An Announcement: The Trip of a Lifetime – 100Essential Travel Experiences
It’s been quiet on Travel Cake these past few months. Some of you have been asking me where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to. Well, I can tell you this much: I haven’t been slacking! I’ve moved from Ecuador to Belgium where I have been slaving away at a 9 to 5 desk […]
9 Day Trips you should Never Take

… Because they should be overnight trips! Day trips… convenient, efficient, and seemingly harmless. They let you cram a lot of sights into a short amount of time. But let’s be honest—some places deserve better than that. In my travels, I’ve come across too many spots that suffer under the weight of day-tripper tourism. You […]
3 Awesome Budget Accomodations in Albania

I wasn’t sure what “on a budget†in Albania would actually mean. Would my daily lunch be a raw cucumber from the market? Would I have to skip bus fares just to save a few bucks? Would I be sleeping in grimy dungeons, sharing a single bathroom with 10 strangers? Luckily, none of that came […]
Visit Berat in Albania and weep

Weeping in the name of overwhelming charm and beauty is a thing, right? Well, it was for me. I definitely had to hold back a tear or two. Maybe they were just tears of general happiness—or maybe it was the setting I found myself in. Berat was nearly deserted. Tourist season had long since ended, […]
2014 Travel Summary

I spent the last two days of 2014 in a haze, trying to beat jetlag and fatigue from the long transatlantic flight to South America. While the rest of the world was exchanging hugs and watching fireworks to ring in the new year, I was soundly asleep, cocooned in my warm bed. Despite the endless […]
Up close and personal with the Albanian Mountains in Valbona

Valbona: A Hidden Gem in the Albanian Alps The journey began in pitch darkness, on the side of a dirt road in northern Albania. I wasn’t alone—I had teamed up with a fellow traveller I’d met at a hostel. Our guesthouse owner in Shkoder had assured us that a bus would swing by to pick […]