, to barely making it onto our first ever Ryan Air flight.  The amazing sandwich was a surprise, the hour or so delay certainly wasn’t a surprise.  But it was a surprise when, full bellied, we wandered to the gate 30 minutes or so before the updated departure time (with no direction saying we needed to do so) and saw “LAST CALL” and managed to sneak on in last place. Perhaps we missed the announcements of “STEINART, STEINART”. We then departed the gate exactly 17 minutes earlier than on the display (but still 63 minutes later than on the ticket).  The flight to Valletta was almost long enough to start feeling better about what might have been (had we missed the delayed flight) only to be shocked into the present by the “spontaneous” applause upon landing…apparently a feature of flying this airline. I guess we’ll find out next time…hopefully.

Malta was our first country where they drive on the left side of the road, so, of course…we didn’t hire a car in order to keep our: “James sits left, Lea sits right” streak going.  It was a very quick stop, just two Knights of Malta, a bit of a Malt-teaser. After a plethora of pork, boar, snails and pigeon on the menus so far, James was delighted to finally find some Maltese rabbit, but was a bit sad not to have found any of the famed Falcon on the menus. The most likely opportunity for the latter would be for Lea to continue her streak and be struck in the head by a stray local cork…a Maltese Falcon if you will, but without a previously mentioned former chandler handy, we were unlikely to Cross this off our Maltese list. Ok that’s it for these terrier-able Maltese puns. Turns out that, despite having a friend for over a quarter of a century whose family is from there, I really didn’t know anything about Malta…I had thought Gozo was a TV clown from the 60s.

In less than 2 days:

• We were greeted with a real first, the pleasure of a PAYG aircon, where we used our last spare 1 and 2 Euro toilet coins to prevent us from not-so-spontaneous combustion in one of the most recognisably hottest islands of the world
• Lea got to have cheese with her lobster pasta, making the most of not being in Italy…but again taking it too far by ordering a pecorino wine
• We spent a day on Gozo in a pink tuk-tuk named Barbie
  • Whose widower driver was very quick to point out he was no longer allowed to do any “hard work” due to all his heart attacks, while hurtling through the streets of Gozo
  • Got confused by his super ocker Aussie accent until we found out he’d been married to an Aussie for 40 years before she sadly passed, after somehow managing herself to pick up Maltese and all it’s 30 odd letters including SIX vowels
  • Got taken out in a tiny boat through the caves where our skipper was kind enough to  tell you about all the recent collapsing caves
  • Met a Brit who was even more impressed to score an extra carafe of free house wine than we were  (I cant’t do justice to how excited this guy was, and how embarrassed his wife was…but we felt it IRL as he offered to share it with me and then I saw Lea’s face as she looked at his wife with empathy)
  • Had to pretend we had children to get smuggled onto a early boat back to Malta because our “Aussie” guide did us a solid after we left (judging by the hug he gave Lea) the biggest tip he’s had for a while, and the Spanish ladies we’d shared a van with (sans enfants) were not impressed by our cutting in…and certainly weren’t impressed with me bidding them “farewell and adieu”, only to end up back in the same van o Valletta and pretending we don’t speak English as they berated us all the way home…maybe, but we don’t speak eSpanish so they may have been talking about swimming in the blue lagoon of Camino.
• Then, the next day, nine years on from Scorpio v Scorpion, poor Lea was bitten by a wasp for the first time ever causing us to consider is it time for her to take up smoking…again? (see Z2A1)
• Thought we’d found a winery on Malta only to be dropped off on yet another garden path, with our Uber driver asking “Are you sure you want to get out here?” (200m of baking hot sun in the middle of nowhere on an island in the middle of nowhere we were finally confident on our previously pretend confident answer of ‘maybe…’)
• Avoided a nightmare as our ferry to Sicily departed…17 minutes (again!) ahead of what we, and the entire internet, port etc…thought was the schedule
• Had a very strange lost in translation moment on our ferry when James tried to order white wine, only for it to be confused with “Wifi”. I was so confused, but can only feel for the poor Filipina girl trying to deal with a mumbling Australian asking for 2 glasses of Wifi, and pointing to the plastic cups with his phone over and over
• And given this potential pain point, the early departure and attempts to drink wifi, we had never been so pleased to see a silver map of Tassie, signalling this intrepid ship, St John Paull II, was made in Hobart and not land locked Poland as one might have expected.

See all about Z2A2 here: Z2A2

And don’t forget the Z2A2 updates: Z2A2 list

After experiencing the driving on an island in the Med for a few days, we immediately signed up to do the same thing in Sardinia.  Known for its beautiful beaches (some recently landing top spots in the world), Lea, again, managed to find us our first stop at…a winery!! Thus continuing our streak of chasing the grape, or “Shirley Valentining” our way across Europe.  She always wanted to drink a glass of wine in the country it was made, unfortunately for her she ended up with a 1980’s retsina, whereas we’re faring much better so far on delicious Vermentinos.

Our route from a night in Bonifacio, Corisca to Castelsardo, Sardinia was packed with at least three potential pain points in a row.  The ferry, the car service pickup and the rental.  The car service pickup had already been painful enough as we realised JUST after we booked the ferry that there were no rentals at the landing terminal, so we pre-organised a pick up, and then realised JUST before we left Aus that we’d booked a ride to a different town than where we’d booked the car, and found out JUST before leaving Corsica that the ride was cancelled.  Lea, being Lea, found an even better solution, but after a seamless ferry ride, was so nervous about the pickup she was a little panicked when we only saw one driver holding up a sign.  Disaster loomed. Only the lucky Steinarts were going to get away pain free.  Wait…being the cunning linguist he is, James couldn’t help but see the striking similarity of STEINART and STEWART…we were saved!!

Two out of three. Surely the car rental was going to be awful again!  So at a packed ferry terminal, in a tiny shopping mall we found a tiny desk with Europcar handwritten on a banner.  We. Are. Fucked.  After being ignored by one lady for a while, we were then ignored by another guy, before James, hoping he wasn’t hallucinating, read the magic word “Yaris” upside down.  It was with that, that this handsome attendant then threw his pickup line at James with “is automatic ok with you?” One could only reply with, “Si, marry me?!”

Sardinia was also amazing. Too big for 4 days, but we packed a lot in.  Lovely nights in Castelsardo, Alghero, Bosa and Cagliari, highlighted by:

• Our first bidets of the trip (and 100% strike rate by the end! Pun not intended, strike rate was not on usage, that’ll remain a mystery)
• Found a stunning antique bedside table James was desperate to take, only for Lea to counter that we can’t take wood home…not even pointing to the absurdity of taking a table in carry on
• Ate surprise lunches at wine tastings, including one of the best experiences being welcomed into the home of a tiny wine maker (by scale and height)
  • James tried to be so careful at this 2.5 hour tasting only to get to the final pairing, just about to get stuck into his ice-cream only for the wine maker to suddenly smother it in delicious 15 year old Vernacchia di Oristano (luckily, we thought, the final run home with the car was to be simple…more to come)
• Stumbled upon surprise festivals
• Got really confused what we were tasting when hearing Torbato as tomato (FYI Torbato is a local grape)
• Got to do more circles of Cagliari airport than expected (with the car screaming at us to put a seatbelt on the wine we’d put in the back seat ready for a quick escape) as we realised we’d got the drop off point wrong…then found out the other one was closed, then got to drive right into town to navigate one final parking solution
• Finally had a venison dinner so we could write about how expensive it was
• Lea put airport sandwich on best meals list of the trip list!

See all about Z2A2 here: Z2A2

And don’t forget the Z2A2 updates: Z2A2 list

An incredibly straight forward trip from Lyon’s NEW airport to Bastia, Corsica, past the Alps with a view to Mont Blanc and straight over Monte Carlo, resulted in a wise decision to split responsibilities, as Lea waited an hour for the bags and James an hour for the rental car.  Both tasks completed concurrently as we laughed at those that performed this in serial, only to more than double their wait time….laughs that were soon quelled as the reality of the “free upgrade” from FIAT 500 to SUV for Corsican roads (more to come) started to sink in.

Apparently, the Mediterranean islands are known for their amazing beaches, but Lea’s desire to learn how farms are handed from one generation to the next resulted in our first stop in the wine lands of…Patrimonio.  We had an incredible lunch with a view, and one of the best wine tastings ever in this unlikely wine region before continuing on driving through one of the most stunning landscapes and worst driving James can remember, to our first night in beautiful Corsica.

The first night was not as you might expect on a summer holiday island, rather, we chose to lock ourselves away in a bubble in the mountains.  One of the best experiences of our lives!  We had:

• James giggling like a school person as the lights went off in the bubble and he went full bubble boy
• A massive argument as James (the bubble boy) tried to explain the reason behind the Moor’s head used on the Corsican flag only to be corrected by Lea that it was a Moop’s head
• Enjoyed an incredible feast of local goodies, of which Lea’s favourite would have been the salsa, had we not wanted to combine bubble boy, moops and salsa together in fear of being sued
• Fits of nervous laughter after eating wild boar sausage, boar ham and boar rillette before hearing actual wild boar roam around us while we were outside the protection of our glad wrap accomodation
• Nervous moments as we realised harmless Dutch Ovens may recirculate and become Dutch bubbles
• Learnt that a dry toilet is nothing to fear, until you realise it’s just a bucket in disguise with a paddle in a bowl of sawdust, and that your hosts are going to own more of your personal information than anyone could possibly hope or want to hold as you pray the boar three ways didn’t give you food poisoning;
• Came to realise that the bubble, amazingly, was worth the drive!

After the safety of our bubble, our chickens soon came home to roost after previous Parisienne jokes about bush fired pizzas (feu de bois) led to us crawling in traffic through 2 bush fires, as we realised our only options were to be sheep and follow everyone else into the oven.  We sat in fear looking at smoke and wondering how bushfires start when there hadn’t been any lightning…while watching every other car throw their ciggies out the window.

Our next night was in Hotel Napoleon in Boney’s home town of Ajaccio and, surprisingly or ironically, with the cheapest stay of the trip, and after a few forehead bruises from the mainland already, had the highest bathroom ceilings so far!  We set out on a cruise for a three hour tour, a three hour tour of the bay at sunset thinking what could possibli go wrong?  We didn’t have to think for long as we watched the crew smoke, drink, perform multiple boat to boat mid-sea transfers of je ne sais quoi and generally take us to right to the edge of what could possibli go wrong.  We maybe should have got off after the Skipper’s 5 minute intro in French to rapturous applause and laugher was followed with, “euh, Anglais ah?  Euh, em, one rule…don’t fall off”.  It turns out a “wine tasting” cruise in French is actually a “piss up” for all…the Skipper, brave and sure, included. After witnessing the most drunken dockings by a Skpper since <editor’s note: you can’t put his name in here as he was a professional chandler> at Geordie Bay we weren’t surprised the crew forgot to put out the gangway as watched drunk cruisers leap onto the jetty like pissed lemmings (note we didn’t say frogs) off a cliff.  The “tastings” not adequately absorbed by the “local delicacies” served…cheese and ham, quelle surprise, and some sort of onion pop tart.

Lea did a stellar job of navigating our way across the entire fucking island to our final stop in Bonifacio and FINALLY drop off our fucking van (or what felt like one).  Thank the heavens this wasn’t our first driving experience (although definitely the toughest) as Lea’s instructions had James fuming “say loop-dee-loop ONE MORE TIME!” And if Lea’s hair appears a little unruly in any photos from here on, it’s due to the use and/or mention of hairpins being henceforth strictly forbidden.  In hindsight, I was probably a little Corse…just like Napoleon I guess.

The only highlights of the driving were the incredible scenery that I didn’t get to witness, and the varied “thank yous” from locals as they passed by. From hazard lights flashing, to foot shakes from bikers, to aggressive hand waves and honking.  And the only lost in translation moment came at at winery (of Corse) after we decided to let the lovely lady there practice her English rather than vice versa, which we thought would help us understand more….which we did, particularly after we finally realised by “meal” she meant “veal”.  We’d struggled to answer “do you eat meal in Australia?” and “I think our meal is a different colour to yours”.

Bonifacio was incredible.  After dropping off the car, we were told there were not taxis today, but, used to the impossible in France, of Corse we replied “no worries, we can walk”.  We couldn’t of Corse, we had to hike…Google maps failing to reveal the elevation required to get to our Airbnb.  After seeing the stunning cemeteries on our drive, we also weren’t surprised our hosts recommended we visit the local one for our last French (for now) sunset where we watched wave after wave of super yachts roll in thinking “I bet they’re wishing they were drinking in a cemetery car park right now”.

We were lucky enough to wake up in Bonifacio, before departing to Italy by ferry, to the wonderful news of our newest niece, Hazel, entering the world…and thus ensuring Lea’s pre-written card correctly predicted we were in France…though you took it to down to the wire guys!!!

See all about Z2A2 here: Z2A2

And don’t forget the Z2A2 updates: Z2A2 list

Ten years on from Z2A, now Z2A1, here we are, still pumping out semi legible travel content just because someone once said we couldn’t do it, and still mostly toilet references because someone said we shouldn’t.

There’s no way we can hope, or would dare try to relive the original, life defining experience of 2015, this time the aim is to enjoy the journey, so much familiar, so much new, but always together…and after so many travels together we now know if something doesn’t go to plan, that we were both right…and move on.

Our exit from Aus was inauspicious to say the least. James knocked off early to meet a colleague for a beer only to later realise one of us (not me) got their wires crossed and went to the wrong bar, meaning James got the chance to drink alone for the last time for a while…well…until right now writing this. And then we handed spare keys to a trusted neighbour, of dexterity true (we thought), only to see said keys immediately tumble to the floor periously close to a drain in what looked like a skit none of us had the comedic timing to execute. Two long flights and joining the mile high club later (I think that’s when all the Champagne you drink on board can reach a mile stacked end on end) and all of aforementioned sagas had been forgotten…until I read my notes promising to never forget.

We’re now (at time of writing) over a week into the trip and leaving the mainland for our island adventures. After 6 months of planning, we’re still wondering “when will this feel real?”  A strange sense of familiarity has dominated the first leg, with half the time spent in towns we already knew, and one, Paris, we have already been to in 2025 <insert definition of lucky>.  A feeling we’re sure, and hopeful, will get knocked out of us as soon as we try to check into Air Corsica.

Our first full day in Paris was coincident with the arrival of the final leg of Le Tour!  And what better way than to start a honeymoon reunion with multiple full body friskings while exploring the city of love.  It was made more cordial with a line for females for female officers and vice versa, but it was disappointing that James’ offers to switch lanes to help out weren’t accepted.

Watching Le Tour we got to see a man run on the track before the yellow jersey passed, only to be followed by a cop sprinting after him with his machine gun bouncing all over the place. We couldn’t help but laugh (partly in terror but mostly in irony) that this poor guy was being weighed down by a gun he was not even allowed to use and thus would never catch the culprit.  The irony continued into the night as we finally made it into a recommended restaurant called Frenchies only to be met with the realisation that this was their spinoff Italian restaurant.

We tried some new experiences in Paris and recycled the old.  New included at least 2 new galleries and old included picnics in our favourite spots – Ile St Louis and under the Eiffel Tower.  Our classic picnics of baguette, fromage et Champagne this time enhanced by un petit chaser of Metamucil to ensure we (James) could pass (pardon the pun) 8 weeks of cheese.  Under the tower we ruminated over how things had changed over a decade and what Lea meant by the names she gave to some of the Instagramer photo poses.  One poor chap was labelled with performing the “reverse teapot”. Now…I don’t know where your mind is going, but whichever way, mine went there too. And after being unable to picture one of them, I soon couldn’t see anything else.

Malheureusement, for reasons unknown, and definitely unconnected to the mile of Champagne, we both started to feel a little under the weather in Paris. Which is ok, except that when we’re really trying to do a good job with the language, it can seem a little insincere with what must seem a faux, nasally accent like Nanny Fine. But I think it was Victor Hugo* who said, “French is merely English, spoken with a blocked nose and only half the written letters”…or something to that effect. *Thanks to my editor for picking up the typo, originally “Victor Huge”…who I think is actually a popular porn actor in France for those with a hump back fetish.

Anyway, our time in Paris reminded us how much rich (old money rich) people love a good tapestry, how opportunity lies around every corner…most often for locals to create a urinal out of nothing, and how a simple moment of lost in translation can really get the mind boggled. Lea, reading “feu a bois” as “bushfire” was super impressed at the lengths Parisians would go to bake a pizza.

De Paris a Lyon.  Lyon, a city that holds a special place in James’ heart and much less special place in other parts a la derrière, after discovering the true meaning of Bouchon in 2015. See: Bouchon 2015

One night in Lyon passed smoothly (pun intended) as we then ventured to a new territory of the Jura.  An unplanned coincidence that after Lyon (and the pre-planned supplements that came with it) was that we spent our first night on the Loue…the river Loue that is, in the stunning Ornans. The Loue even more handy after James (accidentally) ordered his first prawn dish since THAT (ESL) prawn in Sri Lanka….here, in the prawn laden mountains of the Jura.  It worked out well, a truly convivial dinner, apart from once again squabbling over who would get the pigeon for the main course.

After spending too much money in Ornans, we picked a town we thought should help get back a little…Dole.  Having survived the prawns, James somehow managed to order two dishes in a day that clearly looked to contain death cap mushrooms. Morels, it turns out, are ok for a beef welly too. Someone who likely knew that was born in Dole, Louis Pasteur.  We visited his museum, to get some…cultures, but didn’t stay long as Lea, who is yet to catch rabies, considers him more of an enemy of good cheese.

We visited many towns in the Jura-tion of our time, the home of my favourite Vin Jaune, Chateau Challon, where we tried some humdingers (sly nod to Lea), stayed two nights in Arbois and on the way out passed through the home of Comté and Lea bought so much cheese it left James feeling super un-Comté-ble…but worth it to hear Lea (after some years of practice) utter those three elusive words: BEST. CHEESE. EVER.

After testing our cheese in-Jura-nce…we spent a night in a large barrel, in the vines of Cerdon.  Now I don’t know what you need to make you happy, but if limestone mountain cliffs, steep grape laden vines, a cabin shaped like a wine barrel, the best cheese ever and wine (and one average tomato for fiber) from the Jura and a stunning sunset don’t work…then…je ne sais quoi will.  What you shouldn’t do is think you can climb 70 degree sloped, rocky vineyards just because you’re still pretending to be backpackers.  The rocks of the Jura lending their name to the Jurassic period should have had us acting our age and thinking more of our ankles.

Speaking of ankles…En route to another night in Lyon, we passed through medieval villages including Perouges, whose cobbled streets of river rocks had clearly been paid for by ancient physiotherapists looking to ensure long careers in ankle strapping.

We spent our final night in mainland France in Lyon, going from one bouchon (car traffic) to another (restaurant). We stayed at an airport hotel because Lea, on a rare occasion taking after her Dad , was nervous about the early morning start even though James thought we could “almost” walk to the airport from the old town…turns out that not only does Lyon have an old town and a new town, it also has an old airport and new, rather distal, airport.

Next stop, the islands!!