Bulgarian Daze

Or is it “Away up north”?  I’m not sure….anyways, the Canada pictures are up.  Just to recap the trip:

We spent the week with Mark’s partner, heretofore referred to as The Canuck.  We went out crabbing, took scenic drives, fished, and cruised downtown Victoria.  The place was AMAZING!!!  The scenery truly was breathtaking and I saw some animals in the wild that I had never seen before–black bears, elk, ginormous crabs.  We caught crabs and I even killed and cleaned them!  Basically, we relaxed and enjoyed the nature around us.  We especially enjoyed our hosts, who were so so so kind to us.  They have a similar life view as we do, more laid back and outdoorsy, so we all had a great time together.  But my favorite time was, oddly enough, playing croquet in the dark.  We were really cracking up the whole time.

So, all in all, I LOVED Canada, much more so than I ever thought I would.  And, to Mark’s credit, he said I would really enjoy it…and he was right!  Should you ever get the opportunity to visit, you should definitely go!!  Until then, enjoy our photos…..

(In case you forgot, photos are in the yellow church picture to the right of this post.)

…I saw a bear. Do you know that song? We used to sing it when I was in Girl Scouts when I was young. Well, it is now more than just a song to me! I saw a real live bear the other day. Not just one, but two!!!!!!! Big, ginormous, hungry, blackberry-eating black bears.

We went out to this river which is a couple of hours north. We were just going to look for bears and other wildlife and maybe do a little fishing. (Of course once Mark heard the word “fishing” he immediately envisioned the granddaddy salmon being attached to his line. Needless to say, we lost him at some point. He cared not about bears or elk or anything else. Just the fish…..) Well…as soon as we turned on to this lttle dirt road off the big dirt road, we saw a bear. He was so cute and seemed so cuddly. He ran across the road and then hung out by a tree to see what we would do. I tried to get a picture of him but he ran away before I could. Grrrrr!

We stopped at a few places to try to catch some fish. Mark hooked a couple of anchovies on his line. Ok, they weren’t really anchovies. They were some other kind of fish that are supposed to get up to like 15 pounds, but Mark’s looked like anchovies. While we were there, we saw this:

This dude was HUGE and FAT and I wouldn’t want him coming at me, that’s just all I need to say about that! We went to a few more places and down an even smaller road and that’s where we saw our second black bear. He was bigger than the first and he darted across the road. He didn’t seem as friendly as our first bear.

We also saw some river otters playing around. This place is like a real live zoo, I tell ya! No cages, no nothing. Which is a little unnerving. Like when we saw the first bear, we drove a little ways up the road and got out to talk the dogs and there was all this bear poop on the road. Let’s just say I wasn’t feeling exactly comfortable. But Sig (You’ll remember, he was our boat captain from the crabbing day), told me that there haven’t been any deaths in 20 years here from bears. Of course he also told me that he usually comes with a gun or something and this time he had nothing. Greaaaaat……

Anyways, the day was nice, the weather was warm and the animals were amazing!!!! You people gotta come visit this place! Just take a look:

So the beauty of actually knowing people here in Victoria is that we get to do things not usually found on the tourist agenda. For example, today we played like we were on the Discovery Channel and went out crabbing in the Bering Sea ocean inlet. I opted to refer to our rig as the Northwest (ok, so we were in a small metal boat…perhaps not the same) and to call our captain by his crabbing name of Sig (you REALLY have to be an avid fan of the show to understand my references here….sorry if you aren’t….)

I gathered all my gear and my dry suit fleece sweater just in case some rogue monster waves plunged me into the icy Arctic Pacific waters. We piled up all two of our mini crab traps into the boat and set off. Turns out, there were no rogue waves. Actually, there weren’t ANY waves at all. It looked like a tranquil fresh water lake out there. And of course, the scenery is amazing. I cannot describe it, so I will just show you a couple of pictures:

We boated around and found a good place to drop the traps…according to Sig. Then we went and found this little beach where the water was so clear, I could see this:

And this:

We hung out there for a few hours while the crabbies were hopefully gnawing on our salmon bait and getting, well, trapped (hahahaha, I am hilarious!). Then came the time to gather the goods. We motored back out to our site and attached the traps to the hydraulic lift Mark’s two hands and pulled them up. Sure enough there were crabs in there! And just like on TV, we had to measure them and throw back the little ones and the females. I held a few:

Then, on the next stop, there were even more crabs. Here, have a look at the before and after picture of our traps:

This time I bravened up a little and pulled them out of the trap. Turns out they aren’t too thrilled to be pulled away from their dinner and they try to pinch you. But being me and of superior intelligence, I learned to grab them from the bottom, AWAY from the pinchers. Brilliant. I know. We sorted again and put our keepers into a little ice chest.

When we were nearing the shore we started to clean and prepare the crabs. Apparently you have to hold their claws in and then pound their head on the boat to kill them. Then you have to remove the shell, break them in half, and clean out all the guts and gills–all of which you just throw into the ocean for the other fishies to snack on. So I can now confess to you that I am officially a murderer because I killed and cleaned out my own crab. And I must say, I have skills, people….SKILLS! I mean, should the teaching thing not worked out…

For dinner we had steak (a meat which is nearly non-existent and inedible in Bulgaria) and shrimp and crab and baked potatoes with real sour cream (also non-existent in Bulgaria) and a delicious Caesar salad. And I am still full…the next morning. But man, it was TASTY. And I just might have found my second career….

Well, we’ve crossed the ocean. And what a crossing it was! I had fretted the entire evening prior to leaving about the whole weight of the bags versus how many checked bags, etc thing. You see, we flew British Airways this time because, well, frankly I have had it with United. We used up our free United miles to get to Spain and now I plan on canceling the card with them and recovering from our unhealthy relationship. And so I was free to date fly other airlines again.

Which meant I could go with the cheapest fare. Which, in this case, meant British. Now perhaps you more land-bound people do not realize that British Air has a…ummmm….reputation. And it’s not pretty. Similar to British people in general, they like to make up a lot of rules and live by them. For example: Your luggage ABSOLUTELY cannot be over-weight or they will charge you something like a million pounds for each pound over (heh. get it…pound for pound? I amuse myself.) Also, if you are traveling from one European destination to another European destination, you can only check in one bag each–which, of course, canNOT be over weight. But, if you are traveling from Europe to say, the U.S., you get two bags each. And ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY no more than ONE carry-on. Of course, if you can fit two carry on bags into one, then you can walk through security and unpack the second bag and then have two carry-ons—a loophole to the rule.

Well, anyways, you get the idea about the rules. So, I was concerned. Our first flight was from Malaga to London, and therefore a Europe-to-Europe destination, meaning we could only check a bag in each. Problem. We are moving home people. We have more than one bag each. But, being so intelligent as I am, we had two big bags and two small ones and two backpacks. This way I was ready for any rule. Only one bag each? No problem. Check in the big ones and attach the smaller ones in some fashion to the backpacks to get through security. Allowed two bags each (because, umm, technically we ARE flying over an ocean), no problem. Check in the two bigs and the two smalls and carry the backpacks. Now…the question of weight. See, the big bags can become heavy very quickly. So I strategically packed those full of only clothes, nothing else. The small bags housed all the books, movies, CDs, shoes, etc. This should help distribute our weight allowance.

So, as you can see, a lot of thought went into all this. A LOT of thought. Perhaps, some might say, too much. Especially when you consider how the whole check-in process went:

Agent: Passports, please. (Oh…did I mention I had accidentally, completely soaked my passport while I was in Spain? Oops…I was just hoping they would still take it. If not, I guess I would have had no choice but to live there….)

Us: Ok. Here you go.

Agent: (typing, typing, typing) Would you like me to check your bags all the way though to Canada, even though you change airlines in Seattle?

Us: Yes, please, that would be great!

Agent: How many bags?

Us: (wincing) Two each.

Agent: Ok. Just load them all up here and I will put the tags on them. Have a nice flight. Bye bye.

That was it. No weighing, no arguing, no fuss at all. Bizarre. And if you can believe it, things only got better. We got to London and went through our obligatory 28 security checks and arrived at our gate early enough to have a Starbucks coffee and spend some time on the internet. Then, when we were getting on the plane (the 10 hour flight one), we did our usual drooling over those super-snazzy sleeper beds in First Class. We passed the First Class cabin and adjusted our backpacks to head back to the cattle car when all of a sudden, we looked up and realized that our tickets said 21A and B, and there we were at 21A and B, which just so happened to be in Business Class. And not just in Business Class, but they were the bulkhead seat of Business Class, meaning no other seat in front of us. In fact, just one sheer, blue curtain separated us from First Class.

I could not believe it. We clearly did not pay for Business Class. We had stretched already to prepare for the yoga poses we would do in the cattle car. Mark started settling all in and I refused. I insisted there must be another row 21 in the back of the plane. I stood and waited for the line to walk by and then I did perhaps the dumbest thing in my life, which was to ASK the flight attendant if indeed there was another Row 21 because clearly my husband and I were in the wrong seats. The dude laughed at me. Out loud. And said in his British accent, “No, love, you are fine where you are at”. I took that as a sign to settle in. And so I did. I mean, PEOPLE, we were in a curtained area. Those poor economy people could not even enter our cabin. Heh. Heh.

So I played with the fancy TV screen that lifts out of the arm rest and reclined my seat, which just so happened to have another feature where the bottom has a foot rest that lifts up like a Barco-lounger. I tried on my little eye mask for sleeping and inspected the toothbrush you get in Business Class (you know, so we don’t smell like those Economy Class people). All the while, Mark acted like he belonged there, all nonchalant with his newspaper open and legs all crossed. As if he flew Business Class all the time.

And so the flight was fantastic! I was even sorry it ended. We caught our next 20-minute flight from Seattle to Victoria with no problems, and now we are here. It is really amazing here. Soooooo different from Spain of course. everything is all green and foresty and people have these amazing little gardens. Yesterday we walked around some of the reserves and checked out the port and downtown. We have plans to go crabbing (like on Deadliest Catch, except on a much, much smaller scale. But in my mind it will be like the TV show), and fishing, and looking for bears where the salmon are running. The nature here is amazing and the air is so clean. I can see why the Canucks are such peace-loving people.

Oh…and we are in civilization, staying with one of Mark’s business partners. So clearly, we have high-speed wireless internet, because…duh!…Mark’s business partners wouldn’t be caught dead without it. Which means that when I randomly wake up at 3am with my jet lag, I can upload photos of Spain and Canada here. Woooohoooooo! So look for them soon!

Well…here we are, in Spain.  But before I tell you about Spain, I must first tell you about our ironic last day in Bulgaria.  I had all these photos loaded up and ready to post here on the blog as a sort of visual montage to the year, and, of course….the internet went caput!  Also, our water was out for part of the day.  Doesn´t that just go with the whole year? Hahahaha!  So, when I can get internet on my own computer, I will upload my photo montage for you all.  Until then….Espana!

So we arrived here on Friday afternoon and promptly rented a car.  I should say here that I am not so into the car-rental-in-a-foreign-country thing.  But we did it.  The actual renting part was easy.  It was also easy to find the fantastic townhouse where we are staying (which belongs to friends of Marks parents and feels like a mansion compared to the flat where we have lived for the past year…we thought about just getting jobs here and moving in, changing the name from Villa ***** to Villa Drake), and everything was going really perfectly.  Too perfectly in fact.  So we continued on our merry way, setting things up, showering, etc.  Then around 10:00 pm, we headed out to dinner–they eat really late here.  And that is when the perfection ended…

Turns out, we dont know how to use reverse on the car.  We had parked in a dirt lot and walked around a bit and decided we would go further down to eat, but alas, we could not get out of the dirt lot.  Mark must have tried 80 times to figure out the reverse.  He was sweating and doing the nervous laugh.  Then he was getting a little grumpy.  I just kept saying, “There must be a trick to this”, which I am sure just totally helped the situation.  Clearly Mark knew there was a trick.  He perhaps did not appreciate me telling him this little fact 15 times.

Finally he got out and….imagine this!…pushed the car backwards while I turned the steering wheel.  Yeah.  And thats how we got out. It was a classy move.  This meant that we had to now limit our parking to only places that we did not have to back out of.  Go ahead–try that sometime.  Find a place to park where you never use reverse.  Now try it in a crowded beach community.  Good times.

So, needless to say, our perfect day did not end so perfectly.

On day 2, Mark figured out reverse first thing.  And yes, there was a trick.  We wont go into it here.  The we headed out to explore.  On both Saturday and Sunday, we pretty much strolled around little towns here on the beach and laid around in the sun and swam in the sea.  Oh, and ate delicious food…sangrias, paella, fresh fish, shrimp.  All delicious, and not a cucumber anywhere to be seen.  We live the life of kings here!

Today we are in Barcelona.  We drove all day to get here and we arrived in enough time to do some walking around.  This is a beautiful city!  And the weather is perfect, warm but not scorching. You dont actually need to see anything here, you can just cruise around and look at the buildings all day.  They are amazing!  But tomorrow we will indeed tour around and see the Picasso Museum, the Sagrada Familia, some Gaudi work, and of course, the Olympic Village from the 1992 Olympics (you know what an Olympic freak I am!)

There are many more stories to tell, but I have to do it bit by bit.  We cant get our computers to recognize the internet where we are staying (and frankly we dont want to waste our whole vacation trying) so we are bound to internet cafes…and you know how those go.  So, this is all for now.  More later!

 p.s.  I know there are apostrophes missing which is SO unacceptable for a teacher.  But the keyboard switched modes while I was sitting here (it did it all by itself I am sure…I touched nothing, NOTHING, I say), and now I cant figure out the apostrophes.  I will edit later–forgive the mistakes for now.

Hey, wasn’t Charles Dickens BORN in England? How apropos that I would use his theme here…

Best of Times–and oooooohhhh, there are many!

*Traveling alone. This may seem odd, but I really liked being here by myself. I could have my own, selfish agenda and walk or rest as much as I wanted to. It would have been nice to have Mark around to spoof on the accents and ceremonial-ness of everything, but if he couldn’t be there, being alone wasn’t such a bad option. And I’ve never traveled alone, so I thought I would be more nervous, but I wasn’t!

*Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. Oh man, this was hilarious and fun and so much better than I thought it would be. The dudes in red with giant hair helmets just look so…..ridiculous, and yet they are so serious about it all. And, I suppose it is a serious business to protect the royal family, but really, what’s with the outfits? I had a great spot for the whole spectacle and maybe, if you are really lucky, I will re-enact for you how these guys walk and shuffle. HILARIOUS!

*Breakfast. I mean, this is the home of the English breakfast, so I just had to partake. It was oh so good, especially coming from Bulgaria, where breakfast is hardly eaten at all. Oh, and you should know that if you order a cup of tea, it is gigantic. And black tea is black, but if you want milk in it (like I do) then you order it “white”.

*Tower of London. This was surprising. I almost did not pay the entrance fee. But I did want to see the crown jewels, and there are so many historical tales from here that I just decided to do it anyways. When I entered, it just so happened that there was a free tour with a yeoman starting right then. I figured what the heck? So I went along. This guy was so funny. He kept getting all the kids up front and then when he would talk about execution, he would say it all dramatic, like “execuuuuuuuuuuuuution”. They ate it up. Oh, and my other favorite line of his: “If you Americans had just paid your taxes, all this could be yours!” My sides hurt by the end of the tour, which I really needed because this was the day after I heard that a friend of mine had died. So…if you visit London, go to the Tower of London and take the tour!

*Parks/Gardens. Beautiful, really. I can’t say it enough. The flowers were huge and colorful and everything was so neatly arranged. I had lots of peaceful walks through the gardens and often stopped just to inspect the flowers.

*Churches. Both of the churches I visited–Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s superseded my expectations. I am Epsicopalian (the American version of the Church of England…also called Catholic Lite), so I really enjoyed visiting my mecca. I checked out all the little nooks and crannies, lit candles for my mom and my friend’s mom who recently passed away, and even saw a wedding! St. Paul’s is SO huge that there is room for a wedding AND tourists! Next time I visit I will go to Mass. I didn’t have decent clothes this time. And you know how those Brits are….

*Thai Food. Believe it or not, I had the tastiest Thai dinner of my life in London–thanks to the recommendation of my brother which was confirmed by my bible, Lonely Planet. If you ever visit, go to Busaba Eathai in SoHo. It’s worth it!

*Double Decker Bus. I had great weather and a live guide, so this was fun, and the best deal in town–you can get on and off as much as you want in 24 hours and it included a short boat ride on the River Thames.

*The Underground. Besides its incredible efficiency, I love all the little sayings, like “Mind the Gap”. I used it a lot, so I grew to really love the thing. And I could imagine the terror of when it got bombed. In many places, there is literally only inches between the tracks and the tunnel wall, and it is dark and hot, and people had to crawl out of that…

Worst of Times (if I must say anything bad about this place…)

*Bad News. I found out my friend from church died suddenly and unexpectedly while I was in London. This came just days after hearing that my best friend’s mom had finally lost her battle with cancer after way too much suffering. So it was hard to “be on vacation” here. I had to make a conscious choice to enjoy the last few days despite such sadness. Chances are I will never get to London again and I was really strongly feeling like life is just too short and you have to live it while you can. The bad side to all that is that as soon as I got home, I was indescribably woe.

*Early flight out. My flight out was very early and since it was out of Stansted Airport which is way out of the city, I had to catch the coach bus at 3:30 am, which also meant I had to take a taxi to the bus station and it cost more than both the bus rides to and from the airport. Grrrrr!

*Accents. This will sound odd, but I was looking forward to getting to London and FINALLY understanding a language 100%. Well, that’s not quite the way it went. I had the hardest time adjusting to the accent. And several times I had people tell me I had the accent. One dude even told me that he can tell Americans because we talk through our noses. Whatever. Like I have a tongue in my nose. Darn Brits!

*Not enough time. You need a good week here. Really, you do.

There are MILLIONS of photos of London in the gallery—go check them out, but get a snack first, it will probably take you a little bit to get through them all.

This concludes my Amazing Race/European Adventure.  Tomorrow–back to our regularly scheduled programming of life in Bulgaria and us preparing to begin our trek back to the States (woooohoooooo!) with a few stops on the way—Spain and Canada!

Today’s feature: Vienna

Best of Times:

* The opera, baby! I tease that I was all cultured and stuff, but really, it was fun to see an opera in Vienna. This is the opera we saw and we paid 4 euro, or about $6 to stand the whole time and watch it. But it was so worth it.

* The Schonbrunn Palace. This was the Hapsburgs summer home. I laugh at the word “home”. HA! This place is huge. Ginormous, even. You could spend a day just in the gardens….and we did. We actually ran out of time to see the inside, but the gardens were totally worth a whole day.

* Cafes. The whole culture here is the cafe thing. You can just sit there and sip coffee for hours, maybe even days. There is a cafe where Trotsky used to hang out and plot his overtaking of the world here.

* Pastries. Helllllooooooo—this is one of the homes of the apple strudel, and I was not one to deny their specialty. Yummmmmmmm!

* Western Europe. This was our first crossover into Western Europe, and it is strange, but you can immediately feel the difference. Having been raised in the western world, I relate well to the Western Europe scene. Places are clearly signed and marked, restaurants and shops have fairly good customer service skills, and there are social programs to keep the streets clean and free of all graffiti (although,in all fairness, Croatia also had many of these attributes).

Worst of Times

* Rain. I did NOT want the rain here, so we ended up spending more time indoors than we had planned. We had planned to walk to a museum, but in the end, we just didn’t feel like it in the rain.

* Being accosted by a strange Nigerian man. He was selling magazines and when he realized we were Americans, he actually asked us to sponsor him for a visa to the U.S. I was torn: Should I feel sorry for the guy, being so desperate as to believe this will happen? Or should I be leery of his true intentions? I chose somewhere in the middle, explaining his plan just wouldn’t work and there is no way to help him…sorry, but time to move on.

I was glad I had the time to make it to Vienna since I had already been to Innsbruck and Salzburg. This rounded out my touring of Austria nicely. The next time I get there, though, I fully intend on finding Trotsky’s cafe and planning my own world takeover. Mwahahahahahaha!

**Vienna pictures now showing in the gallery.

**Tomorrow is our last stop on the European tour.  Look for men in shiny black hair helmets and funny royal stories…..

Today’s Dickens feature is: Prague

Best of Times

* THE FOOD!  We had one of the best meals of the whole trip here.  I had a goulash with knedli, which are like giant dumplings, and my friends had duck.  It was cold and rainy outside and we had walked quite a ways in the wetness, so the thick, warm meal was especially delicious.  We also had mulled wine which is like a steamed wine with cloves in it.  It tasted like a cider.  DELICIOUS, I tell you!

* The atmosphere.  I’m not a person who enjoys rain and cloudy skies, but if there is ever a city to visit in such conditions, it is Prague.  The weather just fit with the architecture.

* The Mucha stained glass window in St. Vitus.  This was the most amazing stained glass window I have ever seen.  The color and the shapes are totally different from traditional stained glass windows.  I really liked it! (Plus, remember…I am cultured now, so I appreciate this stuff, ok??)

* The Charles Bridge. Even though it was super crowded here, the views of the river and the town beyond are second to none.  It is a really peaceful walk (if you block out all the other people around), and there are odd stories, like places on the bridge where people were, um, executed.

* St. Vitus.  This church is definitely worth a visit. It is so so so gothic, plus it has the tomb of St. Wenceslaus, so how can you beat that??

* Funny sayings on souvenir T-shirts, like “Czech me out” and “Czech Mate”.  Get it?  Get it?  hahahahahahaha!

Worst of Times

* For sure, the train ride.  You know, the one where somebody snuck into our compartment and stole from Kanye???  Yeah, that!  Not to mention the whole idea of sitting on a train for 24 hours and dealing with other passengers so so so close for that time.  Might I suggest you fly into Prague?  Just an idea…

* Finding the hostel.  We got lost.  And we were tired from the train.  And we were carrying bags, walking the dark, desolate,spooky streets of Prague.  Not fun.

* The hostel.  Note to self–check if hostel is actually a university dorm.  Because, turns out, I am TOO OLD to be staying up partying until 5am every night.  And I wasn’t even invited to the party.  I just got to listen to it from afar.  And, in my humble opinion, it ceased being fun at like 1am.

* Internet Cafes.  This was also the land of outdated computers and the internet cafe employees who couldn’t correctly operate a calculator, let alone figure out if their computer has the capacity to download a chat program.

And so, that is Prague in a nutshell.  Go check out the photos.  They are way more fun to look at than my boring writing here.  Wait, my writing is NEVER boring.  But still the photos are more fun….remember they are found in the gallery, which is the picture of the yellow church on the right hand side of the blog.  Enjoy!

So….I am uploading pictures of my fantastic European Adventure daily. There are a lot of them, so it takes a while to do. While I was monotonously uploading, renaming, captioning, and ordering photos, I had a brilliant idea. Are you ready?

Each day that I create an album in the Gallery for a stop on my adventure, I will also write a post about the best and worst things about my visit there. Very Dickens of me, no? Who am I kidding? About as far as I got in A Tale of Two Cities was the first two lines: “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” After that, the book wore on me and I yawned my way right to sleep. But I SOUND so smart using that phrase, so literate. Just work with me here. I should warn you, though, that there aren’t too many “worst” times, since I pretty much had the most spectacular vacation EVER.

Anyways, here goes:

Today’s feature is CROATIA.

Best of Times:

* Seafood. Oh how I have missed it. Mark and I are big seafood eaters back home. We eat fish a couple times a week, especially during the summer. But we have refrained since we have been here in Sofia, being that it is landlocked and highly polluted. Croatia had excellent seafood.
* Snorkeling. The snorkeling was great. The water was clear and warm and you could look around for hours.

* Sunning on the Rocks. Nothing more relaxing.

* The bus ride to Korcula. I have never seen more beautiful scenery. It was a windy road which prevented me from sleeping, but that just allowed me to see more.

* Ice cream. It was hot, hot, HOT! So we indulged in ice cream several times. I enjoyed eating it while we walked along the harbor or the promenade. Very refreshing. Very Zen.

* The color. All the buildings were a light beige which made everything seem so clean and fresh. The grape vines and bougainvillea were so vibrant next to the beige. The color of the water…the blues and turquoises was also amazing.

* The islands. Should I ever be so lucky to come here again, I would spend at least a week or more touring the islands. They are quaint and charming, and most definitely the major draw to Croatia.

* The beaches. I cannot say enough about how excellent the beaches here are. Granted you have to lay on rocks,which are not as comfortable as sand. But you just bring and extra towel or two, and it’s fine. The beaches are pretty clean, the water is warm, and there is plenty of privacy if you walk around a bit.

* The resiliency of the place. As I’m sure you know, Croatia has been the scene of many recent wars, one just 10 years ago. And yet, you will find almost no evidence of this when you are there. They have put their cities and historical sites back together with care and the people are proud of their country. I was rather impressed by this.
Worst of Times:

* Snorkeling gear. As I mentioned, I did not have any snorkeling gear with me (who needs it in Sofia??), so I had to buy some. At $13, it was not the best ever. The mask worked well but it pressed against my face in a funny way and then I had canker sores at the very tops of my gums for a week or so afterwards. TMI? Perhaps if I hadn’t spent hours and hours in the water, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But I just couldn’t resist.

* The stairs. Lugging our bags and groceries up and down hundreds of stairs everyday got a little old…

* Transportation. Getting around is an issue. Finding the right bus/ferry/train takes some research. One day we went to the bus station to pre-purchase out ticket to Korcula because we were tipped off that the bus sells out–and it does!–and we had issues finding the place. We got off the city bus too soon and then ended up wandering aimlessly in the very hot sun. One good thing came out of this–I bought the best peaches I have ever eaten from a 10 year old girl. Ooh and she was a good salesperson, tried to get me to buy other stuff and all. Mark should hire her!

Uncategorizable

* Rooms. I don’t know if this was the best or the worst. You decide. It was unnerving to just show up in a city or on an island without a reservation for a place to stay and have random people approach us to rent us a room. But I think we ended up in great places that we never would have had the opportunity to find otherwise. My favorite place was the 450 year old house on Korcula. It had an old courtyard and it was beautiful. But I was nervous about following some strange man to his digs to see if I liked them enough to rent them. You hear horror stories about this stuff. So, I don’t know…good or bad? There is something to be said for going with the flow, and this is the way things are done in this part of the world. But then there is also the issue of security, especially as two females traveling together. What do you think?

Ok, ok enough writing. Go check out the album. There are some great pictures in there and I am sure that once you see them, you will be booking your flight to Croatia! Hey, shouldn’t their tourism board be paying me for this advertisement??

Did I mention it is super hot here? Oh, I did? Well, I must mention it again. REALLY HOT! And it is seriously affecting my productivity levels. I know, I know…what productivity, you say?? I mean, I AM in temporary retirement, so how productive need I be? Believe it or not, I have a lot to do that I am just not accomplishing. I brought some curriculum over here that I have yet to read and it is getting close to that time when I need to begin to organize, sort, throw away unnecessary items before we move back home (YAY!).

And I am doing none of that.

Because it is hot. REALLY HOT!

And once I walk with Mark to work and back (a couple of miles each way and uphill–I’m not lying!) I am pretty much toast. All I can manage is to make a few meals and clean up after myself. Oh, and read. And nap. And download great songs from the 80s.
But I refuse to give up. Today I really pushed myself and organized some photos into the gallery here. For you. I did it for you. Ok. Maybe an eensy bit for me, since I know that if I don’t get these photos organized here and now, I will never get to it, especially once I get home and join the working community again (gasp! The W word!)

In an effort to increase my production levels, I have set some goals:

1. Organize and albumize all my latest photos–all 350-400 of them. Check! I already started this one.

2. Share all my fun and funny travel stories with you. Perhaps I will even share the not so funny ones, though they may make YOU laugh.

3. Reconfigure and reorganize my iPod. This may not seem important to you, but I do walk a lot and I need that little guy to get past Mark’s nightly snoring. And hey, let’s face it…I’m a high tech retiree. Some retirees garden or do tai-chi. I iPod. What of it?
4. Finish Season 3 and begin Season 4 of 24. Man, that show is awesome.

5. Watch at least 3 loops of CNN with the exact.same.news.stories daily.

I think that about covers it. Oh wait. Did I leave out that part about doing some professional reading and curriculum organization for work? Silly me. Yeah, add that one in, too….though way down there at number 6!

Let’s hope I have enough time after all that busy-ness to eat.

So, stop reading my rambling here and go check out the gallery. I have made an album for the Mother In Law Diaries: Albena, and don’t forget to also view the sub-album of Balchik. There were a lot of pictures (I let Mark have free rein over the camera and he went a bit nuts), so I divided them into Albena pictures and Balchik pictures. Enjoy! And check back daily for more and more and more and more photos.