Albania is one of those countries I never expected to visit. When we first started traveling, back in the 70’s, it was more of a hermit kingdom than North Korea. For 50 years, the country was virtually closed off from the rest of the world. The communist dictatorship even breaking […]
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23
Oct
2012
Albania
23
Oct
2012
The Sea Cloud
For our wanderings, we are sailing aboard the Sea Cloud, a beautiful 4 masted sailing ship. She was built in Germany in 1931 by EF Hutton for his wife Marjorie Merriweather Post. Originally named the Hussar V (the name Hutton gave to all his sail boats) she started life as […]
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23
Oct
2012
Mostar
A long bus ride from Split to Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina (long name for a small country). Mostar’s claim to fame is the new old bridge. The original bridge was built in 1556 to handle freight across the Nerevta River. In 1993, during the Yugoslav war, the bridge was destroyed. After […]
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23
Oct
2012
Kotor, Montenegro
With the problems uploading to the Internet and busy days, I lost interest in keeping up the blog. With Paul off exploring Montenegro, thought it a good time to catch up. From Mostar, we spent the rest of Tuesday afternoon driving back to Dubrovnik to board our ship, the Sea […]
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23
Oct
2012
Split
Time to leave Dubrovnik and head north to Split. We rented a little Peugeot for our drive. The highway winds along the coast, reminiscent of California highway 1. Lots of small beach towns, harbors and places to hang out and enjoy some down time. Split is an ancient city. Nearby […]
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16
Sep
2012
Rating Hotels
We all have our own method of rating accommodations. For me, whether it is a hotel or a campground, the shower makes or breaks the rating. At our hotel in Dubrovnik, we had the best shower ever! It rivaled our shower at home and beat most every other shower we […]
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14
Sep
2012
Dubrovnik
With the long “drive” from Portland behind us, we are ready to go Croation. Dubrovnik is a small, 30,000, city on the Adriatic coast. It is a walled city, the wall was built in the 1300’s to protect the citizens from invasion by surrounding kingdoms. The wall includes a drawbridge […]
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23
May
2012
The trip home (Cuba 7)
The trip home is taking much longer than anticipated. Leaving Cuba went smoothly, spent most of my last CUCs at the airport, and my last trip to the bathroom where, as usual, you paid the matron for toilet paper and there are no toilet seats and half the toilets don’t […]
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23
May
2012
Wait, there’s more (Cuba 6)
Our last full day in Cuba, we ventured out to Las Terraza, a village and UNESCO biosphere area. In the 1820s and 30s, this area was devoted to growing coffee. After the coffee plantations were abandoned, the deforested land suffered from erosion. Around 1968, the government decided to restore the […]
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23
May
2012
Havana continued (Cuba 5)
Hemingway has been a theme this trip. This morning, we visited his Havana home. He rented the house in 1939, bought it a year later and lived in it until 1960 when he moved back to the US. He gave the house to the Cuban people, leaving it furnished complete […]
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