A day at the beach

We spent a lovely day today with my brother's family and their friends in their beach house.
We strolled the beach (not much sea glass unfortunately) and ate a lot of delicious food and sweets!
Lovely views....

 Some were swimming and sunbathing...

 A lovely lady was resting under a bush...

 Umbrellas are getting ready for summer...

 Boats upsidedown waiting for their next fishing trip...

 A fig tree rooting inside a palm tree...

 The winter winds brought out the most amazing things....

 The barbeque is the best spring-summer treat...

 Sheep in the neighbourhood...

 Sweets....chocoate biscuit sweet, carrot and pineapple cake...

 and more sweets....and my strawberry cake...

 Birds were watching us....

 That's the only decent find of ours a lovely wooden face(painted on both sides).

 And some tiles my brother found on another beach.

Romania Day 2- Rainy bus tour.

Hello dear friends,
just came back from the 40 day memorial service of an old dear friend and as the weather turned bad again I thought of continuing with my Romania trip posts.
Again thank you to all those who read and comment or just read me.There are people from Europe, the States and even as far as Alaska and India!Amazing!Blogland brings us closer!

So on our first morning in Bucharest and after the hearty breakfast we got on the bus for a tour of the city. The weather was bad, cold and rainy but nothing could stop us. It was good that we were only 50 people so we could move fast.
The tour took us all around the city and as it was raining heavily we couldn't get off the bus but just heard the guide talking to us and took rainy pictures from inside the bus. Still Bucharest was magical with wide streets like Barcelona and beautiful old buildings.
It was funny spotting beautiful colourful buses in all the darkenss and familiar Greek brands like the bank behind the bus! I know them, I have a huge loan there!!!!!

 See the rain?
We saw lots of similar buildings like this one built by the old regime of Romania but unfinished. The country has no money to finish them any more. This one was finished with glass additions.

 The Intercontinental Hotel was an easily recognisable landmark that helped you not to get lost.

 Our first stop and off the bus for a couple of photos at the University Square. Then the rain came again.

 An amazing group of statues.

 We continued seeing beautiful buildings and the edges of beautiful big green parks.

 Then the Arch of Triumph just like in Paris but cars don't cross underneath.

 Lots of churches. Romanians are Christian Orthodox like the Greeks.

 The Athenaeum, an excellent music venue.

The Central University Library with King Carol I statue.

 The Revolution Square with a disputable statue.

 A short blink of this park made me want to visit it again. (More in a future blogpost.)

 Beautiful buildings.

 Squares decorated with Easter decorations.

 And a lot of green parks. At last the rain stopped. Where are we heading now?
To a museum...but more about that in the next blogpost!.

Romania Day 2-the hotel,the currency

I seem not be able to manage to arrive in my blog very often. I have too many other things to do, all the time!
Anyway, thank you for being patient with me!
So Romania Day 2 has got so many photos, about 300 and blogger is so slow in uploading them, that I decided to make it into smaller parts.
So for today here are some photos of the hotel Rin Grand we were staying at. It was huge and very luxurious for the cheap price we paid.I had to ask for a change of room though as the first one we were given was too small, with two single beds and a blocked view. So after a minor gentle complaint we were given a bigger much more comfortable room with a better view and a kingsize bed!

 We could see a series of greenhouses from our hotel which was ten minutes away from the city centre.

 The breakfast was very good, we could choose from a great variety and could refill our plates. We didn't need to eat out afterwards for lunch and as dinner was included in the price we paid we simply saved a lot of money. Yes I ate all that!

Romania has the RON or lei. One euro was 4,37 lei which was very good for us poor Greeks. We felt we had a strong currency in our purses and everything seemed much cheaper than in Greece.

 The money looked as if it was made of plastic and you could see through some of its parts.

More about Day 2 in Romania in the next blogpost.

Romania Day 1

First of all thank you all for your lovely comments and wishes on my previous blog post!
Are you ready for a heavy photo loaded post!
Hubby and I decided to follow the Teachers' Association on a very reasonably priced road trip to Romania.  I had never been there and hubby had been there 39 years ago so we really wanted to go having the added initiative of having relatives there too.
We started on the Saturday before Palm Sunday of the Greek Orthodox Easter.
The first day was a very long road trip of 14 hours with lots of short stops across Bulgaria.
Although the majority of the photos show beautiful landscape our total experience of Bulgaria wasn't the best. People are very poor and their villages and houses are so ugly. Still the green plains and the wonderful skies made the photos really beautiful!

We started very early in the morning under a full moon. We passed the fog covered plains of Thessaloniki and we entered Bulgaria when the sun started rising.Hence I took no photos inside Greece.

 A strange building near Sofia,the capital of Bulgaria.

 At the suburbs of Sofia.

During a stop in Bulgaria. Hubby took this photo which must be one of the best I was ever taken! I love it,its colours and the sunshine on me. The purple butterfly on my neck was an in-bus purchase, a makrame pendant made by one of our colleagues.

Reaching the Romanian border.

Passing the Danube and the border in Ruse to reach Romania at last. Bucharest was quite near.

 Change of scenery.
After a great dinner at the hotel we went to the city centre and met my cousin Kalliopi and her husband Sorin, architects, who live and work there. You can find them at skaarchitects.
Their office is in the attic over the Van Gogh cafe in the old city centre of Lipscani.

As I have mentioned before I only show gifts I give in special occasions and when they are handmade. So this is something I made for Kalliopi and Sorin and their new life in Bucharest.