What is a visit?
Trip Start
Jun 17, ????
1
20
36
Trip End
Ongoing
Horsham,
United Kingdom
Wednesday, January 1, 2003
Once you start goiong off the beaten track a bit, you often go via other places. For example, I went to Montenegro the year before last and, so that we could fly from Gatwick, we went via Dubrovnik. This was a fantastic way of approaching it. Yes, the Montenegrin airport is a mere 30 minutes from where we were staying, in Budva, but our two hour trek from Dubrovnik took us through the most beautiful scenery and was infinitely worth it to avoid Heathrow. So, technically, I have been to Croatia, but it seems to me that landing somewhere and immediately driving to the nearest border is not doing the place justice.
Generally speaking, I think I'd have to spend at least a day and a night somewhere to be able to say that I have "been" there. (As in "visited". That wasn't toilet humour). Of course, there may be exceptions - Vatican city springs to mind as somewhere you could explore in a few hours and not have to spend the ngiht there. [and, b-gger, that reminds me, I went to Vatican City when I was in Rome in '99 and I haven't posted on it, so that's two countries that I've got out of sync now. You wouldn't think that I was working from a list...]
I'm also not counting Switzerland, although we did spend a day or two there when I was in Leitchenstein. This is because I'm not clear in my memory as to which nits were Switzerland. I've landed in Geneva a couple of times too, but that definitely falls under the "Land and drive for the border" exclusion.
So, the length of the visit might vary and I may or may not spend a night, but I do want to feel that whichever part of the country I'm in, I've actually made some effort to see what's there and ideally, climbed up a famous monument of some sort.
And now I'd better back track to Vatican City.
