Splitting for Split

Although our meeting was in Dubrovnik, we’d been told that one of the most beautiful places in Croatia was a little town named Split, so that was our first stop in the country. But first we had to get there, and that wasn’t

Sunset on the road to Split

easy. Our flight choices gave us several options and none of them great. Barb ended up booking a flight that had two stops before getting to Croatia; I found a more direct route, but had to go through the dreaded Madrid airport.  However, the weather was so unsettled in the northern US that the airline was happy to put Barb on the plane from DFW to Madrid instead of her multi-stop itinerary. I was happy because I was on that plane, as well. We both had bulkhead seats, but not together. The lady who sat next to me had an elbow that resided in my ribs – I really missed sitting with Barb! Overly tight quarters, a completely full plane, and surprisingly bad food did not bode well for this adventure.

Quebec City Sites

Once again, our tour of Quebec City was too short to really learn much

Colors of fall above a marina

about the city; happily that requires a return trip! I was delighted to hear French spoken and gratified that I could make myself understood, at least enough to find a restroom and a gift shop. Although it wasn’t a particularly warm or sunny day, the old city was lovely, especially the Château Frontenac Hotel and its environs.

Seeking out San Saba

The first question Dave asked when we rolled into town was, ‘What does

Big horn sheep

San Saba mean?’ Of course I didn’t know (it’s not French or Italian – maybe Spanish?), so we asked the oracle (Google) and here’s what we got: First, there is no translation from Spanish to English for Saba, but San can mean saint. So going with our guess of Saint Saba, our second bit of information told us that Saint Sabas was, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a ‘Christian Palestinian monk, champion of orthodoxy in the 5th-century controversies over the nature of Christ. He founded the monastery known as the Great Laura of Mar Saba, a renowned community of contemplative monks in the Judean desert near Jerusalem. This community became a prototype for the subsequent development of Eastern Orthodox monasticism.’ The Catholic Encyclopedia pretty much agrees, ‘Basilian monk, hermit, founded the monastery at Mar Saba near Jerusalem. Died 532.’ And if you were wondering, Mar Saba is ‘Old Man’ in Aramaic. There are at least five other saints named San Sabas.  So how did Texas get a river, a county, and a town named after a 5^th century monk? I haven’t uncovered that piece of information, yet!

Goldthwaite Gold

Before we venture out on road trips I try to do at least a bit of research

Abandoned house and well

about where we’re going beyond looking for places to eat and to stay. My task was made difficult because I didn’t pay attention to how the name of the town is spelled. That middle ‘th’ gave me all sorts of problems, but I was sure that there had to be something written about Goldthwaite, so I persevered. Eventually I got the spelling right and found a goodly amount of history concerning the seat of Mills County.

Pretty Priddy

Cedar Oak

Priddy Woman, Priddy in Pink, ‘Priddy Maids All in a Row’, ‘I Feel Priddy’, ‘Priddy Little Angel Eyes’… and more, and more puns. Driving into this tiny town sparked all sorts of silliness from Dave and me. We did calm down enough to look for the historical marker and to learn a bit about this Priddy little town in Mills County.

All the way to Albuquerque

The fact that the Angel Glamp Retreat was held at the Enchanted Trails RV Park in

Top L to R: Sunrise bracelet, Tessellation Lariat
Bottom: Crystal Fidget pendent

Albuquerque was quirky enough to tempt me, and when my friend, Teri, said she was going, I packed my bags and jumped on a plane. I was also attracted to this retreat because of the instructors. While bead embroidery isn’t difficult, it takes a special vision to design these pieces and a lot of patience to complete the work. Having taken a class previously from Kinga Nichols, I knew that we’d get to make something that was unusual and reflective of her artistic insight; I wasn’t disappointed with the Sunrise and Sunset Shores bracelets (I chose Sunrise). Nikia Angel, our other instructor, has been one of my inspirations for quite a while and I was delighted to finally get to spend some time with this creative lady. She gave us a choice of constructing either her Crystal Fidget or the Tessellation Lariat. Of course, I chose both and they are both wonderful! She introduced us to her Sparkly Wheel component and invited us to use it in our own designs. A lovely bonus came from Judith Bertoglio-Giffin; she volunteered to teach a group of us bead crochet. That was exciting to learn, too! These three ladies are exceptionally generous with their talents, helping beaders take what they learned and incorporate it into their own designs. This retreat was fun and I’m glad that I made the journey to Albuquerque! And although I’d been here twice before for the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, I’d never really taken the time to explore the old section of the city, nor had I realized that one of my cousins lives in the area. Besides the hot air balloons, the city has a rich cultural history, extensive petroglyphs from the Ancestral Pueblo peoples, and an interesting geologic landscape.

Finna leið okkar í Iceland

Coming into Iceland

The Republic of Iceland is a sparsely settled (about 9 people per square mile) island that just touches the Arctic Circle and it was one of the places I always wanted to visit. If you put Hawaii and Yellowstone in a sack, shook them up and dumped them out, you’d have the countryside of Iceland (without the palm trees). There are volcanoes, black beaches, geysers and other geothermal features. Differing from these two places are the glaciers that formed valleys and that persist over 5,000 square miles of the island’s interior.  Because of all of the geothermal energy almost all of the energy used is from this renewable resource; it also allows production gardening in greenhouses. Within these greenhouses are enough banana trees to make Iceland the largest supplier of bananas to Europe. However, since its founding in 874 by Ingólfr Arnarson, most of the economy was based on fishing and agriculture; now one of the biggest money-makers is tourism, even though this is an expensive place to visit. Islandic culture has its roots in Scandinavian and Germanic heritage, which isn’t surprising since most Icelanders are descendants from these groups. What’s interesting is how people are named: usually a person’s last name signifies the first name of the father or in some cases the mother. This is a hereditary tradition that is distinctly different from that of Europe. If a man is named John Smith and has a son named George and a daughter named Mary, their last names will not be Smith. They will be George Johnson for the boy and Mary Johndaughter for the girl. It works in the same manner if the children are given the mother’s name. So Sally Jones’s children would be George Sallyson and Mary Sallydaughter. Iceland became a sovereign country under the Crown of Denmark, the Kingdom of Iceland on December 1, 1918; in 1944 Iceland became a republic with a president as the head of government. Chilly and windy, all three towns we visited in Iceland reminded us a great deal of Tasmania and of Scotland.

Pausing in Paris

Bridge over Seine River

Paris is one of my all-time favorite cities! Perhaps the only thing I don’t like is the number of tourists. As we wandered the streets, renewing old acquaintances with landmarks and eateries, it dawned on me that I’ve never been to Paris without a jacket and without needing a raincoat. This trip was no exception; we got damp and chilly, but it didn’t dull our enthusiasm. I was surprised, however, at the increase in the number of people who spoke to us in English. This doesn’t mean that you don’t need any French to travel in France. Having a few phrases (please, thank you, where is, I would like, what does it cost, etc.) are always helpful, particularly if the person with whom you are dealing has the same level of English as you do of French. And being polite goes a long way toward getting folks to communicate with you. Although the French have a reputation for being surly and rude, I have not found this to be the case; rude people are everywhere and there are no more in France than in the US. As a population, they are more likely to speak more than one language and are much more tolerant of poorly spoken French than Americans are of poorly spoken English.

Old Time O’ahu

L to R: Tantalus Drive, Tantalus Park, Song bird

Granted, winter in Texas generally isn’t too bad, but the forecasters were calling for freezing rain, sleet, and ice. We wanted to go where it was warm, so it was off to Hawai’i! The most inexpensive place to land is ‘The Gathering Place’, O’ahu; so three Near-Normal Travelers (along with another 100 thousand or so tourists) arrived to visit about 900,000 of our closest friends. Locals (any resident of Hawai’i) don’t use directions when navigating this rhomboid-shaped island; ‘ewa’ is toward the western tip of the island, ‘Diamond Head’ is to the eastern tip, ‘mauka’ is in the direction of the mountains and ‘makai’ is headed for the sea. The island is divided into five or six sections, depending on who you are talking to: ‘Town side’ (roughly Halawa to just below Diamond Head), ‘West Oʻahu’ (Pearl Harbor to Kapolei and Ewa),  ‘North Shore’ (all of the northwestern coast), ‘Windward Side’ (all the northeastern coast); ‘East Side’ (the eastern part of the island, overlapping ‘Windward Side’ and east Diamond Head), and ‘The Valley’ (Pearl Harbor northwest to Haleiwa). One of the drives we try to take early on to get oriented to the island is the road up and around Tantalus crater. This is a wonderfully scenic drive that immerses you into ferns, palm trees, giant philodendrons and other Hawaiian plants you’re expecting to see. Stopping along the way let us look out on different parts of O’ahu and begin to make our plans for what we want to see and in what order. Of course, plans change as opportunities arise. This time we were determined to see some areas we had not visited before.

Aimed at Aledo and Restaurant Review

House on the prairie

From the time I was in junior high school, the Aledo Bearcats athletic teams (football and basketball) were terrifying. This wasn’t because they were so much better than other athletic teams we played, but because those kids were ‘rough’. We dreaded playing away games because we had to ride the bus all the way out to this foreboding town, were likely to lose the game, and might get into some sort of altercation ~ at least that was what we believed when we were kids. In retrospect, both schools were classified as 2A (105 to 219 high school students) with the only difference being that Aledo was a bit more rural than Everman at the time. Now a visit to Aledo is a nice ride into an area of cattle ranches, prairie houses, and historic settings.