The final countdown to Europe 2017

   One week from today Tom and I will be on our next European adventure!

   Several years ago Tom and I and my sister Carrie started talking about this trip. It's hard to believe that it's finally here.

   The three of us were granted our Russian visas last week. Even though our pictures would all better serve as mugshots, they are a pretty fun addition to our passports. We got double entry visas which will allow us one entry into Kaliningrad and one entry to mainland Russia when we go to St. Petersburg.

   Due  to a few  life changing circumstances it's going to be a different trip than we have had in the past, however we are still very much looking forward to the adventure. 

   One of the changes for me is that I will be  shooting the entire trip on my iPhone. I have a new lens specifically made for this phone and I am looking forward to seeing what it can do.

We are off again soon!

   Last October we came across an amazing deal for a flight to Europe. Delta was having a special... $400 flights from the US to Spain. We already had an outline of our next European adventure and it did not include Spain. Tom and I spent time in Madrid in 2012.  However, with the ability to fly to Spain for $400 and then pretty much anywhere within Europe for approximately $100 on European airlines, we decided to make that our in and out country. No open jaw for us this time.

    This trip my sister Carrie will be traveling with Tom and I. We are headed to Berlin from Madrid and then onto Gdansk,Poland and Kaliningrad (A country belonging to Russia). We will also make several stops in Lithuania and we will travel on to Latvia and Estonia followed by St. Petersburg, Russia. The end of our trip will include Vienna, Austria, and a return trip to  Cesky Krumlov and Prague, Czech Republic. We hope to sneak in a trip to Bratislava while we are nearby. That will give us a count of 11 countries in 6 1/2 weeks.

   Airbnb's and hostels are booked and paid for, and with our flight taken care of long ago, the next order of business is our Russian visa. Cost of the visa is comparable to the cost of our entire flight to Spain! Common sense says that our Russian leg of the journey should've been saved for its own separate trip. We will be paying a lot of money for a visa that we will only use for five days. St. Petersburg is a place that all three of us have wanted to visit however, and with the unsettled nature of the relationship between our countries,we feel like this might be our only opportunity.

Caribbean sunset

The days flow together on a Caribbean island

We have fallen in to a pattern for our days. I wake up 4-5 days a week alone because Tom has gone to the gym at our sister resort. The rest of the week are his days off. When he arrives home we have a frozen fruit smoothie for breakfast while we decide which beach to explore for the day. With 30+ beach choices, it's the most difficult decision of the day.

Each beach on the island has its own personality. The windward and leeward sides are vastly different of course, however even beaches side by side have their own unique shade and texture of sand, variety and condition of shells that wash up, and vegetation (or lack there of) that surrounds the beach. Some beaches have bold iguanas that saunter by as we sit in our beach chairs.

Most days we choose a beach somewhere else on the island, although there are days we stick close to home and enjoy "our beach" here at the resort.  Whether we stay here or chose a beach further away, we end up on one of the two beaches at the resort for sunset. 

We are very fortunate to have two such beautiful and well kept beaches right outside our door. One of the beaches is small and directly in front of the pool, the other is larger and is shared with the resort next door. Our balcony overlooks the larger beach.

 Our beaches come equipped with two "chair guys", Raymond and Jolum, whom we have made friends with. They have become accustomed to us appearing in the late afternoon and staying until pretty much everyone else has gone to their rooms. The very best colors of the sunset appear after the sun has disappeared. Tom and I sit there, armed with our cameras, trying to capture the impossible..... The beauty and tranquility of a Caribbean sunset.

Carrie joins us

We have begun to find a rhythm for our days, choosing a beach and listening to reggae on the radio as we drive to it. (You've got to have a soundtrack for your travels!)

My sister Carrie decided last minute to join us for a portion of our trip. She is spending 10 days  sleeping on our sofa bed and lounging on the local beaches with us. Like me, she is not one to pass up any opportunity to travel.

The mornings that Tom goes to the gym allow she and I time just to hang out together. We saw each other in June at our family reunion but  so many other family members to visit with didn't allow any time for just the two of us to be together.

We share a love of beach combing so each new beach has been an opportunity to hunt for beach glass. We have found small bits of glass, predominantly green, on each beach. The Holy Grail of beach glass was Grand Case Beach, which is on the French side of the island. I told Carrie that it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Glass washed up with every wave and at the eastern end of the beach big chunks of glass sat like bits of shiny candy in the sand.

While I was looking for glass on Grand Case, a local girl named Sylvie, saw what I was doing and joined the search. She began to bring me handfuls and invited me to walk down the beach with her in search of more. She found the prize of the day for me, a chunk of cobalt blue... a color among the more rare. The best part for me was that she never asked what I was doing or why, she simply joined in the hunt and shared her bounty with me.

Stormy beach

A storm is brewing!