Sevilla photos

inside the Alcazar (castle)
a very passionate flamenco dancer

Barcelona photos

a mix of the old with the new on La Rambla street
a fountain in the picnickers' park
the Sagrada Familia, a church designed by Gaudi and in construction since 1882
picnic lunch at the "castle" that doesn't exist

Nice, France photos

sunset on the boardwalk
A fountain near the boardwalk

at a square with elevated statues

Venice photos

a canal
St. Mark's square
gondoliers

Florence photos

Il Duomo
Michelangelo's painting of the Duomo ceiling
Amir and the David (or, at least, his larger twin)
the Ponte Vecchio bridge

the Vatican Museum

One of these things is not like the other.

famous painting

Why does the Vatican refuse to return to Egypt the stuff they stole?
the Pieta

Rome photos

The Colosseum

















Ruins in the Roman Forum


















Amir and I overlooking the Roman Forum












Funny Asians

Aegina Island, Greece photos

Amir with our bottle o'rose wine. It's vintage, I swear.




Aegina Island beach near Agia Marina
A















Amir and I in front of all the yachts




















Aegina Island from the Aegina port

"Stupid French" and "What's the matter with bridges these days?"

Our trip from Porto to Amsterdam started at 2pm that Sunday and ended at 2am on Monday (technically Tuesday). It would have been terrible if we hadn't managed to get sleeping berths on the night train. That made all the difference in the world. We were doing fine on times and connections until we got to Paris' Gard du Nord station and sat on our rather expensive Thalys train for over an hour waiting to depart.

Apparently, someone had thrown their body under a train 2 stations away and that person's suicide was gumming up all the works. When the train conductor announced this news to us, we knew we'd never make the rest of our train connections. What's the matter with good, old fashioned bridges these days?

We finally made it to Bruxelles Midi station at 9:50pm, having missed our connection to Amsterdam. Fortunately for us, there was another Thalys train to Amsterdam that was delayed an hour forty minutes for the same suicide as ours so we ended up hopping it. The desk wasn't able to get us reservations for the train because it was no longer in the system so we boarded the train with fingers crossed hoping we wouldn't get kicked off.

Our stars were all in alignment that train trip because not only did the female train manager ignore our presence entirely (and possibly on purpose because she just didn't want to know), but we had met the two cute train conductresses while waiting for the train to show at the station the one serving our carriage took extra good care of our refreshment needs. The train got us into Amsterdam Centraal at 12:45pm where we waited outside in our first taste of fall weather on our trip so far for a good hour before catching the night bus to our hostel which cost us the ridiculous price of 7 Euros.

Finally, at 2am, we checked into our hostel only to discover that the two free dorm beds in our dorm room looked used and were covered in our dormmates' stuff. Also, the room reeked of weed smoke and we knew smoking wasn't allowed in the rooms. When we asked the manager to take care of it for us, he responded by waking up our dormmates to bawl them out loudly and then told us we could go right in. Not wanting to be strangled in the night by people who hated us from the get go thanks to the manager, we insisted on another room. The room full of girls that we ended up in was not only smoke free and clean, but no one was snoring! What a treat.

We sent our half day in Amsterdam by walking the city from Leidsplassen back to the Centraal train station laden with groceries obtained from the Lidl near the Vondelpark. Then we got our luggage out of storage and hopped a local train to Utrecht and then a commuter train from there to Zaltbummel, the nearest station to the hostel we chose. The hostel manager, Michael, picked us up in an open air, WWII-era jeep and we shivered our way to the hostel. The hostel was a house with private rooms upstairs and a dining room, movie room, kitchen, enclosed patio room with TV and restroom facilities. Attached, there was a small barn housing a pig, goat and several unnamed bunnies.

This is where we will spend as long as the next full week enjoying the peace and quiet of the Dutch countryside while relaxing, reading and generally doing nothing. It will be a nice segue into our visit to my host family, the Mosveens, in Norway and then our final 2 weeks in Ireland with Amir's Irish clan.

Porto, the Radias and Oh, Porto!

Our travel day from Madrid to Porto began at 6am and ended at 11:30pm at the doorstep of Vibha and Tina Radia, friends of Amir's dad Fee when he was growing up in Uganda. We were pretty tired at the end of that day and ended up sleeping in the next morning. Tina and Vibha are amazing hosts and took such good care of us while we were there. Tina cooked up delicious meals like potato curry, chicken curry and shepherd's pie! And Vibha opened up a vintage bottle of 1985 port that he and 11 friends had bought from a winery and bottled with their own label. It was the best port of my life.

Tina took me on a long walk down the boardwalk along the beach. There had been a storm up until 8am that morning. The waves were HUGE, coming in three at a time and breaking into huge sprays against the wave barrier. The beach was covered in sea foam and the local kids were in 7th heaven playing in it.

On our last morning there, we awoke thinking we would leave the next day on an evening and then overnight train to The Netherlands. When we started looking up train info so we could book our tickets, we found a warning in German that, thanks to Google's Translator, told us the French rail system would be on strike the next day starting at 8pm. So we booked ourselves a hostel in Amsterdam for the next night, packed up our things, received the world's best lunch/dinner care package from Tina and left for the Porto train station unexpectedly.

Madrid and the homeless shelter

When we arrived at the Madrid central train station, we had to then take a suburban railway train and a bus in order to reach the industrial park where our hostel was located. Yup, an industrial park. And not one of those nice parks with lots of green grass and landscaping. Then, when we walked inside to the lobby and the entirely glassed in reception desk, we thought we had the wrong building and had found a homeless shelter instead. There were old, crazy-looking people in wheelchairs, people walking around dazedly like they were on something and loads of unhealthy looking kids running around screaming.

Our room and the floor on which it was located were much quieter and more normal. So we decided to stay there. On our first full day in Madrid, Amir and I slept in late and then headed into town where I spent a few hours ogling the portraits in the Prado Museum and Amir went to exercise in the nearby park. Afterwards, we met up in the park for a picnic lunch and then headed back to the hostel for a relaxing evening.

The next day, we took a 2 hour local train to Segovia where we spent the day. Segovia is home to a picturesque castle still furnished with Isabella and Ferdinand era thrones, four poster beds and armory. We also stopped inside a gorgeous cathedral built by Charles V when he was feeling particularly guilty about some pillaging or other. For lunch, we had a lunch special with the local specialty dish, roast suckling pig. It was accompanied by a lovely white bean soup and a rice pudding for dessert with some kind of fruit wine with the meal. Not bad.

And that's all we did in Madrid.

Athens pictures

Amir in front of the Temple of Dionysis
















The Parthenon














Amir with a statue at the National Gardens

Macedonia's Lake Ohrid-pictures

Amir and I with Lake Ohrid in the background












Boats on Lake Ohrid















Lake Ohrid

Nice & Spain

Nice

We hit up Nice, France on our way from Venice to Barcelona. It's a place I had been wanting to see having heard about it from some French exchange students from Avignon that my family hosted for a few weeks when I was in high school. See it was about all I did, and for a relatively brief time at that. We booked two nights at a dorm in a hostel near the train station but we didn't arrive until pretty late on the first night. That left the next day for sightseeing. I awoke that morning with a sore throat and a low fever so we ended up spending most of the day in the room, with me lazing in bed reading. We did venture out in the evening to catch the sun setting behind the hills along the gorgeous Nice coastline. It was a lovely view from the boardwalk and beach (all pebbles) but the downtown wasn't what either of us expected. Instead of some quaint French seaside town, Nice is a lot more bustly than that, heavy on the designer stores and a bit light on the charm of Paris. Still, it was worth that coastline view.

Barcelona

The train trip from Nice to Barcelona was not without delays, but we made it to our hostel by 10pm, just in time for all the supermarkets to have closed. Everyone says that Spain is full of night owls who go out to dinner around 10pm and then stay at the clubs until the wee hours of the morning. When we went out looking for restaurants at 10:30pm, most of them were closing their doors. We had to settle for a Mexican restaurant. Go figure. The portions ended up being tiny so we went back to the hostel for midnight sandwiches with our lunch leftovers.

On our first full day there, we started at La Rambla, the city's main tourist street lined with vendors and street performers. We saw a super old church (aren't they all?) and then gaped at the gothic cathedral but couldn't get inside because we had just missed the 12:45pm to 5:15pm daily closing time. Those Spanish and their siestas...even the priests get nap time. It didn't matter that we missed it because the outside was spectacular and we spent a lot of time admiring the interior of the first church we went into on the way.

Being then lunch time, we made our way to a nearby park that is famous for picnickers and set ourselves our own little picnic just on the other side of the gigantic woolly mammoth. The flies were fierce but we managed to enjoy our usual bread, cheese, meat and wine in relative relaxation amidst a smattering of other picnickers and botany students. On a little hillock by the park's exit, we took a post lunch siesta and then walked 13 blocks or so to view the still incomplete Sagrada Familias church designed by the famous Gaudi. This church has been under construction since 1882 and is currently expected to be complete in the year 2026. However, if you would like to contribute to the church's completion fund, you can pay 12 Euros to view a tiny part of the interior. Can you guess whether Amir and I decided to do that? Right. The outside was way cool. It's very modernistic with lots of fun angles. The Jesus hovering above the entryway is definitely the coolest, grooviest looking Jesus I've ever seen. If you're in Barcelona, I definitely recommend checking out the exterior.

Our second day, Amir took charge of our agenda which resulted in us first walking by the outside of the Barcelona football stadium and then trudging up a giant hill on dusty dirt tracks to view a castle that ended up being nothing more than a damn 4-foot high stone wall with a few turrety-looking things. I was still feeling under the weather so a lot of outdoor exertion in under the hot sun was not exactly on top of my list of things to do. It was hard to tell whether I was sweating more from the heat or my fever. We did have a nice picnic lunch at the top, though, on a bench under some shady conifers near the ping pong tables.

Spain decided on a transportation strike that day which cut short our goal of seeing the Gaudi designed section of town and resulted in us heading back to the hostel from our castle hike to take a nap instead. We made some awesome dinners while at that hostel. One meal was a pasta dish with a Bolognese cum aoli sauce served with a side of sliced tomatoes and chicken. Another was pork chops done up in barbecue sauce. Red wine for both, of course.

Granada

I got fully and irrevocably sick with a nasty cold and low fever the day we took the train from Barcelona to Granada. Fortunately, we met a cool LDS couple, Chad and Allison, on the second train which made the time pass by quickly. They were a couple of years older than us with three kids traveling by themselves through Spain for a two week vacation. We were both impressed that they were able to leave a 10-month old, 2- and 4-year old to travel, something they try to do on an annual basis.

We had one day in Granada and intended to use it to see the Alhambra. I had booked our tickets online in advance because they sell out quickly so we had our time slot for the Nasrid Palace at 5:30pm. It ended up being a blessing that it was so late in the day because I spent the entire first part of the day in bed trying to shake off the medicine head I had leftover from Nyquil the night before. We took the walk up to and through the Alhambra pretty slowly. The gardens were extremely well manicured and lovely to walk through. The best part was definitely the Nasrid Palace, though. It was delicate, intricately carved and tiled and just generally gorgeous. We could easily picture royalty wandering about the grounds back in the day.

Sevilla

Sevilla and Grenada are only a few hours away by train so the trip was blissfully easy and short to get here from Granada. My 6-day fever finally broke on day 7 which was a boon. We checked into our hostel and dropped our stuff before finding out with great dismay that there was only one bathroom/shower for the entire hostel. Had we known that, there is no way in hell we would have booked it. Can you imagine? Let's just say it isn't pleasant. Thank god we only have two nights to deal.

We set off sightseeing and ogled the gorgeous gothic cathedral and got to the Alcazar just in time to see the doors close for the day. Then we walked around and saw some amazingly cool semicircular plaza before heading off to the grocery store to stock up on dinner materials and more wine.

On day two, we queued up and toured the Alcazar, which is Europe's oldest castle that is still in use and is very reminiscent of the Alhambra but on a much bigger, more colorful and somewhat more intricate scale. After that, Amir's ability to sightsee further diminished to zero and we spent the afternoon hanging out at a Festival of Nations drinking wine, enjoying the people watching opportunities and eating the world's best charcoal grilled chorizo in a sandwich served with an awesome chopped garlic and herb sauce. Tonight we plan to see a free flamenco show at a nearby bar.

Tomorrow, we head to Madrid for a few days before going to Porto to meet some family friends of Amir's, Vibha and his wife Tina. Hello, port!

Budapest photos

View of Pest from the top of Buda (got that?)

View of Bergen, Jess & Amir's armpit

View of the bath house

Italy: Roma, Firenze & Venezia

Rome

Getting to Rome from Greece was a daunting undertaking but we managed to do it in only 36 hours without missing any major transit connections. From Aegina Island in Greece, we took a ferry to Piraeus port. Then we got on the metro to the train station in Athens where we found ourselves just in time to catch the next train leaving for the Greek port city of Patras. As an unexpected surprise, part of the train line was down so we ended up on a bus for the last half of the trip. From Patras, we got on board the Minoan Line's massive ferry and situated ourselves in "airline chairs" on the cheapo deck.

The ferry boat was much nicer than expected. There was a swimming pool but it was roped off and drained-bummer. We wiled away the 17 1/2 hours comfortably drinking wine on deck while watching the antics of a college tour group before going below deck to sleep. The boat docked in Ancona, Italy where we hoofed it a few kilometers to the train station where we were just in time to catch a fast train to Rome. Once we had safely made it to Rome, we only had to take one metro and one bus before we arrived at our hostel, awash with relief at having made it to a bed and a shower.

We spent two full days exploring the absolute wonders of Rome. We started off day one with the Colosseum. It was so gloriously Roman. Then we wandered across the street to the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill where we roamed the ancient ruins of a stadium, several churches, other buildings and even some "protohistoric ruins" featuring something similar to early dugout Athapaskan huts.

From there, we hit the more modern sights of the glorious, ornate, white Capitol building adorned by its numerous golden men, women and lionesses with wings. We ate lunch sitting at the base of a fountain in a square while people watching. After that we walked to the Trevi fountain and the Spanish Steps. We must have seen at least 10 or so more sights before making it back to the metro to head home but I can't be bothered to list them all so am sticking to the most famous ones.

Day two was spent queuing at Vatican City waiting for 2 1/2 hours in front of the world's most annoying group of Japanese tourists who kept trying to get ahead of us in line. It was with extreme relief that we finally entered the Vatican complex at noon and were able to distance ourselves from the line cutters once and for all. The Vatican museum took us several hours to walk through. There were exhibits with sculptures, busts, tapestries, paintings, stamps, and marble baths all set against a backdrop of Papal splendor. At the end of the museum, the grand finale was the Sistine Chapel which was, as is internationally recognized, impressive. Everyone stood around straining their necks gawking at the ceiling. Every few minutes, the grumpy security guards would hiss "Shhhhh" and yell at people for taking pictures (it's not allowed). It took a good while to work our way through all the magnificence above and actually take in the glories of the lower works and then the painted curtains at eye level. Just as we had left the chapel and trying to rub the soreness out of our necks, we ended up craning them again to gawk at the opulence of St. Peter's. I had no idea how HUGE it is. My god but it was impressive. St. Peter must have done something right to have had that massive monument dedicated to him.

Florence

The trip from Rome to Florence was short and painless. Our hostel was only a few blocks from the train station which made it a dream because it was also close to the city center. Since we got in so early, sometime around 2pm, we dropped our things, claimed some beds in the dorm and then set off immediately to explore the city. We did most of our sightseeing on that first day, fitting in Il Duomo, the Piazza della Signoria, Palazzo Vecchio, the Ponte Vecchio (bridge), and several churches. I was flabbergasted by Il Duomo. It was so large and so beautiful. I just wasn't expecting anything so green on the outside. Everything was fantastic.

On the next day, I spent the morning at the Uffizi seeing hundreds of renditions of the Madonna with child, the ascension, Jesus in the manger as a baby, and Judith decapitating someone. I also got to see a Caravaggio exhibit all set against deep, blood red walls. It was fantastic. Then I met up with Amir and we set off to conquer the hill en route to Piazzale Michelangelo where we enjoyed a fantastic lunch of Vin Santo (a local sweet white wine), fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, and baguettes while overlooking a spectacular view of the city.

Venice

Definitely the most beautiful city in the entire world in our opinion. Also ridiculously expensive, being an island. We ended up staying at a campground outside the city in a trailer optimistically dubbed a "bungalow" by management. It was cheap and only 40 or so minutes away from Venice so we made a go of it. The one super plus of staying there was that there were bathrooms and showers galore and never a wait for either.

We had one full day in Venice which we used to wander around and get good and lost. The city is so amazingly beautiful that it just didn't make sense to try to follow a map. Every street or canal we walked down was just as pretty as the last. We did make a point of seeing about a hundred churches, all beautiful and ornate, and all the must see major sights. For lunch, we stopped by a take out window and ordered a homemade lasagna bolognese that was dreamy. We ate it sitting on a doorstep on one of the wider roads just on the other side of a bridge and watched all the faux Chanel and Gucci bag sellers irritate all the wealthy tourist passersby.

The whole day was filled with literally one gorgeous sight after another. Our eyes were dazzled by all we saw. A day was enough time to see what we wanted to see and get a good feel for the city but we both agreed we could spend months living there...if someone else was footing the bill.

Aegina Island, 2 Euro plastic wine bottles & endless Greek salad

The ferry to Aegina from Athens was supposed to take an hour so we were not at all surprised when we didn't arrive until an hour and forty minutes after departure. Luckily, we were sleep deprived (meaning we didn't get our usual 10 hours) and used the time to nap out in the ocean with a nice, cool breeze blowing over us and the other three passengers on the straining ferry boat. Aghia Marina, our stop, was the second docking along the ferry's route. We hopped off and eagerly climbed the hill leading from the dock to our hotel in hopes of finding a little beach side luxury before becoming paupers in Italy.

Our hopes were realized and the only complaint we could possibly make is against Greece in general, not the hotel in particular, and is in regards to the fact they don't let you flush toilet paper anywhere in the country, a nasty habit I had thought we left behind in Southeast Asia. Our room had a balcony complete with table and two chairs. We had our own private bathroom and shower, with a real shower curtain!! And best of all, there was a fridge in our room to keep our never ending supply of 2 Euro plastic bottles of rose and retsina cold for our afternoon drinking.

Breakfast was included and it had a sufficient supply of raw materials so that not even the pickiest among the guests could go away hungry. Thanks to the fact that their cereal supply is all completely bland and stale, I discovered that the white whipped substance Amir correctly identified as Greek yogurt is totally delicious when coupled with honey. They also offer up Amir's favorite traveling food, ham and cheese sandwiches, on the buffet line which makes for a hearty start to the day. For those of you who are coffee connoisseurs, I'll spare you a description of the vat of burnt coffee they provide. But I dig it. Add enough sugar and milk to anything and you'd be hard-pressed not to enjoy it. There's always tea, anyway.

We have managed to book ourselves a room very near to the only "sandy" beach on the entire island. What that actually means is that when there is low tide, there is enough room between the water and the rock face to erect an umbrella and beach mats, both courtesy of the hotel and both pretty much on their last legs. The best part of the free hotel accessories has been the tennis ball Amir discovered amongst a bunch of partially deflated beach balls. We've spent hours and hours tossing that tennis ball around in the water. You know what the best part of playing catch in the water is? The fact that no one has to go running after the ball when a catch is missed. You just reach behind you and pick it up with almost no effort whatsoever.

Every time we've been out for dinner here, I've ordered the Greek salad and Amir has ordered something he's expected will rock his world. Thus far, I've been the clear but reluctant winner because Aegina (pronounced Ay-gee-nuh, hard G) is renowned for its excellent produce much more so than its spaghetti carbonara or super dry chicken (thank god for mayo and ketchup). Tonight is our last night on our island paradise and I'm determined to find Amir a dinner worth its weight in gold. I'm thinking that the best way to skin this cat is to get him to order something very Greek, like moussaka or pasticcio, since Greeks can't possibly foul up their own national dishes, can they?

Tomorrow we leave on a 48-hour suicide mission bound for Rome. I can't even describe our journey in detail because I'm trying to block it from my consciousness. But it basically entails a ferry, metro, train, ferry, walking, train, metro and bus before we collapse on our dorm room beds in some ghetto hostel with moldy showers in a hostel that we chose for its proximity to the train station. Once we recover from that trip, we'll write about the wonders of modern day Rome and all its glory.

Athens: dirty but ancient

Our train arrived in Athens in the mid-afternoon which meant that by the time we walked to our hostel nearby and got settled in, we had given up on the idea of doing any major sightseeing that day. Instead, we contented ourselves with discovering the location of a nearby grocery store offering slim pickings in the fresh fruit department but great deals on 2 Euro plastic bottles of retsina. We also became acquainted with a cheap eatery a block from the market where we ended up eating 2 meals a day for the length of our time in Athens. I think I'd rather be struck dead than see another kebab pita sandwich again. Amir can't get enough of them, though.

On the next morning, we equipped ourselves for a full day of sightseeing and set off by Metro in search of the Acropolis. Once there, we quickly coined new terms for the Euroskanks abounding there that were area appropriate. Such as, Acropohoes, Acroposluts and pitachippies. Tickets to get into the Acropolis cost us 12 Euro each which, when combined with our hostel, left us 2 Euros for meals if we had stuck with our budget.

The Acropolis, with its Parthenon and Temple of Dionysus, was very, very old. Some group or other was in the midst of rehabilitating it so we could clearly see the old, yellowy colored stone contrasted sharply with the new white stone they were using to fill in the gaps. We walked around the ruins, all twelve columns of them, and then found ourselves wondering, "What next?" From the viewpoint at the far end of the Acropolis, we could see the Temple of Zeus and Hadrian's Library and some other equally decrepit ruins. So we basically saw the glory of Athens' antiquity in 40 minutes.

Not to be deterred from getting our city's worth, we walked onward and upward to the National Gardens a few blocks away where, for no cost whatsoever, we could enjoy a fountain that spit up water in amusing patterns, weird stone head sculptures and a misplaced zoo of goats, roosters and peacocks. There wasn't much to see on the botanical front, however. Afterwards, we decided to walk most of the way home to get a better flavor on Athens city living. What we found were boutique shops no one in Greece could afford, loads of cheap outdoor cafes filled with youth and age alike, a somewhat dirty and tacky attempt at a grand square (Omonia) in the middle of downtown and then back to the urine-smelling immigrant section where our hostel was located.

The next day, having exhausted our more ancient sightseeing options, we set off to explore both the flea and the Sunday markets near the Syntagma square, which Amir referred to as the stigmata square. We soon found out that prayer beads are all the rage in Athens amongst the Greek Orthodox. Who knew? Athenians are also very fond of cheap watches, used clothing and porno mags. These are the signs of a weakening economy, for sure.

The day after our marketing excursion, we took ourselves off to Piraeus Port by Metro and caught the Alexandros ferry to the lovely island sanctuary of Aegina where we booked ourselves in for a true vacation within a vacation.

Lake Ohrid: the almost vacation

We made it to Ohrid relatively painlessly by a 3 1/2 hour bus trip. At the bus station in Ohrid, a few taxi drivers offered to rip us off excessively but we bypassed them in favor of a metered taxi. There was no one at the hostel when we arrived so Amir went looking in the most obvious spot, the bar next door, and found the owner having a drink and chat with the bartender. Our room was a good deal lovelier than either of us had expected, complete with en suite bathroom and a balcony overlooking the lake just a few meters away. Sadly, we only got to enjoy it for one night before being awoken at 8:30am the next morning to the lovely sound of jackhammering going on in the alley next door. We found out that no construction is allowed during the summer tourist months and we had just missed the end of summer mark.

By 10am, we had relocated to a new hostel just a few blocks away with a room almost as nice with the added bonus of a kitchen, not that we had any plans to cook. The lake was absolutely beautiful and quite large. You could see straight through to the bottom where all the tiny fish were nibbling on our feet and calves. It was like a fish spa but much less expensive.

We spent our few days at Lake Ohrid mostly dealing long distance with a plumbing issue back home so the totally relaxing vacation within a vacation ended up not materializing. In spite of being somewhat chained to our laptop and Skype for those few days, we did manage to enjoy swimming in the lake, racing to the buoy and back, reading on the patio under an umbrella, and gorging ourselves in oodles of shopska salads (tomato, cucumber, black olives and shredded white Macedonian cheese).

When we left Ohrid, we took the bus all the way back to Skopje and then boarded a train (late, as usual) bound for Thessaloniki, Greece where we intended to spend the night and catch a train to Athens the next day.

Skopje, Macedonia

Last Thursday, we left Nis, Serbia for Skopje, Macedonia. Our train was scheduled to leave Nis at 12:15 but we knew from experience that the train runs a bit late. What we didn't know was that is runs 70 minutes late. By the time we arrived in Skopje, we were running a total of one and a half hours late. When we met up with our friends Dimi and Michelle, formerly of DC, and their 4-year old daughter Elena, Dimi explained that the Serbian and Macedonian train systems are basically on their last legs. It is considered to be the lowest form of transportation and Dimi had never taken a train or known any Macedonian who has. Now we know.

We spent Friday through Sunday hanging out with Dimi, Michelle and Elena and had a wonderful time. Friday, Dimi took off early from work and gave us a tour of Skopje, including the Ottoman style fortress, the former home of Mother Teresa (it was torn down by the government to make way for a road), an architectural hodgepodge of a shrine to Mother Teresa, and a Macedonian history museum containing about 7 exhibits ranging from early pottery and bronze tools to a diagram of Skopje as it was originally designed by a Japanese architect but not actually built.

Saturday was nonstop rain so we all headed out to see what Macedonians like to do on rainy weekends...shop at the mall. Three malls later, Dimi, Michelle and Elena took us out for a traditional Macedonian lunch. The food was amazing! We ate seeded breadsticks with two types of dipping sauces; two Greek-esque salads with chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, olives and white or feta cheese; thick and fluffy pita bread; white beans served up cassoulet style; and a meat platter containing pork chops, lamb sausage and a bacon-wrapped, cheese stuffed pork sausage. Which meat do you think was Amir's favorite?

On Sunday we all piled in the car and headed off for lunch and a nature walk at a canyon. The weather was beautiful, sunny and blue skies. Later in the afternoon, we tried the country's best ice cream, according to Michelle, followed later on by dinner at an Indian restaurant. Let's just say that Macedonian restaurateurs haven't quite figured out the concept of saag paneer. It came out as a spinach dip that you might find at any summer block party in the States.

Today is Monday and we have bid Dimi, Michelle and Elena goodbye as they have gone to work, work and school. Amir and I are scheduled for morning haircuts and then we'll pack up and head out by bus to Lake Ohrid, about two and a half hours away from Skopje, where we will spend a few days checking out what some claim to be one of Europe's largest and cleanest lakes. It also has so many churches surrounding it that some claim there is a church for every day of the year. After Ohrid, we'll either head straight to Thessaloniki, Greece by bus or pass back through Skopje in order to get their by train. (Can't wait for more Macedonian trains.)

Catching up to Sept 1st (our anniversary)

SLOVENIA

After we left Peter's in Denmark, we decided to spend a few days at Lake Bohinj in Slovenia before meeting up with our friend Steve Bergen in Budapest for a week. It took us about 24 hours by train to get from Denmark to Slovenia. We booked ourselves into a small scale hostel and the owner picked us up from the train station, which is a service we always appreciate.

The highlights of Stara Fuzina (tiny town near Lake Bohinj) were eating out at the town's only restaurant that serves food where we tried fried cheese for the first time and discovered that there is no such thing as salad dressing in Slovenia. Fried cheese is a breaded , deep fried, giant triangle of mozzarella served with fries and mayo. It's Slovenia's answer to a 4x4 (4 burgers and 4 slices of cheese) at In-N-Out Burger (a west coast thing) with respect to potential coronary. We also loved the lake itself. We walked around all 12km of it twice in the two days we were there. Slovenia is the most gorgeous country we have visited thus far. It looks like Austria, at least what we could see of it from the train window.

HUNGARY

We made endless jokes about being hungry in Hungary that I'll spare you all in this blog. We met up with our friend Steve Bergen who was in Sweden on a conference the week before. Steve managed to find us the best apartment to rent so we had kitchen facilities and laundry-yay!-for the whole week. The city was very walkable so we did a walking tour of it the first day together.

Bergen and I went to the Budapest History Museum the next day. It was the weirdest museum I have ever been in. There were 4 floors of items spanning the dinosaur age to the modern art period in the 20th century. And the exhibits were in no kind of sequential order whatsoever. The highlights were 1) wandering up and down and up and down stairs in the maze-like cave of a basement that could have been an M. C. Escher painting and 2) the fact that they actually had peep holes in the wall of one room labeled 18+ that showed nudie pictures from the early 1900s.

On our last full day there, we all went to the thermal baths. There were 20+ baths of varying temperatures as well as different temperature saunas. It was a trip. The best were the three outdoor baths because it was a beautiful, sunny day and it made for the best people watching. Without their clothes on, we discovered that Europeans are definitely a fitter group than Americans are as a whole (Los Angeles excepted).

When we said a sad farewell to Bergen and sent him back to the miserable heat and humidity of DC, we went east to Eger for a few days of wine tasting. There is a horseshoe of cellar-like wineries on the edge of the town abutting the vineyards that are numbered and rated on a grape scale of 1 to 3. We visited almost all the 3-grape wineries and some of the lesser ones just for fun. The best wine we had was a local variety called Bikaner, or Bull's Blood, a red that was like a cab with an infusion of tempranillo. And at 3.50 Euros per bottle, who wouldn't drink it for breakfast, lunch and dinner? By the way, if you bring your own plastic 1L or 2L bottle, the wineries will fill you up for a Euro or two. Can we say AWESOME?

CROATIA

From Eger, we went straight to Zagreb for a quick one day tour of the city. It is another very walkable city and we got to see all the main attractions (churches, botanical gardens and cobblestony squares) by 3 or 4 in the afternoon. Our next train to Split didn't leave until 10pm, though, which meant several more hours to fill. Thank god for movie theaters and pizza restaurants. Sad to say, there was a dearth of English language movies which means we are now qualified to tell you all to stay as far away from the movie The Last Airbender as you possibly can. It didn't help matters much that Croatians love to talk during English language movies because they don't need to hear thanks to the subtitles. If we had had popcorn handy, we would have probably gotten into a brawl with the loud hooligans in the row behind us.

Split is a beach town without the beach. It's absolutely stunning with its harbor (pictures to come) and historic stone fortress relics and cobblestone streets not large enough for vehicular traffic. The hostel we stayed at had no kitchen facilities and we couldn't afford the restaurants so we made do with two days of sandwiches, cereal and beer. Both days in Split, we went swimming in the ocean. There are no beaches. Instead, there are cement walkways with benches that people reserve by covering them over with towels. From 6am to noon, the waters are crowded with septuagenarians, octogenarians and canes. After noon, the older crowd is replaced by a passel of swarming children playing a game of hit the tiny ball to one another. As you can imagine, there were plenty of tiny balls to be found in Split.

SERBIA

After Split, we went to Belgrade and then Nis en route to Skopje, Macedonia where we intend to spend a few days with our friends Dimi and Michelle Osmanli and family who moved their from DC 3 or 4 years back. Our Eurail pass doesn't cover Serbia or Macedonia but, fortunately for us, those countries are cheap enough for us to afford the train fares sans pass.

Belgrade has a citadel with WWI era canons lining the entrance as a warning to all not to mess with Serbia's superior firepower. A few blocks from the citadel is a pedestrian street lined with restaurants and overpriced stores. The best part of our time in Belgrade was eating lunch at a Serbian restaurant just off the pedestrian strip. Our waiter spoke zero English which shouldn't have been a problem as we ordered by pointing the dishes on the menu we wanted to order. Literally three tries later, we ended up, finally, with the dishes we had actually ordered. Who knew pointing to items on a menu could end so badly? We had to involve the head waiter who spoke enough English for us to communicate to him that we still didn't have the right dishes. As a saving grace, the white beans with sausage and the grilled pork with boulangere potatoes were delicious...after we poured off a cupful of oil from the potatoes.

We weren't thrilled with our hostel in Belgrade so instead of extending our stay two days, we opted to move down the train line to Nis en route to Skopje. Nis (pronounced Neesh) is a decent sized town complete with its own citadel and cobblestoned town square. The best part about the downtown is the super cheap shopping options. We both need new sneakers, having walked the last vestige of comfort out of our current 4-year old pairs, so we'll be spending 10 Euros each for new pairs here. Yay cheap former Yugoslavia countries!

It is our 3rd year anniversary today. We will celebrate by buying anniversary sneakers and finding a lovely restaurant to have dinner at. Amir started the morning with his favorite celebratory beverage, champagne. I'm starting mine with my favorite non-popcorn food, cereal. We walked to a giant Costco-like grocery store yesterday and picked up some blackberry wine, a bottle of local red called Verac and a box of Reisling so we should have plenty of afternoon beverage options. Happy Anniversary!

Tomorrow, onward and southward to Skopje.

Slovenia: Lake Bohinj