Kotor, Montenegro

Dear Family and Friends,

We wound our way out of the mountains of Montenegro and made our way to the Adriatic coast.
We were on our way to cross the boarder into Croatia by the end of the day, but we stopped one last time in Montenegro to visit the a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the walled city of Kotor.


This small city is located on the beautiful bay of Kotor.  Since the year 2000, it has been a popular destination for cruise ships.

I posted in this blog about our visit to this same city in November of last year...which has a lot of information about the area and many more photos of the beautiful bay. Kotor post from December 3, 2018
On our previous visit we were there all day, on this visit we were there only a couple of hours.

Kotor is surrounded by fortification and is a very well preserved medieval city.  

In the photo below you can see a portion of the wall and how beautifully clear the water is.

The tunnel entrance into Kotor.

This clock tower is one of the main symbols of Kotor.  It is located in square opposite the main gate.

This photo is of St. Tryphon Cathedral, which dates back to 1166.

The streets are narrow but open up to open squares where there are gift shops and restaurants.

And, yes, there are people who live in this city.  However, many have moved away and are renting their houses to tourists.

Kotor has many resident cats.  Our tour guide told us that cats are loved and protected here because of the great job they did ridding the early city of rats.

Kotor even has a cat museum.  Here is one kitty perched in a window.  

Chuck and I stopped at one of the many outdoor restaurants for lunch.

Here is Chuck's bowl of mussels.  It seems like he had the same dish when we were here before.

We went out of the city through the same tunnel we entered.  Hopped on our tour bus and drove around the beautiful bay on our way to the boarder of Croatia.

Next time I will share about the popular and beautiful walled city of Dubrovnik.

Love, 
Nancy

Mountains of Montenegro

Dear Family and Friends,

We left Albania and crossed the border into Montenegro on day three.  We traveled through the mountains.  

Here is a picture from the bus window.  

Our first stop was the Moraca Monastery that sits in a valley of the beautiful rock mountains.  This is a medieval Serbian Orthodox monastery. It was founded in 1252 and the church behind the stone wall was completed that same year. 

We were given a tour inside the church but were not allowed to take pictures.  That is very unfortunate because the icons painted inside were magnificent.

Bells hanging in small building on the grounds.

This building is behind the church.  It is a working monastery until this day.  This is where the monks live and work.

They keep bees nearby.  I really loved the colorful bee hives.  I found that bright colored hives is typical in the Balkan countries.

After a visit we were back on the road.  I snapped this photo of a hay stack as we rapidly passed it.  Not a good picture because of the movement, but I was fascinated to see hay that was still stacked this way.

We drove through and stopped at Durmitor National Park.  This area was formed by glaciers and the canyons were deep.  Below is a picture of a bridge that crosses the canyon.

And here are a couple of happy tourists.  

We continued driving until we were out of the mountains and at the Adriatic coast.  On the next post I will share pictures of the town of Kotor, a medieval walled city.

Love,
Nancy

Kruje, Albania

Dear Family and Friends,

It was a good thing that Chuck and I flew into Albania before the tour began because the tour only spent a short time in Albania before heading to Montenegro.

Today I will share with you about Kruje, a lovely mountain side town in Albania.  We went to see the Ethnographic museum and bazaar there.

The museum, located inside the castle walls, was in a house built in 1764.  The museum was created to show what life was like for a wealthier family during the time that Albania was controlled by the Ottoman Empire.

One of the first rooms we saw was the living room for the women.  The woman on the left is wearing a traditional bridal dress.

The next room we saw was the living room for the men.  They were lucky to have a fireplace to keep warm.

Here is the kitchen, you can guess whose room that was.

In the front hall was this copper topped table.  It was for burning coals to keep the room warm during the winter.  

Traditional dress of the men during that era.  Notice his hat.  I will show you some we found in the bazaar.

Outside the museum, I noticed this interesting tree.  I do not understand why it is still living.  The inside of the trunk is almost gone. 

The view from the museum were awesome.

Below is a picture of the Skanderbeg museum.  Skanderbeg is Albania's national hero.  He led the fight against the Ottomans.  He was able to fend off the Ottomans for 25 years before his death.

A local man playing a traditional instrument.

Here are some pictures of the bazaar.

Of course the bazaar was mainly for tourists to buy souvenirs.  Back in the day, this is where the produce and meat was sold along with some shops.  

Even though it is now a tourist trap, there were a couple of very interesting antique shops.

Remember the man in traditional dress?  Here are some felt hats they were selling.  The red symbol on the front is the symbol of Albania (double headed black eagle on a red background).  Also, if you look far to the left you can see a coffee mug with a picture of Mother Teresa.  On the right, are some dolls dressed in traditional clothing.  

We ended the tour with dinner in the castle.  Traditional food that was very tasty...they had those meat sausages of course.

Goodbye Albania, the next post will be about the mountains of Montenegro.

Love,
Nancy

Balkan Adventure

Dear Family and Friends.

Chuck and I returned home from visiting family in Arizona the first of March and had one week to get ready for our Balkan adventure.  We booked a tour through Gate1 to see Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, and Slovenia.  We arrived in Tirana three days before the actual tour began.

On March 9, we flew to Quito from Cuenca.  We took the 7:00pm flight, stayed overnight at the Wyndham hotel at the Quito airport and departed Quito for Amsterdam the next day, Sunday, at about 3:00pm.  

When we arrived in Amsterdam, it was Monday about 1:00pm.  We stayed at a hotel near the Amsterdam airport to get a good night's rest before taking our final flight to Tirana, Albania.

I guess you could call this relaxed travel.  It sure helped for us to arrive in Tirana wide eyed and alert.  No travel fatigue.

Before we went there, I knew very little about Albania.  Of the four countries we visited, Albania has the smallest number of tourists.  However, tourism is picking up there and the government is doing many improvements to the city to attract more tourists.

Here is a little information about Tirana.  It is the capital and largest city of Albania. Albania was under communist rule from the end of WWII until the mid 1990's  Communism came to an end because of the Balkan turmoil which caused the breakup of Yugoslavia.  Albania, which was never part of Yugoslavia, is now a democratic republic.

We had a wonderful airbnb condo located right in the heart of Tirana.  

The view of a colorful and popular plaza from the balcony of our condo.

The glass covered building in the above picture is the covered market.  Along with the fruits of veggies, there were vendors of tourist items.

The man we rented our condo from recommended the national dish.  It is meat sausage with a sour cream and cucumber sauce.  We tried it, it was okay, but we searched for food that was more suitable to our tastes for the rest of our meals.  We found an incredible Italian restaurant nearby where we had several meals.

Here is a picture of the best pasta I have ever had.  It had basil, tiny sweet tomatoes, clams, shrimp in a wonderful garlic white sauce.  

The main boulevard was lined with trees that had their trunks colorfully wrapped.  This main street became a pedestrian street on the weekend.  As we found out later it is many purposes.

The next day, on that same street, we witnessed this demonstration going on.  There were police in riot gear and big tanks behind us. We didn't stick around to find out why....it was time to go somewhere else for sure.

This is Skanderbeg Square.  It still has a very communist feel to it.  In the background is the National Museum of History.

Statue of Sulejman Pashe Bargini, the legendary founder of Tirana.

Besides the plazas and museums, we went to their beautiful mall.  At six stories high it was quite impressive.  

Albania is a secular state with no state religion, the freedom of belief and religion is explicitly guaranteed in the constitution.

According to the 2010 census 55% of the population is Muslim, 12% Christian, 6.5% Eastern Orthodox and 5% Roman Catholic. The remaining population reported having no religion.

Here is a photo I took of the Great Mosque from the top of the shopping mall. 

 This photo is of the Orthodox Autocephalous Church.

The Catholic church, St. Paul's Cathedral was being renovated and all covered up, but I found this statue of Mother Teresa in front of the church interesting.  I learned that she was born in Macedonia but her parents moved to Albania.  During the communist period they were living in Albania and she was denied entry into Albania to see her parents.  Now, Albania claims her as their own.

It was so nice to have a few days here to really get the feel of the city before our actual tour started.

In the next post, I will talk about another town in Albania.

Love,

Nancy

When is it time to slow down?

Dear Family and Friends,

I have been away from posting to this blog since before Christmas.  I realize that some folks keep up with us via our posts and I apologize for letting so much time lapse.  We are healthy and busy as ever.  

I abruptly stopped posting about our last trip because I lost my tablet and lost all the pictures I had lined up for my future posts.  I was heart broken and just lost the enthusiasm to continue.  

Here is a run down of what we have been up to since our last post.  

We returned to Cuenca the end of November after finishing our cruise with Audrey and Jim.

The day after Christmas, we left to spend a couple of months in Tucson, Arizona.  Chuck's family are snow birds there for several winter months.  Actually, Audrey and Jim live there year around.  

When we were visiting there last year we bought a small trailer in the community that Chuck's family lives in. This way we can visit for a longer time without being "house guests" for two or three months.

Our plans are to visit with family and friends in Tucson and other parts of the U.S. every year so having a U.S. base works out well for us.

While we were in Tucson we had many guests.  Our daughter and son in law, Merri and Ken visited us for a few days.  Our friend from Richland, WA, Glenda, came and visited for a few days.  My brother, Norman dropped by on his way to California.  Our daughter, Kylie came for a few days and my sister and brother in law, Mary Anne and Larry came for a week.  We also had a fun "expat reunion" with Bruce, Charlie, Clarke and Brenda, who all live in Arizona now.  

We had a great time visiting with Chuck's family living there and all our friends and family.  

It was unseasonably cold for Arizona.  A couple of days before we left to return to Ecuador it snowed all day long.  

We arrived home in Cuenca this past Sunday from our Arizona adventure.  We thought we had ten days to do a turn around before our next trip, but when we reexamined our calendar we had less than a week.  Oops!  We have spent the past few days doing laundry, repacking, and visiting with friends as much as possible.

We fly out of Cuenca this afternoon for Quito.  Tomorrow we board a flight to Amsterdam. After a nights rest there, we will be flying to Albania.  

Our next month will be touring the balkan countries of Albania, Croatia, Slovenia and Montenegro.  We are doing this tour with Gate 1.  This is the same tour company we used for China and India.  We are very pleased with their tours.

I am not lugging my laptop on this trip, so there will be no posts or pictures until we return the first part of April.  However, I will be posting to Instagram as  ecuadorchick if you want a sneak preview of our photos.  

I have not been posting to Facebook lately, I have been taking a vacation from social media.  It helps to clear my brain, if you know what I mean.  Maybe I will add some pictures to FB also.  

At any rate, this post is to let you know we are doing well.  I just took a break from all things media related and will ease back into it as it seems appropriate.

Before signing off, here are a few pictures from Tucson.

Expat reunion photo.  We had so much fun.

Living desert photo, beautiful cactus.

One of many beautiful desert sunsets

I am grateful that I still have the stamina to keep up with Chuck.  

Love,
Nancy