Back after a week and a half in paradise. But a week and a half in Croatia and the Balkans, rather than sating the hunger for travel, left me rather wanting... The thing was though, it wasn't just about being somewhere exotic (though that was more than nice), or being with wonderful friends (even better), this trip was exciting because it was about going somewhere. Moving from one point to another. Whether by plane, bus, boat, or on foot, there is a simple sense of accomplishment and satisfaction in being mobile, headed in a particular direction.

I like getting places. I often find it the most satisfying part of travel. To be sure, there's an excitement upon arriving at an unknown destination. But I often prefer to know I'm on the way there.  To have a plan, a route, and a goal. To relax in the knowledge that you're in limbo, somewhere defiantly between start and finish.

I spent much of this week en route. In a desperate attempt to keep the cost of flights as low as possible, as well as a bit of nostalgia for backpacking days when I attempted everything on a budget, I flew to Croatia via Bosnia, and flew back to Istanbul via Macedonia.

The two hour B&H (Bosnia and Herzegovina Airlines to most, Benson and Hedges airlines to others) flight out of Istanbul to Sarajevo was delayed three hours. From the lounge, between bouts of fitful sleep on a cold metal bench, I would awaken to peer sleepily at the timetable and watch the delay creep forward: one hour, two hours, two and a half. In a carefully plotted out route, I'd be on a direct bus by 9:30 in order to reach Split, Croatia in time for the Discotheque Riva, a concert on the city's waterfront headlining Faithless and Fedde LeGrand with friends. That became impossible when my flight was scheduled to arrive at ten. Resigned, upon arrival I haggled with the taxi driver for a ride to the bus station, and while all direct buses to Split had left for the day, I hopped on a bus in the right direction, headed for Mostar.  Despite disrupted plans, knowing that there was nothing I could do provided a strange sense of solace... There's always another way. It just ups the stakes of the challenge a bit.

The reroute was, in hindsight, a very fortunate accident. It resulted in a bus ride that was probably the most scenic of my life.  We twisted down narrow, snakelike roads, dipping between high mountains and around glass-like lakes. All the while we paralleled the train line, which crossed the water on long, magnificent bridges and made its way through the hills on dramatic overpasses and through long tunnels. To know this country had only recently been war torn was almost unthinkable as we passed through stretches of serene farmland and tranquil, wind-blown forests.

In Mostar I was told the only bus to Split left at eleven PM for arrival the following morning.  Unbelievably dejected, especially as I'd miss out not only on the concert but also a night in the five-star Meridian Lav, courtesy of a Starwood-pointed friend Walter (yes, the hotel was called the Lav), I spoke to a local taxi driver who asked 50 Euro for a ride to the border. Only after much eyelash batting and wide-eyed questioning did he relent and announce that there was, in fact, a bus running from the other station at four, and offered to drive me around the town for an hour in the interim. Sometimes there is such undeniable luxury in being female.

Mostar is incredibly quaint. See above.

I got on the bus for the last leg of my journey with a sense of self-satisfaction, and onwards towards Split, dancing to Faithless on a boardwalk along the Adriatic coast, a queen sized bed (with a down comforter and air-con), buffet breakfast (stole the jam), and lounging poolside (testing out the new bikini). The luxury was cut short rather dramatically when Josh and I realized that Sibenik, where our Yacht Week boat and friends awaited, was a two hour drive up the coast. In two hours we were supposed to have left the harbour. We jumped in a taxi to the bus station and rushed to catch a bus in the nick of time, and we sat with baited breath as the bus crept up the shore road in deep holiday traffic. We arrived to find that the day trip had been canceled as our boat, Ema Blue, was undergoing some repairs. Bloody Mary's were on the table within seconds.

Yacht week was the Spring Break I never had. See the appropriate pictures here. The not-quite-so-appropriate ones on facebook.

But again, part of the fun was that were always mobile. We took off each morning with a destination in mind, stopping in for the night at picturesque ports, or harbouring in sheltered coves, the ever-changing coastline and clear blue skies following us romantically. The delicate balance between drinking too much in an evening and wanting nothing more than to lie in the sun on the bow all day was rarely tipped.

In the mornings we set off, moving at snail's pace after long nights. As the day progressed with far too few pages of a cheesy International Bestseller read, we would slowly recover from the morning haze. We moored alongside deserted islands and lunched on salami and proscuitto, local cheeses and fresh vegetables washed down with Croatian beer and rose (or perhaps a bit of bubbly for pomp and circumstance). We cavorted in the cold, salty waters of the Adriatic, peering down into the clear blue depths, where splintering light reflected from the seabed below. We would arrived at our destination with daylight to spare, comfortably shacking up next to a fellow Yacht Week boat and befriending our neighbors with offerings of Red Bull vodka or another popped cork spraying undrinkable prosecco in their direction. In the evenings, after a walk and a shower, we would dine on board, or at a local restaurant. Seafood was divine - octopus, shark, mussels and calamari freshly caught and cooked, and bottles of strong Croatian wine flowed. The evening unraveled delightfully from there, but I'll spare the gory details.

As expected, the week ended much quicker than expected, and suddenly we lurched to a stop and in desperate need of a proper bed and a serious scrub down. Despite a niggling in the back of my mind of a flight out of Skopje, Macedonia in two days time, I pushed it aside with explorations of the city of Split with Dan and Dom Heynen, and joined Gill on the island of Hvar a day later. We climbed bell towers, giggled at locals as they doggy paddled in speedos at the local beaches, drank fancy and overpriced cocktails at seaside lounge bars, scrutinized tourist maps to plot our route, perused the old cities, and rented scooters to explore the island. I won't complain about my bruised scooter and the 200 euros worth of  damage, but I will attest to the fact that  at 6 AM on Monday Gill and I came to the sudden, slightly sickening realization that we had a day and a half to get off an island and cross four countries to catch our flight.

We booked it. The 7:30 ferry arrived into Split at 9:40. A 10:00 bus left from the Otogar for Dubrovnik and was scheduled to take four and a half hours, with an unavoidable dip into Bosnia on the way. I sat at the edge of my seat and we watched the seconds tick by before we rolled into the station with minutes to spare before the 3:00 bus over the border to Montenegro. On the way we took a car ferry across the Bay of Kotor, southern Europe's deepest fjord, and rolled into the small town of Herceg Novi, where an overnight bus was waiting to take us through Montenegro and Kosovo and into Macedonia. We breathed a sigh of relief as we boarded that final bus, content in the discomfort of a fitful night's upright sleep knowing we'd reach Skopje by morning and in time to catch our 40 euro Pegasus Airways flight home in the following afternoon. We arrived at 5AM after 22 hours in transit, and fell asleep on the floor of the bus station for three hours before we were ready to face the day.

Skopje is a city that appears to be one large reconstruction site. Apparently the city was all but destroyed after an earthquake in 1963, and it has taken till this year to get moving on the rebuilding scheme. It's clear that they're in a hurry. Cranes litter the skyline, and every architecturally stimulating building seemed to be covered in scaffolding. All around the town brazen new statues are being unveiled, including one hideously tacky Alexander the Great fountain(!) where he is seen on horseback upon a grand white pedestal, surrounded by roaring lions and battle-ready soldiers. See left. That, and the fact that Gill and I were were too tired and too hot, made it difficult to get a good impression of the city, which was deadly quiet due to Ramadan. After making a concerted effort to get our fill of culture by stopping in at a few churches, we fell asleep again on an old, brown, sandpaper-like sofa in Skopje's national art museum before finding any conceivable space that might have air-conditioning (the local mall), until it was time to taxi to the airport and go home. Then the whirlwind was over.

Yes, getting places can be stressful. Plotting a route can take ages, especially in countries where the bus schedule isn't readily available online, (god forbid things are still done on paper!), or a flight is delayed, or you're just too hungover to decide which island you'd like to moor at for lunch. Unforeseen challenges provide an occasional adrenaline rush, forcing you out of your comfort zone. But once you've settled into that window seat, or that perch on the bow where the 180 degree view lends nothing but vast expanses of water; once you've got two hands tight to the handlebars of a scooter as you race along a deserted country road, or you're walking down a quiet side street towards some undiscovered landmark. Once you're doing that, there's nothing to do but take in the the view as it passes, and try to capture the moments of beauty in the landscape. You're moving, but you are there.