You gotta love Swiss……
And by Swiss, I mean the airline “formerly known as SwissAir”. Yesterday, after a lovely walk around, lunch and cider with Celso in Oviedo we flew to Barcelona, stayed overnight in an airport hotel anticipating an early morning flight via Zurich back to Los Angeles. Things started to go wrong at the...
Hasn’t changed that much……😂
It’s more than 40 years since I last visited Oviedo, the historic capital of the Province of Asturias. Can’t honestly say I remember much about the city (I was visiting a city hospital back then)…..other than the great local food. That hasn’t changed! Oviedo is our friend Celso’s home town and he’s...
MO (Missouri) to RI (Rhode Island)……😂
” The Principality of Asturias, a region of northwest Spain, is known for its rugged coast, mountains, religious sites and medieval architecture ”. But we’re in Asturias not for any of that, but to visit Janet & Celso, friends who we’ve known for more than 50 years (Sandra & Janet trained as nurses...
“Independentisme català”…..
Spain where we are now and Serbia from where we’ve just flown in, are at opposite sides of southern Europe. More than just distance separates the two nations. But these two very different countries do have at least one thing in common. It might be a bit of a push to equate Serbia’s Kosovo with Spa...
Too Much History
Haunted by history Serbia is a country haunted by its past, bogged down in its history and struggling to find its way in the 21st Century. Emerging out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th Century, caught up in the horrors of two Balkan wars and the First World War following which it...
Las Vegas of the Balkans
So what’s with all the statues…..? We arrive in Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia at the end of a very long journey from Los Angeles via Istanbul. We’re based in a hotel on the city’s main square and once we step out come face-to-face with the central area’s unusual architecture and its impress...
Sweet 16…..
Just half an hour drive north of Skopje and we’re at the border with Kosovo; an hour later we arrive in the new country’s capital, Pristina. We’re here a day before Kosovo’s 16th birthday. The country formally came into existence on March 9th, 2008 rising out of the ashes of the destruction caused b...
City of Consuls
The city of Bitola (or Monastir as it was known during the Ottoman Empire) is in the south of North Macedonia, just a few kilometers away from the border with Greece. During the heyday of the Ottoman Empire, Monastir/Bitola was the cultural and diplomatic centre of the Balkans, hence its nickname as...