Mundane

So far today, Manfred & Bill went to wash clothes at a Laundromat, which is a bus ride and a walk away.

Note: when going for a trip, try to get mundane things done before the trip, like making sure credit cards work (we did it for Manfred's, but not mine, which we now need to use since his are gone), cell phones work, batteries/chargers/adaptors all good, have soap, towels, extra bags -- stuff like that.

We did get to ride the Ferris Wheel.

Wonderful Wein

That's Vienna, in English.
We arrive here Friday, after a fast train ride from Salzburg (less than 3 hours). However, Manfred left his fanny pack on the train, and it was probably turned in to some bureau. Unfortunately, this is the beginning of a major long weekend, and all offices are closed until Tuesday. Hopefully, we can get it back then. It just had everything that was important in it, Passport, train & plane tickets, credit cards, iPod & cell phone, you name it.

However, we are ignoring that and doing our Vienna things. We saw a performance of the famous Spanish Riding School this morning. It was soooo beautiful. And we bought tickets for a concert tomorrow night. We will go on the big ferris wheel tomorrow (Monday), also.

Tuesday we are supposed to head for Budapest, but we will first have to find the fanny pack with the train tickets.

Sankt Gilgen am Wolfgangsee

That is, Saint Gilgen on Lake Wolfgang. The cute old tourist town on a beautiful lake in the Hills of "Sound of Music" near Saltzberg, Austria .

Our dear friend, Runi, lives here. Every time we come here, she takes us around to see different sights and experience different culinary delights. Yesterday, we toured a salt mine. Bill liked the mine and the underground lake, but he didn't appreciate how much fun it is sliding down the long slides to the lower levels.

We are staying in a beautiful apartment on a farm, complete with cows, chickens, and cats. We get milk fresh from a cow for breakfast. The apartment has 2 large bedrooms, 2 baths, and a sitting room/kitchen. And a front porch. It is very new and beautifully finished, as things always are here. The views are all beautiful, with mountains all around, but you can't see the lake from here. The place we stayed before was just a large room w/bath (and another same for Bill), but there was a big balcony with a spectacular view of the lake.

I wrote this on Manfred's new iPad, and didn't know how to add photos, so now I used the computer to put this one on. Here we are, on one of the high pastures where the cows stay in the summer. Click the photo to see it bigger. (It's me, taking a photo  of Bill.)

Bad, bad Blogger

I wish Google would not change. Every time they, or anybody else does that, they make it worse. Now the pictures won't float and I've wasted a lot of time trying to get them to move, but they won't. I added a 2nd photo to Roma but I did the same thing for Innsbruck but the new one never showed up. I'll have to wait until I get back and have time to write my own HTML. I guess I'll have to change to a different host. :-(

I'm at present having breakfast in the hostel, which is an official government & HI (Hostels International) hostel. It's quite nice, and the breakfast is good, but we got 2 double rooms with baths, so it's expensive (for us). Costs about $100 per day. The shower in our room needs work, they wanted to give us another room, but Manfred didn't want to move all his stuff which he has scattered all around (marking his territory?).

In Innsbruck

It was a long train ride, but we made it. Then we wanted to go to Fussen to see King Ludwig's famous Neuschwanstein Castle. It wasn't quite as snowy as this photo, in fact, it was shrouded in scaffolding because it's being painted outside. This happens only every 10 years. We did go through a real snowstorm on the way back. We had to rent a car because the public transportation is rather difficult and quite expensive.

Since today was a holiday, we didn't have to return the car, so we visited the Sworovsky crystal place. They have a fantastic exhibition there.

Roaming Roma

We came to Rome on an overnight ferry, a huge boat. it took about 18 hours, from Barcelona.

We hadn't been here before, so we took 2 tours. It's the hight of the tourist season, and lines at the attractions are very long. We saw the Colosseum and environs yesterday, today the Vatican. But we lost our tour after the Sistine Chapel so didn't see the Basilica. This trip is becoming a comedy of errors.

Anyway, it was great to see the paintings all cleaned up... they are even more marvelous, now.

We will be here one more day, then take a train to Innsbruck.

Gone to Barcelona

Manfred thought we could just go to the Lisbon airport and get a flight to Barcelona. Well, it was very difficult and we had to pay about 4 times what we would have if we had bought online at least a month ahead. Note: never go to an airport without a ticket.

Barcelona was great, as usual. We didn't get our favorite hostel, and the substitute left a lot to be desired, but a good time was had by all. Note: always book hostel in Barcelona at least 2 months ahead.

Addition to May 3

Well I was not able to add to the previous post (edit), so I'm trying this new post called "Addition to May 3" What I wanted to say was that the tow truck driver came in a half an hour and jumped the car, it started right away. I I drove around for about 30 minutes and the battery was up to snuff again. We had a great time, saw a lot of the country side north of Sintra with the realtors car.

Property hunting in Portugal

May 3.  2012   Sintra, our third day here at the hostel,  Nice Way Sintra Palace.  Today was the day to view some specific properties with the realtor north of Sintra.  We got to the car and the battery was dead!  I think I left the light on last night.  Anyway, the realtor picked us up and we had an interesting land viewing day.  We saw 3 parcels of empty land and 1 house. They all had around 2 Acres.  One of the Parcels was pretty much what we were looking for.  It cost about $110k.  Now we have to get the money.

Then we had a really nice lunch, thanks to our good friend, Bill Jones.  

When we got back, the realtor tried to jump-start the car, but it would not work so we had to get someone from the rental agency to come and start it.  

Here in Sintra

We survived the ordeal of the non-stop flight to London (9 hours + 4 hours pre flight taxi, bus and check-in), 3 hours bussing and walking around Heathrow, 3 hours flight to Lison, renting car and driving to hostel, dragging suitcases up 3 flights of stairs, going out to dinner, and falling into bed. The time here is 8 hours later than in WA, which is why we could get all that into 2 days.

Today is Labor Day in all the world except US, so everything except tourist traps was closed. We drove to the beach towns and around the country a bit.

The hostel is very nice, a big really old house/mansion with a big garden.