Exploring the Adriatic Sea: Pula, Croatia.

I met Phil in Pula, Croatia for a 4-night mid-week holiday. He'd been traveling through South East Asia and up through Asia Minor for the preceding 3 months.

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Below is the Pula Arena (coliseum). The Arena is the only remaining Roman amphitheater to have four side towers and with all three roman architectural orders entirely preserved. Karen and I will be going to Rome next month. We can't wait to see that coliseum!

Here's a movie I took from inside the arena. The ring is almost completely intact and in really good shape.

I was able to catch some pretty good sunset pictures. I forced the shutter closed quicker than normal to deepen the colors. Didn't turn out too bad!
Phil and I rented scooters the second day we were there. We got about 10km north of Pula and broke one 3km out of Fazana. Phil tried to push it alone for about 15 min, then I found a solid spot on the back of his scooter and tried pushing it from behind. We found we could go about 30km/h if I straightened my leg on the back of his scooter and hit the gas on mine.

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We made it into Fazana, called the scooter people, had an espresso and waited for them to come. It took about 45 minutes before they brought us a new one, didn't even try to start the dead one, just gave us a new one and tool the old one away.
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We ended up continuing north to the town of Rovinj a total of 43km north of Pula. We read in our Lonely Planet guide where we might get some great seafood. Sure enough, I had about the best seafood sample plate I've ever ordered. It was the sample of the day's catch.

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Here is the view down one of the cobbled streets. That's Phil down the road a bit.

The next day, we spent some time touring the Pula Arena. Phil actually waited outside and I went in for the full look around.

This arena was built by the Roman Empire between 14A.D. and 41 B.C.
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Yeah, Floyd is in the HOUSE!!!

This is a view of Kamenjak Nature Park. It's at the southern tip of the Istrian peninsula. This view is looking north. Pula is NNW of Prementura at the north end of the park.

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Phil and I rented bikes on our third day and rode south to this nature park. Took us a while to get here... we took a few sight seeing detours and a few wrong turns.

Here I am in the Kamenjak Nature Park sitting on a ledge over looking a water cave that opened up 80 feet below me. We were going to try swimming into it, but the water was too cold. Here's one last picture the long way through the arena. This place is just killer!

Here's the last sunset picture with Phil. This was actually the last traveling sunset Phil spent outside of Ireland. The next morning, Phil and I left Pula got Dublin. Phil actually decided on the bus into town that he wasn't going to Eastern Europe, but back to Dublin instead.
And here is Pula on the way out. You can actually see the arena from the plane. This was a great trip. There are some socio-economic observations Phil and I made about Croatia. I hope the economy gets some good help and maybe future membership in the EU. A lot of the people hope EU membership will improve the economics.

Easter Weekend in London!

We decided to take advantage of the long Easter weekend for a trip to London. We got some great airfare and used Karen's reward points for Marriott bucks.
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The first full morning we were there started off as a semi-bust. We went down to Buckingham Palace to try and see the changing of the guard at 11:30 a.m. Turns out a LOT of people had the same idea. Karen needed a boost by the elbows to see anything! We got a few good pictures though.
Here is a video of the Buckingham Palace Marching band. We thought Tim would really appreciate this...

After trying to see the changing of the guard, we tried to get tickets to a show at Shakespears Globe but they didn't have anything playing that night. On the way there we got a few good pics of Big Ben and Parliament.

Here is a video of most of the 11:00 a.m. chimes. We narrated the video with a little info on Big Ben.

We ended up getting pretty good seats to Wicked, playing at the Apollo Victoria Theatre in London's west end. It was far better than we'd expected. Christine and OB both loved it... now we know why!
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One of the real highlights of the trip was our visit to London Tower. We got there by a riverboat from Big Ben/Parliament on the River Thames.

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Here's Jay inside a guard booth in the Tower of London... nice try big guy!
Here's a good view of the Tower Bridge from inside London Tower. The audio tour of this place was awesome!

The weather in London was great! We ended getting a little more sun than we'd hoped to. Here's an outside view of the London Tower.

We also got to see the Crown Jewels from a flat moving escalator that carried you past them. Our friend David (Karen's boss) said we really should check 'em out, so we stuck it out in the 20 minute line to get in. They don't allow photographs inside, so we can't post any pictures. They were cool though!

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After touring most of the Tower of London we made our way to Trafalgar Square to catch a night-time walking ghost tour. Here's Karen playing in a phone booth while we were waiting to start our tour.

We passed a handful on inviting pubs. Because of the dollar to GBP exchange rate, Jay refrained from drinking on this trip. A pint would have cost at LEAST $10USD!

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The city of London must pay these guys to walk around all punk'd out. People were taking pictures of them everywhere. We had to photograph them from the back to be discrete.

On our Ghost Tour, we stopped below inside the courtyard of the Somerset House. There is a huge collection of impressionist masterpieces in here.

One of the last places we stopped on our ghost tour was the infamous Charles Dickens 'Ye Old Curiosity Shop'. There were a couple super spacey drunk people stumbling around while we were getting the stories of this place and its ghosts. It'll just color the memory for us...
We went to Easter Service at Westminster Abbey. They closed the abbey down to tourists and only allowed people in for worship. When we got there, we found standing room only!

After leaving Westminster Abbey, we walked down the street toward Trafalgar Square and went right by Big Ben and Parliament. It was a beautiful morning. The sun was warm and there were hundreds of tourists taking in the sights.

Here is Trafalgar Square. The tallest sculpture is Nelson's Column. It honors Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, who won some incredible naval battles during the Napoleonic Wars. He's a real big national hero.

Here we are in Hyde Park. There were a lot of people out in the park this day. People were throwing frisbees, kicking soccer balls, having picnics, etc. The colors in the tulip gardens were really nice.Our last day in London we headed west to find a GREAT curry house. On our way back, we stopped in Kensington Gardens. Below, Karen is sitting on the wall outside the Kensington Palace garden.