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+---
+title: "August 2023: Türkiye, Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Albania"
+description: "What I got up to in August in my open-source work and my travels."
+publishedAt: '2023-09-01'
+aside: false
+ogImage:
+ component: Newsletter
+ props:
+ image: /august-theth.png
+tags:
+ - newsletter
+newsletter: true
+---
+
+
+In August me and my girlfriend continued travelling, getting to 4 new countries: Türkiye, Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Albania.
+
+A typically morning was waking up and trying to piece together the details of where we even where, we were moving fast
+after Greece.
+
+We did a quick detour in Türkiye, then the many cramped and sweaty bus getting around the Balkans.
+
+I was surprised to still manage to get 109 hours to work on open-source, but I was starting to feel the burnout of
+managing work and travel.
+
+## Open-source
+
+::div{class="grid sm:grid-cols-2 gap-3 sm:gap-8 sm:my-15 my-5"}
+
+:ScoreCard{label="⭐ GitHub stars" :before="6295" :after="6543"}
+
+:ScoreCard{label="⌛ Hours Worked" :before="204" :after="109"}
+
+:ScoreCard{label="💸 MRR AUD" currency :before="1212" :after="1240"}
+
+:ScoreCard{label="💸 Per Hour AUD" currency :before="6.23" :after="11.76"}
+
+::
+
+The highlight of the month was getting out [Unhead v1.3](https://github.com/unjs/unhead/releases/tag/v1.3.0) which included
+some significant performance improvements.
+
+I continued work on Nuxt Scripts, trying to figure out the scope of the project and how it would work.
+
+The rest of my time went to maintenance of [Nuxt SEO](https://nuxtseo.com).
+
+
+## 🇹🇷 Türkiye
+
+Our first day in İstanbul was massive, exploring all the stunning Mosque's. You can easily hit up 5 mosques and only walked
+a few kms.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+We stayed in a locals neighbourhood and hit up the family-run restaurants. I didn't know at that point, but I'd be eating
+some form of "kebab" and drinking Turkish coffee every day for the next month.
+
+Safe to say, I also took advantage of the Turkish sweets.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+After being thoroughly mosque'd out, we headed to the famous "balloon" town Göreme within the Cappadocia region.
+
+Göreme is stunningly scenic little town that is an Instagram tourist haven and in turn is a bit of a tourist trap.
+But we still enjoyed it!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+We did a full-day hike through Rose valley, coming across
+ impressively well-endowed rock formations, historical abandoned cave churches and a friendly dog
+who guided us.
+
+This was one of my favourite hikes, we had the trail almost entirely to ourselves, it was scenic and exploring the caves with
+our new dog friend was fun.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The balloons were expensive, so I decided to skip. But I did hear good things and the ground view
+itself was pretty impressive.
+
+
+
+## 🇧🇬 Bulgaria
+
+Bulgaria was the start of
+the Balkans for us, which meant I was in for a lot of cheese pies and more kebabs.
+
+We did a quick couple of days in Plovid, which had a nice old town and some interesting Roman ruins. Then we were
+off to the capital city Sofia. It had some interesting architecture and a nice park.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+From Sofia, we went to do Seven Rila Lakes hike, which was one of our highlights.
+
+The hike is a chair lift, followed by a 3-hour ascent to the peek. Along the way you'll see 7 lakes, each at a different altitude.
+
+
+
+
+
+
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+
+
+It was a fun hike, everyone had brought their dogs along and had picnics at the lakes.
+
+You get to the peak, and it's a stunning view - if the clouds aren't blocking it.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+## 🇲🇰 North Macedonia
+
+We spent a couple of days in Skopje, a city characterised by an excess of modern statues and monuments. Many of them
+artificially made to look historical.
+
+
+
+A nice day trip from Skopje is Matka Canyon, you can do some nice hiking, lake swims and kayaking.
+
+
+
+The rest of our time in North Macedonia was spent in Ohrid, a beautiful lake town. It seems to be the holiday destination
+of choice for anyone in the Balkans who doesn't have easy access to the coast.
+
+Every night we were there, there was a festival on the lake, with fireworks, music and rides.
+
+
+
+## 🇦🇱 Albania
+
+We didn't know much about Albania beforehand, we had heard good things from other travellers though and we were excited.
+They told us about the friendly locals, and it was beautiful nature.
+
+Our first stop was Gjirokastër, Albania. Gjirokastër is a UNESCO world heritage site, with a classic old town and castle.
+We got a good workout climbing up to the castle, which had some nice views.
+
+
+
+We also did a day trip to the Blue Eye, which is a natural spring that is a stunning blue colour. You can jump from
+a few metres up into the water, which was fun.
+
+
+
+From there, we hit the coastal town of Himarë. Himarë is one of the remaining chill beach towns in the Balkans, that
+hasn't been completely overrun with tourism development.
+
+
+
+Our last stop for Albania was the Northern town of Shkodër. From Shkodër
+you can go and stay in the Albanian Alp town of Theth.
+
+
+
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+
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+
+We spent 4 days in Theth, doing the Volbona pass hike and chasing waterfalls. It was really cosy and relaxing to be surrounded by
+the mountains, it was a good recovery from the fast pace of the Balkans.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+## September Plan
+
+- 🚌 Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, Czechia