Welcome to my blog. I document my adventures in travel, style, and food. Hope you have a nice stay!
We flew down to the Los Angeles area yesterday for our annual visit with my family. Today was mochitsuki, where family gets together to make rice cakes for the New Year. Afterwards, Melody, Tynor, and I drove back to Lyon Supply to have dinner with my parents and my Aunt Frances, and we got a chance to see how empty the store looked.
After almost 20 years my family has sold Lyon Supply, their art supply store. While they're still working there and the name is almost the same (renamed to Lyon Art Supply), they are now employees instead of employers.
This post covers our last couple days in Budapest and the trip back to Seattle. I've also posted a lot of pictures on the Budapest page.
We arrived back to Budapest on the 27th, and Melody's conference started on the 28th. This post will cover the first half of our last swing through Budapest. I'll post about the second half soon after we return to Seattle.
Eger, Hungary was our quickest visit, since we were there for less than 24 hours. It was a nice chance to take a breath, however. Even though we did several things, they took only the better part of an afternoon.
Kraków, Poland was our next destination. It's described as meny to be the “Next Prague” as far as tourism is concerned. Oddly enough, we had already been to the “Next, Next Prague”s, Budapest and Dubrovnik.
Since we'll do more sightseeing in Budapest after Melody's conference, I'll post the pictures page then (probably after we get back home). In the meantime, here's a narrative of our first Budapest stay.
Ljubljana (lyoob-lyee-AH-nah), Slovenia was quite a change from Bled. While we were pretty laid back in Bled, we ended up doing a lot of sightseeing in Ljubljana, although we took the opportunity to spend some time in coffee houses in the afternoons.
Bled, Slovenia was meant to be a less hectic stop on our trip, to give us a chance to recharge. The setting couldn't be better, with the clear lake set in the lush mountains and a penzion (inn) with the feeling of a small Alpine resort.
After Mostar, it was back to Croatia. Split is another coastal city, but feels much more urban. Many ships come here, as well as busses and trains. While it's used as a transfer point by many, there are also a lot of people who stay a few days in this resort-like city.
Bosnia-Herzegovina was in the throes of war in the early 1990's, but Mostar seems to be an up and coming tourist destination. It's pretty easy to find people who speak English, and those who don't know enough words to make communication not at all difficult.
Croatia is very popular with tourists, especially the Dalmatian Coast, anchored at the south by Dubrovnik. There are more pictures on the Dubrovnik page, including ones showing the great view from our room.
Planning this trip was very involved, but things came together pretty well. I'm lucky that Melody enjoys the research involved with such a task.
I'll be posting pictures and information about our trip to Eastern Europe in two ways. These blog entries will have some pictures but for the most part will have quick information about the city we're visiting and small stories describing our visit. This entry is actually being posted after we've been to a few cities, due to the lack of internet access. The first Trip Log entry is about our flight over, followed by our experiences in Dubrovnik, Croatia and Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina..
Stacia found a stash of photos from my Great Aunt Eiko, so I scanned them in. I eventually want to work them into pages for my family, but for now I'll put them into a post.
Yesterday marked the end of the Seattle Mariners' 2009 season, and even though they finished third in the AL West, this year was an unqualified success. New management made quite a few changes over last winter (and even more during the year) with the end result a team going from 61 wins in 2008 to 85 in 2009. All indications point to the clubhouse environment improving a lot and everyone (players, fans, media) enjoyed the season as it unfolded.
We're coming up on a quarter of the way through Project 365, and I thought it would be a good time to post some more pictures I found interesting.
It's hard to believe we've already been here almost a week, but so we have. We've hit multiple 100+ days, and will be more than happy with the 20°F drop in temperature when we get back to Seattle.
Another day has passed, and it's hard to believe our trip here is more than half over. We stayed inside the store for the bulk of the day so we were spared the heat.
Kellen, Josie, and I made it safely to CA on Sunday and even though it's been only a few days, we've been pretty busy. So far the weather has been in the 80's/90's, and has been pretty humid, not unlike what we left in Seattle. Last week it was cooler in Southern CA, but this week it's a few degrees cooler at home. Figures.
