Pictures

Are being posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/beccajulia when we can.
Love, Becca

Out With the Old, In With The Purple

This is just a fun update. We are currently on our way out of Szombathely, Hungary, We arrived here yesterday after spending a day in Zagreb. I had been getting sick of my old red, now yellowish hair and below the train station ran into a hair dye store. Fun!! I thought I would grab a color that was somewhat benign and enough to blend in with my already natural brown hair. Maybe redish brown, light golden brown, something pretty. The hair color was a little more expensive that we expected and we always have a budget to think about. Until Jason found a box for purple hair dye that was only 15,99 kunas…which translates into about 3$ US dollars. I told Jason that I wanted to go back to a color that would blend. He told me that I was chicken to have funny hair for only a few weeks. So purple it was.
I did have to be careful, however, because the hair color itself could have turned all my hair purple. So we were careful to pick out only the yellow hairs (didn’t get them all) and dye only those. The directions for mixing the color was in poorly translated English, I don't think I mixed it properly. We did it this morning and to Jason’s disappointment, and perhaps my relief , the purple is quite nice and blends well with my brown hair. ☺ Although there are still some yellowish hairs and now some redish/purple ones too - it is much tamer than the red before.

Homesick

Well, we know it would happen sooner or later. We would get a little tired, a little restless, and get a little homesick. I haven’t spoken to my parents or heard my sister’s voice since the day we left. It’s been even longer since we could commiserate about the week's start with friends over wings or spend Friday nights drinking wine in the garage. And we still have three months to go.

When we arrived in Zagreb, we were tired and aimlessly wandering around the city - which sort of made it all worse. We tried to duck into cafes for a cappucino or birre and that didn't seem to help. The tiredness craves a comfortable couch and home cooked meals with a warm, soft dog to cuddle with. The restlessness craves a place where moving around and exploring is not required.
That is when we decided to add a stop to our itinerary. Our original plans involved going from Zagreb, Croatia to Wein (Vienna), Austria on a 6 hour train ride the next day. We were already loathing the time spent on trains, which Jason and I have calculated to be a total of approximately 64 hours so far. So we took a look at the map and train schedule and noticed a very small stop that is halfway to Vienna. That is how we ended up in a place called Szombathely in Hungary. We looked it up online and it didn’t seem to have much going on except a nice looking hotel with a small pretty lake out front. Perfect, a place to go where with nowhere to go, get some R&R and shake the illness of missing home.
It was just what we needed. We arrived in Szombathely while it was raining pretty hard. So we caught our third taxi of the trip so far to our hotel. We settled in and had a wonderful dinner at the hotel restaurant and went back upstairs for hot showers and some American movies on the laptop. We rested and slept and woke up late in the morning, went for a jog around the lake and checked out an hour late. We caught the fourth taxi of our trip to the train station in no particular hurry, grabbed some lunch, and were feeling much better and ready to head to Vienna.

One thing I have not had the chance to mention is how beautiful the European countryside has been. Green as far as you can see with sporadic patches of bright yellow, farmland, and animals. We have seen rosters, peacocks, swans, sheep, horses, and cows who all seem to be enjoying the farm life, soaking up sun, and look up as the trains pass by.

When we left Szombathely we pulled into our transfer station, it was a beautiful day. Crisp spring day with warm sun and clean air. Our trains thus far have varied in cleanliness and functionality, but today's train from Szombathely to Sopron (our transfer for Vienna) was simple, clean, and had a working window. It was such a beutiful day that we opened the window and stuck our heads out letting the clean air wash over our faces. What an amazing feeling, no wonder dogs like doing this so much. Oh, Charlie would love this! I could see her now with her head out the window, her hair and ears flowing back in the breeze and her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth. She'd be in heaven.

We will be in Vienna for one night before heading to Praha, then onto Berlin, then heading somewhere else to meet up with Copp. A few more long train rides ahead and starting the tail end of our European journey. Hope I don't get sick again.

Days Traveled: 24
Distance Traveled: 17,871km/11,169mi
Countries Visited: 9
Craving: some sense of normalcy, In-N-Out, Charie

Runaway Train

Last I left off we were in Florence and (I) completely envious of the shop-a-holics that had come to Italy prepared to buy fine Italian goods. However, since that time, we made our way to Venice and now to Ljubljana, Slovenia. I hadn’t planned on writing at this point, but since getting to Ljubljana I felt compelled to share some thoughts/experiences.
Venice was all that you would expect: gorgeous, wonderfully unique, a bit overpriced and hugely overcrowded. I have been to Venice once before during the high tourist season of July 2001. Either Venezia’s high season has shifted to start in April; or the Low Season has become the new High Season as black has become the new pink. Or is it pink the new black? Anyhow, the pizza is exactly the same as I remember it – absolutely AMAZING!!!! It was good. So good it was worth the 4euro/slice we had to pay. We enjoyed our only night in Venice and the next morning took our hotel up on their offer for a free ride to the island of Murano. Murano is an even smaller island than Venice where they make all the cool hand-blown glass trinkets, chandeliers, glassware, etc. It was pretty neat. I have never seen glasswork like this before, in its grandiosity, and a little sad I will never be able to afford it. Murano is definitely like Venice, but with about 100,000 less people on it, so we spent the day meandering from shop to shop with gelato trying to find the best, most reasonable, gift for our sisters (which we did find, but I am not going to spoil). We left Murano on time but only barely in time to run back to our hotel, grab our luggage, only to run back up the bridge with our 50lbs duffels, catch a waterbus to the train station where we would be on our way to Ljubljana, Slovenia. We are getting pretty good running up stairs with luggage in hand.
The Eurorail Train Schedule, in all its complexity, has proved to be a priceless item for this trip so far. It allows us to see where in Europe we could go from wherever we are, even if the trains really don’t go there. For example, we saw from the schedule that there is a train that departs Venice for Ljubljana everyday at 15:45. What the schedule doesn’t mention is that the train isn’t actually going to Ljubljana, it’s going to Vienna and when it stops in a village called Villach, Austria you have to jump off and run to a train on it’s way to Beograd, Serbia and jump off again when it reaches Ljubjana, Slovenia – and you figure all this out only by matching a train’s departure time. Part of the adventure I suppose.
When we booked our ticket for Ljubljana, it was the first thing we did when we arrived in Venice. It’s another rule of ours, which has gone unmentioned to this point. The rule is basic: “Plan the way out [of a place] when you get in.” It’s proven to be a helpful rule since apparently you can’t just show up for a train whenever you want to leave. You end up realizing you can’t leave until the next day and now have to find another place to stay in a city you were emotionally and mentally ready to leave.
When we got on the train for Vienna>Villach>Serbia, there were people in our seats. This happens a lot, so you just ask nicely for the people to move and it’s no problem. This time, however, it was a problem. With 3 minutes before the train pulled away from the station, we all had come to realize that the tickets we were holding were booked for the wrong day. New rule: always review dates on tickets- not just destinations. So, a little confused, now a little stressed, and with no time to go get off the train and get the ticket changed, we made the decision to stay on the train and see what transpired. We figured we’d either get to stay on board and pay a few extra euros, or we get kicked off at the next station.
It turned out not being too big a deal and we almost got away with it. When the guy came to validate our ticket he stamped it and started handing it back to us and then at the very last second, he stopped abruptly, brought the ticket close up to his face and studied it for a second. Busted. He handed it back and pointed to the date. We shrugged and said it was a mistake. He said, “OK, no problem, pay for new ticket”. “What?? Two whole new tickets? What do we do with the ones we bought?” Well ideally you just get a refund at the ticket counter, but of course only a ticket counter in Italy could issue a refund. So unless during a three minute stop somewhere random in Italy on the way to Austria we could jump off the train, get in line, and poorly communicate that we got the wrong ticket, there would be no refund. But the adventure didn’t stop there.
We couldn’t use a credit card on the train (because apparently Italian trains don’t have good communication) so we had to pay for our new ticket with the 40Euros we had in hand. The tickets were eighteen each so that gave us 4 extra. Not a big deal you say?? Well, those 40 euros were specifically in hand to make sure we could good grab some food on board since we hadn’t eaten since breakfast before Murano. Now it is 4pm; we’re hungry, and we couldn’t use the credit card to buy food. The guy at the café indicated that Austria had better communication so we could use the credit card for food once we got out of Italy and into Austria – only we get off in Austria, so it didn’t help much and we would have to continue on hungry. We made it to Villach a few minutes late (of course because Italian trains never run ontime) only to run down the stairs, then up the stairs, then down the stairs to the elevator to get to the platform where we barely made our train to Beograd. I guess this doesn’t sound too exciting, but all this running and stair climbing, it’s 7pm and we hadn’t eaten in 10 hours. Oh well, make it to the train for Beograd and we can buy something on board. Wrong again. The train from Villach to Serbia was like an old rusty Dautsan with 3 wheels and no transmission. When we asked if there was food, the train guy looked at us funny then took us to a dark closet where there was warm Fanta in a box. Great, whatever, we’ll take two. “What? I’m sorry, I didn’t understand…oooh …cash only?” Problem. We wouldn’t eat until arriving in Ljubljana around 9:30 that night. So there we were, hungry and seriously hoping the train we were on was on its way to Serbia via Ljubljana. We arrived in Ljubljana at 9:30 dark, cold, and wet. In the station we passed a vending machine and peered inside like a child would. We started to scramble around in our pockets for whatever we could find. Thank goodness Slovenia would be cheap –the crusty Euro change we found in the corners of our pockets would be enough to buy us not one, but TWO Snickers bars!!! YeeeeHaw!! Food! Yes! The Snickers was going to satisfy us enough while we walked around the sleeping city to find a hotel with availability. Found one! Cheap? Check. Safe? Check. Uh…free breakfast? Double Check. Awesome. Check in, dump the bags, turn around, get dinner. One of the best meals we had in weeks and it would be the perfect ending to a somewhat adventures (and long, starving) day.

This blog is long enough and so I am not going to go on and on in great detail about Ljubljana. However, I will give you a brief description of our Ljubljana experience. Ljubljana is the city capital of Slovenia, which became its own country back in 1991 and recently joined the European Union in 2004. With becoming an EU member, Slovenia was able to get funding from the EU to help rebuild and renovate large parts of the country and cities, which included Ljubljana. (btw – the correct pronunciation is “loob-yawn-a”) Ljubljana is described in our Lonely Planet guide as a “Prague without the crowds and Paris without the attitude.” We found this to be true, but if you haven’t been to either of these cities, you wouldn’t get it. But basically Ljubljana has all the quintessential characteristics of what makes a European city European: it’s old, has a castle, a beautiful cathedral, cobblestone streets, and a superfluous amount of street cafes. However, what it did not have were streets that were over flooded with crowds or overpriced anything. It was so great to be in a relaxed state in the middle of a capital city. A city, which apparently, has credible evidence to say they invented democratic government. I forget the exact reason why and my resource on Slovenian history has already been shipped home. Much EU funding went into rebuilding Ljubljana (the renovations to our hotel included) and we found it to be a safe, pleasant, quiet, and very enjoyable city. Good cafes, good food, very nice and welcoming people.
Tomorrow we are off for Zagreb, Croatia. We tried going to Croatia during our honeymoon, but the ferries were not running in the off-season. Zagreb is not on the coast (darn) but we will be seeing Croatia nonetheless.

Days Traveled: 22
Distance Traveled: 17,520km/10,950mi
Countries Visited: 7
Missing: Charlie, Wednesdays at Bubs, and Thursday night NBC TV

No Stopping…I Mean, Window Shopping

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is the inability to shop and buy things we don’t need. Not that we have some sort of incapacity – it is just another one of our rules: No shopping while in the EU. This is for a few very logical and legitimate reasons: 1) The Euro costs more than the dollar 2) Anything we buy has to be lugged around for the next few months (and risk losing it or having it stolen) and 3) The Euro costs more than the dollar.
Not shopping hasn’t been too big a deal thus far. I see things in windows I would like to have or buy for someone but they are passed with great ease. Well, that is until we got to Florence. Beautiful Firenze. Not only does the Euro make things expensive, but Florence is already expensive and happens to be one of the BEST places to shop in all of Italy, perhaps all of Europe. (Well maybe it rivals Paris, but you get my point.) Anyhow, passing all the beautiful windows and colorful street vendors has NOT been easy. Everything is so beautiful. The dresses, the bags, THE SHOES!!! Oh the shoes, the beautiful jewelry and the embroidered tablecloth I know my mom would love and the leather bag I know my sister would love. (Both of which cost more than our daily hotel budget.) Even the stores that carry only men’s ties are so colorful and so perfectly displayed so that it looks like you are walking into an Italian silk rainbow, makes you want to know someone to walk in and buy a tie for. Seriously, window-shopping has been quite painful. I suppose I should also tell you now that all of this also means, no gift shopping either. At every turn and every street there is a souvenir or a gift of some sort that reminds me of someone at home and we just can’t do it with three months left of our trip. Don’t worry, we won’t forget you at home; but maybe when our US Dollar goes a little further. Right now, everything I see is going to stay right here in Italia. Sorry.

These Boots Were Made For Walkin'

The last I wrote we were in Valencia on our way to Barcelona. We got to Barcelona and spent that evening and all the next day touring the city by foot. It was a great day but pretty tiring. We spent all day walking from early breakfast until we caught our 7pm train. The street vendors were pretty cool and the food was good but I was quite disappointed for this night's stay. Jason and I haven't really been on any sightseeing tours, but there were two places in particular that I wanted to see in Barcelona. One was this massive gothic cathedral which was covered in construction cranes, and the other was the main symphony hall - which was sold out of all tourist tickets. I was so disappointed. Next time I guess.

Anyhow, the next morning after our overnight trainwe arrived in Milano and our priorty was getting to Cinqe Terre. Cinque Terre are five very small towns situated just sligtly north of a medium size town, La Spezia. In order to succeed with this plan we had to run to buy tickets to Genova where we would then tranfer trains that led into La Spezia and then jump onto a train for Riomaggiore, one of the five Cinque Terre towns just north of La Spezia. It would end up being long day of traveling for not having a place to stay. Once we arrived in Riomaggiore, in order to get to the centre of town we had to hike up..up... and up. It would be the first time we regret the weight of our luggage. It would also be the first time we check out the backpack straps on our bags....I give them an A, but they were still heavy going up all those stairs.
We ended up renting a one bedroom apartment for a pretty good deal. It was bright, airy, and clean, and had REST all over it, and that is just what we did. Being our first night in Italy we set out for an awesome Italian dinner and picked up some groceries at the market for breakfast and dinner for the next day and planned our hike of Cinque Terre.
Now when planning your hike you have a few options. You can choose any portion of the five towns since the regional train stops at each one, or you can hike all of them starting at Monterosso to Riomaggiore. The whole hike is 9km (5.6miles) with varying degrees of elevation. Of these five the first two towns have moderate climbs which wouldn't be too difficult on any normal day. Except today wouldn't be normal. Perhaps I should back up for a second. When I say most people climb all five of the Cinque Terre towns, that is mostly true and the hike takes anywhere from 4-5 hours. What some may not know is that there is a small town the size of La Spezia called Levanto that is just north of the northest town Monterosso and is included on the hike map if you wanted to include it on your hike...well we did and so we began our hike of Cinque Terre first with the 11km (6.9miles) and 1300 foot climb of Levanto. So when I say that the first two towns of Cinque Terre have moderate climbs, starting with Levanto made them wickedly exhausting. We were absolutely wiped out by the time we made our way back to the Via dell' Amore in Riomaggiore.
On the Via dell Amore we locked our Masterlock to the bridge, kissed our keys, and threw them as far as the rest of our energy would allow. Mine hit a rock before ending up in the water. Jason's made it just fine. And now, we are secured to the area forever and will have neverending love. Sweet.
It is worth noting that to have ended up staying in Riomaggiore by chance was pretty fortunate. After all day hiking through all the towns, we found that Riomaggiore was our favorite and the most peaceful and romantic of the towns - well, maybe except for the church bells that happen to go off sporadically for minutes at a time constantly throughout the day.
Our long exhausting day ended with two hot showers and a homecooked meal of fresh gnocchi with fresh pesto, fresh baked bread, olive oil, and a 2,60euro bottle of Italian vino. It was perfect.
The next day we toured each town , this time by taking the train an stopped for lunch, layed on the beach, and soaked in some Mediterranean sun. Tomorrow we start our busy travleling again so this evening we will end our stay in Cinque Terre with another fresh homecooked meal and some Italian TV. Fully rested, a little sore, (missing Charlie), and ready to venture on.
Will post more pictures later...still having trouble.....sorry.

Distance hiked: 20km/12mi
Days Traveled: 17
Distance Traveled: 16,696km/10,435mi
Countries Visited: 6

La Espana

Things out here have been going well. It's been 3 weeks since we left San Diego and 12 days out here on our own. Over the last 12 days we have visited Amsterdam, Netherlands; Lisbon and Peniche, Portugal; Madrid, Algeciras, and Valencia, Spain, Gibraltar, UK; and Tanger, Morocco. We have been busy and are currently here in Valencia for two and a half days before heading to Barcelona. We've been having good times and experiences - well, except for when our Morocco guide ditched us pissed off in an underground belly dancing club. He had accidentally spent the commission we gave him when he kept ordering drinks. It was tough finding our way back to our hotel. Things are becoming more familiar as we go along. Not hearing English is the big one. Our previous European experiences taught us that we could expect to hear some English from some people. But that is not been what we have found to be true this time around. What we have found is that very few, if any, Europeans in Portugal and Spain (well, I guess Morocco too) speak very few, if any, words of English; and we also seem to be the only Americans around. We don't mind at all though. It has given us a great oppurtunity to practice our Spanish- and it is getting muy muy bien, although still struggling a bit. We are getting used to traffic and signs, both pedestrian and vehicular, sounds and rhythms of places we go; train schedules, Metro lines, ordering food, knowing what we actually ordered, smoked filled bars, Spanish dinner times; but most of all, we are becoming familiar with being comfortable unfamiliar places. We have adopted a few rules of the road for whatever their worth. They are either to keep us in budget or keep us fit, but I am sure that we will continue to adopt more rules as we go along.
Rule No. 1: Use free Internet wherever we can find it. No purchasing hotel Internet.
Rule No. 2: Eat all free tapas before paying for them.
Rule No. 3: Drink beer or wine as often as possible as it is cheaper than soda or water.
Rule No. 4: Speak as little English as possible.
Rule No. 5: No one is allowed to take the elevators or escalators unless with luggage. This rule does not apply if going more than 6 stories up.
Rule No. 6: Do our runs and sit-ups, even if we don’t feel like it.
We have been doing well so far, I think, with going on our runs. They have been really nice and relaxing and really help us get oriented to wherever we are. In a weird way, going for a run helps makes us feel at home a bit too. At home, our runs in the neighborhood or to the beach help us unwind after a busy day. Here, they sort of help us unwind as if we were home and help ease any travel tension or restlessness. Anyhow, the runs have been awesome less one awesome dog. Charlie is missed daily and is spoken of often. I had a dream about her the other night. We were visiting home for only one day and had the opportunity to see Charlie; but because it was only one day we didn’t visit because we thought it would be too confusing to just leave her again. In my dream, I went away crying. I am not really sad though, just missing Charlie. Her soft fur, crazy smile and heavy hugs. But I know she is having a great time with her BFF Leyla and gets to see Bucky and Carson and Kendall. And there is no better place she could be. How we will ever repay Loren and Teague for taking her while we’re gone, I don’t know.
Today we leave for Barcelone where we will spend one night before heading to Milano. It seems that with the availability of trains to the places we have “planned” for this portion of our journey we will be skipping France altogether. I don’t mind too much, but Jason had Marseille on his list of places he wanted to visit. It seems that I will not be able to visit Luxembourg due to train schedules too. C’est la vie. Un otre tempo. We wont be staying in Milano, but it is where we will be catching our train to La Spezia. La Spezia is how will access Cinque Terre, which we hope to hike and put our lock on the Sentiero del Amore. The Sentiero del Amore is on what’s called Lover’s Path where you attach a lock to the bridge and toss the keys into the ocean to secure everlasting love. Our lock was a gift Jason gave me for our first anniversary and I hope to leave it in Cinque Terre. Ok – enough for now. I will update all of you again soon. Until then, we send our love and hope you are all well. Send messages and keep us updated!

PS: this computer is having some trouble uploading pictures...will send some soon, promise.

Days Traveled: 12
Distance Traveled: 15, 085km/9,428mi
Countries Visited: 5

I Am No Blogger

Ok, so first things first. I am a horrible blogger – no one should ever hire me to blog, ever. My blogs are going to end up being disorganized thoughts or conclusions and elementary updates on where we are and what we have been up to less any sort of linguistic creativity I was hoping for. With the unpredictable availability for free (or any) internet, I have been writing down jotting thoughts and activities on my little notepad from time to time on trains and at cafes that I will later type and upload when I can. I would love to fill you in on the gritty details of how every café and tapas bar looks, feels, smell, but alas, I am not going to be able to keep up with myself. Additionally, I might as well tell you now that we are not going to be able to document this trip photographically they way we did our honeymoon. During our honeymoon, we spent our time, money, and energy freely visiting the gorgeous green and turquoise isles of Greece and thus able to photograph every odd and in we ran into that was unusual to our daily life at home. However, the length of our journey, our transient state, and financial restrictions, there is no way that we are going to be able to capture every moment digitally. Which is probably a relief since no one really likes looking at thousands of pictures anyhow.
We definitely feel as though we are not temporary visitors or tourists, but rather trying to live our daily lives wherever we happen to be. We are going to share as many thoughts as possible on how our experience is going – but you will have to forgive the gaps in time we may not be sharing with you at home.

The Beginning

There is so much to say on this first update and I am sure so much more as we continue our travels. Internet is hit or miss in our hotels and not always easy to find on the streets, so I think we may end up skipping around a bit.
Despite our bumpy beginning things have gone quite well. Our flight from DC to Amsterdam was very pleasant and quite smooth. We landed early in the morning and had a 4 hour layover so we decided to head out into downtown Amsterdam to have some breakfast. It was early, cold, and a little rainy so we ducked into a nice place for some breakfast. However, considering it was 2am for our bodies, we weren't quite hungry. After a nice slow-paced, jet-lagged stroll around Amsterdam we headed back to the airport for Portugal. After finding our hotel and taking a shower, we realized that we were slowly burning down our hotel room! The converter Jason bought to supplement mine seemed to be defective. All I kept asking is "What is that smell?" It was the converter melting and smoking. If we hadn't realized it, I am sure we would have gone to explore the city and returned to a charred hotel. That would have been quite an awful start to the trip. We did spend the rest of the day exploring main parts of the city and headed into the Bario Alta district for some drinks. The Bario Alta, which we would later find, doesn't really open up until 7pm, it is certainly where the night life lives. During our nightime exploring we decided to drive up the coast in the morning and come back to Lisbon later, which is what we did.
After some much needed sleep we threw our stuff in the car and headed up the coast. We drove for a few hours, mainly because we kept ending up on the wrong freeway, but ended at a small surf town called Peniche which is about 100 kilometers north of Lisbon. We had some lunch, took some pictures of the cliffs and surf and realized that there was 8-10 foot waves with offshore winds - which in surfing terms means "pretty good". So we headed out to find Jason a board and a wetsuit, got a hotel room and hit the beach. We both had a good time, Jason surfing and me taking pictures. It was a fun day and ended at a small pub for pizza and beer (which is really cheap in Portugal).
In the morning we enjoyed the brisk spring morning and went out for another surf session, but the winds had changed direction and there were no waves. Sorry Jason. We drove around enjoying the small town of Peniche, returned the surf board, and made our way back to Lisbon. On our way back we decided to stop at the train station to see if we when we could reserve an overnight train into Madrid. Apparently there was room that evening and we said - ok! Let's go Spain!! We truly enjoyed the rest of our day in Libson, and Portugal for that matter. We sat and enjoyed the ambiance of the day life in the commercial district, had some lunch, stopped in a few (many) cafes, enjoyed some cervejas and took in all that we could. Before catching our 10:30pm train to Madrid we stopped for dinner at a place called Sul, meaning South, for a cook your own meat dinner. (A MUST SEE FOR ANYONE VISITING LISBON.) We had stumbled across this place during our first evening in Lisbon and were pleasantly smothered with the amazing smell of the grill. But at that point, we had already eaten dinner, so we vowed to go back as soon as we could. Dinner was amazing and followed by a few drinks in the area before heading to the train station. Jason and I are both convicned that is much more to be seen of Portugal, but also feel that even if we were to spend a whole month here, there would still be more to see.
I have left out a lot of details about this portion of the trip, mainly due to time constraints and internet availability. I hope to share more with all of you later. We did arrive in Spain yesterday, but I think this is enough for this blog entry. I hope to organize my Espana entry a little better and with a bit more details. Sorry for the grammar and typos.

April Fools!!!

So after a very busy day of running our (VERY) last minute errands before we leave the country, Jason and I head to the airport a little behind time, a bit more intimidated than expected, and a little more nervous than excited. This big trip is quite the break from our world and reality at home, so I suppose it was natural to feel a bit anxious. Anyhow, we get to the airport a few minutes early despite a late start and what would you know, our flight was canceled. Apparently with the weather and delays, JFK's air traffic control indicated to Delta at some point in the hour prior to our arrival that our plane couldn't fly in. Nice to know. So after about an hour scrambling with Continental and Delta we had two options: leave tonight with three tight connections on oversold flights; or leave tomorrow with one connection to Lisbon on guaranteed business class seats. Yeah, no - we weren't sure what to do when the agent put us on the spot so we flipped for it. The coin flip had determined that we would leave today, three tight connections on oversold flights. But alas, we would be smarter than the coin and decided to leave tomorrow. So it seems like we would spend another night here at the Aksts while we anxiously await, again, the start of our Excellent Adventure. It also seems with this first punch to be rolled that the anxiety has subsided, the intimidation melted away, and now we are both ready and very excited to get our travels started, FINALLY feeling fully relaxed and ready to take on the world - literally!!

Lucy and Jason

Some of you know already that the Akst's long time canine companion, Sandi, had to be put to sleep a few weeks ago due to failing health. Barbara, Jason's mom, doesn't want to get a new dog or puppy but has rather decided to become a foster parent for a Golden Retriever rescue. Due to the increasing foreclosures in the area, there seems to be a high number of pets being given up when their owners have to leave their homes. So Thursday evening a situation came up where two dogs, Lucy and Jason, were being given up together and the rescue organization wanted to keep them together. Barbara was only too happy to help and now we have met two sweetheart Goldens, Lucy (age 8) and Jason (age 9). They will be residing here with the Aksts until adopted - together. Go Barbara!

Spring Is In The Air

The day after Jason and I got to DC we went to see the Cherry Blossoms in the tide pool downtown. We have been in DC in the spring a few times and always manage to miss seeing this beautiful gift from the Japanese in full bloom. Well, this year we were in luck. We arrived on Monday March 30 to find out that the projected peak bloom for the blossoms this year would be on Tuesday March 31. Yeehaw! I was going to see some Cherry Blossoms! Barb took us into DC to apply for our Chinese Visas and was nice enough to bold the mad DC traffic so that we could be dropped off near the blossoms. There were people with cameras everywhere trying to get their fix of the blossoms before they dropped and I was not going to be any different. It is quite a phemonemon though, if you think about it, that all these people come to check out trees. Anyhow, it turned out to be a gorgeous spring day and we enjoyed a nice slow-paced walk around the basin. After the long week of moving behind us, it was really nice to relax in the new spring air and in the shade of the Cherry Blossoms.

Link to pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/beccajulia/CherryBlossomFestival#