Barcelona - first impressions

Jeremy and I arrived in Barcelona. After one beautiful sunny day, the rain came and it never seemed to stop. The city is absolutely beautiful with lots to do. However, with their weird business hours, many times Jeremy and I found ourselves searching for food while all the businesses were taking their siesta. We spent most of our time here trying to get settled. We did get to do some sightseeing although not much because of the terrible weather and our busy schedules.

Pros:
- beautiful city with lots to do
- lots of seafood!!!
- lots of trails for exploring (and only 10mins away from our apartment!)
- really friendly people
- I finally can communicate with people! = )

Cons:
- too much rain (although they tell me it’s unusual)
- expensive
- quite a bit of smoking
- business hours

Parc Güell:

La Sagrada Familia:

Sagrat Cor:

Tibidabo:

La Pedrera:

Arc de Triomf:

Parc de la Ciutadella:

The Sea:

La Rambla Catalunya:

Last weeks in Budapest

After spending the last 7 months in Budapest, it was time for me to leave. Although I haven’t done much here because I spend most of my time working at home and running, during the past 7 months Jeremy and I did manage to make a few friends. Every Wednesday, Jeremy and I would spend a few hours of our evening with the “Sit & Chat Club.” This is basically a club of older Hungarians who at some point in life have learned English. However, because of lack of usage, many of them are starting to forget. In this club, we would spend the hours just chatting and Jeremy and I were basically the moderators - teaching them new words or correcting them when something was said incorrectly.

Two weeks before my departure, they decided to throw me a really nice farewell party. Kathy, the host of the club and a very talented and rare codex artist, spent a lot of time putting a really nice bag full of Hungarian things for me so I can always remember them and remember Hungary. It was quite touching hearing her say that many years ago when she was much younger, a group of people whom she had met in Germany had given her something very similar. Because it had touched her so much, she told herself that someday she would do the same for someone special. I was quite moved by her story and the fact that I was “special’ after having only known her for a short 6 months.


Sit & Chat group at Fanyűvő


My gift


All things Hungarian

Beautiful card hand painted by Kathy

To add to the wonderful Farewell Party, a group of them decided to take us, over the weekend, to Szentendre (a small town north of Budapest along the Danube Bend). Mary, who works in the tourism business, served as our wonderful guide. It was a short day trip but it was the perfect way for me to say good-bye to my friends.

Enjoying some good langos

Slovenia

Over a long weekend in February, I surprised Susan with a 4-day trip to Slovenia. Okay, I admit that I did accidentally give it away several weeks ahead of time, but Susan still pretended to be surprised. Nonetheless, she didn't know exactly where we were going, so the actual destinations within Slovenia were a surprise.

The flight in may have been the easiest flight ever. It was a 70 minute flight on a prop plane from Budapest. Within 10 minutes of landing at the airport we arrived at the bag claim just as our luggage was being spit out and then walked about 20 meters to the exit where we immediately found a shuttle to take us to the Slovenia's capital: Ljubljana.

The next morning we took a 90 minute scenic train ride to the Skocjan Caves in Slovenia (just about everything in this small country is within a 2 hour ride of Ljubljana). We first walked around the national park, with some views into some deep sinkholes called dolines (I think). See photos above and below.

Then our tour of the caves began at 1:00pm and the caves were absolutely spectacular. Check out this photo:















Okay, they didn't allow us to take any photos in the cave, but this is what it looked like when our tour guide at one point turned off all the lights. Susan and I have gone on several cave tours before (in Colorado and Missouri in particular), but this was far and away the most spectacular. After going through several huge chambers the size of football fields, we then entered a section of the caves where we were on a walkway suspended on the cave walls about 100' above a raging river. Think of the cave scene in Lord of the Rings ("You shall not pass!") and you're close. Here are some photos of the cave I got off the internet:

Finally we could take photos again when we exited.

We returned to Ljubljana and spent the night there before leaving for Lake Bled the next day. Lake Bled was in the opposite direction, nestled in the Julian Alps.

For some reason Susan included this photo. But, we were both amused by this duck that kept blowing bubbles. Besides crazy ducks, Lake Bled is known for its lake (duh), which is surrounded by mountains - including a castle perched on a precarious ledge high above the lake, and its church located on an island. In the summer one can swim to the island, but it was a little to cold in February.

Views from the castle

We walked around the lake on our first full day at Bled (about 3 or 4 miles around).

The island church with the castle on the left and the mountains in the background.

The castle at sunset

Valentine's Day night

The next day (Sunday), we took yet another bus to Lake Bohinj, which is even furthur up in the mountains. We were the only idiots in this town without skis or a car. So we rented snowshoes and walked/ran 2 miles to the ski resort while cars were whizzing by us. We then took a gondola halfway up the mountain (to about 1500m/5000ft above sea level) where we then stood out for the second time. This time we were the only idiots walking up the mountain (on snowshoes) while everyone else was taking the chairlifts up to the top (2000m/6500ft) and skiing down.

This is the highest point we reached. Susan is the figure down below as she was shivering and was in hurry to get out of the wind and the shade.

View of Lake Bohinj about 4000 ft below us.

Susan kept saying that the snow up here looked like marshmallows. The snow was about 10-15 feet thick as we saw a few holes in the snow where we could see the top of some pine trees several feet below us. It was an amazing experience to be up in these mountains in the middle of winter. We have summited many mountain peaks before, but never one like this in the winter. Since we aren't downhill skiiers and don't plan to be anytime soon this was a special opportunity.

The final night we returned to Ljubljana where we spent the night in a prison cell.

Okay, it was actually formerly a prison and is now a hostel - the smallest room we have ever stayed in. The bed is suspended above the doorway.

Ljubljana at dusk.

Ljubljana is famous for its Dragon Bridge. If you've read the novel, "The Historian," Ljubljana was described in this book under its Roman name - Emona. I also just wanted to prove that I can make cultural references other than to the Lord of the Rings, The Da Vinci Code, or Seinfeld.

View from Ljubljana's castle

If you're not completely sick of viewing our photos more from our Slovenian trip here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/runningmonkey01/SLOVENIA?authkey=07U3mmcK02Y&feat=directlink