A Travel Story

This is a story about traveling to another country. Since some of you have read me long enough to know how I feel about traveling, flying, and other countries, this story just may help you understand my feelings. (I hate traveling and flying even though I've been to other countries and refuse to do either anymore.)

My daughter's husband died about 3 years ago now and you can read the blog post about that here. It was a very sad day for all of us. But her in-laws treated her to a Mediterranean cruise 5 months after their son's death. It was a sweet and gracious thing to do. But it got ugly real fast.

My daughter hadn't ever traveled to any place beyond our continental borders, except for Hawaii several times, and wasn't used to the culture shock. And, truthfully, I don't think those countries were ready for her. Before the trip, she had traveled extensively in the U.S. and her choice for the worst drivers in the U.S. and the worst city in the U.S. are recorded forever in my memory. I won't mention which were her choices here on the internet, but if you ask me through an email I'd be happy to share with you. I just don't want rants from people about a city which just may well be their city.

Anyway, after crawling through the pyramids of Egypt (scary and suffocating—her words), trekking through the filth of some of those countries and experiencing the ports of call in that area of the world, she told me her experience in Turkey, which she now says is the worst country for drivers. Their laws for motor vehicles are taken as just a hint, never enforced really. Traffic jam? They just pull on the sidewalk and drive. Now, that alone should be your first clue but I'll elaborate. Second clue is my daughter is very demanding—very. This is important to the story.

A relative is a travel agent (Terry) and sets up all the trips for the family and always travels with the group. This is also important to this story as I don't think most travel agents would go as far as Terry did in helping daughter. They spent a few days in Turkey off the ship.

When time came to return to the ship and they got to the dock to get back on, her passport was missing. She looked through her purse, pockets, everywhere and they couldn't find it. The border agents put her in detention. Terry, travel agent, was beside herself. She couldn't leave her in Turkey but the Turkish government wasn't about to let her go to the ship without a passport. Finally, she thought it could be somewhere in her luggage that went on back to the ship and was on board at that point. (Luggage goes on before you do.) So Terry went on the ship, waited for  ALL the luggage of all the passengers to get on the ship, rummaged through hundreds of suitcases until she found daughter's luggage and finally found the passport. Now, the relevant part here is that took hours. SEVERAL HOURS! Daughter was in tears because she had absolutely no control if they wanted to keep her there. (I'm sure some of you have seen the movie, Midnight Express.) Plus the cruise ship would sail on time, with or without her. They did give her some things to eat and Terry or her in-laws brought her food. She was scared to death when in that detention. She just wanted to come home to California. She said she'll never leave the U.S. again.
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Another cute pink vignette I like. I think I say “love” and “adore” too much, but it is actually how I feel about these photos.

I saw this pool on this high-rise home and just can’t see myself ever swimming in it, not that I’d ever get the chance, but I’d get dizzy just approaching it.

Do you remember these old 1950s dining chairs? I certainly do and it looks like this one had been given a fresh update. Cute!

Beautiful for French, English or any décor actually.

Sweet.

A teapot from Green Gate.

Bedroom with Green Gate accessories in it.

Green Gate tea tin. You’ve really got to visit their website. I’ll be posting more Green Gate items here for you to see though.

A mews in England somewhere. I think mews are very quaint places to have a shop, office or residence. Mews are a row or street of houses or apartments that have been converted from stables or built to look like former stables.

While I doubt this is really pink, I thought it was clever the way the photo turned out sort of pinkish.

Cute way to do some used eggshells, if one can paint! I can’t. Read about that here if you'd like.

A cute little thermos.

Another divine old lawn chair with a cover for the sun.

Fun place to watch the ocean.

I can’t believe this is available somewhere for sale. Surely the owner spray painted it and painted or decaled the BREAD on it.

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A Story About the Life of a Marine's Wife

 This is a mosaic of my laundry room.

I've updated my tutorial on the new blogger interface here. This one is about blogger wanting you to upgrade for more storage space and telling you that some photos and/or posts will be deleted because you're using too much space. You really need to read this tutorial. Go to the bottom of the tutorial for a bit of advice on what other options you have.
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As I've stated before, my hubby is a retired Marine. We've lived in the Western part of the U.S. most of our lives and I can't imagine living anywhere else. When he had to go overseas twice in our years in the Marine Corps, it separated us for a whole year. He was on unaccompanied tours, which means that our kids and I had to stay stateside. Since he was in nuclear weapons, he wasn't allowed into Vietnam or any war zones for which we were grateful. But it was very difficult being without a hubby for a whole year and only communicating by letters and through short wave radio contact. By that I mean, I'd go through a local ham radio operator via a phone connection here in the U.S. and hubs would go through a ham radio operator where he was. That way of communicating left us with no privacy; the ham radio operators heard everything we had to say and we'd both have to say "Over" when we were through talking so the other person could talk. So you cell phone users have no clue how it used to be. Very inconvenient to talk personally about situations at home if need be. "Love you. Over" doesn't quite convey its message! Personal things took weeks to resolve if a situation at home had to be addressed through letters. Yes, letters. There was no instantaneous email at that time. And with 2 kids there was always something.

Anyway, the first time he went to Asia, I stayed with my parents in San Jose. The second time he went overseas I decided to go back east to Pennsylvania to be near his family so they could become better acquainted with their grandchildren. Our kids were their first grandchildren. Hubs has 7 sisters and 1 brother. Hubs is the second oldest. With all those kids you'd think they'd have scads of grandkids. Not true. There are only 15 and that's kind of small for such a large family.

Anyway, we settled into the town next to them, just about 15-20 minutes apart but I didn't see them but 3 or 4 times that year. It was a small town, at that time probably 11,000 people and today the population is at about 13,000 people so it's not had a lot of growth in 40+ years. It was difficult for me because it was a place where people were born, lived and died in that same town, sometimes never leaving its local boundaries. We were newcomers, Californians and well-traveled besides. You had to be just a few certain ethnicities or you didn't fit in, very different from California where there is such a glut of just about any ethnicity you can find. My kids struggled. And if not for one of their teachers being an ex-Army man I doubt they would have survived. He went out of the way to help them fit in. I don't remember his name but he was very kind to them—the new, strange Californian arrivals. We were viewed very differently, especially when we talked.

Now, Californians for the most part don't have a regional accent. But that part of the country has a very, very specific accent. It's a tri-state accent I can pick out of a crowd anywhere. I can tell if you're from that part of the country. A sort of SE Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey tri-state area accent. Very distinguishable for us from the Western part of the U.S. Hubs sounds nothing like his brother or his sisters! I have no clue how he didn't develop that accent but he hasn't. The only things he pronounces funny—to me anyway—is saw and water. Saw sounds like sol and water sounds like wooder. I've kidded him about it for 51 years!

This is getting kind of long and I have another story to tell concerning this but I'll leave it for another time, but I shall reference this in that blog so you can read both if you miss this one.
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An easy-to-make outdoor shower. I think I’ll try to get Love Bunny to make one in our backyard just for fun.

A cute quaint stucco cottage with a couple of pretty espaliers against the front entrance.

Beautiful shades of blue, especially that bowl on the table.

Smile. Just some pretty papers in a pretty pink bucket to delight your little peepers.

What a bedroom this would be to have!

Looks to be a beautiful residence in a large city. I love that they fly the American flag. I thought the other flag might be a Texas flag, but it isn’t. Probably their “heritage” country flag.

Go ahead and sigh; I know you’re loving this home.

This almost looks like a beach house but I have no idea where it is. Pretty though.

What a beautiful entrance to both houses this is. I’d take the lower one though because I hate climbing steps now. But I’d sure love to have those others for my neighbors though. ☺

Beautiful pool and spa.

This looks to be in another country. Notice they didn’t go buy an expensive umbrella; they just tied up a tablecloth or sheet to each other’s houses to shield them from the sun in their common area. Peaceful co-existence.

A pretty little garden with roses to greet you at the entrance, tipping their little heads with delight as they drink in the sunshine. Grand performance!

A sweet vintage cabinet someone adapted to their bathroom needs.

Now, I want you to notice the tiny dimensions of this bathroom. A typical bathroom in a typical sub-division house hallway. BUT with a tile floor adding the biggest pizzazz I’ve ever seen to it! Stunning!

Another example of tile adding pizzazz to a bathroom.

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Linking with Savvy Southern Style