Where in the world am !!??

I thought I was used to traveling . . . . but I think this summer I'm beating my own records. I've also been terrible about "updating" my blog, so I'm going to summarize what I've done in these last two months below with words and pictures.

May - I got to Italy and immediately headed off to Spain by van and ferry. It was actually pretty cool because I got to just hang out and skip about 1000 kms of France while I hung out on a souped up ferry boat. I was hoping to get some rest of course but the screaming high school students on their field trip who happened to be sleeping in the same hallway as me didn't feel others on the boat should sleep!

I was headed off to Andalucia to meet my first group. This tour is so beautiful and we get to see so many cool things - including Olive trees - lots and lots of them . . . .
After finishing my tour in Andalucia I flew back to Italy for a little over a week where I did our classic Venice to Florence and had a wonderful dinner with my family (we all managed to be within 20 miles of each other so we took advantage of this rare occasion to have dinner).

Next, I flew back to Spain to begin my tours on the Camino de Santiago. Still, one of my favorite places to bike and visit. I did two of these trips, back to back - one with some great neighbors from the Fort! and the other with customers who have been with me and us for over 10 trips.

This brings me to the end of June. I then drove back to Italy and spent a week there (without moving!) before driving back to France to begin some scouting for our Pamplona Running of the Bulls and Tour de France tour. Which began in July.

Mid July I finished that tour and trained back to Italy. Of course as usual after running around 3 countries it was bound to happen . . . I lost my cell phone - or I should say I left my cell phone - at the Customer Service office of the Central Milan train station. Fortunately I had made friends with the little old men working there as I was trying to work on my computer and recharge the battery before my train ride home, so they kindly put my phone on the train that was coming one hour later and I just had to wait for it in Bologna! I've never seen such efficiency in the train system!! Amazing what human connections can do :-)

I quickly changed the clothes in my suitcase for clean clothes and jumped on a plane with my mother to Romania! This is when the real adventure began.

I was meeting the ExpedtionPlus! that was coming from St. Petersburg and arriving in Bucharest a couple of days later. Bucharest is not a beautiful European capital city. It has a lot of history though, which is partly what makes it a peacemeal city that shows traces of older better times and the destruction a communist dictator can bring when he is obsessed with himself and his ideas! (see the pictures of the Palace). Here I was able to meet up with Yaya! which was so fun because it is always nice to see a familiar face in unfamiliar surroundings :-)

The cyclists arrived in Bucharest slightly bewildered by the traffic, but safe and sound. They had just cycled across 7 different countries, starting in June in St. Petersburg. To get a good idea of what they went through check out my dad's blog (linked above).

My cycling adventure with them began as we left Bucharest the next day and headed to the Bulgarian border and the Danube. This was going to be my second border crossing by bike this year (the first was in February when I crossed over the Andes from Argentina to Chile!).

I'm going to try and upload some pictures now and I'll continue the story of Bulgaria and Turkey in the next post!