Here Comes An Adventure!

It’s finally set!

I’ve been plotting and scheming about my summer travel plans for months, making and breaking itineraries, dreaming up new fabulous adventures, and living in the wonderful world of complete possibility.

Of course, that complete freedom restricts when you actually COMMIT to booking tickets, which is perhaps why I constantly have overwhelming anxiety when I book flights. (This has been an ongoing problem for years. I always feel GREAT after I make the plans; I always feel like I’m going to die before I do. Anxiety is a weird thing, and why it chooses to manifest itself like this is beyond me.)

But now the flights are booked, the itinerary is as amorphous as it could possibly be, and I leave in two weeks for a grand adventure!

It’s a jaunt that involves (hopefully) five different countries, four different alphabets, three different language families, two different regions, and one fabulous festival.

Here’s where I’ll be frolicking, friends:

In two weeks I fly to the country of Georgia, a place that has captured my imagination for years. I’ll start in Batumi before basing myself in Tbilisi and exploring the quirky city, the beautiful countryside, and the famous Georgian cuisine.

I have two and a half weeks in the Caucasus, which will hopefully also involve a jaunt to Armenia, if there’s time.

Then I cross back into Turkey for a brief stay in Kars, the setting of one of my favorite Turkish novels, and a day trip to the deserted city of Ani.

After a brief stopover back in Istanbul, I fly to Serbia for the Guca Trumpet Festival, a bacchanalia of Balkan music in the mountains. I am obsessed with Balkan brass bands; I can’t even begin to express how giddy I am about this leg of my trip.

When the festival wraps up, I’ll head back to Belgrade and spend the rest of August exploring Serbia and Montenegro! My friends have raved about the Bay of Kotor, and the Balkans is one of my favorite regions in the world, so I’m sure this part of the trip will be fantastic.

I’m setting off on this adventure all by myself, which is terribly exciting and a little scary at the same time. The unknown is so intoxicatingly beautiful. I’ll be leaping into it with fistfuls of film and eyes full of wonder.

Stay tuned. Who knows what magic will come of this.