The biggest difference of my corporate crash out versus my college travel days, is where I choose to stay. Now that I’m 31, I’m actually too old for most youth hostels and to be honest, that part of my life is behind me. My last ever hostel stay was in Cartagena, Colombia of a mixed 18-person dorm for $13 a night and I LOVED it. Today, I have some savings, my dogs bark a little harder than they used to, and there is some level of comfort I aspire to have.
So, I am now an “in-betweener.” I can’t afford to stay in hotels every night for 6 months but I want some level of privacy and comfort. Generally, I aim to find a place for less than $74 a night (this would put me on par with my rent in Scottsdale, Arizona). Sometimes it’s lower, sometimes it’s higher. It also depends on what country I’m traveling in and if I’m in a tourist hot spot or a city.
The biggest key to my travel is traveling in the shoulder seasons. My Balkan’s trip started in mid-September so the kids in Europe are going back to school, the weather is just starting to get a little cool, and the tourists are definitely lesser. This is the ONLY way I am able to book my accomodations with as short of notice as I do (literally the night before or day of). This also hurts or helps my cost at times. Generally, I also search all of these through Booking.com. BONUS: Book through the AAdvantage portal to double down on getting airline points + credit card points + booking.com points.
Here is the running list of the places I have stayed during my time in the Balkans (most recent to oldest for reference if you are following my Instagram timeline).
- Ljubljana, $107/ Night- THE WINE BARREL. Hilarious stay. Leaving the “Balkans” and going to the “EU Balkans” essentially involves a huge price jump. My money went much further when I was not on the Euro. This stay literally had a bed that looked like a wine barrel. I don’t know the story but I would love to hear more. It actually was an awesome location and about the most affordable place that wasn’t a hostel.
- Sarajevo, $62/ Night- I am borderline obsessed with Sarajevo, especially in the fall. It’s such a wonderful city to visit, albeit horribly tragic. But I’ll save that for another post! If I wasn’t on a time crunch to meet my dad in two weeks, I would have booked a stay in the city for another 4 nights to hunker down and get some work done. The location of this spot was great but the apartment was not the best. I would absolutely go back to the first place we stayed (see below) if I wanted a nicer apartment and cared a little less about the location.
- Srebrenica, $38/Night- We drove as far as we could from Skopje to get in the Bosnian border to see the Srebrenica memorial before we returned the car in Sarajevo the next morning. We booked this place about 4 hours before arrival to see how far we could get driving before we were exhausted. There is no special reason to stay here really, was just a place to lay our heads. But it was totally clean and even had a washer! Nothing good or bad to say, just a necessary drop in. I didn’t even take my suitcase inside since we were barely there.
- Skopje Marriott/ $224- YEAH. You read this right. A full-blown city center hotel with a car. Basically, our accommodation was fully booked out that we started at but we ultimately decided we needed one more day to actually enjoy Skopje and not just day trip to Kosovo (rental cars cannot go here, so we did a bus transport). Because of our tight timing to get to Kosovo and back in a day from the city center + we wanted to go to a soccer game that night, we needed a secure place to park the car. I also need 10 more nights this year to maintain my Titanium Elite status with Marriott, so this was a good time to logistically do a splurge night where we could park the car at 7:15am and safely leave it all day. Parking per night of stays is 15 euro, even if your car is in the garage longer than 24 hours.
- Skopje, $70/ Night- I thought I was obsessed with Ohrid, but maybe it’s Macedonia in general. While I probably would have preferred to stay closer to the city center, this is technically walkable and was a GREAT stay. It would be especially good for a long-term stop where you don’t want to be int he city center all of the time. There’s a HUGE, extremely nice grocery store in walking distance plus a DM and some food spots. The parking was also very easy. Loved this place, tried to stay longer, but it was booked.
- Ohrid, $39/ Night- Alright I’m obsessed with Ohrid. This place was cute, safe, had COVERED PARKING, and was in a great location. It is pretty bare bones, reflective in the price, but if you are on a budget and have the ability to do laundry on the front or back end of staying here at another accommodation, it will totally get 2 people by.
- Shkoder, $70/ Night- LOL Gardenland!!!! Picture a golf resort, except it’s miniature golf. The rooms here are nice but the outside is admittedly kind of cheesy. We had two twin beds, very clean, perfect bathroom with a bidet. Since we were out of season, the pool was closed for fall, but you can tell this place is POPPING in the summer for family vacations. We really only used this as a 1-night stopover to get to Macedonia. In a perfect world with more time, I would absolutely build in a day trip to Shala River- but it’s still a 1+ hour drive one way and a 2-hour boat ride to get to from there,
- Kotor, $78/ Night- Not a great stay to be honest and I would change this up. It’s such a toss up with the car to figure out if we should find a place with parking in the old towns and then walk to things, or stay outside of the towns and drive in to a tricky parking lot. This time we opted for an in-between place. It was a 30-minute walk still to the Old Town. To be brutally honest, I don’t think this is a very good “old town” as it’s overrun by cruise ships and sickly cats. There’s much better coastal areas to stay in Montenegro. Check out Budva! Our favorite reason to have a car here was to stop at the mussel farms along the coastline and eat fresh steamed mussels right out of the water.
- Dubrovnik, $130/ Night
By far my most expensive accommodation thus far. Croatia is just expensive and we stayed pretty far from the Old Town at this place. The location was actually so nice because it was a little ways out, there was a great bus line, and there was a pedestrian street with restaurants nearby. Hannah was also here so splitting with two people helped, otherwise I may have looked for a private room option. Having our rental car also created an accommodation problem. - Mostar (Dracevice), $57/ Night
This one was not in downtown Mostar, but since we had a car, we looked for some options outside of the city with better parking that were also potentially cheaper. And we surely found it here! I love a fun stay over anything and as long as I can do laundry somewhere else within 10 days, I don’t always need a lot of amenities. So, we stayed in this barn attic. It was so cozy and cute. - Sarajevo, $61/ Night
Wow, this was a beautiful booking for the price. It was a very large unit but it didn’t have very many useful amenities (like we desperately needed some table lamps in the bedrooms). My friend Hannah also joined me this weekend so we started splitting costs from here, but even alone I may have picked this. Overall, we decided we would have maybe rather been in the main part of the city than the Old Town but this was a beautiful spot! - Belgrade, $56/ Night
This was an exceptionally cute little place in a the scariest, brutalist building. The courtyard would just about have you turning around on your heels. PUSH THROUGH. This is so incredibly common in Eastern Europe. At this point I don’t bat an eye. The owner actually grew up in this unit but remodeled to rent out and lives in the countryside now. I really enjoyed it. Fully equipped and in a very central location to a major bus stop and the horse statue. - Sofia Stay #2, $45/ Night
Also LOVE LOVE LOVE. This was not quite as private as my other stay, so consider if that is more important to you, but I loved it. The owner Jasmin is an absolute gem. She has the whole floor of an apartment building with three bedrooms and three bathrooms. Each room has a private bathroom that is detached, but I didn’t mind this at all. It was so bright and airy and everyone who walked in said it felt like home. It totally did. I actually extended my stay here. - Bulgaria Road Trip, $32/ Night
Not going to lie, slightly scary to get to and not really in a place most people would come across. It was a little tricky finding a stay in the middle of my strange Bulgarian road trip path. It was SUPER CLEAN and people staying were very welcoming, but not particularly a place I was wanting to spend extra time at. - Sofia Stay #1, $74/ Night
LOVE LOVE LOVE, I felt like I was in my teenage bedroom in the best way possible. Lovely place to stay, little kitchen, comfy bed, tall ceilings.. felt like a princess with a ton of room and privacy. I would literally buy this place.