Weekend in Amsterdam

Just after our arrival in Prague, we got an email from our friends, Chuck and Laura, requesting that we all meet in Amsterdam for the upcoming weekend. So...what the heck? We're already IN Europe, and Amsterdam is only and hour and a half flight away...Shebang, Sheboom, a few days later, there we were :)

To our enjoyment, Chuck found us a great little houseboat just outside the city. Here we are relaxing on our deck.

We were visited by lots of waterfoul...ducks, shovelers, swans and even a blue heron. Hannah enjoyed feeding all of them :) She even shared her caramel waffle cookies with the swans & they loved it! And check out the heron on the roof behind Hannah and Laura.

And, of course, if there's any opportunity to add some good wine to the day's activities, we're there! What better way to enjoy our deck?

So, we wandered around Amsterdam & made our way to the zoo. They had an awesome butterfly exhibit. Here are a few picks from that.

The zoo also has a recent addition to their gorilla exhibit. Here's the proud Mama with her baby. So cute!The reptiles are always a favorite, too!Watch out for Hannah the baboon and Laura the gorilla :)

This one is definitely dangerous...Hannah playing the white tiger :)

Have you seen Ocean's 12? If so, you might remember this bridge from one of the scenes.

All in all, a great weekend & forsure one of our favorite cities in the world.

Catching up!

Well...I'm home on a sick day today, so I thought I'd post a few blog updates. Sorry for the delay!

First - We're really starting to feel settled in here in Prague. We're enjoying our school and the people we work with & we love our neighborhood. All is well and we've already had a few good adventures to speak of :) Check out our next few updates for specifics!

Hope you're all well.

We have arrived...

Sorry it's been so long since our last update. We had an excellent time in the States visiting family and friends...so much to catch up on, but that will have to wait for a future blog.

Cisco at Wenceslas Square, 6:45 a.m., first morning (seriously jet-lagged).

Sausage stands were all ready to serve meat to the masses at 6:45. We were tempted, but thought better of it.

This is the Municipal house, still early morning on the first day.

For now, we arrived in Prague & got keys to our new apartment. We spent our first couple of nights sleeping in the living room, trading between the couch and the floor. On our third day we made it to IKEA and bought a bed (among other things), so we're definitely getting more comfortable in our place.

Cisco sitting on the more comfortable of the two sleeping options in our first few days.

But, it's a great place and we love our neighborhood of Vinohrady.

This is the view from our front window.

This is where we will be catching the Metro everyday to work, starting in a few scant days.

The cats are adjusting...Woody a little more quickly than Clementine (as you can see by the pictures).

Woody relaxing on his momma's lap, catching some rays.

Clementine hiding under blanket from all the bad things in the world, like airplanes, taxi rides, and delivery people.

We're spending our time walking around & exploring our new city (with a particular focus on all our local restaurants). Yesterday we had the greatest traditional Czech meal of roast duck, wild boar gulash, and dumplings, dumplings, dumplings. We have decided we will revisit them for our Thanksgiving dinner in November. Anybody want to join us?

Hannah enjoying one of the many delicious Czech beers before the long foray into IKEA.

Overall, we're doing well and finally starting to get over our jetlaggedness. We're looking forward to seeing any and all who can make it to Prague!

Finally...good diving pictures!

We went out for a couple of dives this weekend with some friends who are leaving the island. I finally got some good photos so I thought I'd share a few.

This dive is called the "Cheese Caves" by locals. This is due to all the caves in the rocks that make it look like a big piece of Swiss cheese.

Here I am at the beginning of the dive...And looking very sleek if I do say so myself :)

Now, I know this isn't the most amazing fish picture you've ever seen...but those little buggers are FAST, so I was impressed that I was able to capture it at all!

Cisco was definitely enjoying himself in this dive. Everytime I looked over at him he was upside down playing.

This was a super cute little starfish...talk about great natural camoflauge.

Cisco had a school of small fish swimming around him for a while. They didn't seem concerned by the giant man flipping his fins near them.

This is a fire worm. The have been pretty common on our dives, but this is the first really good picture I've gotten of one.

There were lots of urchins on this dive. I thought this little urchin community was pretty awesome with all the different colors.

Again...it may not look like much, but these fish are dang hard to capture on film!

Here's another cool urchin bed with some funky corals. The grey one looks like an underwater beehive.

This was forsure the coolest thing we saw on the dive. It's a nudebranch...no kidding...it's name sounds like nudy-branch. Anyway, it was REAL pretty and has a super cute little face and poofy tail. I am continually mistified by the variety in nature.

Cisco says, "It's all good!"

Avakas Gorge

One of the few places we had yet to go in Cyprus was Avakas Gorge on the Akamas Peninsula.

So last weekend we took a trip to see it. The gorge is about a mile from the beach through a walking trail. It has a lovely (in some parts...in other stagnant areas it's filled with algae) creek running through it.

And at one point the rock cliffs come together to form a very cool gorge. It was a really beautiful place. We're glad we got to see it before leaving Cyprus...in just 2 weeks!

Wreck Diving

I love using a sick day to go diving, don't you? :)

Yesterday, we went scuba diving to the Zenobia, last year named the 2nd place wreck dive site in the world. On her maiden voyage to Cyprus on June 7, 1980 she sunk about a mile of the coast of Larnaca harbor. The Zenobia is now lying on her side at about 42 meters below the surface. Here's a pic of the Zen as she was sinking.

We made two dives, each about 40 minutes, to check out different areas of the ship. Here's Scuba Cisco just as we're getting ready to go down for our first dive.

There was a lot of sea life surrounding the boat. Unfortunately, my underwater photography skills are still lacking a bit...or a lot. I wasn't able to photograph the baracudas or the huge groupers we saw, but I did manage to get the 50 silver sea bream that were surrounding us. Way to go me :) This one pretty much jumped in front of my camera while I was trying to take a photo of Cisco.

One of the coolest parts of this dive was getting to swim through the wheel house and canteen areas of the ship. We went in through old busted out windows on one side, and up and out through another. Here's Cisco heading into the canteen.

These next two pics are of some feather duster worms attached to the Zen. They were really beautiful.

I especially like this one with the bright orange fish. And the feather worm looks beautiful with its tentacles pulled most of the way into its protective tube.

All in all it was a great day. Gotta love swimming with the fish!

Animal Planet Weekend

We had a 3-day weekend this weekend and went to stay at a village house with our friends, Dale and Annick. We'll tell you more specifically about some of the events of the weekend, but first, let me tell you about our animal adventures over the three days.

Our first encounter with animals came in the form of flies. It is that time of year here in Cyprus and you mostly get used to them, but these ones were especially pesky. Cisco got a great close-up of one on a piece of our melon. Looks like something out of a sci-fi movie, huh?

Our next animal encounter was with the lizards. They were everywhere! They are real cute and very fast. It was hard to get a picture at all, so this one's not too great.

On our second day in the village house, we went for a drive around the country-side. Dale took us to the infamous goat village. There are a lot of abandon houses, a few still with owners in them, but most filled with goats. We happened to come at the goat crossing time. The goats you see here are only a fraction of the goats in the village.

Also on our second day, we went to Avakas Gorge. On the way, there was a restaurant with a bunch of pigs outside. There were two BIG mommas, one with a couple of older babies, and one with about 10 newbies. They were SUPER cute and reminded us of Babe or Wilbur from Charlotte's Web. In this photo, some of the babies are getting a little confused about who their momma is. I wanted to take the little pink one (in the top left corner of the pic) home with me...Cisco said no.

On our last day in the village house (and thankfully it was our last day) we woke up to do some dishes and squeeze some orange juice (the village house was in the middle of an orange grove). Cisco went to the sink and jumped about 5 feet back. This is what we found in the sink. A real, live tarantula! Its body was about the size of my thumb and its legs were big and hairy. Though we were both freaked out, I saved the day and caught it, then released it into the orange grove. I still have goose-bumps thinking about it.

Finally, shortly after the tarantula incident, we noticed something unusual in the pool. There was a little mousy swimming across, holding his little head out of the water, and paddling his little legs as fast as he could.

Don't you worry...we saved said little mousy and he was just fine, if a bit water-logged. Oh, the Walker adventures never end!