Sitting at the Airport

They fancied up the Queenstown airport since we were here a few years ago. They now have a gorgeous lobby (it looks similar to the Palm Springs airport, truthfully) that looks out onto the runway and the wonderful Remarkables mountain range on the other side of the runway. Landings here are incredible. You come in beside the mountains, over the turquoise blue, glacial Shotover River and the farms along the mountains. In front of you is Queenstown and Lake Wakitipu. It is incredible. Now the airport is modern and spacious. It is never crowded although it looks as if they built it large enough to accommodate future crowds.

One of the additions to the airport is a row of desks along the windows with internet accessible computers. So, here we sit, checking our e-mail and updating the blog one last time before we leave. We are mentally challenging ourselves about all of the last minute details. Did we send Caitie all of the information she needs for her flight home? Does my mother have all the details of our arrival? Do Mike and Dana have the information about our arrival? After many years of travel for work in which I gave little worry to the details of travel (well, after all, I had wonderful Samm to arrange all my trips which probably caused her some worry) now I am checking and double checking that it is all done.

We had a wonderful farewell at our Arrowtown home. Graeme and Hilary were wonderful hosts and we loved staying at their Pittaway cottage. So, if anyone ever travels to Arrowtown we recommend their cottage. They were welcoming hosts and their cottage is right in the heart of Arrowtown.

I have a huge to-do list for our January trip. After the month in the US visiting family, we have a terrific destination all planned. Stay tuned to the blog for the announcement of our January trip. We figured we would tell the kids where we were going first, so after they know, the blog will know.

We're off. Home to America in about a gazillion hours of airport and flight time.
Bye,
Deanne

Trying to "Be Here Now"

Is it possible to be in a place that you love completely, yet be missing it because you will be gone in a few days, and at the same time, be anxious to move on so that you can see all of the people you love and miss? That is how we feel. We are trying hard to enjoy every minute of the time we have remaining here, and we are going through the rituals of leaving (last meal at this favorite place, last walk through the town, laundry, etc.)yet we are thinking longingly of seeing the kids and grandchildren. Home for the holidays. Even though they are playing Christmas music and decorating the town for Christmas, the warm weather is such a stark contrast to Christmas in Seattle that it is hard to think of being in the final countdown to Christmas.

We will keep writing while we are in Bellingham (after all, they have free internet to accompany our free rent at the kid's house), then as we move on to California. Keep watching to see what is happening.

Deanne

LIFE IN THE ADVENTURE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD

"Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment." – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The kiwis invented bungy jumping. They dive off bridges hundreds of feet above a tiny little, rocky creek. They jump off mountains with only a parachute to hold them aloft before hitting the soccer field below. They drive jet boats in narrow little canyons on water so shallow the boat slides across the rocks. Kiwis do it all; white river rafting, parasailing, luge, mountain biking, kayaking, canoeing, zorbing (whatever that is),.... And nowhere do they do all of these things except Queenstown. Here the lake, rapid rivers and surrounding mountains make the perfect environment to be able to take advantage of wind currents, fast water, scary drops and empty lakes. On top of this wonderful scenary, the weather here is spectacular. Summer is warm enough to have a wine country, but winter is cold enough to have skiing only a thiry minute drive up the mountain. It really is paradise, and if true to my kiwi friends, I would never send this paragraph to anyone. They like for it to be a secret.

So, what are the Handrons experimenting with in this land of adrenaline rushes? Well, we have been seeing a movie every night at Dorothy Browns cinema. This art house theater is at the other end of town from where we are staying, which means it is a five or six minute walk door to door from our cottage. To find the theater you have to walk between our favoriate restaurant, Saffron, and the town pub, the Blue Door, which is a semi-underground cave of a pub totally lit with candleight. At the end of this little tiny alley is the stairs up to the theater, where you grab your glass of wine, maybe a cheeseboard full of cheese and crackers if you are hungry, then find your leather cushions and comforters to settle in for the movie. Since we started coming here they have added a second theater- "the den". If you get to the den movie early (say ten minutes before showtime) you get the best seat... the velvet couch in the backrow. Otherwise you get a living room side chair or recliner. We saw Atonement last night and Evening the night before. Our idea of an adrenaline rush.

We are on our final three days here so we are doling out the places we go to make sure we hit each of our favorites before we leave. Today was lunch at the Gibbston winery. Monday night will be dinner at Saffron again.

Lest you think that all we do is sleep and eat, I have photos to prove we have been out on nature walks. It is too hot to walk in the sun, even with our super duper Australian leather hats, so we have been walking along the river bed in the shade of the trees. The lupines are in bloom and the trees create the most peaceful shade. It just begs for taking it slow and finding a spot to curl up for a nap. Adventure walking at its best.

Thanks to all of you who sent notes to Mike about EJ. He really appreciates it. I think I am going to sign off now. It is 4:00 in the afternoon, which means it is time to swing from the trees soon (also referred to as hammock time). Later,

Deanne

Sorry to hear about all that Rain

We heard about the rain hitting the Northwest from sister-in-law, Maryann, so we checked it out on the Seattle Times website. Amazing. Interstate 5, the major West Coast transportation line is closed for five days! Sounds miserable, and the photos of people evacuating their homes are compelling. We just watched a special on the drought in the Southwest, with entire lakes drying up, and police patrols making sure no one is watering their lawns. Whoever doubts global warming must wonder why the two days with most rain in recorded history in Seattle have happened in the past five years while droughts in the Southwest reach historic records.

In the meantime, New Zealand weather is outstanding once again. We packed up our apartment by 9:30 this morning, then walked into town (around the corner, really) where we sat in the bank branch office that is bank business in the right hand side of the office, and cafe on the left side. We have seen Starbucks share an open lobby with Wells Fargo in the ground floor of my former office building, but never have we seen a small tourist town bank branch office that looked like a cafe on one side with smailing tellers facing you while you sit in the center of the office at small tables and chairs. Very cozy. Very kiwi. Mike's favorite savory muffins are baked by a bakery that only sells to cafes; one a drive away and this one in the bank office. Once we found that out, we found a new place for breakfast. Most days are oatmeal in our own kitchen, but today we had to move out so we had breakfast on the town, or in th bank to be more precise.

Yesterday we sat in Starbucks for an hour because I had to upload photos and the only way to use my computer was finding wifi somewhere. It worked great (to all you Starbucks sharholders out there- the wifi offering does encourage visiting when you are on the road) but was expensive. To give you an idea- one hour in a Starbucks is $10 NZD, or $7.80 US. In an internet cafe, using their computers, we can get 5 hours for $12. We have a little piece of paper recording out time usage, and each time we return they dock our remaining time and record it on our little piece of paper. Much cheaper.

Mike just received word, while I am writing, that his nephew, EJ passed away shortly ago. Mike has been communicating with family members about his nephew's illness for the past few weeks and has been feeling pretty low. It is always such a tragedy to lose a family member, particularly the younger members of the family who we all hope will outlive us until their old age. To all the members of the Handron family, our prayers and thoughts are with you.

On that note, I am signing off for a bit. Write to you later.

Deanne

More on "those Hairy Hemi-Halos"

I thought for sure I would hear about the typo misnaming the prostate as prostrate. I confess, I do know the difference, but my fingers missed it.

Last column I promised more on the Mustache drive. I borrowed the title, "those hairy hemi-halos" from the newspaper in which an entire editorial was devoted to "Movember", the official name for the charity event. In fact, if you look at the website you can read all about it. Check out, http://www.movember.com/ for an introduction. Even Wikipedia knows about it. I was surprised to find out how big it is here in New Zealand and in Australia where it was started.

We were watching a morning news show while we were eating our oatmeal (yes, it is not all chocolate and wine) and one of the male hosts was talking about Movember, referring to it as the charity drive to raise funds for breast cancer. The female host swooped in and corrected him, saying, oops, he meant prostate cancer but he can't keep the body parts straight. It was funny.

Sigourney Weaver was in New Zealand for the past month filming a new movie. When the newspaper interviewed her, she mentioned the obvious facial hairiness of the men here. That was headline news. We heard her quotes over and over. The editorial in front of me says, "when the star of Gorillas in the Mist does such a double-take at the hairiness of the menfolk in our midst, it may be an indication that things have gotten a little out of hand". Spoilsport.

Tomorrow we make our final move. We spend our last New Zealand week in a cottage in Arrowstown. You can see it by searching Google for Pittaway Cottage in Arrowtown. We leave here on the 11th, spend one night in Auckland (to make our 7:00 am flight out), then leave for Melbourne, then LAX. It is over 24 hours travel time. Thankfully we have a nice rest in Southern California with my mother for a few days then on to Bellingham for holidays with the kids. Caitie will be home on the 15th and we are all excited to have her back after a semester in Italy.

Another wonderful day in Queenstown. We had a terrific lunch out near the original bungy jumping spot in the world. Sat under an umbrella to fend off the strong sun, although we were cooled by soft breezes and accompanied by the sound of the waterfall across on the other side of the gorge and the river rushing at the bottom of the gorge. Sure is nice.

Love to everyone,
Deanne

anniversary celebration and 'staches for prostrates

We agreed that this trip counts an entire year's worth of gifts to each other, so we are not exchanging anything on the anniversary, brithdays, Christmas, etc. Each day we are on this fantastic trip seems like a gift. Last night we went out to dinner to celebrate and our favorite restaurant, Saffrons, bought us dessert. So we ended up with gifts anyway. We had wondered into a winery at lunch and ordered wines with out lunch. The waiter forgot to bring our wines for about a half hour (no one is in a hurry around here, so it took awhile to bring it to his attention). He felt bad so he bought our drinks. And he rounded off the price of our meals (NZ$ 26 and 27 earned a round total of $50). So, we scored all around. It was our lucky day.

Now, you are probably wondering about my title. What does she mean, "staches for Prostates? New Zealand has a wonderful tradition during the month of November. Men get sponsors to pledge contributions, then they grow facial hair to collect money for prostate research and treatment. There are lots of fun ways to earn money, like company wide competitions, with prizes for the best mustache and the best fund raising. Everyone posts a photo of themselves hairless on November 1,then a progress report on the 15th, and the final on November 30. It is a big deal. The television personalities all grow hair, then they talk about each other's look all month. They make jokes about the pale people that have funny facial hair. I am at the internet cafe right now without the notes I have been making about this competition, so next column I will share some of the coments from the newspapers, etc. Stay tuned for more on 'Staches for prostates.

Over and out, but back tomorrow,
Deanne

Time to change the Intro

Today is December 3rd in New Zealand, so we are celebrating our 24th wedding anniversary. It is amazing to remember back to that rainy, windy night 24 years ago when we were married in Montara, California. It was horrible weather that knocked the power out of our home for the twenty hours preceding our wedding, closed the Golden Gate bridge blocking access for our most Northern located friends, and gave me the worst case of frizzies possible (no hairdryers and wet weather are a bad combination). Nevertheless, the bride-of-Frankenstein-lookalike and the young (well, 39 isn't that old)prince were married in a candlelight ceremony in our stormy little beach house.

We have been celebrating by thoroughly enjoying our gorgeous day in Queenstown. We drove out to the airport this morning to find a new cafe run by our favorite cafe owner who's old cafe has gone downhill in his absence. Mike is a giant fan of his savory muffins which we have never found anywhere else. Unlike sweet muffins which we also have at home, savory muffins are full of vegetables and are more like corn muffins that sweet muffins. Everyday is a different flavor, today being capsicum (red or green bell pepper) and tomato. A muffin and a latte bowl (big latte served in a bowl rather than a cup) makes a wonderful breakfast.

Since we were in the neighborhood, we went for a walk along the less developed edge of Lake Wakatipu, the lake the Queenstown sits beside. After a nice walk we drove out to the Gibbston valley and had lunch at Waitipiri winery. Lightly cooked tuna (me) and a chicken salad (Mike) sitting under an umbrella beside a 100 year old church converted into a winery, surrounded by vineyards and mountains on a warm, sunny day. Heaven.

Mike is enjoying a nap while I leave you all this note. We have to build up our energy for a night on the town to celebrate. 24 years is a long time and we are building up our endurance for the next 24.

Audience feedback

You are a shy blog audience! For whatever reason, you are not commenting on the blog, but sending your messages to us on e-mail. We will summarize them here for everyone to see, but leave them anonymous for those of you that are either shy, desirous of confidentiality or eluding the police.

One of Mike's long time friends (yes, there are people who have been his friend for forty plus years) has a family friend that works in satellite TV and volunteered to transmit footage of us attending the NZ Open Golf tournament to any of you silly enough to watch a New Zealand golf tournament at 1:00 in the morning. He usually weighs in with messages of disbelief when I write something particularly nice about my wonderful husband. Mike went to Bishop Gibbons high school class of '62, and thanks to the internet these old geezers (that ought to get some comments) have reconnected. They send each other outrageous jokes (many of which Mike censors out before showing me) and funny stories. We love to hear from them.

One of our sisters (you all know Mike is one of many boys, but most of them married and we can count the wives in this group; and I have three sisters) writes several times a week with suggestions of places to visit based on her travels. She is the source of great advice about food. In fact, based on the feedback we get, there are probably a number of foodies in the audience. Or maybe since that is what I write about that is what you comment on. Hummm.

We have one audience member that we met on this trip and has become an e-mail pen pal. We like her a lot and are glad to get nice notes from her. I suppose we ought to wonder why we don't have more "new" friends met on this trip writing to us. Hmmm.

Some of you that write to us are Mike's friends from the Chopra group and some are former students of his. This group is very tight knit and supportive and we really appreciate hearing from such busy people. They even send nice comments to me about the blog for which I am very grateful.

I have a few friends of my own that send nice notes to us. Considering that they are triathletes, consultants and generally busy people, we love hearing from them. Eric is the only one of my former colleagues that dares to leave his name on the blog comments...Brave man.

We left our blog address with our houseboat neighbors and the folks renting our house. They send us comments on our blog and updates on the neighborhood. It is hard to be sympathetic when we hear about the weather. Those rainy windy days sound so remote when you are sitting on a deck eating your dinner watching the sun go down on a balmy evening.

My dear Aunt and her husband follow the blog and send us notes and advice. I love my Uncle and Auntie and feel closer to them than ever based on their wonderful notes. Our travels have provided us an entire new way to communicate.

The comments you see on the blog are usually from the not shy family members- sisters Sue, Leanne and Jaye. Children - Dana, Mike and Megan. Some of the other children read the blog and send notes once in awhile. Then of course, there is that son that bragged he graduated high school without reading a book (or blog either based on his nonexistent correspondence)- thankfully he has a girlfriend that checks in or we would never know how he is doing.

To all of you following us, our deepest thanks. Having you all out there being part of our trip makes it even more special. With love,
Deanne and Mike

I am sitting in a huge internet room in between members of a Scandinavian family. Blond young daughter is sitting beside me and her parents are a few carrels to my left. Unfortunately she keeps finding things to talk to them about and leaning in front of me to call down to them. She is mostly drowned out by the loud music, though, so it is not so bad. In fact, it is 6:30 PM on a glorious sunny evening with the sun still shining on the sparkly lake, but making shadows of the mountains that rim the tiny town of Queenstown. So, why sit in an internet cafe anyway? I am just checking in, and then I am off to watch the big football game between Wellington and David Beckham and the LA Galaxies. We are eating in tonight so that we can watch the big game. A hot Saturday night in
Queenstown.

We had a wonderful lunch at a neighboring winery. Mediterranean lunch under the grape arbor. In a switch of ordering roles, Mike had the grape pickers platter (my normal order) of soup, bread and spreads like hummus and chutney. I had pasta (maybe my first time since Italy and even there I only ate it once or twice). Heavenly.

We made reservations at our favorite restaurant (Saffron in Arrowtown) for Monday evening to celebrate our 24 year anniversary. Boy does time fly. We will stay in Queenstown until the 6th, when we have a reservation at a little cottage in Arrowtown for the remainder of our trip.

I will write tomorrow and let you know how the football game goes.

Til then,
Deanne

KIWI TV

Those of you who have listened to us enumerate the reasons we love New Zealand over the past twenty years are sure to remember our descriptions of television. Perhaps it is their no-nonsense farming history, but kiwis don't mind showing blood and guts on tv. Years ago we saw news coverage of a shark attack on a swimmer, and the news team went right into the poor bloke's hospital room and interviewed him about the attack showing all his stitches and cuts in full splendor. Kiwis thought nothing of realistic TV. So, we were not surprised the other day when we saw a thirty-something woman dressed in sweatshirt and jeans crying and walking around the streets of a deserted town late at night calling for her lost chihuahua, "Misty". They interviewed her about her love for this little eight year old dog and interviewed a classroom of schoolchildren making up lost/reward signs for this dog. We were properly amazed that a lost dog would get this kind of coverage until a few minutes later when they took the time to remind the audience who this woman was by showing her dressed for work in her skimpy stripper clothes. Apparently New Zealand's most famous stripper lost her dog. There are signs up all over town advertising her lost "chawawa"- nobody said blond strippers have to spell.

What else is on TV? Well, for one the news people don't have to be "beautiful" people. The Morning show is hosted by the blond Rippa lookalike, along with a funny looking man with crooked teeth and funny round glasses that could never be mistaken for Matt Lauer. He was telling a story from the newspaper yesterday that Mike relayed to me (I was in the shower). Mike says you'll never get the humor of it in print, but here goes anyway: One of the New Zealand farmers was working with some piece of heavy equipment that caught his arm. while trying to free his arm, the machine malfunctioned and caught fire. This poor farmer chopped his arm off after partially burning his body. The show host was relaying this story in disbelief. He remembered the famous story of the American mountain climber that hacked off his arm after getting it caught under a boulder, then making his way to safety. He started talking about how ward it is to imagine the how-to's of chopping off your own arm. In working through it verbally, he exploded in laughter and talked about making little "chippie, chippie motions on the bone to get it to cut through". The more he imagined chippie, chippies, the more he laughed. And, because he was so hysterical, the Kelly Rippa lookalike started laughing, and before you know it they were snorting their way through the story.

Today's big news, and I mean BIG news is David Beckham. It has been a tense three or four days as the news as covered him all trough the LA Galaxy's trip to Australia where they played "football" or soccer against an Australia team to the biggest packed stadium (85,000 people) in Australia's history. Well, to make it even better, the Galaxy is coming to Wellington to play against the local Wellington team. The team flew in from Australia yesterday and were met at the airport by the biggest crowd since the Beatles visited New Zealand. Apparently a group of disabled kids were standing by to present Beckham with something they made, and he walked by them without seeing them and the scandal in the press has been huge. He has apologized for the accidental slight and is hosting a private meeting with these kids. He and his team are inviting 10,000 kids from all over NZ Zealand to travel by bus to watch them practice today. The official game is tomorrow night and it will be the only thing happening in all of New Zealand. Apparently Wellington had to pay over a million dollars to get the Galaxy to travel here for this game. I guess we know how they are recouping the $25 million they are paying Beckham in salary. But Bekham mania is alive and well her in New Zealand.

If any of you are Netflix users, we have it on good authority (but, untested as of yet) that the movie, Crackerjack, will give you a funny introduction to the New Zealand game of bowling. In previous columns I have written about our growing appreciation for this SLOW game, but apparently this movie is a funny peak into the game. If you see it before us, let us know.

New Zealand has two terrestrial national television channels. Most of what they show is daily news, British Television shows (Coronation Street) and American television (every crime show we have it seems, plus the worst of the reality shows like the plastic surgery show- the Swan). Over the twenty years we have been coming here, the mix has moved much more to US shows, with fewer British shows on nowadays. There are also satellite stations, including CNN, but only the more upscale places we stay have the satellite stations. For example, at the winery cottage where we stayed, our host Wendy told us that she is such a cricket fan, and cricket matches go for six hours per day for five days running, that she purposely does not subscribe to satellite tv so as to get her work done around the vineyard. And, if she doesn't get to watch it, either do her guests.

Today we arrived in Queenstwon. The New Zealand Open golf tournament is being played here in the little nearby town of Arrowtown where our former condo lies. It is almost impossible to find anywhere to stay, but with a slightly higher budget we landed an apartment on the road into town. We can park our car and walk around from there, which is a nicer way to see Queenstown than having to park everywhere we go. We have a cottage reserved in Arrowtown begin Dec. 6th for the final week of our stay, after the hubbub of the golf tournament is past. For now, golf is the only thing on TV, where we can watch them play golf fifteen miles from where we sit.

'Til Later,
Deanne

Updates on everything

Traffic Circles: From the assorted e-mails we are getting it is clear that there is no consensus on traffic circles. In fact, if I were to summarize what you are telling us, it seems that Americans don't like traffic circles at all. Probably because US traffic circles don't come with driver's training. The people here are very accustomed to "a_____s" from America (Mike's words) that they enter traffic circles very carefully. So, they feel pretty safe here. Mike stands by his original position that they speed up the intersections in town and make driving much smoother.

Loud fire sirens: We still don't know what the loud city-wide siren is. As we were sitting in the internet cafe in the next town we visited another similar citywide alarm sounded. I leaned over to the twenty-something girl next to me and asked her what the siren was. I loved her answer, "I don't know. It goes off all the time and I never knew what it was for". We aren't talking a little noise. This is a booming siren like the one that would cause you to run to the fall-out shelter if you lived in New Zealand during the London bombings in WWII.

Chocolate: Mike said that I forgot to tell you his favorite chocolate flavor...paprika. Dark chocolate with paprika as flavoring. He couldn't find nutmeg chocolate but asked the proprietor of the shop to consider it, so if you ever visit the Shoc Chocolate shop in Greytown, New Zealand check to see if Mike's nutmeg flavor was ever put into production. In Bleheim we visited another chocolate factory (can you feel the pounds going on? Well, can you?) that specialized in nuts and fruit covered in chocolate. So, we had to buy a little of everything to make sure it was all good. We have dark chocolate macadamia bark (think toffee), white chocolate (Mike eats that stuff), macadamia nut caramel corn..... We are eating all of this so that you can know the best places to visit on your trip here and for health reasons (those antioxidants) so we will return to the US VERY healthy. VERY.

Wine. We have been hitting all of the wine regions of New Zealand on this trip. In Belnheim (pronounced by the kiwis as Blen'em) we stayed in a cottage in a vineyard and spent an hour this morning with hostess, Wendy walking around the vines learning about care and feeding of the vines. She also threw in her wisdom about wines. We toured several wineries yesterday (Cloudy Bay, one of the most famous of the NZ labels and source of good natured resentment among all of the kiwis for their success; Nautilus and Allan Scott where we had a lunch). The tasting room at Nautilus was wonderful, with a solid ten bottles lines up to taste, of which we did justice to them all in order to not have them feel bad. Delightful. The Marlborough region is home to fifty wineries with true odd kiwi names like Dog Point, Mud House, Monkey Bay and Big Sky. We are trying them all, one by one, so that we can advise you all how to order New Zealand wines that are impossible to purchase in the US.

Meals. The New Zealand dollar is the only currency we have hit in our travels that still provides a somewhat favorable treatment to the US dollar. We can have a nice restaurant meal for diner at $120 NZ which is about $85 US dollars. That may sound like a big bill, but when you compare that to Switzerland, or even Italy, it is a bargain. We are still eating breakfast in our room, usually oatmeal. We usually have lunch or dinner picnic style, with one restaurant meal per day. Overall, the quality of the meals is terrific and we are eating lots of iron rich steak and some awesome seafood like green lipped mussels. We have visited two apiaries and carry around a couple of bottles of honey and a jar of peanut butter. Lunch or mid-day snacks are soya and linseed bread with a PB and honey topping. A big splurge might include a banana on that sandwich. We are here in strawberry season, so most nights we have desert in our room; strawberries and chocolate. Heavenly.

The Weather: We have had cyclones (Cairns) and hot (Portugal) but now we have perfect. Every day we wake up to sun and perfect temperatures. We haven's needed to break out our jackets even once, nor have we been so hot that we needed our summer skimpy clothes (thank goodness after the chocolate!)

Current Events. We are sitting on the second floor motel walkway, where we have a table and chair set up in front of our door. We have just finished our latte they made us upon check in. I am working on my laptop with wireless network access. The washing machine is cranking away on our clothes. Mike is sitting beside me editing my thoughts as I write this. We are surrounded by neighbors in our full house motel. Tomorrow is the beginning of a senior citizens tennis tournament (65 and older) and this appears to be Geezer Central. However, I must tell you that they don't actually look so bad. I had to empty the clothes washer to put our stuff in, and those geezer undies looked pretty racy. In fact, geezer Mama has them hanging on the public clothes line outside the laundry room. (I am putting mine in the room! We are in the town of Ashburton and having a geezer good time.

All the best,
Deanne (and editor Mike)

FIRE?!?!!!!!!!

As we were sleeping soundly in our little two bedroom home in the wine country, a very loud, powerful alarm/siren went off. It may have been inside our house somewhere, but it is also true that it could have been outside on a pole somewhere. All I can tell you is that it was louder than that obnoxious alarm that goes off when I cook dinner and announces to all of our neighbors that we have something burning at the Handron house, while Mike and I frantically open all the doors and window and fan the ceiling smoke detectors. This New Zealand alarm was horrible, made worse by the fact that we were in a strange house, it was 1:30 in the morning and we had no idea why an alarm was sounding.

Finding no obvious cause we climbed back in bed. Maybe ten minutes later we heard distant sirens, giving weight to our theory that we live in a town with a volunteer fire department that is alerted to a fire by a community-wide alarm rather than an automated phone dialing system. We never did find out what the alarm was, but it wasn't enough to keep two weary travelers awake to worry about it.

After leaving the Hawkes Bay wine country we went to Wellington for a night. Wellington is the capital of New Zealand. Although it has only half a million people,it is a very cosmopolitan city. We were told proudly that there are more coffee houses per capita than any other city. Coming from the town that put Starbucks stores four to a corner we find it hard to believe that statistic, but it does make a point that it is a happening place for coffee affectionados or people out on the town. Keep in mind though, that kiwis version of out on the town differs completely from Europe. The streets roll up at 6:00 PM in most towns, and in a "big"city like Wellington you can expect to find places open until ten or so. So different from Spain where you won't find a restaurant open until ten.

Wellington was just an overnight on our way to the ferry from the North Island to the South Island. The ferry crossing is three hours long, and residents take their cars across. Visitors turn their cars in at the ferry terminal where Avis and Hertz conveniently have rental offices, then pick one up on the other side after crossing. It works well, as there are people f\driving to the crossing point from both islands, turning in their cars for pick up by someone coming across on the next ferry.

We had beautiful weather for the crossing (it has been outstanding all along). The top end of the south island is the Marlborough sounds, and it is gorgeous. A bit like the fiords, but the mountain sides are not as tall. Our Toyota was waiting for us and we took off. Less than an hour later we were in the middle of the Marlborough wine region, home of wonderful white wines. Having such success renting a cottage last time, we headed straight for the information office where we were able to get another cottage for $100 NZD per night, or roughly $78US. It is two bedroom, two bath sitting in a vineyard. It is immediately adjacent to our hosts'home, although hedges separate the entrances and provide us with privacy. Our hosts are two women who run an assortment of businesses, including the vineyard (they grow grapes under contract for one of the local wineries), a wine tasting tour company and other things we have not yet discovered. They have a white lab that they offered to loan me when I asked for advice on where to roam for my walk. That is real service...a dog to accompany you on your walk! They made reservations for us at the local hot spot and have provided us with lots of advice about where to go. Although we didn't expect any services to our unit during our two night stay, we returned to our cottage to find clean towels after a day of touring the wineries and chocolate factory (yes, MaryAnn, we are keeping up our medicinal doses of chocolate by visiting the boutique chocolate shops of New Zealand).

Chocolate in New Zealand is very creative and wonderful. Because we are partaking for purely medicinal reasons (similar to the wine drinking) we are only eating dark chocolate (except for an occasional venture into white chocolate by Mike to prove that dark chocolate isn't the only source of health). We have found dark chocolate flavored by wonderful additions such as coffee, ginger, cardamon, saffron....

Well, I have worked myself into a hunger. So, I will log off this internet cafe machine and go find some coffee, wine or chocolate to take the edge off.

Take care,
Deanne

It is just like Home

As we were cooking breakfast this morning in our little three bedroom rental cottage Mike looked over at me and said, "this is just like home", at which point I said, "who wants it to be just like home?". We have a little home to overselves, and it does feel just like home when you are doing the dishes and cleaning up after yourselves. What are the differences from home aside from the obvious things like no family around?

First of all, kiwis have on/off switches on all of their electric outlets and they use them religiously. So, when you want to turn on the kettle to boil water for your coffee you have to turn on the outlet and turn on the kettle. Same with the stove. You turn the switch on at the wall first. I am not sure why it exists this way, but even the hotels are like this. The only exception I have seen is for the televiaion, which in most places seems to be in the permanent on position.

Secondly, although rental houses and kiwis houses all seem to have washing machines virutally no one except hotels use clothes dryers. Given the fine economic shape the country is in I doubt it is because they cannot afford them. I think the prefer line dired clothes. So, yesterday when we arrived at our rental house I had to take our towels off the line, then later when our clothes came out of the machine I had to hang them on the line to dry. As a result our clothes are fresh, but a little wrinkly.

Third, all rentals everywhere include milk. Kiwis are huge milk drinkers. Apparently Heather Mills, Paul McCartney's soon to be ex-wife recently was in a set of ads talking about how cows are ruining the environment and we might as well be drinking rat milk, it was so preposterous to drink the milk of an animal. The newspapers here have roasted her, taken her comments out of context ("she proposes we all drink rat milk") and invited anyone to come see a beautiful dairy farm in New Zealand and see that they are clean and beautiful. When you check into a moetel, rental, hotel, whatever, you get a small refigerator with milk and a tea making set (kettle, teabags, sugar, etc) so that you can enjoy your daily cuppa. It is very nice.

Well, someone has come into the library in search of my machine so I have to log off. We are going to Wellington tomorrow in search of a hotel with 24 hour access to the internet so I can finish uploading my phots. Until then...
Deanne

Soaking up the sun (and wine) in the Wine Country

We have found another area of New Zealand that we love. Having never visited the North Island south of Rotorua, we were very pleasantly surprised to find the Hawkes Bay wine area to be like an undiscovered Napa Valley. It is beautiful weather (warm and sunny) combined with gorgeous scenery (vineyards, rolling hills and the most magnificent beach anywhere) and wonderful New Zealand hospitality. We stayed for two nights in a little village called Havelock North near Napier. We can't stop raving about this village. Set up in a spoke and wheel configuration, the center of town is a memorial to WI veterans and a surrounding traffic circle(more on that later). Around the traffic circle are little streets with small shops. About a block off the traffic circle are the motels and larger shops like the grocery store and the cinema. We were in a motel right off the circle within walking distance to everything. We loved walking to dinner and had a wonderful meal at the hip place in town, Diva.

So, to explain traffic circles. Everyone in Europe and Australia New Zealand drives them and we are not quite sure why they don't exist in the US. They are a very efficient method for getting traffic through an intersection. You pull up to the traffic circle, look to your right, and if it is clear, you pull out into the circle and make your way to the first street if you are turning left, the second if you are going straight, the third if you are making a right and all the way to the fourth if you are doing a U turn. It works remarkably well.

The beach that we loved is called by the original name of Ocean Beach. You drive to it from town through the vineyards, with the last mile on a gravel road. When you get in sight of the ocean you see a one lane road down a major hill to get to the beach. The view from the top of the hill is amazing, which you will be able to see as soon as I can post my photos. The beach is white sand and aquamarine colored water with no buildings for miles. There is one small village of cottages, but it is being torn down. It is gorgeous. We were there with perfect weather and shared this amazing beach with a few middle aged surfers, one family and a few straggler sunbathers.

After two days in paradise we left this morning and headed down the coast to the next stop, also a wine area called Martinborough. We rented a three bedroom home (great photos to come) right off the town square for less per night than our motel room in the last town. Even though the kiwi dollar has increase3d in value relative to our dollar we are still finding housing for substantial savings over our 100 euro per night budget that we set when we left for Europe in July.

We know that it is Thanksgiving at home, so we called all five of the children today. We missed "the boys" which everyone in the family knows is Matt and Jonny. Michael and Dana were having a nice dinner at home and were making up a leftover plate for Matt who was busy working at the casino today. We hope that means he gets Christmas off. Jonny is in Whistler for the week on a vacation with his girlfriend, Megan's family. Megan is coking dinner for nine people and we caught her alone during the time she had allocated for stuffing the turkey which she delayed to talk to us. Caitie reported that turkey dinner in the dorms was a major disappointment but that she and one of her roommates were spending the weekend close to the dorms to nurse her friend back to health.

So, for all of our friends, have a wonderful Thanksgiving. We are very grateful to have such wonderful friends and family and count our blessings daily.

With love, Deanne

Back in New Zealand again!

We left Cairns last night at 11:00 PM after a delicious dinner in a Greek restaurant. It turns out that there are lots of Greek immigrants in Australia. Melbourne has the largest Greek population outside of Athens. Megan and Matt introduced us to Greek food after their year in Athens, so we were not novices anymore and we enjoyed our dinner.


the Air New Zealand flight was full, but comfortable. It was a four hour flight, but with the time change we arrived at 6:00 AM, which means we basically didn't get any sleep last night. We rented our car in Auckland and headed south, towards the town of Hamilton. Mike has the knack for left side of the street driving now, so aside from the occasional time when one of us walks to the wrong side of the car to climb in, we are making our way smoothly. It was about a three hour drive from the airport to Rotorua, but we stopped in Hamilton for breakfast. By the time we arrived in the "Roto-vegas", the motto/nickname provided by the new horrible marketing campaign for this wonderful little town. It is the center of Maori culture, with large parks and shows available to the public to teach us about the indigenous people of New Zealand. It is also on a lake, so there are lots of the lake activities. Finally, it is a thermal area, with boiling mud, sulphur smelling air and geysers. Why in the world they thought people would be more inclined to visit it with the Vegas comparison is beyond me.

We checked into a $99 NZD a night motel (that is about $78 US) which has its own hot tub (you fill it up yourself- water is plentiful here), kitchenette, starter carton of milk to flavor your tea, and oldish but comfortable furnishings. Even better, for $12 NZD we get two hours of wifi computer access, something I have been waiting for so that I could upload my photos to this blog site.

After a short nap we walked around town a bit. It is a glorious day which is particularly welcome after the oppressive rain and humidity of Cairns. The government gardens is a beautiful park in the center of the city that is about 100 years old. In the British style it has bowling lawns and croquet. We enjoyed walking around, seeing the rose garden and enjoying the weather.

We have a list of the top ten restaurants in New Zealand, and if we can, we will try to have dinner tonight in the only one on the list located here in Rotorua. More on that tomorrow maybe.

Bye,
Deanne

My last five minutes on the internet

What can you write in five minutes before the internet shuts down? I have been working on flights for Caitie's return for the holidays and now I am almost out of time on the machine so this will be fast.

We have heard from Caitie at school. She is doing so well at NYU. A star student. We can't wait to see all five kids at Christmas. We will have Caitie home at Casa Handron Bellingham, where Mike and Dana live, in about three weeks. We read Mike's comment on the last blog entry and are glad to hear stories of their new little cat we will get to meet when we get there.

Today we leave for Auckland, New Zeland although the flight is not until 10:50 tonight. We have to check out of our hotel at noon, so we have a long day to fill.
Bye,
Deanne

Musings from the top of the bottom of the world

Sitting beside my beloved in the internet cafe in Cairns, Northern Australia. He is adorned in absolute tourist clothing...his Australia tee shirt with the Australian flag (he is such a flag junkie!), his leather outback hat beside him, his ever present shorts with socks and boots. He is thumping away on an e-mail to one of his friends.

A cyclone is due in town today. The weather man has been tracking it across the ocean offshore for the past few days. This is the rainy monsoon season- spring turning to summer and the weather has been thick with humidity and afternoon rains. This is not the mild little misty rain we get in Seattle, but the gushy, flood the streets in ten minutes downpour that tropical environments get. The storm has held off all morning so we decided to drive into Cairns and brave the internet cafe as soon as our laundry was washed and hung up in the shower, kitchen and deck. Hopefully our sojourn into town will be over before we receive the brunt of the weather. No one out and about seem the least bit worried about weather. Like growing up in Southern California, people that have nice weather most of the time never talk about it. They assume it. Only in Seattle did I develop the habit of talking about the weather every day.

Mike and I had a disturbing talk with Matt yesterday. One of his former roommates died in bed the night before last. Apparently it is too soon to know how he died. It is such a tragedy to have a young person die, and Nick was a nice guy with wonderful parents. It is difficult to be so far away and not able to be with Matt as he deals with the loss of his friend.

I can't help comparing the differences in lifestyle between the cultures we have visited. In the Latin countries, particularly Spain but also Portugal and Italy, everybody is out on the streets until late at night visiting each other, sitting in cafes for long, leisurely meals and partying together. Now that we are in Australia we are back to the lifestyle more familiar to Americans... we eat faster and earlier when we are eating out, we don't linger for long walks on the streets and plazas, and we return to our little abode for an evening of reading and television. I miss the warm night strolls in Spain.

I must admit television in English has its charms though. Mike is so happy to have sports that are narrated in a language he understands that he is even willing to spend an hour or two trying to figure out the rules to the interesting game of bowling. This is not the bowling of alleys that we know. This is a strategic game involving teams trying to place their balls closest to the jack, or white ball, while knocking the opponent away from the jack. Very strategic. Not quite the vigorous sport of football, so age is not quite as important as football. Players are older, wear glasses and sometimes sport a bigger gut than in other sports. We have two Fox sport channels and one other sport channel so there are always things going on that interest Mike. He was even able to watch an American football game on Monday (when it was Sunday at home) so he will make it through this football season with at least one game.

We have not been enamored with Australian food. Yesterday we found a cafe in tiny Kuranda that served health food type meals. Called the Queen bee, the restaurant shared space with a bee products store that sold honey and honey soaps and lotions. We both had the Queen Bee favorite, his a turkey and avocado sandwich and mine the same except grilled and open faced on a single thick slice of wholemeal (whole wheat) bread. Mike pronounced it his best sandwich in Australia and if the drive was not a half hour over mountains I am sure we would go back for more.

I hope to download photos in a few minutes so that you can all see where we have been. I hope you are all still out there, having weathered the quiet while we were on the cruise.

Love from Cairns,
Deanne

Sitting with the Z generation in Cairns

Calling them kids makes me seem old. Apparently the X generation is over and done with, so I assume the young people surrounding us in this internet cafe as Generation Z. Whatever. As I look around this dark, narrow store on the main street of Cairns I see young faces totally concentrating on the computer screens in front of them. I also see, three or four occupied chairs from me, the gray hair, glasses and headphones of my husband. I have no idea what he is listening to down there, but he is sitting with headphones like the young folks. we are sitting along the two outside walls of this narrow little storefront in library like carrels with divider between us so that you can barely see the screens of your neighbors. By leaning back and putting the keyboard on my lap I can rest my wrists and watch the kid next to me work on a computer game that looks much more like an animated movie than a computer game. The girl on my right is reviewing a Sizzler restaurant menu. I have no idea why that would be worth spending your internet time, but that is what she is doing.

We got to Cairns on Sunday afternoon. Mike is so happy to have a rental car. He is like a teenager with his first set of wheels. We are staying in a Cairns suburb called Trinity Beach. Our studio apartment is a block from the beach, so we wandered down for a walk along the beach on our first afternoon. Trinity Beach is a sleepy little area that reminds us both of a small Hawaiian town. The climate here is virtually the same tropical weather that Hawaii has, and combined with the similar look to the vegetation and housing if you did not notice that the cars were on the opposite side of the road you would think you were in Hawaii.

Our apartment has a washing machine- a true luxury that we availed ourselves of the first day. Our second day here we went for a long drive up to the Daintree National Park. We took a small hike out to see the Mossman Gorge (think Olympic National Park type rain forest in a warmer climate combined with a small river bed/gorge. It was nice but no grand canyon. The Daintree River was impressive, though. We took a one hour boat trip (Bruce Belcher's crocodile tours) and saw lots of tropical birds and bats and one 2 year old crocodile that splashed in the water and swam away as soon as we got near enough to see it. They threw in a free four dollar meat pie with the $20 admission price, so Mike has eaten his first (and probably last) Australian meat pie. If they had paid us to eat it I may have been tempted but at free for the taking it was an easy decision.

Now that we have our own kitchen we are back to eating home cooked oatmeal every morning for breakfast and picinic lunch or dinner. We have one meal out most days. It is cheaper this way and we enjoy the leisurely meals in our apartment or on our deck overlooking the pool.

Today it was raining much more vigorously than the past two days so we waited an hour to take our drive in to Cairns. We had never been to this town before, so we spent the rainy morning in a movie (Robert Redford and Meryl Streep's new movie which we liked for its plea to get people thinking and doing something about what is going on), then lunch in a health food store and now the internet cafe. We will probably walk around a bit more then head back to Trinity beach (about half an hour away) for our leisurely afternoon.

I have lots more photos that I will send when I get on my computer.

Love you all,
Deanne

Last Day on Land for awhile

We are sitting in another internet cafe, this time in Auckland. It could be China based on the looks and sounds of the place, though. Everyone in here in Chinese, the screens on the computers use Chinese characters, and Google is set at a Chinese screen default (something I have been able to change when it is set to Spanish, Portugues, etc. but baffles me when I try to read Chinese characters to find the change). The chatter between people in this place is all in Chinese. Other than the Chinese decor and people, this is similar to all other internet places we have been. Up a rickety set of stairs from the main shopping plaza. Windows covered with something to keep the sun's glare off the screens. Here the window covering is some sort of army camoflauge- a green, leafy thing. Yesterday it was Indian blankets that reminded me of my college dorm bedspread. This place has two rooms; one for internet users (full when we cam in) and another for gamers, where we are working for 50 cents extra per hour to have plasma displays.

Caitie checked in today. Her vacation last week in Spain with her roommates was a big success and she is back in classes. We reached Jonny by phone yesterday and he is doing well. Word from Mike and Dana and Meggie is all positive. Megan sent the cutest photos of our wonderful grandchildren all dressed up for Halloween. We are excited to see everyone at Christmas. Mike and Dana are hosting us for about ten days including Christmas, then we are driving to California to see Meg and Matt and her family.

Running out of time. Will write again soon.

Love, Deanne

Connected to the world in the Tauranga Public Library

We are in tiny Tauranga, a New Zealand North Island harbor town a few hours drive from Auckland. This is the second fastest growing area in New Zealand after Queenstown where our former home sits. Our ship came in early (I think I heard it docking at about 4:00 am) to begin the repairs. It was available for passenger disembarkation at 5:30, although these passengers weren't ready. We got up at our now typical leisurely 9:00 and had breakfast, then jumped on the 11:00 shuttle bus into town. The shuttle (a city bus with a "charter" sign in the destination window) took us into downtown Tauranga from the harbor of Mt. Mangatui. We stopped right in front of the public library, a very new and modern library, where we sit with fellow passengers working on the internet for the reasonable sum of $4 NZ and hour.

We have become friends with our table mates on the cruise. Bill and Lori are about our age and come from Delaware. Chris and Denise, also about our age are from Michigan. Carol is a young grandmother traveling with her oldest granddaughter, Katie, who at 21 is a recent graduate celebrating with her grandmother. Katie is one of the most attractive girls on the ship, where there really aren't many people her age, so we all have the entertainment of watching the interest she creates among the men. Last night was Chris and Denise's 36th anniversary, which we celebrated with champagne, photos and a serenade by one of the Chinese waiters with an incredible voice. It was a very nice evening.

Our day at sea yesterday was quite lazy. All of the best intentions to keep up our work out schedule have been lost in the rolling seas of the work-out center. We had one successful workout at the beginning of this trip, but the rough seas have turned us away. We have tried, but it is hard to work an elliptical when you are hanging on for dear life. We are working on our contingency plan of extra workouts when we hit land again.

Tomorrow we will be in Auckland and I will write again before we hit the two day dead zone as we cross the Tasman Sea back to Sydney.

Deanne

Limping from port to port with a broken propeller

After finishing in the internet café yesterday we wandered around the charming city of Wellington and made our way back to the ship. Like most of the days on this trip, we spent the afternoon reading and watching movies. As the ship set sail for our next port of call, Napier, the city rebuilt after a devastating earthquake in the 1930s in Art Deco style, the captain came on the loud speaker. He let us know that we had hit a submerged log in our previous port, Dunedin, and divers had gone under the ship while in Wellington to investigate. Apparently three of the four blades on our starboard propeller had been broken off. For this reason we were unable to sail at peak speed and would cancel our stop in Napier and go directly to the stop for the next day. As a consolation for missing this port we were each given a credit of $100 per cabin to use however we want. Although we are disappointed to miss Napier which we have never seen, we are happy to have the $100 (helps make that budget!) and a relaxing day at sea.

Cruising Downunder- a wonderful way to go

For the outrageous sum of 50 cents per minute I can use my computer onboard our cruise ship to update the blog. Forget it! So, we have been sailing for one week and there has not been a port of call with time enough to update the blog until today. We are in Wellington, New Zealand on a wet Sunday afternoon. We are sitting in an internet cafe (which is why I don't have my own computer and cannot update the photos for the past week) for the bargain price of $4 NZD per hour. It is luxury!

We boarded our ship in Sydney and set sail for Melbourne. Our cabin is on the second floor, "deep and cheap". We have an inside cabin which is astoundingly dark at night and we were able to sleep in until very late in the morning on our sea days. In Melbourne we took a tour out into the country on the "Puffing Billy" steam engine, and a bus tour of the city. The weather was beautiful and it matched the gorgeous city views of Melbourne. We had a few cold, rocky at sea days that resulted in my desire to spend the majority of the day sleeping. The day we arrived in Milford Sound, New Zealand was clear and beautiful; one of those rare days in this rain forest area that was clear and beautiful. My photos of the area will show you just how sensational this area is when I get a chance to post them. We spent a day cruising the fiords (Milford, Dusky, Thompson Sounds)without going ashore (there is not much ashore in these remote areas). The following day we arrived in the picturesque city of Dunedin. Once again we opted for a train trip to see the countryside, as we have spent many visits in Dunedin. The old wooden train (the cars were built in the 1920s) met us in the port town where we docked and took us through a gorge. The volunteer staff that works the train served us tea, then later a light lunch as we traveled through the countryside. The manager of our carriage took a shine to us and shared her insights into when and where i needed to be standing on the observation platform between the cars to get the great photos of the gorge and our train traveling over the wooden bridges. It was a wonderful day and we left the train with a new friend, Daphne, who volunteers on the train several days a week to help earn money for her community.

After Dunedin, our next port was Christchurch, where we did our third and final train trip. We left on a modern train this time, from the port, and traveled through the city of Christchurch and across the rural Canterbury Plains to the New Zealand Alps, where we traveled through the mountains to the tiny town of Arthur's Pass. There we were met by buses that had carried other cruise passengers to this point, and we took the buses back while they toured on the train. The buses took us on a city tour where we were able to walk around the city square and the botanic gardens.

Today we are in the national capital, Wellington. Sundays in New Zealand are traditionally slow days with no shopping available. We have never been here, at the south end of the North Island so we opted to spend the day walking around, doing internet and just kicking back rather than taking a tour. Tomorrow is Napier, and if we have time, I will try to upload the photos from the past week.

Until then-
Deanne

Odds and Ends at the End of our Sydney Stay

We’re doing the laundry and packing up after a week in one place. It has been such a luxury to sit in a single place for a week. We worked out at the Gold’s gym every other day, ate microwaved oatmeal every morning in our kitchenette and spread out our clothes instead of keeping everything packed during our stay. We learned the public transportation system and the groceries (which thankfully are much easier to find than in Europe).

We have found Australians to be warm and friendly. Every time we thank someone, we get the very pleasant response of, “no worries”. They are open to conversations about where we are from and curious about our visit. The Australian news is covering the Los Angeles fires as top coverage. Right now I am watching Charlie Wrangel on the news. Can you imagine watching an Australian politician on our news? It seems that more Australians have visited the US than vice versa. As I working out today the woman next to me told me she spent four weeks in LA and New Jersey this summer and was watching the fire news as anxiously as I was. When we say we are from Seattle, they always respond with some knowledge of the area such as, “home of Microsoft and Boeing”, or “are you Supersonics fans?” The US is like a big brother to Australia. They watch our politics and our news with interest.

The owner of the Golds gym told us that with overtime, the guys working the front desk make $30 AUD an hour on Sundays. Assuming that is time and a half or double time pay for working Sundays (can you imagine getting paid more for working on a Sunday?) they make $15-20 an hour the rest of the time. Each of our trips out to dinner cost between $60-100 for the two of us, so the prices here reflect the higher compensation. Our dollar has been falling all over the world, and in our week here has gone from one our dollars to 88 cents Australian to today’s one to 90.5.

One of their local business heroes died a few days ago, just a day after we watched a special on him. 42 years old, this local man from an immigrant Middle Eastern background made millions by founding a cell phone store empire. He was a philanthropist and all around good guy, who dropped dead of a heart attack while taking a walk, and today there is a huge Muslim funeral. The news coverage is similar to what the passing of Bill Gates or Warren Buffet might be like. Most of our business people don’t get this type of news coverage.

It is a rainy, storming day today with lightening and other-non-vacation-happy weather. We are spending our last day relaxing. Last night we had our best dinner here at a small Japanese restaurant around the corner- the Uchi Lounge. Wonderful. We will probably go back again tonight.

Love, Deanne

I may have gained a bit of weight….but not that much!

Masters of public transportation…. We have traveled by city train, ferry, taxi and this morning we added the monorail. We rode around the city loop (meeting a two couples traveling together from Dallas for the same cruise that we take on Saturday) to Paddy’s Market, a huge indoor swap meet. Stalls go for miles selling souvenirs, tee shirts and all kinds of can’t-live-without-it junk. We wandered around for as long as we could take the crowds, escaping with one grandchild gift and a few workout tee-shirts (something we should have planned better before leaving home).

After the markets we decided to take the monorail to Darling Harbor for lunch. We found one of the guidebook recommended restaurants, Blackbird and settled in for a chicken sandwich and fish&chips. Both of us were concerned about the slippery floor under our table and asked the waitress to have someone clean it. Someone came over and assured us that the floor was wet from the rain (it was an open restaurant with no walls facing the harbor where we were sitting). After finishing our meal the floor was still slippery even though neither of us had been rained on while eating, so we knew the floor was oily from something else. I decided to clean my shoes with the cleaner that the waitress carried over to use on the floor. While rolled up in my chair cleaning the bottoms of the shoes the chair collapsed! One minute I was sitting up cleaning shoes the next minute I was sitting on the floor with a broken chair beside me. Nothing was hurt but my pride. It was quite embarrassing.

Apparently customer service in Sydney does not include listening to your customers complain about the slippery floor, nor does it include any concession when your chair breaks while a customer is sitting in it. May we suggest you not visit the Blackbird Café.

I am off to edit the zoo photos. I took so many that I need to weed through them or I will kill the internet when I post them. I will write again soon.

Deanne

Settling into Sydney

The zoo was beautiful- just as I remembered. The weather was not nearly as gorgeous as my last trip, but the overcast skies made it cooler. If you look at the photos, you can see the city skyline behind the animals. So impressive. I took pictures of the snakes for Jonny who has a few of his own. We especially enjoyed the Australian animals- the koalas, kangaroos and others.

We are busy staying close to the tv to watch the reports of the horrible fires in California. For all our friends and family nearby- our thoughts are with you. We have heard that the Chopra Center is closed and many of our San Diego friends have been evacuated. We aren’t sure about our former home in Malibu, but once again we are happy to no longer own that home and the vulnerability it had to the weather.

We have been working out at the neighborhood Golds Gym around the corner from our hotel. Just as expensive as everywhere else in Sydney- we have a discounted neighborhood hotel rate of $12 per day to work out (that is each!). We have been there every other day where we feel quite welcomed by the American men that run it. Marc and Steve are quite welcoming and offer us a cappuccino at the end of each work-out as a gift. Marc has been very generous with ideas of places to eat and visit, and we have found commonality in the fact that both of us are graduates of both Cornell and USC.

Last night we took the ferry across the harbor to Darling harbor and Star City where we saw the Sydney performance of Miss Saigon. I had purchased the tickets before we left on this trip. We have seen performances of concerts and plays when we visit new cities and always enjoy the night out. The Lyric theater in Sydney is beautiful and we loved watching the orchestra from our front row seat. It was particularly nice to be able to go out on the town without dressing up- everything goes in Sydney!

Today we walked down to Chinatown for lunch which was wonderful. Our restaurant was quite popular, with room for several hundred people all full. One entire wall of the place was taken up with aquariums full of fish and shellfish where you could select your meal while it was alive. Mike is not a seafood lover even when he hasn’t seen it alive, so we decided to stick with a meal that we didn’t need to apologize to before digging in.

The weatherman anticipates rain this afternoon although it has not begun yet. We are in our room watching the news, working on the internet and thinking of all of you.

Bye for now,
Deanne

Sydney- Expensive doesn’t even begin to describe it

We are in Sydney. It is so nice to hear English everywhere you turn. We have TV on right now playing another game show- “The Singing Bee”, but this time we understand the show and the rules. Game shows seem to be popular everywhere. Maybe they are also popular at home but we don’t know because we never tune them in. In Europe we watched them under the pretense of learning the language- here we have them on just to laugh at the silliness.

We are staying in a very nice little boutique hotel- the Best Western Stellar. It sits on the edge of Hyde Park across the street from a Marriott. It is a suite hotel, and in the reservation I asked for a high floor with a view. We ended up on the top floor (sixth) with a view of the park. We have a nice little kitchenette with coffee making equipment, a microwave and a small refrigerator. One of the other luxuries (I wasn’t even going to mention the bathroom in the room rather than in the hall) is a washing machine and drier in the laundry room across the hall. All of that comes at a price- $165 AUD, or about $150. I keep reminding Mike that it is close to our 100 Euro a night budget. But the expensive room pales in comparison to other costs. We went to see our first movie in months (assuming you don’t count the marathon of movies we watched on the plane coming here) for $31 admission for two.

One of my favorite memories of Sydney was visiting the zoo and looking back at the Opera house and the harbor. That is on the agenda for tomorrow. Today we went to the historic area- the Rocks and visited the weekend arts and crafts market. We purchased a week pass for the public transportation so we are taking the subway around town and the ferry to the zoo. The transportation pass was the bargain price of $31.

The Australian people are so easy to like. Two tall, tattooed and wild looking teenagers asked Mike to take their photo today where we were sitting in front of the Opera House. He agreed but pointed them to me, saying that I was the photographer of our team. They whipped out a cardboard covered disposable camera and Mike laughed and said he thought even he could figure out that camera. They got a good laugh over the ribbing about their camera and sat together for a “cheese” and the snap of the camera. That is a little like the other young people we see around town- a little wildly dressed yet good natured and fun loving.

The back to back trips from Italy to Seattle then two days in town and on to Sydney has been hard on the internal clocks. We arrived here early in the morning and slept several hours that first day. Then, we were awake early the next morning (2:00 is very early) so we read for awhile then slept for a little while. We had a similar night last night. Hopefully we will sleep better tonight.

I will write tomorrow and let you know if the zoo lives up to memories.

Deanne

Seattle Whirlwind

We arrived in Seattle on Monday night after two long airport delays- one in Rome and the other on our connecting flight in Cincinnati. Nevertheless, it was nice to get back to cool, wet Seattle. We stayed a Motel 6 in Issaquah in order to be close to the appointments we had lined up for all day Tuesday (doctors, dentists, pharmacy, hair stylist, barber). We also had some shopping to do (new lens for the camera, drugstore supplies, etc.) We didn't sleep all that well Monday night- perhaps jet lag or maybe the sound of cars parking outside our motel window. We were very keyed up about all that we had to do, so it was possibly the excitement of our fast touchdown in Seattle that caused the wakefulness. Nevertheless, we made it through our day of errands and drove our rental Toyota Prius up to Bellingham Tuesday night for dinner with Mike, Dana and Matt. Unfortunately we did not get to see Jonny this trip. Dinner was fun- we celebrated Michael's birthday and listened to some friendly jibes from Matt who responded to his Dad's comment that we loved the nomadic lifestyle and might never come home with a request that we not tease him like that.

Mike and Dana put us up in their home where we got a private bathroom, free internet access, a bottomless cup of coffee at breakfast and English speaking hosts! It was great to sleep well, although once again the excitement of getting ready for the next leg of our journey caused us both to wake up at 3:00 AM, so wide awake that we got out of bed and packed our bags. Crazy!

We spent most of today traveling to the airport from Bellingham. We flew to LA this afternoon and currently sit in LAX waiting for our flight to Sydney. We found a condo to rent in San Miguel de Allende, so we know where we will be in January.

We arrive in Sydney in another day or two after our fourteen hour flight. We will log in then and let you know how these two dead tired travelers are doing. To those of you that we couldn't see this trip- our apologies. One and a half days in Seattle was just not enough to see everyone. We will be back in December though.

Love to you all, Deanne and Mike

Can you believe it is almost over?

We have been enjoying our last few days in Italy. When we returned to our hotel in Florence we were greeted like returning family. Tonight we took Caitie and her roommates to dinner at a restaraunt that we ate in twice during our last stay and once before this stay and the entire staff treated us like neighborhood friends. It has been great to know our way around this small part of Florence and to have familiar faces to make us feel more welcome.

Tomorrow we leave for Rome. Caitie and her friends are joining us for brunch at a restaurant that reportedly serves an American style breakfast, something we all have done without for months. Then, after our visit, Mike and I board a train for the two hour ride directly to the Rome airport where we are staying at the Airport Hilton (thank you work-earned Hilton points) the night before our morning flight. We fly to Cincinnati then on to Seattle.

We have been thinking and planning our holidays. We expect to spend our time from mid-December to mid-January with family then we think we will head to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico for six weeks for Spanish lessons and holiday. We have located several condos available for rent that allow us to stay downtown near the heart of the city. If any of you have similar experiences and advice please let us know.

We have several busy days ahead, so it may be a few days before you hear from us again.

Love, Deanne

Firenze and wonderful wifi

Final (hopefully) update on the bugs. Mike's invention of the ankle to wrist and neck tin foil suit does the trick. All new bites are limited to my neck, face and hands. Becuase the bugs had a much smaller target area, they were twice as vicious so my hands feel like monster fingers. They hurt to bend. I will be glad when whatever spiders or bugs we have encountered are in our past.

We took the train trip to Florence this morning and checked back in to the wonderful City Hotel where we felt like we were coming home. Francesco, the wonderful man who helped us arrange for crutches had our room ready with the bag he was storing already in our room. We have a room with bathroom for one night, then to get our discount rate we have to move tomorrow to a room with a bathroom outside in the hall. Oh well. We are so happy to be back in Florence. We had lunch at one of our old haunts where the chef came out to greet us again. We sat beside a couple from Ireland and had a wonderful visit.

Caitie just called. She has just finished a test in Italian which she is celebrating with a McDonald's ice cream with her roommates, then she is coming to town to meet us for dinner. She leaves tomorrow morning at 8:00 for Venice so we won't see her again until Sunday morning when we meet for breakfast before heading off to Rome for our final night and flight home.

I have updated the photos now that we are back in a hotel with wifi access. What a pleasure it is not to have to go to an internet cafe to work on the blog and e-mail. We are sitting on the bed side by side both working on our "stuff". Small pleasures.

Later,
Deanne

Sleeping in a tin foil suit does the trick

A few of you were wondering how I was doing as the bug dish delight. The anti-itch cream seems to be doing the trick, although I have to reapply it all of the time. I woke up a few times in the night itching my knee or ankle and applied the cream from its syringe-like container to myself in the dark. The hardest part was figuring out how to keep from getting bit again. So, Mike and I settled on clothing from head to foot as a detrrent to the little critters. Unfortunately my loyal readers know how hot I get at night, so it was tough to find the right outfit, but I settled on long pants and a long sleeved shirt from my extensive wardrobe (which you know has to fit in my little suitcase). I wore the clothes that keep the sun off and they worked pretty well. All of the blankets and sheets ended up on Mike and he needed them because the window was wide open to keep me cool enough. The only new bites were to the ankles in the space between the top of the socks and the bottom of the pants and my neck. We had an attack of laughter this morning when we realized how noisy these clothes are and how every time I rolled around in the night the crinkly of the cotton woke both of us up. It was like sleeping in a suit of tin foil.

I have to end with just this short note. My husband bogarted the computer in the internet cafe so I didn't get much time.
Love to you all,
Deanne

Bugged in San Gimignano

I have written enough on Mike's accidents and disabilities. Now it is my turn in the spotlight. It turns out that there is some sort of biting bug in this beautiful Tuscan town that has decided to make lunchmeat (and breakfast, dinner and snack) out of me. I am covered in bug bites from neck to toe. The worst ones are on the palm of my hand which hurt to type. They are driving me crazy with itching, causing me to miss my precious good night's sleep. Trust me, very little in this world disrupts my sleep (especially now that the boys are grown up and I don't have to worry about 16 year old drivers). So, Mike and his spotted wife went to the Farmacia in search of sledgehammers to know the itching away. We ended up with cortisone cream (Susan-remeber that cream that I was allergic to? The one that made my face swell up?). I am so desperate that we bought it and I started using it today. Mike promises to take over the blog if my face swells up so bad that I can no longer see or if my bug-bitten hands get to the point they can no longer type.

We have discovered the 2006 winner fo the world's best gelato contest. This tiny shop is right across the courtyard from our hotel. We have decided to assure all of our loyal readers of the validity of their claim to being the world's best by trying every one of their thiry flavors before we leave so that we can make sure. So far, Mike still favors Crema Argentina, a flavor he found in Verona. I am partial to last night's cone- made up of half saffron cream (think eggnog gelato) and cinnamon (a most delightful, creamy and spicy gelato flavor). We have only two more days to make sure we have tried enough flavors. This place is so popular they sell cones starting at 9:00 am.

So long,
Your spotted friend,
Deanne

On the homestretch for our return

It is later in the day, and we have finally located an internet shop with two working computers. The last one was in a cafe, convenient for having a cappuccino while you work, but requiring serial efforts. Mike went first then got bored waiting for me to work on the blog, hence the short write-up earlier.

We are staying in a lovely hotel in the main square. After ending up here we found out from our well traveled next door neighbors that this is a favorite hotel of theirs. It is nice to hear that we didn't just miss on a better one. The views from the breakfast room are sensational- when we get to Florence and have free internet in our room I will be able to work on my computer and send the photos. This walled town is surrounded by rolling hills covered in vineyards planted in various directions depending on the hills and the sunlight, making a beautiful patchwork green.

We are enjoying our return to Italian food. The difference in weather since our last visit has provided an entirely different range of menu possibilities. We are starting at least one meal each day with a rich soup, mostly homemade minestrone, but sometimes lentil. Yesterday I had something called medieval soup which is a cream based leek and vegetable soup with saffron. It is fun to try the sous after all of those hot weather sandwiches. The Tuscan wines beat the Swiss wines by 100%. For about 10 Euros ($14) we had a wonderful bottle of local chianti. Great life.

We are here until Thursday then we go back to Florence. We have three nights in Florence. We will see Caitie art of that time, although she and her roommates will be visiting Venice for one of those nights. It is such a great opportunity for her to see these Italian cities on her weekends. School is going well for her. She has sent us by e-mail a couple of her essays and they are outstanding.

Our current internet outlet is a bookstore. Books have turned out to be one of our biggest costs on this trip. We both spend lots of time reading (on trains, evenings, etc). English books, in normal paperback format cost between $10-20. I can read four or five a week, which adds up. So, Mike likes to limit my access to bookstores. As it turns out though, the bookstore is the only location with two internet accessible machines in this town, so here we sit.

We fly back to the US on the 15th from Rome. We are planning dinner with Jonny the night we return, a day of doctor and dentist appointments the following day, dinner with Mike, Dana and Matt that evening, then a flight to LA and Sydney the following day. Another leg of the adventure!

Deanne

P.S. I just reread for edits. The keyboard does not accept the letter P unless you pound heard, so if there are misspellings it is not my fault!

San Gimignano- A "discovered" Tuscan village

We traveled all day Friday to reach San Gimignano, which lies about 50 km or 1 hour by slow regional train south of Florence. We had pounding rain, thunder and lightening and cold weather all of the way, but arrived to a beautiful Tuscan evening. Our hotel, Hotel La Cisterna is right in the center of town, but unfortunately the train doesn't come to this town. We asked a cab what the price was to take us the 10 km to our town, and after hearing his rediculous answer of 50£ we struck out for the bus stop. After half an hour the bus arrived, the driver jumped signaled to all of the Americans waiting for him, to put our luggage in the luggage comp'artment in the back of his mini-bus. We all did as instructed then boarded the bus only to find out we were to have purchased a ticket in advance. Lots of yelling in Italian went with that discovery, so Mike and another American went in search of tickets while the women stayed near the bus to make sure our luggage did not head off without us. The bar where he dicrected us to get the tickets told Mike they weren't selling any, so they came back to the bus. Meanwhile the driver is getting irritated by the delay. I told him we needed to get the luggage out before he could leave which further bugged him. So, in the end he signaled us in to the bus without tickets. The ride up the hill was through gorgeous vineyards with ancient stone farmhouses lined up on the top of hills. It was wonderful. The driver didn't want any money when we got to town, but Mike insisted he keep our 5 Euro tip, so we ended up trying to patch international relations between Italy and America by not mooching a free ticket.

We are taking turns using the internet cafe computer... the only one that works, so I have to log off now. We are in seach of another place where we can both work at once.

I will write further in a bit. Deanne

Final Day in Switzerland

We decided to move on. Mike is feeling good and the bruises have faded to that wonderful shade of yellowish green that is so attractive. We took a nice walk this morning along the Aare River. We tried to find a room for a few nights on the path between here and Tuscany where our next reservation lies, but we ran into a wall of full hotels. We decided to do one very long train trip instead, leaving here tomorrow morning at 9:30 and getting to San Gimginano four trains later at 6:30 PM. It will be a long day, but we know we have a room waiting. We will stay in San Gimginano (1 hour south of Florence by train) for five days then move back to Florence to see Caitie for a few days before we head to Rome for our flight home on October 15.

We have loved our time in Switzerland. Everything is so clean and beautiful. The Swiss are very proud of their country. Every morning we see shopkeepers wiping down the front of their stores, cleaning the windows and sprucing up the sidewalk displays. The people are genuinely friendly, unlike some of the places we have been like Venice where the people appeared to suffer from tourist fatigue.

The weather has been unpredictable. Mike ended up buying a fleece pullover because he was suffering from the cold. He now proudly sports his "Swiss Military" fleece, a beautiful red reminder of Switzerland. The weather report says it is 80 degrees in Florence, so the jacket will go back in the suitcase when we leave.

Today is Mike Jr.'s birthday. We are thinking of you, Mickicito. Have a great one. We will celebrate with you on the 16th when we get to Bellingham. We are looking forward to seeing you.

so Long from Switzerland. Next stop.... Tuscany.

Deanne

Mickey's the world over

Here we are, once again in the front window of McDonald's being watched by the tourists who walk by and point to the Mickey D's disquised as a real restautant. The Swiss Mickeys are pine lodge looking (Zermatt), modern sports bar (here in Interlakken) or historical landmark (Geneve). They all have outrageously priced food that is slightly better than home. They do take pains to try and blend in, though. No huge parking lots (well, there was one in Tomar,Portugal) or big golden arches. This is the subtle look. The free daily half hour of internet access is enough to pull us in every day. I drink a cup of tea, Mike has a coca cola light. 6.60 swiss francs, or approximately $5. Beats the internet cafe, though.

Today is raining, so we have been reading. I will write more this afternoon.

Bye for now.
Deanne

Cow Update

I talked about the cow concert, but that wasn’t the end of the cow story. Yesterday we were walking around town and we heard a loud clattering, banging noise. Thinking it was a parade coming around the corner we stood on the side of the city street to see what was happening. A herd of cows, complete with big cow bells around their necks and Christmas trees tied to the tops of their heads were walking down the center of town herded by some un-cowboylike folks with sticks. Apparently the cows spend their summers up in the mountains grazing then come down to town for the winter. Their twice annual trip up and down the mountain is called Alpsabzug and the timing of our trip coincided perfectly with the winter move. For the rest of the day we had to step around the piles of cow manure in the streets but today’s rain finished off that problem.

We never did hear why the cows are decorated with Christmas trees on their heads, but we will try to figure it out for the next chapter of the cow story.

I have written a little about how we have split up our responsibilities on the road to play to our strengths, but the more time we spend on the road the more clear those unique roles have become. I don’t mean things like laundry; we both wash our own laundry out in the sink every other day, or if we are in a town for several days, every day. The trick is to do the laundry with at least on complete day to dry. The real division of duties is in things like asking for help (Mike unless it is a little old lady- then Deanne), scanning the guidebooks and planning the logistics of the trains (Deanne except when Mike was excited about visiting Lungern, which he planned), managing the finances and tracking the budget (Mike, totally and completely). We spend all of our time together and talk about everything. Other than walks, which Deanne has taken alone while Mike heals, most of our day is spent together. We have our quiet times while we are working on individual projects such as blog updates or journals, but most of the time we are doing things together. We are very compatible travelers.

The more days we are in Switzerland the more German I am remembering. Those five years of German in high school were not completely forgotten. This morning I asked the kitchen helper to refill the coffee and I asked her for our bread basket. When the owner came in, I greeted her formally (and correctly) and earned a smile. She is an older woman who speaks English very well, but she is being very helpful with my stabs at German. Mike and I are both trying to improve our language skills as we move from country to country, but it is sometimes hard to remember where you are and what language to use. Over the past week we have both found ourselves thanking someone for our food with a quick, “Grazie”.

The weather is starting to get cold. It has been raining some nights, which is quite cozy in our fourth (top) floor room with the sloped, wood paneling ceiling. We hear the rain falling on the roof all night then wake to a chilly, but clear and beautiful day. We have been taking strolls through town each morning, then while Mike rests his foot, I take longer walks out into the countryside in the afternoons. Interlakken has been a restful stop for us.

We found the fitness club. It is "geschlossen". Not exactly sure why it is closed until October 5, perhaps vacation, but we aren't working out at the fitness club.

Deanne

Micky D's- Free internet for thirty minutes a day

For the price of a Diet Coke (amazingly they are about $5.00 US for 2 of them) we can sit in Micky D's and work for thirty minutes on free internet. So here we are, second day in a row. I spent most of my minutes on updating the photos. I should have written the blog entry off-line and posted during the thrity minutes. So, tomorrow will be longer.

It is dreary and rainy today so we are looking for the fitness club to work out. We will let you know how it turns out.

So long on a wet Sunday in Interlakken.
Deanne

Sttending a Cow Concert in the Outdoor Auditorium

On one of our train rides through the gorgeous Swiss countryside Mike fell in love with the strip of towns between Interlaken and Lucerne. These little towns were all similar; well maintained, peak-roofed homes surrounding a church with a steep roof and tall spire built on the tallest hill around set beside the crystal aquamarine glacier water of a lake. For whatever reason, Lungern struck a cord with him and we decided to stay there for a few days. Mike got on-line and found accommodations in the Rossli Hotel for significantly less than our big city accommodations, so a few days ago we set off for Lungern.

It was a long trip, with four separate train rides and the changes in between. When we finally arrived in the tiny town of Lungern we were ready. We were standing near the doors to the train with our baggage ready to alight when the train stopped. Unfortunately it was difficult to tell which side of the train was the right side to get off, so after pushing hard against the door I finally got my side open and we threw off the bags. Unfortunately it was the wrong side of the train and we were out of sight of the conductor who had no idea we were trying to get off. So, by the time I got off and the bags followed, the doors closed before Mike could get off. They blew the whistle to take off and we forced the door open as he slid out of the train. I know you have guessed the rest. He bruised up the foot attached to the recently healed leg. In fact, his left foot is now a horrible shade or purple that matches the shade the leg was until days ago. He is jinxed.

The train station is on a hill. In fact, the entire town in on the side of a mountain. The train comes over the pass and Lungern is the first town it hits. The town begins at the train station and works it's way down the hill to the lakeside, then back up the mountain on the other side. When I attach the photos you will get a sense of it. We set off downhill toward town to find the Hotel Rossli. This is a small town so it was easy to find. Attached to a restaurant, this family run place was in the midst of lunch time when we arrived, so after waiting for Mom to finish up with some card-playing lunch guests she checked us in. Our room was in the chalet hotel facing the lake. With a wall of windows and a beautiful deck we had a great view of the mountains and lake. Beautiful.

We spent the next few days walking the nature trails around town and enjoying the peace and quiet of this little village. On one walk that I went on alone I walked past a building with opaque glass windows on some garage doors. It was clear that there was heavy equipment inside, red in color, so perhaps a fire department. Later, I revised the guess to be snow removal equipment. As I continued walking it was apparent that the second floor of this building was an elementary school. It was lunch time so I was able to see all of the kids leaving for lunch. I heard a horn player inside practicing (in need of much more practice). After walking up into the hills I heard the most amazing "band" of bells, cymbals, etc. I wondered where it was coming from and kept walking to find the source. Imagine my surprise when I looked down to the field below and saw that I was listening to the bells around the neck of the cows. Some huge (maybe 16 inch diameter) and others smaller, they rang at different pitches making the most wonderful music that echoes through the valley up into the hills where I was walking. A cow concert!

We are sitting in McDonald's using 30 minutes of free internet before it runs out, so I have to go. I will work on another entry tonight that I can post quickly tomorrow when we return to McDonald's.

Bye for now. Deanne

Success at Everyday errands

When you live somewhere a long time you learn to operate efficiently and effectively with little conscious thought to day-to-day activities. When you move you are forced to start over and find a new grocer, a new dentist, a barber that gets it just right and the best place to get your favorite dinner. When you move every two or three days, without the thought that you will be home in two weeks so haircuts and dental appointments can wait, you have to learn some tricks to figure out how to learn these things quickly. Not learning them means you have shaggy hair for awhile, you buy your bottles of water at the tourist shops paying four times the price you would pay at the grocery store if you could just find it, and you can't get fresh fruit for breakfast so you will just have to settle for the fruit cocktail they serve. When you combine the need to learn these things quickly with the language difficulties and the cultural difficulties it is more complex. Does the place that looks like a hairdresser cut men's hair? Will you look like a complete moron if you go in and ask?

As much as we love our suitcases, we did have one mishap. While yanking them on and off trains every other day has not hurt them too bad, one hauling effort caused the foot rest on my bag to fall off. It didn't grossly effect its functionality, but it did fall over rather than stand up. We saved the leg, but the screws holding it on were broken. This happened two weeks ago, and we have been quite unsuccessful at finding a hardware store in which to buy screws, nuts and the hardware to use them to repair my suitcase. So, we have devised a two person team effort to make our way. One of us watches the suitcases, holding mine up, while the other goes in the information office, the restroom, or the shop. Then, while out for a walk today Mike spotted a hardware shop on a side street in Zermatt. We have not found a hardware store in bigger cities than this with lots of asking, so imagine how surprised and excited we were to find this old fashioned neighborhood hardware store. We found the equipment we thought we needed and with a promise that they would trade anything that didn't work for replacements, we left the hardware store to empty my suitcase and try to put the foot back on. We installed the foot successfully and considered that a win!

As to haircuts. Barbers are hard to find in some countries and easier in others. Spain seems to hide them but they are very clearly barber shops in Italy. Mike got a great haircut in Orvietto, by using sign language to make his requests. How do you explain how long to make the sides, or to trim the beard if you and the barber don't speak the same language? All I can say is I think the sign language worked really well and we may try it when we get home.

I have explained grocery stores in an earlier blog. The groceries are not surrounded by giant parking lots. They are in tiny side streets, with only a small doorway going in, usually to a set of stairs down to a basement, but sometimes winding to the interior of a building. There is nowhere to park- everyone walks to the market and buys only what they can carry or put in their rolling basket to get home. If you don't know the name of the grocery stores in that country you would have a very hard time finding the stores. So, you look for people carrying plastic grocery bags and you walk in the direction they are coming from. In most of the countries we have visited the groceries are quite small, think the size of a convenience store with shelves closer together, a meat and fish counter and a small produce area. In some groceries you weigh your own produce and put a scan tag on it from the scale. In other groceries you are not allowed to touch the produce, instead you point out what you want and they bag and weigh it for you. Swiss grocery stores are the largest and most beautiful stores we have seen so far. Think Whole Foods. Big, well stocked and much greater variety than any other country we have seen. For example, yesterday I was able to buy almonds and cashews in the grocery instead of buying them in the health food store as we had to do in Italy.

Laundry facilities continue to be elusive, although we have decided that when we have found them they are so expensive and time consuming that doing our own laundry in the hotel is preferable. We have a routine now. The day we check in to the hotel is laundry day. Mike strings the line and we each wash and hang our laundry. Whatever isn't dry by morning shower is put on hangers in the closet until time to leave. We left some of our clothes in Florence in the hotel we stayed during the kick-off of school for Caitie because we are going back there on our way home. So, with a limited wardrobe on hand, we have to wash clothes every two or three days and layer to keep warm. Yes, I am sick of Mike's orange shirts and he is sick of my white and black shirts.

It is raining and cold today. We have been out for a walk this morning, then again for lunch and a walk, but now we are in for a cozy afternoon. It is snowing in the mountains nearby, but here it is not quite cold enough for snow. But cold enough to keep us inside this afternoon.

We spoke to Caitie, Jonny and my mother over the past two days. It is wonderful to hear everyone's voices. Everybody is doing well. For those of you curious about how school is going for Caitie I can just say that she is ecstatic about her choice of NYU Florence. She loves the curriculum focused on the Renaissance, had made wonderful friends with her roommates, has been on a weekend trip to Rome to see the museums ans stay in a hostel, and is learning to speak Italian. Jonny has started school and he loves it too. Things are going well for everybody.

Love, Deanne