Athens, Greece July 12, 2008

We arrived in Athens early this morning and of course had to go on a tour. One we did not do last April, The Temple of Posideon. We drove one and a half hours on one of the most spectacular drives, the views even better than Hwy one in California. Seems Greeks like to swim! Everyone was at the beach today. By the time we made it to the Temple, the wind was So high, I thought Nicky was going to be blown off that mountain top into the Agean Sea below! By the way, the Agean Sea, is Calm and BEAUTIFUL. No sharks or anything that might get you, maybe some jellyfish in August. Or at least that is what our guise told us! Many fabulous yachts...did not see any Aristotles, of course there are not many left.
We are at our hotel now, The Intercontenintal. From the top floor you can see straight over to The Parthanon. Crazy beautiful. The sun is setting and the stone pillars are brilliant orange from the sun and you can almost feel the heat from here. There are flood lights up on that mountain. We will come back after dark and take some pictures at night with just the lights up on that unbelievable structure. I don't know if I will be able to upload any photos but will try.

Our bus to the airport in the morning is at 10:15a.m., so we will get a good nights sleep before we head out to the land of wooden shoes!! Hopefully, we will have internet available there.
We are all feeling good and having a great time.

Sailing through the Bosphorous 7-10-08

A shot of the bridge between Europe and Asia. Before the bridge was built, they had to ferry across.










To be able to see two continents at one time is a sight of a lifetime. For our small family of 4, this is our 3rd time to do this. We have been through the straights of Gibraltar two times, seeing both Africa and Europe and today, almost at sunset, we saw Asia and Europe as we went through The Bosphorous. It was slow sailing and very quiet at times and then at 8:45p.m., all the mosques for miles around sounded their calls to prayer and it was both beautiful and errie. When we started counting all the mosques that we could see, you'd be tripping over them to try to decide which one to go to. People think there are Baptist churches on every corner in every small town in the South, this is WAY more than that. Here's a look!

Trabzon, Turkey July 9th, 2008

The monastery. Fantastic!












Trabzon is not a highly tourist visited area. It is perched on a hill overlooking the Black Sea. At first glance, it seems to have many very ugly houses an buildings. This is really just the port area. When we boarded our coach to head to the mountains, we saw this place turn into a wonder of the world. The mountains are like none I have ever seen. STEEP, full of dense tress and unsual trees. They grow hazel nuts here and they are the world's largest producer of hazel nuts, producing 60% of the world's hazel nuts. If you love them, this is the place for you! As we climbed further and further into the mountains it was clearly becoming evident that we were not only in for a treat but for an experience of a lifetime. We are on our way to see the Sumela monastery. This monastery was built in the 14th century by monks. There was at one time a fresco there done by St. Luke of The Virgin Mary. It is no longer there, stolen or put into protection, nobody knows for sure, but over time the monastery has been vandalized. People have defaced the frescoes and even chipped away at them to steal a piece of beautiful history. The monastery itself is built clinging to the side of a sheer cliff. It is an unforgettable sight. You stand there wondering how in the world back in the 14th century, with no roads, only hand tools, very few beasts of burden..how did they build this? It is a miracle, it has to be, no other explanation except they were a group of about 25 monks that loved their religion so much, they risked life and limb to build this. See for yourself. You too will be amazed. I will tell you, the trek to get there was about a 1 hour bus ride, then we transferred to small mini-vans to make our way through smaller roads, then got out and walked up the last 30 minutes up the mountain. Kathleen and I elected to hike down the mountain afterwards, we made it, but I don't know if I would do that part again again. It was a long way down that mountain!

Sochi, Russia July 8th, 2008

You'll see no English on signs here! A few things to buy but we were not allowed to stop.

Palm trees like Miami!









Three elderly ladies out for a day in the park with their hats, floral print dresses and clutching their handbags like they were full of gold bars!

Which tour should Kathleen take?

The fruit stand was tempting, but we could not stop!

HOLY COW!!

Look closely at the back of the tiny red car. There is a sticker on the window and in the middle of the sticker is a high-heeled shoe. The guide told me that this sticker means this is a woman driver and she might not be very experienced!!!!!

The Russian tree growing on the mountain, the tea room, the entertainment, Kathleen washing the honey off her hands, some beautiful flowers,
Kathleen and a giant tea pot. Charles, Kathleen and Nicky saying good-bye to Russia.


Sochi, Russia is just north of the Russian border. It is blessed with the northernmost subtropical climate in the world. They have quite a unique landscape here. You can be on the sunny hot beaches and then in a 40 minute coach ride you can be at the top of mountains that have snow 9 months out of the year! This is where the 2014 winter Olympic games are set to be held. We did not see any construction except for cranes trying to bring really old communist built dorm-like apts. back to new life.
Getting into Russia, or the Russian Federation as they call it now, was not easy. We had to be on tour from the ship. You cannot enter without a Visa, so we were issued something like a "day pass" Visa to enter. A small pink card we held onto with our passports. We met our guide. Darling cute gal, 21 years old and VERY happy we were there. She was the first smiling face we had seen in quite a while! She tried VERY hard to show us her city. She was bluntly honest about everything we asked her, but when you think about it she was only a toddler when the communist empire crumbled. Her recall, is from history books alone. Anyway, we had a short walking tour of the city and I was amazed at how much it looked like south Florida! Palm tress all over and HOT! After our city tour we headed for the mountains to visit a Russian tea plantation. Sochi has the northern most tea growing in the world. It's climate is perfect for tea and they have a tea that is only grown her, Krasnodarskyi. That is what we drank. After our lecture that was given in Russian and translated to English by our cute guide, we walked through a beautifully dense forest to a log cabin. There we were treated to music and dancing by local people and a man that played many different sizes of accordions, all the way down to maybe 3 inches across! It was amazing. Warm homemade bread with apple butter like jam inside. Very good. Unfortunately this ended our day in Russia after our bus ride in. We went trough some villages that would have been nice to stop and browse their things but that was not allowed. We were brought back to the port, went through immigration again and had to turn in our pink cards and not talk. That is the only thing I did wrong. As I gave the gal my pink card, I said "good luck with the Olympics!" She took my pink card and put her finger up to her pursed lips as if to say "HUSH LADY"! And that was the end of our day. I guess she did not want me to talk to her...what do you think??

Sevastopol, Ukraine July 7, 2008

Sevastopol in Greek means "city of glory". Since the Greeks have been here, guess what they have here?? ROCKS and RUINS! We skipped our rocks and ruins tour for a more interesting Welden Family tour! We got off the ship and explored on our own. Back in the day, this was the Russian Empire's most important naval base on the Black Sea for their fleet. Even today, Sevastopol, is very proud of their history and beauty. You can see an original Russian fleet anchor that Nicky is using his whole 10 year old strength to try to pick up one link!
The green areas of the city are well kept, with many beautiful flowers and plants. Right before we took this picture of Kathleen and Nicky in the garden area, a mid-twenties young man said "hello, are you from the U.S." to us. Kathleen and Nicky have grown leery of strangers approaching us wanting to sell us things, so Kathleen and Nicky did not reply. After I took the picture I heard an accent very familiar to me...someone from the SOUTH! Not South Ukraine either. A guy hollered over to us, "Are y'all from Alabama?" The Auburn shirts that Nicky and I sported that day allowed us to meet people from Birmingham, Alabama that were there on tour that day! They were there on a mission trip and had come into the city for the day! We had a brief chat about our travels and how nice and crazy it was that we ran into them. The Auburn shirts caused us to make new friends! He gave us his card and we both wished each other safe travels and we said good-bye. It was nice to visit with a group of peope from Alabama when we were in Crimea!
Charles and Nicky at lunch. Our table looked over the Black Sea. Nicky and I thought an all Auburn shirt picture was appropriate!
Kathleen found a friend she wanted to bring home! Monkeys!! Yikes, all I could think of was rabies. The military trucks were parked outside some sort of high security place, maybe a prison. After I took this picture a soldier came out and said something that must have been "quit taking pictures and leave". We did.
Really large iron gates were keeping us out of something interesting. This is as far as we got though! The hammer and cicle on the gates, let us know it was once a communist building, who knows what is in there now.

The port was easy to walk around. We got some of their money for Nicky's collection and I got some handmade purses, one is quilted. I used most of the money I had of theirs buying the purses, so it was time to head back to our floating home. A fun day, new friends from Alabama, a beautiful sea side lunch and military police running you off ...perfect.