Balkan Road Trip: Days 17 and 18

After an amazing breakfast at Niche Camping, we left Budapest at 8:45.

Joel securing the tent before we hit the road.

"Shut up and eat bread"

We drove about an hour until we reached Lake Balaton, which is the largest lake in central Europe. We stopped briefly at Siofok, on the southern side of the lake, and enjoyed the views, but didn't go swimming (which I wish we would have had more time to do). At this point we were ready to get home and we wanted to get some good driving time in!

Then it was back on the road for what seemed like forever!

In our rush to make good time, we didn't stop to get our daily groceries after breakfast. So we were in-the-middle-of-nowhere Hungary around 1:00 and our kids began to complain of hunger, as kids often do. We hoped for the best and got off at the Kiskunfelegyhaza (we all had a good laugh trying to pronounce that one) exit. We found ourselves in some tiny town and managed to find what seemed like the only restaurant and walked on in. EVERYONE in the ENTIRE restaurant stopped eating and stared at us. We quietly sat down, trying not to draw more attention to ourselves, and greeted our waitress who spoke no English. She handed us some menus and we pointed to the only word we recognized (schnitzel) and told her we'd have that. It turned out to be delicious and all 7 of us ate for 3900 Hungarian Forint (about $14.87)!
All that to say, the whole experience made me really thankful for how far we've come since first moving to Turkey. Things that used to be so hard are now so easy. And what used to be so foreign is now so familiar. Turkey feels like home to us and I'm so grateful for that! We had so much fun on this trip, but we also missed home. Turkey, we love you!

An hour and a half wait at the Hungary-Serbia border 😩

Zooming through Serbia's capital, Belgrade.

We've possibly spent too much time driving today.

Daddy's helper! ⛺️ AND we made it to our campsite just before dark!
It was by far the smallest campsite we stayed at, but one of my favorites. The owner came the whole way to the highway exit to meet us and help us find the place (it really was in the middle of nowhere)

We got up really early because we thought it was going to rain and wanted to pack up before it did. Thankfully, the weather was nice. We had eggs and cheerios for breakfast before leaving at 7:30. 

Some views from the road. We drove through mountains and plains, sun and rain, through 2 and a half countries . . . 

Another long border wait at Bulgaria- about 50 minutes.

Almost home! At the Turkish border finally!! Little did we know we would wait for about 2 hours!

At least we were entertained. There were horns honking, people milling about and then a fight broke out. Oh Turkey, how we missed you! Isaiah and Brooks came up and ate some chips with us as we watched the action. Haha.

Finally some sun!

The plan was to stay at the campsite on the Gallipolli Peninsula, where we had stayed our first night, but when we checked the weather and it was calling for storms, we just decided to keep on driving towards home!

We had another long wait to get on the ferry (1.5 hours. Boo). But it was worth it - check out the sky, it was amazing!

We were pretty tired at this point and we had to put on some 90s pop music to keep us awake and singing for the last two hours of our trip, but we had fun reminiscing our middle school days. It was 2:30am before we arrived home!

Our last day we drove from Serbia to Turkey, 19 hours of traveling (with stops and border waits)!! We were so thankful when we arrived home and fell into our own beds. We slept like babies!

So there you have it, folks. I LOVED this trip! It was such an adventure and one we'll be talking and laughing about as a family for years to come - SO, SO many fun memories! I'm thankful we were able to do, it definitely brought us closer as a family.