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We spend a week in Curaçao. A lovely small island to relax without being bored: a lot and nice beaches to snorkel, a small but rich capital, a natural park to walk, a large coast to dive, a lot of attractions to visit (e.g. the sea aquarium and museums). And last no least cocktails.
Because we missed it in the first day of return and having not a lot of ingredients at home, I invented the first own cocktail. I named it “First Curaçao”, inspired by my first creation and Curaçao, which is also represented by its original orange liqueur. It is a light cocktail with few alcohol, typical for beach cocktails you take there during the day.

“First Curaçao”

2 cl of red Curaçao

2 cl of Barcadi white rum

2 cl of Grenadine

15 cl of fresh pressed orange juice

Mix everything wich 12 cubes of ice in a electrical mixer.

First photos below.

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Last weekend we made a small bicycle trip in Castilla y Leon. Spain is converting some old railway tracks in cycling and walking routes. Friends found a cottage (Casa Lavaderos) in Pineda de la Sierra, which is in the middle of the Via Verde de la Demanda. It is a nice village with the most essential installations: bar (at disposition), church (in renovation), telephone kiosk (not generally working), and letterbox (not proofed). Next supermarket about 40 km (some shops may be at 20 km), also next gas station about 40 km, but don’t expect 24 hour service.

The beautiful trail is based on an old mine train track (should say: it is not a boring flat route; additionally a tunnel is destroyed so the changed track leads of course above it). And in autumn it is nearly lonely (no only because of missing mobile phone coverage).

Furthermore the location serves to visit some interesting areas of Spain which are nearby: Burgos (cathedral), La Rioja (red wine, Tapas, especially in Logroño, and monasteries, e.g. Yuso y Suso).

The links here follows mainly to the English Wikipedia, but the Spanish one is naturally more complete (use there the cross links Español).

To get an impression about the region, the trail, and the village some images are included below. More photos are in the Gallery following one of the pictures below.

Just a weekend in Lisbon. Too much to see (see gallery if you look for ideas), but sufficient to start. Impressive capital, good organized (e.g. public transport, Lisbon Card), good value (hotels, entrance fees), friendly people.

We will come again

Finally we are back from Greece. As often realized in the past, we tried to get an entire view of the country by visiting different regions, mixing activities, trying different traffic systems, and touching different aspects.
So we visited Peloponnes, Crete, Santorini, Mykonos, Chios, Thessaloniki, Mount Olimpus, Meteora, and Delphi, to terminate again in Athens.

What we liked:

• Very clean beaches with extremely clear water (no comparison with Spain).
• Cheap and good food
• Friendly people on the street
• 3 weeks sun shine

What we missed:

• Working or up to date infrastructure
  (The busses are not coordinated, the ferry bad organized, the hotels often in bad condition.)
• Service of service providers
  (Difficulties to get information, long waiting times, double-dealing, unfriendly)

Some short remarks to the sites visited:

• Peloponnes
  Nafplion is a nice city. Tolo near by has some restaurants where you can dine directly on the water line of the beach. Great old theatre in Epidauros, Mycenae is famos but poorly reconstructed, for Olimpia we had no time (due to uncoordinated busses).
• Crete
  Chania was the most beautiful coast town we saw. The trip through the canyon was bad organized and overcrowded (but there are no alternatives except you spent a day of studying public transport).
• Santorini
  Wonderful island with volcanic origin, some lonely beaches.
• Mykonos
  You have to go to a discotheque to come to the beach. 24 hour bus shuttle to the beach. Impressive, but I would miss nothing not having seen it.
• Chios
  Was necessary as stop over to go from Mykonos to Thessaloniki. A quite place with very few tourist (because there is not a lot to see which is different). But if you didn’t see it, you will miss nothing.
• Thessaloniki
  Modern city, we liked it more than Athens.
• Mount Olimpus
  A mountain region, good for hiking. I prefer the Alps with better infrastrukture but unstable weather; our hotel (Villa Pantheon) was not able call a taxi, we had to go to the tourist information, the track bad indicated, the restaurants in Litochoro sold out.
• Meteora
  Really impressive monestries on top of rocks. At least a one day tracking tour (to see some of it, two days to see all).
• Delphi
  Famos, but I think other site are more impressive (Epidauro).
• Athens
  They spend all the money for ruin restaurations more or less in Athens (especially for the Akropolis). Good as stop over to visit Santorini and Meteora, and then go back

The first fotos are available, the rest will come step by step. You can use RSS for tracking the gallery.