Bulgaria

Stob's Pyramids, a natural formation caused by erosion outside of Sofia

Rila Monastery - amazing paintings covering the church

Rila Monastery

This a private residence and he had tons of old cars like Trebants and Beetles and they were on the roof!

Plovdiv and the Roman amphitheater

Shipka Pass - a monument to the Russian soldiers that helped Bulgaria defeat the Ottoman Empire and kick the Turks out of Bulgaria after 500 yrs.  The views from this were amazing!!

view from Shipka Pass

Shipka Pass

We also toured an ethnographic museum that was incredible.  There were shops with artisans crafting and this is a bagpipe shop.  Mike bought the pipes hanging in the picture!  Very cool! 

From Istanbul, we took an overnight train to Sofia, Bulgaria. Iskra, our tour planner, met us at the train station.  She was wonderful and so were all of our guides and our driver, Luybo (pronounced Lubo).  He was apparently an actor on vacation for the summer and she arranged for him to drive us.  He didn't speak very much English, but we had a great time with him!  We were in Bulgaria for 6 days and the tour was definitely a crash course on Bulgaria history.  We traveled to Sofia, Plovdiv, Lovech, and Veliko Tarnovo and saw some amazing things at every place.  Best things:

• Sofia - Boyana Church (I know that I always say this, but this is seriously some of the most amazing art I have ever seen) We couldn't take pictures, but the church is covered in frescos dating back 200 yrs before the Renaissance.  They are stunning and realistic and gorgeous.  We were only allowed in for 10 minutes and the timekeeper just couldn't help himself and started pulling Mike and me around to show us and tell us everything.  He was so excited that it was hard not to get caught up in the magic of the place.  I think that he thought that our guide, Rumi, was going too slow!
• Plovdiv - Probably the Roman amphitheater in the center of town...what?  Yep, a Roman amphitheater.  Not that it is surprising to see Roman ruins, but it is still incredible how many there are and where they turn up.  They didn't even know it was there until they started excavating for a subway tunnel a few years ago.  And, now they have events there.  Oh, and also whiling the afternoon away at several cafe/bars.  It was so hot, there wasn't much else to do after our tour.  Good times.
• Lovech - small town, probably Danni, our guide, was the best thing.  She was 20? and full of attitude.  She was fun and we had lunch with her and Luybo at the hotel her family owns in town.
• Veliko Tarnovo - cool town with many reminders of communist Bulgaria.  And, an incredible fortress on a hill overlooking the town.  The ruins were huge.  There is a restored church there with murals that were repainted in the 1980's.  Because it was still communist, the govt wouldn't allow the works to be specifically religious.  As a result, the church is not sanctioned and is only considered a museum.  Our guide, Ruman, said that the murals scare the tourists.  They were amazing!  I loved it, but I can see how they would be a bit off-putting.  There is a lightshow at the fortress every night and Ruman happened to be the manager of the show, so we had seats in the special viewing building for the show.  It was so dramatic and awesome!  And, on an island in town, there is an incredible equestrian monument dedicated to the Asen dynasty, three brothers and a nephew who 'founded' Bulgaria.

I should probably spread this out a bit, instead of trying to cram it all into one post!  That's a recap of  Bulgaria.  I'm going to put pictures from Veliko Tarnova in the next post.

Istanbul is Constantinople

As promised, here is the Istanbul post.  Obviously, we have loads more pictures but I'm only going to put a few here.  Gotta save something for the family to sit through.

We arrived in the afternoon and our hotel picked us up.  It is almost an hour to the old town where we stayed.  The hotel was really cool and what a view!  We had three days and two nights in the city, so we got moving immediately, wandering the streets.  We happened to be there right in the middle of Ramadan and it was a huge party as soon as the sun went down.  All of the families came out and gathered in the park around the Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque to have picnics.  People and children everywhere, it was great!  There was even a festival area hightlighting the food and crafts of Ramadan.

As far as the sights, what can I say?  The Hagia Sofia is absolutely one of the most incredible things I've ever seen.  I studied it in school and was amazed by its age and its size and that it was a church and then converted to a mosque.  But, it seemed so exotic and outside of any possibility to see it.  I was awed that Mike had been there before we were together.  And now I've seen it too!  Something to check off the bucket list.  Everyone should go to see the Hagia Sofia

We went to the Bazaar, we walked across the Bosporus to the new town, we went underground into the Cistern and toured the Topkapi palace.  Everything was incredible with fantastic views!  It is an amazing piece of real estate that Istanbul occupies and I would go back in a heartbeat.  We'll go to the Asian part of Istanbul next time.

Next stop - Bulgaria.

Flying into the city

Ataturk Airport

Our hotel room

The Blue Mosque decorated for Ramadan (or Ramazan as we saw it written)

Women leaving the Blue Mosque, I love this photo because they look like spirits or something.

The Ramadan Festival

Festival entrance - so many people!

Breakfast at the hotel restaurant - what a view!

Inside the Hagia Sofia

Arabic medallions added after it was converted to a mosque

There were cats everywhere in the city and apparently this one likes to sleep right here.

When the Hagia Sofia was converted to a mosque, all of the Christian imagery was covered, but it keeps coming back.  See the crosses?

Aaawww...

View of the old town from the new part of town, the Asian part of Istanbul is on the far left

A vendor in the spice market - see the pyramids of spices?

Dinner on the way to the train station to catch the train to Sofia, Bulgaria

Summer Review

Grant's Headquarters during the Petersburg siege

Hanging out with Ben

Museum of the Confederacy - Lee's tent

Bullet Rosette formed from a Northern bullet and a Southern bullet colliding - these are amazing!!  We actually saw several of them at various museums.

Richmond courthouse

Violet Bank - General Lee's headquarters for a short time outside of Petersburg

Museum of the Civil War Soldier historic buildings

Museum of the Civil War Soldier historic buildings

Museum of the Civil War Soldier - building exhibiting the line between the North and South

Virginia Battlefield

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Arlington Cemetery

Okay, so let's catch up on the summer.  Mike was in Petersburg, Va all summer taking a class at Ft. Lee.  I stayed in Texas and then Sandra (his mom) and I drove to meet him in Virginia on July 4 weekend.  After that, we spent the rest of the time hanging out with Ben and seriously catching up on Civil War history.  Virginia is heaven for Civil War buffs.  We saw Grant's headquarters and we saw Lee's headquarters.  We toured the Petersburg battlefield.  Mike took field trips with his class to battlefields in the area.  We went to the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond and then we went to the Museum of the Civil War Soldier outside of Petersburg.  All of the museums were extremely well-done and I learned so much about the war that I hadn't known.  Now that we are in Maryland, there is even more to see including Gettysburg which is not that far from Havre de Grace.  And, we are in Revolutionary War territory now so that will be interesting as well.  So much history on the East Coast.  We also went to Arlington Cemetery on the way to the airport to fly out to Istanbul.  We were there in time to see the changing of the guard at the tomb and we visited the graves of several of Mike's classmates.  It was a very moving experience.

Back to Blogging in Havre de Grace

Havre de Grace lighthouse found here

Where did the last four months go?! After an extended hiatus (apparently), I am back and in full blogger mode. This summer has been a whirlwind of trips through Texas, Virginia, Istanbul, Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine. And now, finally we have arrived in Havre de Grace, Maryland where we will make our home for the next few years. After being here for a week, I am getting excited about living in this small Chesapeake Bay town. Everyone has been super friendly and we have found a place to live right near downtown within walking distance of everything...except Mike's work, but that drive is only 15 minutes or so.

I will post some pictures of our trip soon, as in later today or tomorrow, I promise!  And, I have no idea why the formatting has gone crazy, but I will work on that too.

Road Trip.

The Gothenburg Ibis
The afternoon we picked up the car we made it to Gothenburg, Sweden. This trip we stayed at several Ibis hotels because they are affordable and everywhere in Europe. This Ibis happened to be a boat! It was nice and we had dinner there in the hotel and went to bed because the next day was going to be long. We got up early and left Gothenburg with our destination being Bergen, Norway on the fiords. We bought the Europe maps for our GPS and it worked perfectly! I was amazed. It would have been very difficult without it. And, we bought an audio book online and listened to it through our GPS all day. It would have been somewhat brutal to only be able to listen to Norwegian radio for 12 hours. Yes, that's right. 12 hours. I think that our top speed was 40 miles an hour. The roads were crazy, but there wasn't very much traffic so that was a good thing. And the tunnels! One tunnel we went through seemed like it corkscrewed down into the mountain forever. We just kept going round and round. A couple of hours outside of Bergen we realized that we had to take a ferry to keep going. There was some stress for a while because we didn't know how late the ferry ran and if we were going to have to sleep in the car to wait for it. Thankfully, it was still running and we were able to keep going. We had a hotel reservation in Bergen so we went straight to the hotel when we arrived and crashed. Long drive! I think I will save our adventures in Bergen for the next post because I have already gone on and on.

Malmo, Sweden.

It seems to be taking me a very long time to get through our trip. Oh well. Just to recap, we have already been to Amsterdam, driven through Germany and took the train/ferry to Copenhagen. After spending the night in Copenhagen, we took a train to Sweden over one of the world's longest bridges. We arrived in Malmo early, ready to pick up our car and begin our drive. However, the Hertz rental car office decided to not open until 3pm. So, we had some time to kill. It was so so foggy everything seemed like some kind of dream. And, we could barely see where we were going. We wandered into town and through it toward the old palace. Mike had been to Malmo before, so he knew where we were going. There is a botanical garden around the palace and it was just beautiful in the morning fog. The palace is a museum now and we went to the gift shop and then walked back to the square for lunch. It was cold and all of the restaurants have blankets draped over the chairs outside and heaters, so we ate outside. After lunch, it was finally time to get the car so we walked back to Hertz. Everything looked very different without the fog! We picked up our Volvo wagon and drove into the Swedish countryside on our way to Norway.

Copenhagen continued.

These things are hard to explain. They are part of the royal treasury and made from ivory and amazing! Most are from the 18th century and they are so intricate, with lots of little parts and pieces within pieces. Incredible.

The entrance to Tivoli Gardens.

Ok, so I found some more pictures from Copenhagen!

Copenhagen, Denmark.

The Harbor.
Somehow, I only have two photos from Copenhagen. I will check Mike's camera again.

We left our hotel in Luebeck Saturday, October 9 (according to my book) and walked to the train station. the train arrived and it was a small two car train. We thought, this can't be right because we are going all the way to Copenhagen. Little did we know... and let me tell that it is always good to get reserved seats on the train because this one was packed and I'm not sure that we would have had seats if we hadn't reserved them. As it was, we had to kick people out of ours. Anyway, the train went to the ferry port and then drove onto the ferry! Everyone unloaded and spent the 45 minute trip eating at the restaurants and shopping in the stores. The ferries are like cruise ships so there is alot to do. Then, back on the ferry and away into the Denmark countryside we went. We stayed at a new contemporary hotel called Wake Up Copenhagen and walked from there to the old town. Copenhagen is a big city with lots and lots of tourists. We had to walk past Tivoli Gardens (the oldest amusement park in the world) and it was totally decorated for Halloween. Very cool. However, it was closed for some reason, so we didn't go inside. We just wandered around old town and went to the old palace to see the crown jewels. There were some amazing things! Then it was down to the harbor for drinks by the water and people watching. We only spent one night in Copenhagen, so the next morning we took the train to Malmo, Sweden.

Germany.

The red car is ours and Mike had to press a button to bring it down so that we could leave the hotel.
Munster.
The market. Look at the leaves!

Me admiring the pumpkins.

Bremen's Town Hall

The cathedral.

Bremen during the day.

An Art Deco conference room in a hotel.

I am the worst blogger ever! So, catching up with our trip. We left Amsterdam Wednesday morning and took a train to Dusseldorf, Germany to pick up our rental car. Then, we drove to Munster which had the best market ever. There were fresh meat vendors and flowers and fruits and vegetables. and the best pumpkins and gourds. Everything was beautiful. We ate at a food stand there (yum) and walked around the square. Then, we got back in the car and headed to Bremen. Bremen is an great town and the jewel of the Hanseatic League (we spent alot of time this trip in Hanseatic cities, so now we are experts). Anyway, it is pretty amazing because they became a power player in the 1200s and were in charge of ports as far away as Bergen, Norway (more on Bergen later). The old town is beautiful and there is one street called the Boettcherstrasse that was incredible! Brick buildings with quirky details like aquariums and art niches. Very cool and art nouveau. Bremen is famous for its Three Musicians tale and its statue of a donkey, dog, cat and rooster. It just occured to me that there are four animals, not three. Hmm. I should look into that. Next stop, Luebeck Germany.