8/4/2023: The Dilemma

Ischia, Italy

After spending the previous day in a lounge chair by the pool reading our books  and soaking in the sun, we officially had the energy to leave our hotel by the sea and checkout a nearby beach. Oh man, was it beautiful! We found a spot in the shade, bought a sandwich and mojitos to-go from the bar across the street, and soaked in our first true beach experience since leaving sunny San Diego. I gotta say, that beach put San Diego to shame. The water was clear and perfect for snorkeling, warm and calm enough to plunge headfirst into, and sooo refreshing.

Now let me preface this rant. Our trip has been magical - fun filled, low stress, and particularly free flowing. By this point, we have successfully navigated 6 countries, trains, planes, buses, ferries, taxis, subways, & light rails all across various languages. We have stayed in nice hotels and frustrating hostels, with groups and just by ourselves. The magic kept flowing, getting stronger with every barely made train and boujie accommodation that we nickel and dimed for. And then we hit the dilemma.

We had been fortunate to be able to plan each next leg of the journey as soon as 48 hrs or even 24 hrs before! While we may have missed out on some discount hotels, we’ve been able to secure timely transit and lodging at about $50/person/night. That was, until our time ran out in Ischia.

Our plan was originally to go from Naples area (Ischia & Amalfi coast), down to Sicily, then to Greece, to Istanbul, back up through Croatia to Venice and then to Budapest, Vienna etc. etc.

We made the executive decision to skip Amalfi Coast and Sicily, hop over the Adriatic Sea and go to Greece. We can dig into this more if you’d really like us to. But mainly, we had been in Italy and had the opportunity to experience so many amazing cool things and now we were ready to check out some new countries while being mindful that we didn’t want our Schengen visa to run out before we got to the tail end of our trip. We quickly found out, however, it is not that simple to get across the Adriatic! At least, not in our budget… One way flights from Naples to Greece were $250+. Flights from Greece to Istanbul were another $250+. Flights from Istanbul back to Croatia or Budapest were another $250+!

With the Inter-rail/Eurorail pass we bought at the beginning of our trip, we have been getting to each new spot for less than $10/person and less than $50 if it included a ferry, long taxi, or seat reservation. The additional $750+ was an unbudgeted expense accumulated in as short as two weeks! It doesn’t even include lodging or island hopping in Greece!

Whereas we normally were able to plan the next leg of our journey in a couple short hours, this was turning into mountainous task. We tried every conceivable combination of traveling from Ischia to Greece, Istanbul, Croatia, Venice, and Budapest - in no particular order. It wasn’t possible with our reroutes. We were [stuck 😉] on island on the west side of Italy until we sacked up and made the tough call. We would have to cross AT LEAST one leg off the list. And THAT was being generous.

Realistically, we should have taken a ferry and a train up to Venice the next day and skip Croatia, Greece and Istanbul altogether. From Venice we could head to Vienna and Budapest and continue on, saving money spent on transit and hotels in the process. But that’s not why we came! Greece, Istanbul, and Croatia were top on the list of places to see. Skipping them all would be a heartbreak.

We couldn’t solve the puzzle that night. At 2am, we threw in the towel and banked on our hotel extending our stay for one more night, giving us an additional day to figure it out.

Woke up the next morning and luck was back in our favor. The hotel, bless their heart, extended our stay at a discount price. We took our fully charged phones and a pad of paper and some pencils to the pool and got to cracking the code.

We knew we couldn’t make it all work… We had waited too long, flights were too expensive now, flights that would have been reasonably priced had we planned in advance. We HAD to cross Greece off the list. As much we we wanted to visit, we could frickin make it work. Ferries from Italy to Greece got us nowhere close to Athens or the Islands, planes and trains were just outrageous.

Using all of the resources at our disposal (pens & paper, Google maps, chat GPT, and aperol spritz) we were able to devise a new route. Get back to Naples, fly to Split, train to Budapest, and get round trip tickets to Istanbul [from Budapest]. Not perfect, by any means, but significantly cheaper than the alternative. Learned our lesson and got two keep two of the three spots alive. A win in our book.

~ J