Pamukkale Paradigm

As soon as we arrived in Pamukkale, I knew I would have difficulty with the travertines from an experiential point of view. From a distance the travertines look a lot like an early season ski hill or a small glacier- the ice falling over edges, the colour of the dirt and algae on the surface, the look of the slippery slope. We have had windy and cool weather while we have been here, adding to the difficulty of thinking about swimming in the warm pools made out of calcium carbonate rather than skiing down the relatively short slope. Even at night, looking up at the hill made me think of Red Mtn with night skiing. Added to this were the emails from Big Red Cats showing photos of the early season skiing back home.

It wasn't until we were walking amidst the travertines shoeless and geothermal water running over our bare feet that I really could get a grip of the fact that this was a very different formation and not ice or snow. It was a fantastic experience and today we are all back into the preset mind state as we slip on our words and say ice rather than salt to describe our experiences. It really speaks to the strength of our experiences as we try to change our paradigm of what really could be.

See photos in Emilia 's blog below.

Pamukkale

We went to a small town called Pamukkale. There is also a site named Pamukkale. The site has little cup things that hold water. They do not hold water all year long. We got lucky in that it rained so that they would be filled with geothermal water.

We also went to an ancient pool in Pamukkale. The ancient pool was more geothermal than the cup-thing-a-ma-bobbers. We swam in the ancient pool. In the ancient pool we would play on daddy's back and daddy would smash his shins on the ancient pillars and the ancient rocks. The ancient pillars and the ancient rocks came from the Roman empire. The Romans built a beautiful pool for the emperor and the ancient rocks and the pillars are from that pool.

All the water at the site was geothermal (geothermal means heated by the earth). Most of the geothermal was warm, but some of it was bit cool. The geothermal reminded me of Iceland.

Bye,

Emilia

Ephesus

The day before yesterday we went to an archeological site called Ephesus!! It is the most preserved Roman site in the world! Everybody knows that Kelowna has 100 000 people, but this ancient city Ephesus had just over 200 000 people in it. Wow, that must have been big! Actually, the site was over a whole kilometre long.


We also went to the temple of Artemis. It is one of the seven great ancient wonders of the world. We have also visited two other of the great ancient wonders on the trip. The Parthenon and the site at Rhodes where the giant statue of Colossus once stood.

Yesterday we went to a beach!!!!!! I built a tunnel so I could go through it. It was very hard to go through one way, but easy to go the other way.

In Turkey there is this thing called the blue eye. When you have one and someone gives you the evil eye, it bounces back at them. I really wish I had one so my mother and father would stop looking at me in funny ways.

Bye for now, I hope your school year is going well.

Mattias

The Search for the Ever Elusive Pita

There are certain things I associate with a country and for the most part, these associations have rung true. Like Crepes in France, fresh Pretzls in Germany, Strudl in Austria... So you'd think that Greece would not let me down when I tried to find Pita. In a way she didn't let me down, there was pita available at most restaurants and certainly at every Gyro stand. But whenever I tried to find fresh pita in the grocery store, there was none to be found.

Lunches are generally picnic affairs and we try to vary things a bit and often try to inject as much of the local staples as possible, so I thought pita at lunch would be a nice change up when in Greece. At first we found NO pita in the grocery stores we went to. Bakery's too. None, zilch, nada, nichts, kanenas... Now these were not always little stores - even the large ones where they had everything else - Greek and otherwise. "Where are the Pita?"we would ask. We usually got a shrug and the best we got was a 10 pack in the frozen section. Now the frozen 10'r was an improvement, but it still wasn't the same.

Often with will and determination there is a happy resolve to these kinds of quests, but alas, I must admit defeat. We never did find a source of the fresh pita. Perhaps all of the Gyro stands have the market cornered? Maybe Greeks don't eat it? Maybe you can only get frozen imported from... Canada? Whatever the case, we never did track fresh pita down and will have to make this a priority should we ever find ourselves in Greece again. I hate to think we were simply missing something obvious - though that is a possibility as well. I will have to resign myself to the fact that the frozen 10 pita were pretty good (once they thawed) and the ones from the Gyro stands and restaurants were great.

Fresh Pita - Where are you?

Quarterly update

Amazingly we are, to the day, three months out! This is one quarter of the way through our trip so we decided it was time to reflect on the many adventures we have had so far. We are doing this as a family, so some of the comments may include more than one response if we have differing thoughts.


Iceland
Best attraction: Minke whale, geyser, natural hotsprings
Best food: homemade soup
Biggest challenge: staying awake the first day; sleeping during daylight

England
Best attraction: salcombe sailing, Oliver, crabbing
Best food: Salcombe ice cream
Biggest challenge: Saying goodbye to the car

France
Best attraction: classic hike in Pyranees, Eiffel tower, Puy du Fou, Chateau Breze , Lascaux caves (so many...)
Best food: pan au chocolat, Camembert, mussels
Biggest challenge: finding camping in the middle of the night in Moisac(they lock the gates); kids biggest challenge was talking the parents into letting them have a pan au chocolat
every day

Spain
Best attractions: FC Barcelona museum; hiking in Picos de Europa, aqueduct in Segovia
Best food:we camped and cooked our own food mostly so we are not sure what we missed...
Biggest challenge: parking (anywhere in Spain), getting away from the cigarette smoke

Portugal
Best attractions: uncle Paddy and playing in the waves, archaeological site Citinia de Briteiros
Best food: BBQ fish, rice bowl with egg, vegetarian platter
Biggest challenge: getting info from Tourist info about anything other than the specific town we were in.

Germany
Best attraction: FC Koln game, riding Marina and Geronimo (auntie Chris' horses), hiking the steepest vineyard in Europe
Best food: pretzels, Daddy's birthday cake, Chris' pumpkin soup
Biggest challenge: beating Michy at footie (Mattias), none for the rest of us

Austria
Best attraction: Crown jewels in Vienna, meeting all the family, hike on the Hohewand with the petting zoo and zip line
Best food: sacher torte, heurigan food
Biggest challenges: getting cold milk, finding a happy Austrian in Vienna

Slovenia
Best attraction: Skojan caves, Vintgar gorge
Best food:Slovenian pub fare in Bled
Biggest Challenge: staying dry

Croatia
Best attraction: Plitvice Lakes, old city Dubrovnik
Best food: seafood risotto, ice cream/ gelato in Croatia
Biggest challenge: finding an easy route to Greece

Greece
Best attraction: black sand beach, Santorini; quads, old streets of Rhodes, Zeus' temple
Best food: halva, olives
Biggest challenge: finding fresh pita in the stores, not stepping in land mines (dog poo), finding legit TI offices

And there you have it....some of the best, not really much to complain about, and lots of yummy food.

Zoom Zoom

Today and yesterday.... well, yesterday we rented a quad for yesterday and today. (I forgot to say we are on Santorini, Greece).  The fastest speed we hit was 52km/hr. I was with the crazy driver Dad. Dad and  Mom also let me drive by myself for 5 minutes or so. We zoomed to a town called Oia  (Eeya) and watched a sunset. Today we zoomed to a red sand beach and a black sand beach.

At the red sand beach, we tried to snorkel but the water wasn't clear enough and there wasn't much to see.  Also, I tried to balance a thin rock on a thin rock, but it wasn't working for me so I put them together like a T for sitting on and then it all collapsed.

At the black sand beach we found some beach beds under umbrellas for free, that felt very tropical. I went snorkeling and saw and eel at this beach. He glared at me so I swam back and told Mima to get out of the water.

I think the place we are staying, is the best place we have stayed  so far.  It is good because it is comfy, they clean our room each day, there is a swimming pool and cake every day so I think Life Is Good!

I think that is it for this blog entry, I will get back to you as soon as I can.

Mattias

ps - don't forget to write comments.

Quad - ruple

We are on Santorini Island.  We rented some quads. On them today, Daddy let me drive for a bit. Frightening, hey!?  He totally took his hands off the steering and accelerator and let me drive. We went to three beaches. One was rocks and we didn't stay long. Another was a red sand beach and the other was a black sand beach. We stayed at the black sand beach the longest.  At the black sand beach, me and Mattias would swim in the water and snorkel with Daddy. We also would lie in the sand and bury ourselves. Yesterday we drove on the quads to Oia ( EEH-ah) and watched the sunset.  Tonight we are going on a night ferry that will arrive at 7am.  I am looking forward to Rhodes Island.

Groovy Greeks

Classic Greek vs our version
Corrupt police sounds like carped police - Emiliaism
Socrates sounds like great soccertes - Mattiasism ( disappointment at learning he wasn't a soccer player)
Typical Greek corner today - looking one way you see riot police and civil protesters (every other day event right now) less than a block in the other direction a ceremony marking the end of the German occupation, more police, but his time dressed in their best....hmmm. The irony not lost on too many on that one.

So here we are, in the heart of the city of Athens. Athens wasn't even on the original itinerary, but Greece, well it is so enticing! Getting from Croatia to Greece is an interesting dilemma and a long way given the options, we opted to take a ferry to Italy, wrong direction - we know, and then the 17 hour haul to Greece. The first ferry time flew by as we met some really fun Brits doing a year trip too- we hardly saw our kids, they were having a blast with their new friends Charlie and Billy, while we were being taught a new card game that Bernie, well, I'll leave that unsaid.

Surprisingly - in Greece, everything so far has been just that....surprising.

For me, Athens is nothing like the city I remember from 24 years ago( to be honest I was dreading coming) - it is cleaner, more welcoming, the hostels are great and the site-seeing really is amazing. The sights haven't changed much I suppose, but my outlook likely has!

For Bernie, the history has been fascinating (bit of a history buff he is) and the photography is fantastic.  Mostly the later as a result of the man we met who cleaned his camera.  For about 6 weeks, Bernie has been disgruntled at a dust speck you can see on most of his photos. He tried cleaning it himself, but ... When we arrived in Athens he did some internet searching and found Picopoulous cameras. Off we went - and discovered a man who had been in business -with his father- since 1935. His father was the only Greek to ever produce cameras - named Picca ( pic from the last name, ca for camera) . And he was totally up to date with his knowledge of digital cameras.  Bernie got a scolding for trying to clean it himself ( apparently it was obvious once opened).  The kids got a glimpse of his camera collections - wow! and the best part, the man was brilliant - a doctorate from Cambridge in Philosophy.  He was friendly, fun and obviously loved his work. It really helped that his English was good too - it meant for some great conversation. What better Greek to meet!?


The kids have enjoyed learning the Greek history (nice and gruesome) and seeing some for themselves, but today, they found the best thing yet - at Hadrian's Library ( yes, a Roman in Greek territory) they scouted out 9 tortoises, one a wee baby. They were in heaven.

Sorry for the lack of photos on the side bar - we are having trouble finding a connection fast enough to upload them... wait for Croatia tho, they are pretty great!

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who are Canadian.... we know we have lots to be thankful for....

Till next time,
Karen

Walls (images here too...!!!)

We walked on a Roman wall. It was so cool! You could see all of Dubrovnik. I forgot to say we are in Dubrovnik. We also went to an Island called Lokrum. On Lokrum we went swimming on a rocky beach. We had to wear sandals because there are sea urchins on the coast of Croatia. Lokrum is on the coast of Croatia.

While me and dad were swimming, we saw a black sea urchin eating a clam. It was really awesome. We also went tortoise hunting - no tortoises, but we did see peacocks. And we saw a baby peacock. The length including the tail was about a half foot and it was about half a foot tall. It was by its mama peacock.  We also saw lots of males but they did not spread their beautiful feathers (I guess that is for mating season).

Daddy is reading to us about the Groovy Greeks. They got in a different wall by playing tricks and because Cheradimus knew the password. Tomorrow we are heading to Italy and the next day to Greece on an overnight ferry. I hope the Greeks don’t play any tricks on us!

"Piratee mantises" (with images)

We arrived in Dubrovnik and went straight for a hike. We saw three Preying Mantis’ (cool - two adults and one baby). The evil  baby bit me !!(He was green and one of the big ones was green and the other was brown.)

We also came across a pirate dude with parrots  that sat on our shoulders ;)))The parrots were well trained. I thought the guy was psycho because he dressed me up as as a pirate (look down for more information).

There was a white parrot that ran away and the pirate brought him back from a cafe with a package of sugar that the parrot was eating. Just to tell you, the parrot stole it! Good thing parrots don’t get cavities.

My How Travelling Has Changed

Karen and I were lucky enough to have traveled for extended periods in Europe and Asia in our younger years, before we knew each other, but roughly around the same time - 20 years ago. Now I know some of you math whizzes are saying "That can't be. That would have been when they were 9 and 12". But alas, too be truthful, we are a little older than that ...

Well traveling 20 years ago seems in many ways to be similar. No we didn't have kids with us then, but the jist of it is the same - travel within a budget, eat where the locals eat, sponge where you can, plan as you go and be ready to be spontaneous. Though we haven't stayed in a lot of hostels, we have hit a few and they are good to make us feel a little bit younger again as we chat with the other travelers about whatever - usually good places and bad, how long we've been on the road, countries visited ... Just like 20 years ago. Granted it does get weird when we share some anecdote from our travels 20 years ago and the looks around the room tell you that the other travelers weren't even a twinkle in their mothers eye back then, let alone been born (Talking about shooting digital versus film usually has the same effect). Mattias and Emilia are closer to their ages than we are... by about double.

Where it starts to get different is when you factor in the technology that just didn't exist when we traveled 20 years ago. Almost all the travelers we meet travel with technology, usually some sort of netbook or laptop and that is where a bulk of their planning is done. Mattias and Mima use the gadgets we have for everything from music to math. Even most of their books are electronic. Where we used to have a guidebook or two as a starting point, people now use the web (though you still will see the guidebooks around but even the guidebooks themselves are available electronically).

Internet and wireless are key selling points for places to stay and merchants rely on the internet to get the word out. Ratings on TripAdvisor and similar sites can make or break an establishment. Travelers check these and base a lot of decisions on that information. More and more people book in advance, or at least they do in the places we've traveled so far. We used to just get to a place and start asking around of other travelers or maybe start with some of the guidebook recommendations. It usually took a little while but I must admit I'm glad the kids don't have to be part of big searches for a place to stay as I seem to recall doing.

Even places when you do book with will send you a google map link to give directions to their place, have panoramic views of their rooms, and even have computers on hand to use. I also talking hostels here - not fancy pants hotels and so far it seems more common than not.

It changes things in terms of planning and perhaps lessens the sense of surprise when you get to a place (that can be good or bad). Maybe some spontaneity is lost and certainly there are those who don't use it for this reason. For us we have used it and more since we are no longer camping (though campgrounds featured the technology as well). Spontaneity is often there with kids and traveling, but the kind that we were accustomed to in our 20's is not necessarily the kind that Mattias and Emilia would enjoy.

We'll see how true this difference of traveling with technology will hold as we venture beyond Europe, but so far - it's working for us.

Great place

In Croatia, I think you all know, everything is great. We are staying in a great apartment, hostel, don't know what you'd call it. Just across the street is a great swimming area, not too many sea urchins and lots of minnows (a few crabs too). We went crabbing on the first full day we were here. We watched a little one eat and then we caught him and we also caught a fairly big one that I almost stepped on:( First one we saw was way too hard to catch, scurrying along on the rocks, hiding completely under them-so, we gave up.

Today we went to Korcula. We saw two humungous ships, the tall mast was about 40 meters high. They were about 40 m long. We just went out for dinner, we were going to have cake, but they didn't have any. The only desserts they had were ice cream and crepes, that we had for breakfast. So we decided we will save the cake for when find a good one ( speaking of which, it is mommy's birthday).

Sorry can't add a picture as they aren' t loaded yet, I will once they are up.

Bye for now everybodiezzzzzzzz

Mattias

Hvala, Croatia

Croatia has been everything and more than we could have expected. Even on the
back end of some bad flooding - read: rainy weather- it really has been fascinating. We started at Plitvice lakes, a spectacle of nature unlike you can see anywhere else, as far as I know anyway...and we were lucky enough to be there while all the colours were turning on the trees. 12 lakes, one above the next, with a veil of water cascading down from each to the next, the cascades in various heights. The only negative was the massive number of tours going through. Very few people travel on their own at this time of year, but there are lots of groups around and they don't move very quickly.

From Plitvice we went to Split via the only public transport possible, six hours on a bus to get 220 km. Can you say milk run..... And we weren't
even convinced we wanted to got to Split after various reports from people about there not being much there. What we found was a real living city where you could get a glimpse into Croatian life. We thoroughly enjoyed our two days there, with nothing to "must see" and lots of time to wander and observe. The old city is intriguing and we did see a lot, but to the kids dismay no turtles. Mima's eye, if you are wondering, is looking pretty good and the swelling has gone down a lot- should be back to normal in a day or two. Thanks to everyone who sent her a note!

Now we are enjoying island life as we kick back for four days on the island of Korcula. The low season allows for some great accommodation deals and we are happy for four nights in one spot with a terrace on the Adriatic. We have seen dolphins twice and so the kids are on the lookout.

That's all for now....Croatian pics not loaded yet, but when they are I'll attach a couple...

Miss everyone at home,
Karen

The Green Market

We went to the Green Market. It is a market where people sell food and clothes and other things like tablecloths. We bought some fruits and vegetables. It was near the water line, and since it was a sunny Saturday everywhere you looked there was a person. Even if you looked down the street you would see a person. Oh, I forgot to mention where we are - on the coast of Croatia in a town called Split.

Back to the markets part. There were also a whole whack of bees. Mattias didn't get stung, Dad didn't get stung, Mom didn't get stung....but I got stung! In a very bad place to be stung. It wasn't my fault because, when the bee flew by my eye I blinked and it got tangled in my hair and then it stung me right on the very edge of my bottom eye lid. I screamed! Almost everyone came and circled around to see what happened. A doctor and a nurse asked if we wanted help. Mom showed them we had an epipen and they realized we were good. I was crying so hard I could hardly hear Mom talking to me. That darn bee. Luckily the stinger didn't get stuck there and it didn't die. My eye got all puffy. Dad went into a random restaurant and got ice. We wrapped it in a head scarf and held it against my eye. The bee sting was in the morning when we just left the hostel. It still hurts now and it is 10 pm.

Tomorrow in the morning we are going to some islands to find some good snorkeling. We will stay there for four nights. Today we walked around the town and looked in a place for turtles, unluckily we didn't find any. Here on the coast of Croatia, when you go to the waterline, there is a rocky edge. Mattias and I went to clamber down the edge, we were careful and it was okay. We tried to catch crabs, but no luck. But on the rocks we found some crystals. Mattias chipped some off with a different rock. At a different part it was a straight down drop with slippery concrete. You couldn't go on it it was too slippery. It wasn't too long, only about 5 feet. We could see all sorts of colorful fish in the clear water. Some were long and scaly like a rainbow trout but looked like a baby shark, but we knew they weren't because sharks wouldn't come that close to the surface.

At night we thought it was beautiful because the palm trees were lit up and the buildings reflected on the water. We thought that was very, very pretty.

Mattias and I decided we want a hamster and a turtle. By the end of the day we were pretty tired so Mattias and I got ice cream. I got lemon with chocolate sauce. Mattias got vanilla with chocolate sauce. That's what we did today. Get back to you soon.
Goodbye, Mima