Spain

Aug 1-Day 32

I am looking around the room I am in, trying to figure out what city we are in. Don´t know. Can´t remember. Oh well. We arrived here yesterday by train and booked into a nice hotel because all of the hostels are booked up. We have a room for 4 and Colton is sleeping on the floor so Erin and Miranda can have the bed. It is kinda nice to be in a nice hotel. Miranda made a bee line for the bathroom to see what little presents would be on the vanity. She hit the jackpot, there was shampoo, lotion, body wash and a toothbrush with a tiny toothpaste and floss. It made her day.
We were so happy to be out of Barcelona. It felt a bit yuck as a whole. The city is a bit sleezy downtown. We were so pleasantly surprised with the city we are in(whatever it´s called), feels so nice. It is an old city with stunning arcitecture. The people are friendly, is feels so safe. We love it. We are also downtown here but it feels wonderful. We walked around last night taking pictures till 10:30. It was so great we had a hard time going to bed.
This morning we got up, had a coffee and toast and took the bus to the beach. It was deep soft lushious SAND. We haven´t had a nice beach like this one yet in the last month. Miranda yelled HALLELUYA sand. Whoo Hoo. Off she ran chucking her stuff into the warm warm Mediteranian sea. Ahhh, Spain.
Dean just walked in the room and said we are in Valencia. O.K. so now I know where we are.

Barcelona, France

July 30-Day 30

We are halfway into our trip and we still are having a great time. We still have energy and we still like each other. The best part about this week is that Erin arrived yesterday. We are so excited to be able to have someone new to hang out with. It definatly has brought a hop to our skip to walk around another city with someone like Erin. She is so fun.
We arrived into Barcelona yesterday evening by train. We had a long day (12 hours) and 5 trains till we arrived. We knew where Erin was thinking she would be staying for the night and so we booked our own hostel right near hers. Hers was booked up. We went to her hostel as soon as we checked into ours and they told us she had checked in but she had left. So we went on a mission to get something to eat, and to find her. We grabbed a donair from a vendor and walked around the area and finally we spotted her. I yelled Erin, she turned around and ran to us with big hugs. We felt very happy to have found her in a city this size. The crowds are massive and we definatly feel ready to leave for quieter pastures.
We spent our day today touring the works of Gaudi. We again did a lot of walking and think we almost pooped Erin out. But she was fine. Oh too be 22 again. We bought some salsa and guacamole makings and had an awesome supper in our hostel.
Tomorrow we will leave after breakfast to somewhere down the coast of Spain. We will stop when it looks quiet and we see some sand from the train.

Cinque Terra, Italy

we dropped into the Cinque Terra area without a reservation or much info about where to stay. As we were on the train from Venice to this area we read that the town we were planning on staying in books up really quickly so we were prepared to have to go to another town if needed. That was the case, the first town we would have stayed in was called Monteroso, the town we ended up staying in was Riomaggiore. It ended up being the fifth and last of the towns in the Cinque Terra. The pictures are from the day we went on a hike through the mountains from the first town till the last. It is a fairly strenuous hike up and down hand made paths through absolutly georgeous picturistic mountains and valleys and the towns are all build on the sides of mountains.They almost seem to hang over the water at times. The mountains have been terraced in many places to make it possible to grow grapes, orchards and gardens. We stopped in each town for an icecream break and to fill up our water bottles. We had a back pack with 4 water bottles and we needed to fill up as often as we could. We were very proud of Miranda for being able to do the hike and not once did she complain about it being to hard. She is in amazing shape this year and has always been able to keep up and even run ahead.

Venice

July 23-Day 23

We are in Venice, yes we are.We arrived by train yesterday, left our packs at the check baggage for the day and started exploring. We love it. Dean thought he wouldn’t be he loves it also. We walked around the canals and bridges yesterday till late afternoon and decided to head out and look for our hostel. We collected our bags and checked our directions that I had printed up before we left. Venice was one of the places that we were told to pre-book. So I found the only hostel a month or so ago that had room. So we read the instructions, jumped on a bus and off we went. It sounds easy when I say it like that. It was acually a huge pain in the butt. But how can I complain when we are in VENICE. O.K. so I won’t complain but, it was a really hard day. When we got to the town where the directions said to get off, we had to walk ½ a mile yet. When we finally got there, the host wasn’t there. There was a family from Sweden staying there and they borrowed us the phone to phone the lady. They then proceded to tell us that there was not kitchen access, nor was there a store or resteraunt within walking distance. We hadn’t prepared for that at all. We thought we would get to the hostel and either pick up some food or go for dinner. NOT. We were hungry, tired and grumpy. What to do? I think the Swedish couple could see it was going to get ugly, or something. They had just finished up their dinner and offered us some salami, bread, wine and fruit. Just then I remembered we had a package of microwave rice and chicken and there was a microwave so we were set. Whew, that was close. We decided that we would not be staying the 2 nights we had pre-booked and would take our bags and figure out some other place to stay for the next night.
Day 2 in Venice. We ate the included bread and jam for breakfast and walked the ½ mile back to the bus stop and now we are back in Venice. First things first we again dropped our bags at the bus station baggage check and thought we would wing it and see what rooms would run us right in Venice. We walked a little way and saw a little hotel called Dollerama, or something close. We though, it looked good and inquired about the price and surprise, surprise it is only $100. Well, Euro, but from what we had heard that is a steal. Also, we have no other plan for tonight, so the Dollerama it is. Now we can relax and start the tour.
We started by going to San Paulo square where we had a quick lunch of pizza and water. We had read in the |Rick Steves travel book that if you checked your backpack or bag you could get to the front of the line into the bacillica. It worked. We did the walk through and it is another very nice church. Then we toured the Doge’s palace and the bridge of sighs and the prison. That was our favorite tour. We haven’t seen an old prison yet and it also included a museum of the old armory. They had many pieces still in excellent shape. The collection included swords, cross bows, cannons, guns, pistols, suits of armor, shield, lances, spears and pikes. The palace was full of paintings and old furniture. It was amazing.
We were DONE around 5 o’clock and still had to walk back, collect our packs, shop for supper (roast chicken, salad, cucumbers, peppers, focaccia bread and fruit) and check into our hotel. We have doen that, finished our supper and are sitting on the terrace overlooking the cannal, drinking wine, sketching the old buildings, writing in our journals listening to the church bells ring and reading. Ahh… life is good right now. Oh, and the gondolas are floating by below us to give us some music and something to entertain us. It’s funny, as we are looking out over the gondolas floating by the tourists are taking pictures of us on the terrace and waving. Very fun.

Divaca, Slovenia

July 20- Day 20

We had a huge treat today, mostly for Miranda and I. We found out that the stables for the very famous Lipizzaner horses was right here in Slovenia. We told Miranda on the way that we would be seeing them and she was pumped. I was excited to be able to see them also. We had the lady from the tourist info desk reserve a pension (B&B) in the town od Divaca which is 5 minutes away from Lipca. Lipca is where the Lippizaners live. We arrived a bit late as we took the wrong train and had to wait an hour at the next stop to catch the right one and by 2:20 or so we finally dropped our packs in the room. The owner of our pension offered to drive us to Lipca and return 3 hours later to pick us up (for free!). So we of course said sure and off we went.
We took the $30 tour and our tour guide told us all about the history of the horses which have been here since 1580. The farm is home to 400 horses and all the official bredding papers. The Sud farm in one of the most attractive cultural and historical sites in the republis oc Slovenia. After WW ll, Lipca developed its own classical ridding school and show the horses all over the world. The farm is in a picturesque valley surrounded by century old Linden and oak trees.
We loved to stand and admire the different colors and sizes of all the horses we were shown. We were brought into the best stud barn where we got to pet the oldest of their studs who was 24 years old. He was a beautiful specimin even in his old age. He looked at us with eyes full of wisdom and patience as we took picture after picture trying to get the perfect shot.
As we were about to leave they brought back all the mothers and fouls from pasture. They passed by us and we longed to be able to get closer but were separated by a fence so we had to zoom in for a couple of good shots for the photo album.
We feel grateful to have been able to see such wonderful things in the last few weeks. I am so glad we got to do something that was so good for Miranda’s soul (and mine).

Postojnksa Jama cave, Slovenia

July 19-Day 19

We left today for a small town called Postojna, Slovenia. It is in the direction of where we want to go and it has a very huge cave that we want to go see. We take the 1:30 train and the ride is only an hour so we are there early enough in the afternoon to go and see the cave. We drop our bags at the HI hostel that we had book the night before at the last hostel and walked the mile or so to the caves. They are called Postojnksa Jama Cave. It is a UNESCO site.
It was amazing. It was a huge cave system that would be similar to Carlsbad caverns in the USA. It is the most visited caves in Europe. It was discouvered in 1818 and tourism started there the very next year. The constant temp. of the cave is a very cool 8 degrees. Of course we didn’t think of this when we left our hostel and luckly they rent coats for people like us. The tour was the perfect length. They first took us in about 2 miles in a small train, then our guide walked us through another mile or so and then the next 2 miles was again by train. By the time we left our toes were quite chilly.
We decided to leave for the next town tomorrow morning.

eating in Slovenia

We woke up to rain this morning. The kids thought it was great. So did I. It meant we could have a morning of hanging out and relaxing. If you know anything about the way we travel, you will know exactly what I'm talking about. I won't name names but some of us can't just sit still for very long. After the rain stopped around 11am we headed out to check out the city. It is another old world city full of very beautiful buildings, castles and markets. It is Saturday today and that means markets are huge. We went from vegi stgand to vegi stand buying green and yellow beans, fresh baby carrots, potatoes, peppers, tomotoes, celantro, honey and also some fresh chicken breasts. Then back to our hostel to cook up the best lunch ever. We cut up the chicken, fryed it with fresh morel mushrooms. Boiled the potatoes, beans and carrots and Mmmm mmmm it was fabulous. I have been so hungry for fresh vegis, this was exactly what we all needed. After lunch we spent the afternoon walking around finding cool buildings and churches to explore. It was very relaxing. At 4 it started to rain again, just in time. So we headed back to the Alibi hostel and took showers and planned our next few days and started making supper. Of course we brought along our trusty bottle of epicure guacamoli mix. So we had nachos with fresh salsa and guacamoli.We tryed a Slovenian local wine called Quercus Modri Pinot (very nice). For desert we had a traditional cake from the market. It is called prekmurska gibanica. It is a layered cake with 8 layers of filling and filo dough. A layer of poppy seed filling is placed on a buttered cake dough followed by more filo dough on top of which cottage cheese, walnut and apple fillings are put, followed by another four layers of the same filling in the same order. The top layer is filo that gets iced with icing sugar after the cake has been baked. It tasted like a combination of baklava and apple pie. Not bad.
Tomorrow we leave for another part of Slovenia that is closer to the coast. We will spend a few days touring some caves and we have a huge surprise for Miranda. We had no idea that the Lipizaner stalions are bred, raised and trained in Slovenia. Well we decided to go to see them. We hope to do that in the next few days. So don't tell her.