Arrived in Montenegro

I fell in love with a small, mountainous country when the Norwegian Spirit, on an Aegean/Mediterranean cruise, stopped in the beautiful seaside/hillside town of Kotor in Montenegro.
A Montenegran tour bus picked up my group of passengers (those of us who couldn't walk very far or very fast) but the driver didn't have to take us far before he stopped.
He parked in a peaceful spot in Kotor, near the end of a road of historic seaside buildings, so that we could walk back a bit to photograph the homes and businesses, boats, fishermen, and cats.
We weren't the only ones who were out walking, however. Despite a main road up above, our parking spot was so peaceful it attracted walkers from virtually all walks of life:

There were white clouds above us when we got off the bus, and the dark clouds that followed did bring rain... but, fortunately, not enough to prevent us taking photos of the area where we were parked, and of every scenic step along the way.

Verdant green amongst the roadside rock.

Green seemed to turn to black when the storm clouds arrived.

And now for something completely different

It's a mackerel, as some members of my family would say...
because being on an Aegean/Mediterranean cruise not only made me feel better, but also look better.
Who knew?
My husband took this photo of me on board the Viking Spirit, before the stress of London's Heathrow Airport (the airport from hell for passengers who require assistance) and of flying from there to Calgary, Alberta, without any sleep. Then I was waiting hours for my husband to join me there, because we had made different flight arrangements, and he didn't get there in time—all of which had me looking just as bad as my pre-cruise self.

So, I just wanted to show you I could improve with a little bit of stress-free living. Let's hope I get my relaxed cruising self back.

Besides my new favourite photo of me, here is the funniest photo from Montenegro, my new favourite place in all the world:

Much more Montenegro to come, a well as many more Aegean/Mediterranean ports.

This post, however, is for Lady Fi's wonderful meme Our World Tuesday

Did I say so long? There's more Toulon

A last look at Toulon, France, with its naval base, dry dock, and massive body of water, part of the northern Mediterranean sea.
Fortifications of old still stand, overlooking the bay, and contrasting with today's modern naval vessels.

So long, Toulon, you're too long

My first view of Toulon was from an upper deck on the Norwegian Spirit, and it didn't appear too daunting.

Travels again, still in reverse order

When we are on a cruise, Dick likes to take on the most active of shore excursions, while I do the easy ones.
In Toulon, France, the easiest excursion on order was a tourist-boat ride around Toulon's huge waterfront, on the largest bay in France.
The sun was so bright I couldn't double-check any of my cell-phone photos because of the glare, so I have repeats of everything, often several, and it's taking me forever to edit them all.
Although our guide spoke at length about Toulon's naval fleet, including the dry dock with all its cranes, I turned my attention to seagulls, which I have always loved.
Indulge me on this one, please...the bay is so big that the gulls seem small, but I loved seeing them.









 From a T-shirt given to my brother Clint from his wife,  Maria, who also bought one each for their two sons.

Lindy is fine, thank you for asking

Many of my blogging friends have asked what our darlin' dog Lindy does when her daddy and I travel, so I must calm your fears...
We have wonderful friends, Gayle and Larry, who provide Lindy with a second home when we're away. She moves over there with all of her dog food and dishes, plus a supply of her favourite veggies, and money to buy more. Larry and Gayle won't take the money, so we always take them out for a nice lunch, brunch, or dinner, when their schedule allows.
Since Lindy first stayed with them, Gayle has taken up babysitting some other dogs, but she says our girl is still her favourite.
Who could resist this face?
These photos were all taken here at home, but let me tell you, Gayle and Larry have two matching couches, facing one another, in their living room...when Lindy is there, Gayle sleeps on one couch, with Lindy on the other.
Some of you will remember that, in our house (aka Lindy's house) we have installed Lindy-coloured flooring in the living room, dining room, and kitchen.

When the moon shines over the...

Remember this month's super moon? The first since before I was born, I think, or when I was a baby, anyway. My parents never told me such a thing existed, or was possible, or anything. Not a deficiency in my upbringing, but certainly in my education.
Himself and I got a little arty with it that night. Fun. And the pilot boat, in Rome's seaport town of Civitavecchia, cooperated with us.

Too sweet it is...

As I mentioned in a previous post, my photos are coming out of my cell phone and onto my computer in reverse order, but I'm sure no one cares except the photographer herself, and that would be me.

Our Aegean/Mediterranean cruise started in Venice and ended in Barcelona, so we stayed in our favourite Spanish city for a day and a night just to renew our acquaintance with the Ramblas and waterfront and the colourful market.

For those who don't know, the Ramblas is a wonderful pedestrian space between two roads, leading uphill from Barcelona's waterfront. A favourite feature of the Ramblas is the market, without which no visit to Barcelona would be complete.

Forget the Sagrada Familia, folks, my favourite discovery in the city was a market stall that carried sugar-free candies.

Below are some sugary goodies, some colourful veggies, and a wide range of colourful icy treats.







Kay Davies photos

Strolling Barcelona's waterfront and....

My dear husband loves his pedometer, so he walked up to the top of the Ramblas for a bit of exploration while I took the opportunity to nap. However, before darkness fell, I insisted on some waterfront people-watching at sunset. One of the people I watched was Himself, or at least the back of Himself.



See the pedestrian bridge in the first photo above? The bridge opens to let Barcelona's many sailboats through. Several people, much younger than either of us, hurried across before it opened, so guess whose husband made her "run" across just as it opened. I say "run" in parentheses because it was a slow jog at best, and I was beginning to fear for my life, but we made it through just as the bridge gates were closing.







Kay Davies photos

Reverse order will have to do for now

I'm in the process of getting photos from my phone to my elderly Apple computer. No easy task for oldies like the computer and me, but will continue to try.  I'm getting the newest photos first and the oldest ones last, so it's a tedious job, but someone's gotta do it. I took gazillions of photos, not only in Scotland, but also in England, and then on a 12-day cruise from Venice to Barcelona. So many photos, but I have plenty of time.

Meanwhile here are a few beautiful photos of northern Scotland from my mother's cousin Ian MacKenzie and his wife Audrey, who visited Scotland before I did.

Our MacKenzie ancestors came from the area of Culkein in the northern Scottish Highlands. I was privileged to travel there in the company (and the car) of fellow blogger Yamini MacLean. It is a beautiful wild land, overlooking the bays and inlets of the North Atlantic.







Photos courtesy of Ian and Audrey MacKenzie

Unfittie gets unfitter but has a lot of fun doing so

Hello, unfittie-fans...if there are any of you left out there after my latest long absence, I have a good excuse.
I was visiting my blog friend Yam, of the blog Doses of Wild Yam, who took me all over the Scottish highlands, where we had a wondrous time, didn't we, Yam? I sure did, anyway.
After an overnight in Glasgow I dropped in to meet blog friend Phil of Another Bird Blog, and his lovely wife Sue, on my way down to the middle of England. They took me to Kay's Chippy in Knott-End-on-Sea, where I do believe we all enjoyed ourselves. Thanks again, Phil and Sue!
Then (yes, there's more) I took a train to Rugby and got myself a room at the Wheatsheaf Pub in Crick, which, if it isn't the middle of England, it was close enough for me to spend some quality time with my lifetime friend Judith and her husband who live in a narrowboat on a canal in Yelvertoft.
I kid you not.
Plus, my brother Rob's lifetime friend Michael Bratley and his wife Michaela (yes, no typo) came down to Crick to visit me.
It was a wonderful trip.
However, what with the time difference when I flew home two weeks later from Barcelona, following an Aegean/Mediterranean cruise with my darlin' husband, and the fact that I didn't sleep a wink on the flight from the dreaded London Heathrow to Calgary, Alberta, I am now exhausted. And my poor husband is still on his way home, having missed the flight to Medicine Hat by about two minutes, and who is now driving home with another missed passenger.
Sigh.
All in all, a wonderful time was had by all, but this one is exhausted, having been awake for 36 hours or something that felt that way.
More will be revealed, however, when I wake up..maybe today, maybe tomorrow, but there are a lot of posts and pix to come, not to mention our darlin' dog Lindy, who hasn't come home from her Auntie Gayle and Uncle Larry's house, where she vacations when we're away. She had a wonderful time. But she misses tummy-rubbing time with her daddy, I'm sure.

Okay, one last hint...my new favourite place is Montenegro. On the Aegean, south of Croatia, absolutely stunning place.

And another very last hint...the bowels of Heathrow Airport, where they park wheelchair passengers in order to yell at them ("Are you sure you're not carrying any liquids, because, if you are...") and then forget them entirely (oh, we might miss your flight, you should have told us) might be looking somewhat spiffier but the lack of service remains the same. If you have to go there, be afraid, be very afraid.

PS — What's this? I am sleep-deprived and do not understand...

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Heartbreak Hotel

Just last month, here on my blog, I featured photos of the three large coleus plants I called "my girls" all summer, and brought indoors to overwinter because I couldn't bear to see them die.
Now I have to admit that my girls brought with them a whole herd of tiny flying insects, gnats or fruit flies or something.
Sigh.

I don't really know what to do.
I'd like to think I can get rid of the little "buggers" but I don't really believe I can. And we aren't always home to look after houseplants, anyway, vagabonds that we are.
So I'm afraid I'll have to put them outside in the windy wintry weather.
Part of me wants to advertise them "free to good home" but that would just mean passing on the infestation of insects to someone else.
And the bug problem really is getting to be awful.

So here they are again, my beautiful girls, just before I say goodbye to them.
(Or until I find a solution to the problem. No, Kay. Down, girl. There really is no solution. Admit it and move on.)

Sigh again.


Linking to Lady Fi's Our World Tuesday

Long long ago, but never forgotten

I was watering my coleus plants when I noticed a couple of leaves that needed to be pinched off. As I was doing that, I unintentionally poured some of the water into a box on the floor beside the plant table.
When I pulled things out so I could dry them, one item turned out to be a photo of a couple who were my parents' friends, and my friends, since the 1960s. They had left Alberta and moved to British Columbia where more jobs were available.

This is a photo I took, of the picture I found, which had been taken at my young brother Rob's wedding. It shows Ralph on the right, Petie in the centre, and on the left is 'Auntie' Edith, whom you can barely see. She and her husband George were family friends who knew me since I was wee tiny or, more likely, since I was born.

I babysat Petie and Ralph's kids until they no longer needed a babysitter, and Ralph actually gave me a ride from White Rock, in the suburbs, into the city of Vancouver for my very first job hunt.
He dropped me off near Playland, and told me to wait because a downtown bus would be along soon. Terrified that I might take the wrong bus, I walked instead.

I walked, in my mother's shoes, for one hour and sixteen minutes, according to Google Maps. 6.1 kilometres, or 3.8 miles.

I walked, in my best neat and tidy dress (and don't forget Mom's shoes, through some pretty shady neighbourhoods, and was never accosted at all. Instead, people smiled and said hello.

It was 1965.

I walked to the offices of the Vancouver Province newspaper, where they said they had no openings, so I walked the short distance (maybe a block or a block and a bit) to the offices of the other daily paper, the Vancouver Sun.
I took the elevator to the newsroom, where they directed me to the personnel office, and I got a job...working in the newsroom. It wasn't a glamorous job, I was just a copy-runner, but I was happy as a clam, except for that annoying young woman in the newspaper library, who would call "Copy!" which meant I had to take something from her and give it to a writer or an editor. Everyone else did the same but she, somehow, managed to sound worse.
Little did I know she would become my best friend, as she is to this day. We've been through a lot together, and we've had a lot of fun together (took in lots of baseball games together) and we've had a lot of disappointments, sorrows and losses together, taking the bad with the good.
As for Petie and Ralph in the photo above, they were praying for my family when my brother Rob was born in 1968. He was a teeny tiny preemie, but he made it.
So Ralph and Petie's kids, the ones I babysat, began babysitting my baby brother. We came full circle together, my family, Petie and Ralph's family, and me. I can't forget Edith, whom you can barely see in the picture, but she was, with her husband George, with my family all the way.
I guess spilling that water today wasn't a disaster. I got to reminisce a lot, all because of the wet picture I found when I was supposed to be watering my plants.

Snow brings the deer here to feed

Deer eating our ornamental crabapples.

Mmm, more here, closer to the tree.

Here's one of the others, saying we must go.

Now all that the camera can see is our white tails.

When the deer appeared to feed at our ornamental crabapple tree a couple of days ago, I thought they were early, forgetting that there's no such thing as 'early' here in Alberta. The deer must have known the weather would change, because today we have snow, but more on that later.

Posting here to share on Lady Fi's popular meme

"Our World Tuesday"

When Lindy was young, and I was not

Thanks so much to our friend Mara, originally from the Netherlands and now enjoying a busy life in Scandinavia, for taking this picture.
Mara came to Canada a few years ago, in hopes of finding work and staying here in Alberta. Dick and Lindy and I were all pulling for her, but there exists a rule (maybe it's even a law) saying Canadian citizens get first crack at job openings. This is excellent for unemployed Canadians, of course, but we were rooting for Mara to be able to stay, and she couldn't.
Lindy was very disappointed, as Mara is one of her favourite friends, and I was disappointed, too. In this photo, we were taking Mara to Banff and Lake Louise. Lindy and Mara went for a walk alongside Lake Louise, while I sat on a bench and enjoyed the magnificent scenery.
Lindy can no longer go on long walks, any more than I can, but she is still happy...although she would have loved to keep Mara here.

I don't know who said this, but...

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.

I wish I knew who said this. I had saved it to my desktop at some point, without attributing it to anyone, and am now furthering the attribution problem by quoting it here. To everyone out there, if you know who wrote this, please let me know.

Meanwhile, I copied it then, and am quoting it now, because I feel it to be particularly apt at this point in the history of the world.

I also just deleted a treatise of my own, raging, in my old-lady way, against injustice and against those who would deny help to refugees from other countries.

I went on and on and on, as I am apt to do, and realized I was on the verge of raving, which I'd much rather not, so I deleted it.

I don't pretend to have any answers. I surely have none. But I also have no criticisms to make of people who are living in poverty through no fault of their own. Yes, that's the word used in that quotation: criticisms. How dare anyone with a good life criticize someone who is struggling to survive?

There used to be a saying...I don't know if it is still used today..."walk a mile in my shoes"!

Sharing this with Lady Fi's wonderful meme Our World Tuesday.

Silly still life stills my life

Still life with hat

Kay Davies, October 1, 2016

I've been stressing over things the past few days, because my computer has been giving me  trouble, and decided I needed something to cheer me up.
A few minutes after I decided that, I walked past the kitchen island where we keep fruit and/or vegetables in a bowl, and noticed this straw sun-hat sitting amongst the squash.
Just for fun, I arranged the squash around the hat brim, and added a red bell pepper on top, for some colour. Just a silly thing to cheer me up.
And it did.
Names of squashes in order from left: Acorn, Spaghetti, Butternut, and one whose name I can never remember...a Kabocha Squash. Rather like "Ha gotcha, squash!"
Very silly, but the silliness cheered me up immensely. Maybe you'll laugh at my squashes, too.