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.

Got the tickets

We have finally bought the tickets for our trip to Europe. Bill Jones is going with us. We leave from Seattle SeaTac Airport on Sunday, April 29. We will arrive in Lisbon, Portugal, the next day, April 30. We return to Washington 7 weeks later, on June 22, flying from Frankfurt to Seattle.

This time we are going to a new country (for us) -- Hungary, and other E European places. [Photo is Budapest]

Here's our plan:
Lisboa/Sintra - Barcelona - Roma - Innsbruck - Salzburg - Vienna - Budapest - Prague - Dresden - Berlin - Frankfurt

We want to stay a week in the Budapest / Vienna area, but accommodations are not easy to get, at least not from here.

Greetings from Mexico

Just finished my 3rd, and hopefully last, session with our friendly neighborhood dentist -- if your neighborhood is Tijuana, Baja

I have gotten a whole new set of much-needed chompers, and now I can chomp anything and everything.

We are enjoying Port Orchard. A small town, but nearer civilization. We can go to Seattle to go to the iMax theater, or whatever. It's just a ferry ride or two away.

Re. pic:
OK - it's been shopped, but not the teeth. Couldn't stand seeing the under-eye bags.

Happy Year of the Dragon 2012

I was born in a Year of the Dragon, 1940, so this is special for me.

New Move

We have just moved to our house in Port Orchard, closer to Seattle & other civilization. The new address is: 1300 Flower Ave Port Orchard WA 98366 Still unpacking and getting settled in.

Just keeping on keeping on

I haven't posted here for some time, but I've been adding to my askgeneva.wetpaint.com site. Still typing the Port Angeles Senior Center newsletter and being VP of the local MUG (Mac Users Group). I'm giving a demo of how to make slideshows on iDVD tomorrow @ the MUG -- first time (wish me luck). I recently got a new iPod Touch (it's like an iPhone) and I've been having lots of fun getting some of those thousands of apps. Books & games & lots of cool stuff, including fantastic wallpaper (I'll try to put some here).

Update

Well, we did the tech fair, & it was good. Then we saw a movie -- the Adjustment Bureau. It was excellent.

The neatest thing at the fair, for me, was a Hackintosh made by Chuck of the SPCUG. It was a Dell Mini 10v - running Snow Leopard!
Here's what it looks like -- cute as can be --->

It only took him a couple of hours to hack the $300 Dell NetBook to run the $30 Snow Leopard upgrade. Appears that it's become pretty easy now with the Dell Mini 10v and Mac OS 10.6 -- most of the time spent is waiting for it to set itself up. I want to make one.
See comment - update

Time has flown...

I've been spending most of my time on the Strait Mac User Group (SMUG) here, getting a booth ready for a tech fair that's coming up tomorrow in Sequim. And, my typing of the Senior Center newsletter 'job' has continued. It was supposed to be for just 2 or 3 months.

I've tried to keep up on the AskGeneva website, but there is still much to do. All the specs have changed for the MacBooks. And, of course, the iPad 2 is here.

The new Mac OS X system is coming... OS 10.7 named Lion. It's presently in beta for developers only, but I couldn't resist this photo.

I had a horrible toothache -- the kind that starts on Friday and you suffer agonies until you can get to the dentist on Monday, then it stops hurting. But he said it was infected, and gave me a prescription for antibiotics. I was so beaten down that I actually took them. I haven't done such a thing in at least 40 years. It made me sicker than anything -- coughing, nose running, fever, etc. I'm just now getting over it. Never again. .

Happy New Year everybody!!

Activities

I have a couple of new "jobs" (no-pay). One is typing the Senior Center Newsletter and the other is VP of the Strait Mac Users Group.

As typist: The Senior Center uses InDesign for the page layout -- I find it much like Pages, but the differences are in Pages' favor IMHO. ID looks too much like a MS product. Anyway, it's done for Feb and I want to change it over to Pages before it's time to start typing the March issue.

As VP: It's my job to arrange the programs. Luckily the 1st 2 were done already, since I missed them both! January because I was in Hawaii, and Feb because I was sick (still am, but it should be over soon). I have also been given the job of coordinating arrangements for the MUG booth at a Tech Fair that will be happening March 19. For that, I set up a wiki, but, so far, only 4 members have contributed.

Christmas in Hawai'i

I (Manfred), too, can't believe that we lived here so long. The island of Kaua'i where we are, is much more built up from when we lived here but at the same time, I must say, that most of it is still very much he same. The same underdeveloped roads & single-lane bridges, the same 40 foot MATSON containers that bring in practically everything from the Mainland US, the same vegetation, except more so, with it's flowering trees and bushes and most of all the same friendly and seemingly very happy people.
We were fortunate to be invited by our long time friends in Princeville on the north of the island for Christmas dinner and had a most wonderful time.

The weather is another thing all together. It's too hot . . . . . at least it is for me now, it must not have been then, age has definitely something to do with it. In the last few days we had a storm system coming through here lots of rain complete with lightening and thunder in the distance. This made it a couple of degrees cooler but also more humid.