In Photos: The Train from Zagreb, Croatia to Belgrade, Serbia

I’m in Serbia on a nerdtastic fact-finding mission about the inventor Nikola Tesla. The journey started in lovely Croatia, followed by a Saturday ride on the train from Zagreb to Belgrade.

It is the dead of winter, but that didn’t create a lack of scenery. The train was comfortable and cozy on the inside, warmed even more by the fact that Croatians and Serbians are among the friendliest on the planet.

This is what it looked like (all photos snapped on my iPhone from the train window):

 

Zagreb to Belgrade Train Journey by Kim Mance is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.gogalavanting.com.

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Kim Mance is Galavanting’s editor-in-chief, writer, photographer and con-camera host of Galavanting.tv and two cable TV shows in production. She’s based in Brooklyn, NY and blogs for places like Condé Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, Huffington Post, and Babble. She’s host of the popular TBEX conferences in North America & Europe. She’s @kimmance on Twitter.

Girl in the North Country - Plattsburgh, NY

A park on the shore of Plattsburgh Bay.This week I find myself in quiet Plattsburgh on the Adirondack Coast (which is home to a whopping 600 miles of shoreline). The historic little town is a quick ferry jaunt across Lake Champlain from the coffee shops and art galleries of Burlington, Vermont. The locals and their signage call this area of upstate New York the ‘North Country’.

I took the scenic Amtrak Adirondack train directly from New York City’s Penn Station, through the Hudson Valley and alongside the shores of Lake Champlain. The ride even includes a free talk by National Park Service volunteers in the train’s cafe car, who provide information about the surrounding landscape, point out historic landmarks, and answer questions. It certainly beat a trek to the airport and being harassed by the TSA.

A country road antique shop in Plattsburgh, NY.Folks often roadtrip the surrounding area, past hilly cornfields in-between cute antique shops and farmer’s markets along backroads and highways, or to see the changing of fall leaves.

And francophiles can even get a bit of a fix because of Plattsburgh’s proximity to Québec, Canada.

Directional signs in Plattsburgh’s historic center show off a little French.Historic sites are marked all along Plattsburgh’s Riverwalk.The Battle of Plattsburgh was won by the US Navy on Sept 11th, 1814 and helped prevent the British from making any claims on US land during treaty negotiations.

A highlight is taking a stroll down the city’s Riverwalk with fantastic views of Lake Champlain, Plattsburgh Bay, the historic center of town and the Saranac River.

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Take me out to the ball game - Chicago, IL

The air is seemingly solid, it is so thick. While the slowly setting sun casts a rosy-golden hue on the summer haze, red and blue foam fingers, baseball caps and shirts become an ocean of people that is neither refreshing nor cool. It is Game Day in Wrigleyville, Chicago, and the Cubs and Phillies are about to go head to head. It is hot, and I am bothered. “What am I doing in Wrigleyville?” I thought to myself.

Easy enough answer: I’m going to my first Cubs game.

I don’t “do” sports. I’m kind of plushy and lazy, and the thought of watching athletes compete makes me short of breath, not to mention feel a little guilty. “I should probably go do something, huh?” So it came as a surprise when I got invited to

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A Rainy Day in Paradise - Roatan, Honduras

One of my fondest and most vivid memories is of me and a childhood friend playing in the heavy, cool rain, on a warm summer day. It rained all day and it never got old. We only threw in the towel when my mother forced one around us.

Several years later, I found myself in what would become another fond and vivid memory of a rainy day.

I had been looking forward to our stop in Roatan, Honduras for months. I knew we only had one day there, and I wanted to make the most of it, but the rain just poured and poured with no signs of stopping. My high hopes of exploring beautiful Roatan were dashed. That is until my travel companion Kim Mance took the bull by the horns (the bull being a very grumpy, heavy set fellow working for a tour company). Everyone was lining up for personal van tours, as just about all other activities were canceled due to the downpour. Explorers, we are! Tour people, we aren’t. It took some scaling language barrier walls, but Kim finally got “the bull” to agree to just drive us wherever we would like, and forego the actual tour. Genius!

Our main mission that day was to leave the tourist town and stop over at the Elfrida Brooks grade school. When Kim realized we were stopping over in Roatan, she took up a very successful fundraiser through Galavanting for this tiny school.

The kids—who had come for miles to see us and get some new school supplies—were fantastic! They were all polite, grateful and energetic, as was their teacher, Darla. It was very plain to see that Darla cared about each and every one

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A Taco Ride - Your Hometown

A gathering of bicyclers for a “Taco Ride” in small town Iowa (photo by Courtney McGann).

Do you remember how fun it was to first learn to ride a bike? Now imagine how fun it would be with cocktails! Every Thursday night, a few friends and I join hundreds of cyclist for a nearby ‘Taco Ride’. Could sound a little dirty depending on where your mind is, but I’ll explain.

We all set off at whatever time we please and meet 10 miles down the trail at a tiny little steak house in a tiny litte town. That’s where you rest your legs and start workin’ your liver. The special here on Thursday nights is six tacos and a pitcher of (very

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