Assisi, Italy

We joined the nuns and monks in Assisi for the festival of St. Francis. How is it possible to have so many delightful towns with steep narrow stone streets and steps complete with the feel of being in a zone of magical antiquity.

Assisi is touristy--the destination of pilgrims and Italian hill-town seeking tourists. Yet it manages to hold on to its quaint medieval heritage. We stayed in a great pension just off the center square. Seeing the festival was difficult as there was really no information available but we really enjoyed touring the churches and enjoyed some incredible Italian meals. We enjoyed truffles--a nutty mushroom taste at a restaurant overlooking the piazza in Assisi. The meal and the wine were outstanding. Paul is still trying to find the dessert that we had there in order to enjoy it again.

Our British Holiday in Croatia

We set out on a two week sail from the island of Murter in Croatia. We have wanted to learn how to sail for quite awhile and were very excited about learning and exploring Croatia's islands in the Adriatic Sea.

We lived onboard the sail boat (Stella) with a skipper/instructor and other students who all lived in the UK. Paul learned a lot of brilliant British slang and also learned all kinds of nautical knots. We spent time each morning just learning to handle the boat and usually the winds were quite light in the morning. Our crew on Stella made lunch each day and we usually anchored up in a bay for lunch followed by snorkeling, reading and sunbathing for a couple of hours. After lunch the wind usually picked up and it made for good sailing practice as we headed to our resting spot for the evening.

Jib, Jibe, Port, Starboard, Tack.....the new vocabulary was extensive and seemed overwhelming at first but by the end of the two weeks we understood the terms. We learned how to handle the boat under sail, under motor, to rescue a man overboard "Wilson" and most importantly how to park the boat in a marina.

The landscape of Croatia is rocky and it is difficult to tell what is the mainland and which are islands when you are on the water as the islands are so numerous. The hills have the ruins of rocky walls covering them. The Croatians long ago cleared the rocky hills in order to plant Olives and Grapes. The land is so rocky that they built walls out of the rocks they cleared from the rocky red soil. The walls divide the hills into partitions. The amount of effort that went into food production is represented by the walls and cultivation in such a difficult environment.