Xmass in Vienna and Athens

Just before the world enters 2018 and leaves 2017 we decided to take a short trip to Vienna Austria and Athens Greece to explore the Xmass Markets, zip some Glue Wine (hot spicy traditional wine) ,eat the famous Vienna Schnitzel , taste the best Suvlaki in Athens near the Old Market under the Acropolis and wash it down with Recina(Greek wine make from Pine tree zap).

25 of December is also our Anniversary and this year we are celebration our 54 years of holding it together...it is also our daughters companion's birthday ,so having all this together we decided to invite our daughter and her companion to this short trip.

Vienna is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe ,a river runs in the middle of the city allowing to stroll on both banks seeing boats go by, there is an Old District with many small alleys , Churches and Castles can be seen almost everywhere.

For 2 days we focused on walking through Xmass Markets in close to freezing temrature warming ourselves by drinking Glue Hot Wine and resting in heated stores.

Athens greeted us with much warmer weather but with a lot of more dirty streets and alleys, yes this is the Mediterranean hot countries...the people are more warmer and friendly than in classic Europe and one has to take the good things from each place as we did.

Life is short and we are seeking new destinations as time permits.

Merry Xmass and Happy New Year.

A day in downtown Toronto

The main reason for stopping in Toronto is to visit our youngest son family , we have done it many times during the last 16 years, it is always a stop we make in the Summer flying from home to the trailer wherever it is stored and at the end of the RV trip we stop again on the way home.

Toronto is a huge city , it has it all, great Malls, high buildings, University, industrial area, Underground and beautiful living areas, but most of all we love the downtown area where old buildings are still standing surrounded by coffee shops, markets and a lot of colors.

Parking is an issue as in all big cities ,so we used the underground to get into the down town area, it saves time and money.

Before we entered the market place we decided to eat Dumplings in China town, it where many Chinese eat ,so it must be good , and it was ....

Now even though we walked in the market surrounded by smells from all the cooking we were not tempted to crab anything along the way.

It was cold with crispy clear sky but we were ready for it and dressed accordingly.

The China Town area is a great place for a walk, many bargains on clothing can be found here although the quality wise it is of course not the best.

Let's hope that Mona Lisa will continue smiling on the old wall of the building and that this area will remain unattached.

Visiting family in Toronto on the way home

For the last 16 years we are RVing every summer for 4-5 months in North America, during this time our family grew, kids got married ,grandkids were born and some changed their location.

As for now we our youngest son lives in Toronto and therefore every summer we visit him and his family twice, once on the way before we start our RV summer trip and second on the way back at the end of the trip.

This way we keep seeing our family at home (Israel) during the winter months and our Canadian family twice a year for a period of 10-20 days at the beginning of Summer and in the Fall.

On top of that we made a rule to take every grandkid that reaches 12(Bat Mizva-Girls) and 13 (Bar Mizva- Boys ) with us for one month in the summer- this is the kind of "balance" we found to travel and spend time with the family, till now 3 grandkids have already been RVing with us and next year we are taking the 4th granddaughter as she reached 12 .

Now we are on the last stretch of our 2017 RV trip, the rig is already stored for the winter in Spokane and we are spending quality time with our son, wife and 2 fantastic grandkids, we see them in the morning before they go to the kindergarten and of course after they come back till they go to bed.

  

In the weekends when all 4 of them are free we explore the outdoors if the weather permit's or indoors in case it is cold.

We have built a "Sukah" in the basement and the grandkids helped decorating it during the Sukkoth holidays, it was a lot of fun for all of us having meals and telling the story of Sukoth while sitting in the Sukah.

It is sure the best way to end a RV trip, we will see them again in the next summer hoping we will still be RVing when they get to be 12/13 years old……

Tommorow our youngest grandkid will be celebrating his birthday-2 years young,Mazal Tov Noam we love you.

End of our 16th summer trip

The ones that read my blog know that my wife and I are from out of the States and that we RV every summer for 4-5 months , at the end of each trip we store the rig and fly home for the winter, in the following Spring we pick the rig from the storage and discover new to us States/Provinces.

Because we hike allot mainly to waterfalls, View Points, Lakes and Mountain Peaks it took us 16 years to "cover" most of North America main areas.

This year we started in Bend Oregon and ended in Spokane WA, hiking Mt Helen,Mt Rainer,Mt Baker and visiting the beautiful Washington West Coast ( scroll back to my previous posts ).

It is a challenge to store the rig each time in a different place without worrying all winter what is going to happen to the trailer and the truck during these months, will mice adopt the trailer, will ants enter, will heavy snow damage the roof or will the sun "burn" the walls, in any case there is no alternative for us and so far no major damage happened touch wood.

The storage process starts few days before our departure to the closest Airport , it includes: removing all foods, cleaning the trailer from inside from all remaining foods that might attract mice, shutting the fridge ,disconnecting the battery,winterizing,packing bags that fly with us (mainly clothes and presents for grandkids), lowering trailers front to get rid of snow and water , covering the wheels and the air-condition, putting wood boards under the wheels and asking someone to start the truck every 2 weeks for 10 minutes and hoping for the best.

Sometimes like this year we are lucky to leave the rig on a friends property instead of a RV storage place , we know that it will be in good hands and can always find out through e-mails how are things going.

After all these preparations we start our trip back home that can take in some cases 2 days:

We were booked with United Airlines from Spokane via Denver to Toronto to visit our son before flying home, the connection in Denver was 55 Minutes, which is OK if the flight arrives on time to Denver , in our case the flight to Denver took off 3 hours later than scheduled , so we stayed in Denver overnight and continued on the next day, it was not bad if you are familiar with the Airlines regulations and demand them to pay for accommodations, transfers and meals .

All in All we are having a blast in the last 16 Summers, everyday is a new "adventure", we manage the bank of time as we wish, we like it then we stay -we don't like it then we move, we can hike an area using the truck for days before moving to a new spot with the trailer and most of all we made many friends that enriched our lives ,some we are in touch constantly and meet again after a year or two.

LIFE IS GOOD IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WANT AND DO THINGS THAT YOU CAN AFFORD AND LIKE .

Thank you all dear friends and RVers that shared great times with us, may you all be able to do what you want to do but had no time till today.

See ya all next summer.