I can’t write an article about 2020 without mentioning COVID and the measures taken by almost all countries to delay its spread. It turned our world upside down and determined us to find new ways of enjoying our free time with the loved ones. We started 2020 with 5 planned trips. I didn’t write much about them. I am not superstitious, but wanted it to be a surprise. As for many others, some of the plans got cancelled. We couldn’t go in Tenerife in May and in Ireland at the beginning of June. But we consider ourselves lucky. We didn’t lose anybody and didn’t get sick. We got to spend more time in the middle of nature and looked for safer ways to travel.
January
We started the new year in the capital of Macedonia, Skopje. It was a big group trip, with good and bad, but as a whole it was an interesting experience.
We didn’t go skiing last winter, but we discovered the thermal waters at Chiflika in Bulgaria and the little town Troyan.
February
We went back to Warsaw and found out more about the city and its secrets. This time we spent more time indoors visiting museum, as the weather was mostly bad.
Ploiești, a town less than one hour from Bucharest, is so close to the capital that we always postponed seeing what it had to offer. In February, as we didn’t have much time, we decided to give it a go and we really enjoyed it. We visited The National Oil Museum, The Clock Museum and The house of a merchandiser from the 18th and 19th centuries. While the first one doesn’t have any information in English, the second and third are open to international visitors.
March
Just before the pandemic I travelled to Malaga and Gibraltar on a girls only trip. We had doubts if we should go or not, but in the end the majority of us decided to go on with the plan. Coming back, I was told to work from home for two weeks, as Spain was in the yellow zone. I didn’t feel excluded for long. Only a few days later my colleagues also started to work from home. The two weeks turned into 10 months.
10th of March – May
A period full of restrictions for all of us followed. I didn’t go out much. We discovered the world mostly from our couch through movies, board games and music. On the bright side, we succeeded to save quite a lot during that period of time.
June
Even if we got rid of some of the restrictions, but most abroad trips were cancelled and we were not allowed to enter a lot of countries. We travelled mostly on weekends in Maramureș, Oaș, Galați.
July – October
After two months of questions and searches, we decided to try a new way of traveling. As we both worked from home and always looked up to the RVs passing by us on the highroads, we made a big step and bought one. A period full of new experiences, challenges, camp fires, happiness and sometimes frustrations followed. But now we remember those times with joy and hope to do it again next summer. We travelled by RV in Suceava, Neamț, Covasna, Harghita, Mureș, Constanța, Tulcea, Hunedoara, Alba, Cluj, Bihor, Bistrița-Năsăud, but also Poland. I hope to get to write about some of them next year.
October
We travelled abroad with the RV for the first time and discovered a country ready for this way of travelling, with big and uncrowded camp sites, but also nice and well maintained off-camping sites. In Romania the authorities are thinking of forbidding off-camping in order to protect the nature, but Poland proved to me that it can be done. That off-camping doesn’t have to be the enemy of nature. I enjoyed the most the areas of Zakopane and Gdansk, but small cities like Zamosc, Lublin or Poznan also have a special charm.
November
We travelled for the second time to Sweden and this time visited Stockholm, Gothenburg and Swedish Lapland.
December
This year we didn’t go to any Christmas market, but saw the Apuseni and Retezat mountains in winter. There wasn’t much snow, but some of the waterfalls we had seen in summer were now frozen and offered us a real show.
TravelWithASpin in 2020
Like every year, I wanted to do much, but actually did little. The views had increased at the beginning of the year, but in March dropped to almost 0 and barely got to the previous level at the end of the year.
Thank you to those that get to this blog and don’t run right away. I hope you found some useful information and that I convinced you to travel more, even in this new world, when we have to pay more attention to hygiene and people we get in contact with.
Plans for 2021
2020 started with a lot of planned trips, some of which took place and some not, while others just happened. This year starts as a white canvas. We have no planned trip. We hope to be able to spend one more summer in the RV, preferably abroad, but nothing is set. Let’s see what the future has in store for us.
Conclusions
2020 forced us to get out of our comfort zone, try new ways of travel and spend more time in the middle of nature. Fortunately, no friend or relative suffered of a serious form of COVID and the ones that had the disease got well. We hope next year we’ll slowly get to a new normal, but keep what we won by mistake this year, independence and hope!
Happy New Year!
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