Oscypek in the mountains

Yesterday we hiked over 20km through the Tatra mountains. It was cold and a bit misty at times but we had a good day. Our first stop was the famous Morskie Oko (lake). After 9 km of hiking on a very good asphalt road that is now closed to public traffic we reached the lake. We couldn't see much of the mountains but it was still a beautiful alpine lake. Thanks to the weather we could also move around as there weren't too many people there. There have been as many as 17,000 people visit the lake in one day!

We took a horse cart down the trail to escape the rain and save some time and then hiked back into the mountains in search of cheese. The trail to Polona Rusinowa was much more interesting as it was made of rocks and steps and felt like a proper hike. After about an hour we reached a clearing. You could hear the sound of logs being loaded onto trucks and I thought I heard a sheep. We reached the crest of the hill and sure enough there was a little cabin and not too far away a flock of sheep. One of the shepherds was carrying down a pail of fresh milk while another sold us some oscypek smoked cheese, some fresh cheese and some sheep's milk. It was all delicious. And so fresh!

Happy 4th of July

We spent the night in Lourdes for the 4th of July. It's a popular pilgrimage site that has become very touristy with tons of shops selling candles, rosaries, and bottles you can use to collect the holy water. And at night it all gets lit up with neon lights. 

If you can put the tourism aside though it is really an impressive complex with so many diverse chapels and churches in such a small place. You can give confession in at least 6 different languages and people come from all over to heal themselves. 

Every night at 9 they have a short mass procession with candles. It was a rainy evening and still so many people showed up for it. I can't imagine how many people must visit this place each year if there were so many for just an ordinary day! 

We weren't expecting to have the town fetes too. After the mass we walked through the neon lit tourist streets to the carnival and outdoor concert that was set up for the Lourdes festival. We waited for the main act to take the stage - Willy William. He sang Happy Birthday, which was cool since it was the 4th of July. Happy birthday USA!

Trilingual Reunion

After five years we have finally managed to see our French friends that we met in Spain. Between the five of us we all lack knowledge in one of our three common languages -French, English, and Spanish. With me being the worst in my lack of French. Somehow we managed to communicate all of us with a funny mixture of the three languages.

I was really looking forward to this visit and finally seeing our friends again and somehow it was even better than I could ever have imagined. We had so much fun and learnt so much about the food and culture in the north of France. I'm learning alot about french cheese. We went to a supermarket and they had an entire aisle just for cheese! And all of them different! I think we had cheese and dessert after every meal, even if there was already lots of cheese in the meal. Like the flamiche au maroilles that we had for dinner.

We visited an old swimming pool that has now been transformed into a really cool art museum. And it's in a town that used to be very famous for its textile industry so there were some old fabric catalogues and fashion exhibits in the museum too.

Today we explored Lille and it was full of Swiss people for the French Swiss soccer game tonight that was in the Lille stadium. (We went to the fan zone for another game last night and I scored a goal to win a bag! We even saw the Swiss soccer team yesterday by coincidence as they were staying at the hotel right by the museum and arriving just as we were leaving the museum.) 

Lille's such a nice city (even with all the drunken soccer fans) and so easy to walk around or take the metro or tram. Lots of character and of course delicious food. Apparently we need at least two weeks to try everything typical of the region but I think we got a pretty good sample.

Thanks guys for everything! I hope we get the chance to host you soon. Missyou already.

Copenhagen

So even with a delayed flight from Boston we still had a bit of time to get out of the airport and explore Copenhagen. It's very easy to get from the airport to the city. We got an overview of the city by climbing a tower with a spiral staircase around the outside. It didn't have a top landing- the stairs just kept getting narrower and narrower until you couldn't climb any higher. 

After this we explored the Christiania neighborhood that was recommended to us by a lovely older couple we met while waiting in Boston for our delayed flight to board. They said it was a friendly, open neighborhood that smells a bit like Amsterdam and is very safe with no trouble and lots of interesting houses. They were right. You aren't allowed to take photos on one of the streets so pardon my hand blocking the photo but I thought it was interesting how the booths were set up to block the identity of the sellers. We didn't explore too much because we had a flight to catch to Paris. 

Boston: follow the red brick road

We had a great time in Boston with P's cousins. They took such good care of us and we got to see a lot of the area. We spent a day in Boston city. It has so much history! It was nice to see it in person rather than just read about it in a grade school history book. We walked along the freedom trail following the red brick road. I kept thinking of the Wizard of Oz. We took a free NPS tour, ate lunch at Cheers and even had some cannolis in the North end where we ran into a procession for St Anthonys day.

Our following of trails continued in Salem where we learned that all of us are psychic. We just have to find it within. Needless to say we didn't actually believe this so didn't but any charms or pendulums. It was fun to see and pretend though. Along the Salem Witch Trail we learned a lot of history too.

And we can't forget about the Sam Adams brewery tour, delicious dinners and wonderful company and birds!

Overall a great stay in Boston.

Road Trip: San Fran to Bass Lake via Yosemite National Park

 
Leg 1: 218mi, 4hr55min

So this is the unofficial start of our road trip across the country, well at least to Chicago. Unofficial because we didn't drive this segment- we will pick up our rental car after Yosemite.

We started off Friday morning with my brother driving. We had a great trip, taking our time through the park and a detour to Yosemite Valley.

We even got to crawl through a fallen sequoia tree in Tuolumne Grove. Unfortunately Mariposa Grove is closed for restoration, but we enjoyed seeing some baby giants. 
 
We met dad and BK at the cabin in Bass Lake, and of course we couldn't miss out on burger Friday!

Back in the USA

I've finally decided to try and start blogging again. Great timing as we are nearing the end of our road trip but I'll try to catch up on the past month or so. We started with a great week in the San Fran area visiting my family. Mom was a great tour guide showing us the greater San Francisco area. So great to see her again.

If you're ever in the Bay Area

There's so much to see and do!


Our week in San Fran just flew by. It started with Burger Night on Friday when we got in- what a treat it was to have a family dinner with all three of us home at once and such an array of toppings for our burgers. Yum!



We headed to Sausalito on Saturday and took the ferry across to San Fran city. It's always nice to get out on the water, and we had a fun day walking and people watching. The line for the ferry was very slow moving, but we were lucky enough to have a man and his dog entertain us with their singing and guitar playing.




Sunday we met up with S & K, who live in Haight. It was a windy day, and we had to learn to walk quickly to keep up with them!

Monday we went to a Giants game. It was P's first time in the stadium- I love the view from there.

We spent the rest of the week hanging out with mom and family- it was good to be home for a bit. We went to Santa Cruz, Berkeley Bowl, bowling, and we even saw Jerry Rice on the golf course.

New Zealand Flag Design

So it has been suggested that New Zealand needs a new flag. The NZ government is currently taking submissions for flag designs, so if you'd like to make your mark in New Zealand history, now is your chance. Submit your designs! It's a bit of a debate and the topic of many jokes at the moment as to whether it's worth all the money being spent on this re-design. They've been holding meetings that aren't very well attended, but apparently all the engagement and support is coming in online. There are over 7,000 submissions for a new design so far. Many are variations on the silver fern, kiwi bird, and korus in red, white and blue. A few incorporate rugby, and then there are those that have a unique take on what it means to be a kiwi, for example displaying the kiwi fruit instead of the kiwi bird. Here are just a few that I found funny, unique, or interesting. Have a browse yourself and see if there's anything you like better than the current New Zealand flag design. If you click on the title of the design it should take you to the submissions website where you can read the reasoning behind the submission from the designer.

The Beach

How about a kiwifruit

The Winding Road

Crayfish Bonanza

Paherowa (Pavlova)

Integration

 

Chocolate Fish

Melting Pot

Koru Jack

Fighting Kiwi

Phar-lap

Mt Yasur - A volcanic expedition

It's not every day you have the opportunity to stand atop the crater of an active volcano and look down into a sea of spurting lava. I'm really glad we took advantage of this amazing (albeit expensive) opportunity - it was even better than I had imagined.

We were lucky enough to only have four in our tour group. From reading reviews, it seems like you normally caravan to the foot of the crater with lots of other groups, but we were lucky enough to only see one other small group (3 people only) when we arrived. Getting there though was an expedition indeed.

I've spent the past couple days compiling a video of photos and footage from the journey, so I won't say too much and will let the video speak for itself. I just want to point out a few things that are hard to capture in a five minute video:
* Our home for the week- we could see our place on Efate from the plane as we flew off to Tanna, see if you can figure out which one it is in the video!
* The cyclone's destruction- note the high number of trees that have fallen during Cyclone Pam. You can see this from the ground but I remember it being remarkably noticeable from the air, even more so on Tanna than Efate.
* It's bumpy- while making this video and when uploading it, I was asked multiple times if I wanted to stabilize the footage. I didn't think it was nearly as bad as I remember the journey itself being, so chose not to employ the stabilization. Hopefully it doesn't make you sick (I managed to avoid the car-sickness, only just).
* The smell- of course, being on top of an active volcano smells strongly of sulfur and whatever other mysterious things are erupting from the center of the earth.
* The heat- when I showed photos to my coworkers, they all asked if we could feel the heat. I must say, it wasn't noticeably hot whilst we were standing on the crater edge- in fact one of the guides was shivering. However, once we started climbing back down toward the car you could feel the air getting cooler and realized that you were just standing on top of a massive fire ball.
* The sound- the video captures some of it, but at times I thought the earth was going to open up to a big dinosaur and swallow us whole (lucky it didn't!).

Seapost at Hideaway Island

Diving was my main inspiration for visiting Vanuatu, but places with good diving often come with good snorkeling and Vanuatu was no exception. It even has this wonderful tourist gimmick of an underwater post office! Of course, being the fish that I am, we just had to check it out.

Unfortunately, the manned underwater post office had been swept away by the March 13, 2015 cyclone. Luckily, the actually post office box still remained and is supposedly checked daily. Mom, let me know if you ever get your postcard- I actually wrote it underwater! How cool is that?

Apparently the coral here was much better before the cyclone, but it was a pretty good start to our vacation if you ask me.

I'm only going to apologize once for the large number of underwater photos that are to follow on this blog (this post and those to follow)- I got a new GoPro toy and have lots of photos to show off. Here are a few from the first day: 

One of P's favorite fish

Tropical Fish

Finding Nemo

Blue Clam