Adventure of the month

Although this summer has been going wonderfully, there is something missing. I may be traveling, meeting some amazing people and finding that the Netherlands has seriously stepped up their vegetarian game.  However, there is also a distinct lack of blue-eyed zombies, dragons and little blond badasses in my life. In other words, I want my Game of Thrones back. Seeing as George R. R. Martin is not taking my calls and I inadvertently cancelled my HBO subscription (but not before the finale of Westworld), this situation called for drastic measures. If the seven kingdoms would not come to me, then clearly I must go to the seven kingdoms.  I've already been to King's Landing (aka Dubrovnik) and Braavos (aka Girona), so maybe it was time to check out the Iron Islands, the wall and pretty much everything else in between. In order to do this, a trip to Belfast was in order.

My first Game of Thrones fan tour led me to King's Landing and Qarth- or as nit-picking cartographers would call it "Dubrovnik". A new month meant a new destination and this time I made plans to go to Braavos. For those that do not have either (a)an HBO Go subscription or (b) way too much time on their hands, (SPOILERS APLENTY COMING UP) this was the place where that little badass Arya went to train with a cult of weirdo assassins. You might remember that most of her time was spent running through crowded markets while being chased by a crabby blonde chick with a stick. Either that or selling oysters. I wanted to go to those markets. Turns out that all of those scenes were filmed in the Catalan city of Girona.  To get there, one could easily do a day trip from Barcelona (less than 1 hr by train) but the wee medieval town really does merit at least an overnight.  This is particularly true if you are hoping to transport yourself to Braavos (with a little bit of King...

One would think that the "sport" of counting countries would be relatively free of controversy. There are no banned enhancement-performing drugs, no need for instant replays and the balls are very rarely deflated. But this was one trip that lead to a bit of soul searching for me. Back in 1988, I did a summer study abroad program in what was then Yugoslavia. We spend two weeks in Dubrovnik, one in Belgrade and one in Zagreb. In a probably unrelated move, not too long thereafter, the country came out from behind the iron curtain and eventually split up into seven independent countries. Although I had been in what would become Croatia and Serbia, I have always counted this as one country, placing an asterisk next to my listing of Yugoslavia. And then Game of Thrones happened. Like everyone else who chooses to live among humankind, I'd heard about the show but it wasn't until this spring that I decided to watch the first episode.  That one episode led to another a...