Family Fun

      Hi all, it’s been a while since I wrote. I did have a pretty good excuse… having lots of fun with family. So let’s see, since I last wrote we had just moved to Milni , just south of Dubrovnik. A very nice small seaside town, apparently a favorite vacation spot for the Croatian army, so it saw , and you can still see  some damage to buildings from the war here 20 years ago. Actually almost everywhere we have been , you can see evidence of war, it’s sort of hard to wrap your mind around the thought that people were dying  here just 20 years ago in a bloody civil war.

   Ok this is how it started, this is so fantastic to me, I am just amazed and glad that we were able to pull it off.  On Tuesday June 17^th, Carrie and I went to the Dubrovnik airport to meet our nephew Tyler Williams from  New Zealand, via Portugal and France. 2 hours later, David arrived from Nicaragua via Norway. The next day we moved to a house in Dubrovnik and Maggie, Sean’s mother from New Jersey met us at the house and finally…. Later that night,  Sean, Erica , Cora  came in from California via Moldova where they had been visiting Kate for a few days, and then hopping on the same plane as Sean, Erica and  Cora, Kate also made her way to Croatia. So here we are 8 adults and a baby, together in this beautiful country, ready to have some fun.

   I don’t want to go into great detail about what we did for the next couple of weeks, and we have posted a lot of pictures on facebook, which I think will give you a pretty good idea of what we were up to. I do want to talk about cooking and eating though. Since there were so many of us and some of us, actually most of us were tryng to stay on a budget, cooking was a good option. Not all the restaurants were expensive, just like anywhere, and you could do some baked goods and a cappuccino in the morning quite inexpensively. All 3 of the houses we stayed in had pretty good kitchens and of course they all had the world’s dullest knives, my total pet peeve. I think we all agreed, the nights we cooked, and everyone cooked, we made better food than we could have gotten at a restaurant for at least half the price.  Mushroom risotto, pasta carbonara ( oh my god the Pancetta here is amazing and well… cheap and the Feta! BOOM!)  Gyros, chicken with gremolata, etc. we all ate very well. For me, to have all our family around the dinner table, eating, drinking and having a great time together, means a lot to me.

   So I am sitting on the upper balcony with Carrie in the house on Vis, and I see a gentleman walk out onto his balcony in the house adjacent to ours. I go to say good evening to him and then stop, because I realize I don’t know if he’s a local or a foreigner, so what language do I use? Meanwhile he is no longer looking at me, so I have lost that opportunity. Carrie, who is sitting with her back to the man, has no idea what is going on, she is talking to me and by this time my attention has wondered slightly, this never happens by the way. So imagine Carrie is sitting at the table, talking to me and I am watching the man on the other balcony, take his shirt off and hang it on the line, look at me..I smile, Carrie is still talking to me. He takes his shorts off and hangs those on the line, no looking this time, I look at Carrie and wonder if I should interrupt, and decide not to right now. I look back just in time to see, yes of course, the man taking his underwear off and hanging those on the line…Ta Dah , naked man on the balcony across from us, does it get any better than that? An emphatic NO Then he looks up at me, smiles , waves and goes back inside, waving back never even crossed my somewhat astonished brain…so I did not…love travelling.

               We did do some diving on Vis, I have to say it was kind of disappointing, I was looking forward to diving in Croatia ( OK let’s be honest, I look forward to diving period) It was cold, but we knew it was going to be, it was expensive, but we hoped we could get some sort of deal … we didn’t. We dove 3 times and went to the same dive site all 3 times..lame. We max depthed or close to it all 3 times…again lame. OK I ‘m getting depressed just thinking about the whole experience, only think happy thoughts, only think happy thoughts…so yeah we did some diving in Vis.

     As I write this. we are going through passport control on the train into Hungary. We have decided to spend a lttle or maybe long , time in Budapest. Last night we took the train from Split to Zagreb and we decided to spring for the sleeper car, an extra $40 each. We got a room to ourselves and of course beds! Neither Carrie or I had been on a train in years and the sleeper car was a nice surprise for us, we thought we would just have a bunk bed in the hall somewhere. We left at 10 last night and got into Zagreb around 630am, we stashed our packs in a locker and walked around town for a bit. Walking through the mall by the train station, I found a McDonald’s, OK before you get all whatever, yes I did want an egg mcMuffin.. and I got one, but the nice thing about McDonald’s, when you travel, is that, they all have free WIFI and outlets so you can plug in your stuff before going on a long train ride to Budapest. OK so the train station is great, and it was built in something like 4000 B.C. , but they didn’t have electricity back then, so they didn’t think back then to run conduit through all the rocks and bricks, for all the electrical outlets they will need, so Carrie and Glen can plug in their Ipods, so they can listen to music.

    We both loved Croatia, the country is beautiful, especially  all the little towns on the coast. It is getting kind of sloppy messy with tourists, so going inland for a while, might give us a respite from all the hoardes there vacationing. On the other hand, we are going to a pretty touristy city, might have to start rethinking our plan if we want to get away from the crowds. Well I think that’s enough for now, we should be getting to Budapest in about 4 hours and well it’s past noon now, so….it’s beer time.  

  OK, one more thing. One day while walking back  from the beach in Split, I was thinking about what to make for dinner and thought maybe some tsatziki might be good and that I should remember to pick up some dill if I can find it in the fresh green market. Finding fresh herbs other than parsley has been close to impossible. Literally 3 steps later, there was some wild dill growing out of a crack in the pavement by the side of the road. Hmm guess I can check that off the grocery list. This place is cool…love travelling.

Love and Warm thoughts from Hungary

Carrie and Glen 

Dubrovnik, sort of

   Hello all, We're in Mlini now, about 8 km south of Dubrovnik. We got here after an 8 hour bus ride from Zadar and then another 1/2 hour on the public bus to here...and well it's been raining here ever since. When we got to our room, the family had welcome shots of brandy for us, I love this country, by the way did I mention you can basically buy alcohol everywhere, for example, the gas station, it's like the anti = Indonesia, where we couldn't find alcohol anywhere. Well since it's raining and we're sitting at a restaurant drinking, I thought hey it's a good time to write something.

   Even though the room thing in Plitvice didn't really work out , I think in the end, it was the best. By staying in the park we only had to buy a one day pass, instead of 2. We didn't have to take a bus back and forth to our other room out of the park and well we were right there. So.. according to Glen math, everything was a wash, a little high on the financial side, but way high on the happy scale...ohh ok I forgot about the food, the food in the park is horrible, really??!!! boiled pork chops in some sort of oily saucy thing...Yum?? no I think not, something masquerading as a hamburger, good? NO! OK I think you get it.

  The park however is ABSOLUTELY beautiful, really probably the most amazing place we have ever seen, I mean we haven't been everywhere, by any means, but I think that's saying something.We posted some pictures on facebook, they only give you a small idea of how beautiful this park is, I could go on...and I will, only on a slightly different tangent.. cause that's what I do.

   So we had been walking around the park for 5 or 6 hours and we decided to go back to the hotel for a beer and a rest. From to the lake to the hotel is about 500 metres, almost all uphill. The park is also filled with people on tours from all over ( and most of these people are older than us, or at the very least look older than us) OK so we are walking up the steps on the way to our hotel and we are behind one of these tour groups, slowly we are making our way through the group until we reach 4 ladies spread out across the whole width of the steps. So imagine the blocking wedge they have in football on kick off returns, this is the same thing and just as effective, they are not going to let us get around them. I started thinking... maybe if we just chucked one of them off the trail the others would get scared and let us pass or maybe if we separated one from the rest of the herd, they would sacrifice the one for the benefit of the rest of the herd...so we started looking for an older, slower tourist the herd might sacrifice, when, I think,sensing our intentions,  opened a hole for us to pass through.

  We grabbed a bus to Zadar on Wednesday, have I mentioned it's been stinking hot here, I am not complaining, but I did make an error in packing, it's been in the low 90's since we got here.So.. Zadar, lots of what I am assuming is communist era ugly apartment buildings, but really that has been everywhere we have been so far in Croatia. Old town in Zadar is just great, the stones on the walkways are shiny from the centuries of people walking on them. This is my first time in Europe and this may get old, but for me, it was beautifully old and choatic, crammed with people from all over, speaking all these different languages, these amazing old churches, small hole in the wall shops, the predictable and tacky tourist souvenir shops, the families out for the day, the women all dressed up in heels and nice dresses and the men dressed. The sea organ and the sun salutation are definitely very cool, in our mind a perfect example of a city supporting the arts and in turn that art creating a tourist attraction that benefits the city.

   Ok well I'm running out of gas here and well... the wine is starting to work, the wine so far has been pretty good, is mostly served cold and it won't probably win any awards, but it tastes ok and it's 2 bucks a glass, so who's complaining, not me!

Hey the sun's coming out, yup definitely time to go.

love and warm thoughts from mlini

glen and carrie

  

Here we go!!!

  Ok so....  for a little recap. We have sold almost everything we own and put the rest in a small storage room. I quit my job at the winery, so I think that means I am now retired. We each have a backpack and a day bag and that's all. The plan really is no plan, the next month or so with the "kids" is more or less planned, can't really travel with your own baseball team without plans. After that though is sort of whatever we feel like doing until our return flight in October. We haven't been freaking out or anything so far, so I guess having no house and travelling the world, is OK for now. We have been asked a few times how long we plan to do this, and well my answer is ...until I tip over and can't get up. I think Carrie's answer is different, but maybe not.
  We arrived in Croatia this past Thursday, after 24 hours, from home. Pick your expletive here, although it was less time to get here than going to Indonesia, we were crushed. I think I made it for 2 hours after we got to the apartment in Zagreb before I started experiencing total system shutdown. I think we fell asleep at 5pm and slept for 12 hours. Zagreb what we saw of it, is a nice city, somewhat eclectic maybe, but with a nice vibe. Just a small note about Croatian.... is not pronounced the way it is spelt, I'm just saying, not trying to be judgy. There is alot of graffiti here, I don't know if that means jack, but it seemed a little curious. So it seems the major food groups in Croatia are coffee, beer and cigarettes.....another curious thing, the streets are clean, we saw street sweepers, but they don't pick up the cigarette butts, not sure why. We wandered around town for a couple of days, did touristy stuff...another thing and I don't know why, but I was suprised to see so many of my tribe in this part of the world. OK one more thing, if your dressed like your going to comic=con but your not actually going to comic=con, then you look stupid.
  The big public market in Zagreb was great fun and the amount of bars and cafes is mind boggling. We figured out how to catch the tram to the bus station this morning because we couldn't figure out how to call a taxi, or flag one down for that matter. We did figure out how to get a bus to Plitvice national park, although we didn't figure out that our room we booked, wasn't actually in the park. So we decided to splurge a little and get a room here in the park. This is us so far, stumbling around in the world but slowly getting our feet under us...  yup that's me , mister profundity!

Love and warm thoughts from Plitvice

No good title for this

Hello from Gili Air , yup we have moved again, we're in the Gili islands off of Lombok and more specifically we're at a restaurant named Scallywags and I'm eating tuna sashimi in a third world country... could be a bad culinary choice, I'm sure we'll find out.

Like Erma Bombeck but different

OK , we're on Bunaken island now, after a couple of days travelling to get here. We 're staying at an all inclusive... yes we have gone indonesian high end, called Seabreeze resort. great place, nice people and we're going to start diving here tommorrow, yeah fishies!!!

Hi to Bali or Bali Hi

Nyepi

So I guess I 'll start with Nyepi. Nyepi is the Balinese "day of silence" which in more practical terms means we are not allowed to leave the hotel property the whole day , no internet , no music and of course no electricity. They have had Nyepi events the last 2 nights, a dance on Sun and a parade last night up and down the Main Street with these big , and I mean 10 or 12 ft big evil looking figurines on platforms that are carried by a crew of people . Lots of fun, fireworks, bands , torches , singing....all fun , all the time in Bali. So today we are hiding from all the evil spirits and making ourselves inconspicuous so that the evil spirits pass us by.

trundling around japan

Being in Japan is a little like the unwritten rules in baseball, unless you are in baseball or follow it pretty closely , you don't know the rules. I actually bought a book about Japan that had some stuff that even Erica didn't know about. ( red lanterns outside a doorway means neighborhood pub, blowing your nose in public is frowned upon...but all those other disgusting noises they make are OK?) It is cherry blossom time in Sasebo, just beautiful, not sure why we don't plant like millions of these trees everywhere.We took a little field trip to Nagasaki and Kumamoto. I'm jumping around here, but hey , back to being in Japan...  everything is small, except the money (1000 yen = $12 around there) so the cars are small , the roads are skinny, the doorways are short, it sort feels like your in legoland...in an ashtray, cause everybody smokes. Everything is really clean,on time ( which is helpful to try and figure out which train or bus your supposed to take ) and polite. Japanese people are not the friendliest people around, unless they're drunk, then pretty friendly until fall down time....so friendly for about a half an hour.
  Nagasaki atomic bomb museum ..is what you would imagine. The castle in Kumamoto is world class, just beautiful. It sort of seems like all japanese cities were designed by the same guy...shopping area here, call it ginza,restaurants next to the shopping area, big beautiful park in the middle some where and then plain bordering on ugly offices,apartments, hotels and then huge ostentatious pachinko bars that look like they are on fire, just all the cigarette smoke coming out of them. Almost everyone backs into parking spaces, do you think people that don't get tickets?
  Anyways we're back home now, all jet lag screwed up. Slept like 22 hours the 1st night and then 4 the next, UUGGGHHHH.

love and warm thoughts from home

carrie and glen