Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

Pyxis

Forgot to log out last time I was on, then we were out all day Friday in central Montenegro with no internet access, then travelling all day Saturday. Then when I got home late afternoon, my own internet access had failed.....got it back this morning!
So no internet for two days! Despite being logged in to here! Aaaaargh!

Anyway....... In short, the holiday was fantastic! Every part if it was good; the travel, the hotel, the food, the people, the hospitality, the tour manager, the weather, the experiences, and last but not least, the fabulous singing! :T

Will catch up with the thread. Hope everyone is ok!

CKhalvashi

Speaking of travel, going away for my birthday weekend, and just wondering if I can take a (moist) carrot cake through security into Romania, and the hosts won't accept cash at all (and actually got offended by the idea last time round)....it's EU, so no further issues if that helps , and I asked OH, who doesn't know

vivatifosi

Happy birthday CK!

I don't know the answer to your it cake question but my instinct is that you will be ok. Perhaps buy a nice box of biscuits as a back up as they are definitely ok. If travel us EU to EU it should be blue channel anyway, so you shouldn't be stopped. It sounds more about the flight.

The non drink food items I've seen people stopped with are things like jars of salsa. I regularly take big packs of moist wipes in my hand luggage in my hand luggage and am never stopped with those as they are mostly solids even though v damp if that helps.

The one thing that has caused me a problem is shortbread fingers which apparently look like cannabis on a scan. Somehow the pack was less appealing when it had been gone over with a drug scanning wipe. That was on Eurostar.

vivatifosi

Glad you had a good time Pyxis! It sounds wonderful. Are most of your holidays singing related?

Pyxis

vivatifosi wrote: »

Glad you had a good time Pyxis! It sounds wonderful. Are most of your holidays singing related?

Not all, but the others are music-related! I have done a three singing ones this year, but only have one booked for next year. I think I'll probably do another music one next year as well.
I do have two singing weekends coming up, though, but in England!

Pyxis

GDB2222 wrote: »

If you can't reverse safely because there are loads of very small kids about, then to carry on regardless seems wrong to me.** Maybe you need to get a reversing mirror.

What about getting the reversing beepers fitted?

Mine came with the car, and quite honestly, due to the shape of the car body, I'd be constantly getting in and out of the car to check how near I was to a wall, or whatever, without them.
When I'm reversing out of a car space at a supermarket, say, it's a godsend when pedestrians appear from nowhere, despite my constantly scanning all the mirrors and moving exceedingly slowly.

I don't have front ones, which is a pain, as my bonnet slopes down so much I can't see how close I am to a wall. I believe you can get front ones as well.

Yes, it would be an expense, but it could save a life/injury, and keep you out of gaol!

ukmaggie45

Still in London (long story) but we're headed for Stafford later for overnight hotel and hope to make it home tomorrow.

Visit fairly disastrous for me, but I did get to hear Tim Peake speak, :j and even managed to do an 11 minute video of him talking about the trip from Kazakhstan to the ISS.

Got PIP result - standard rate for both Daily Living and Moving Around, so car goes. Only good thing is it's an Ongoing Award. Have applied for Mandatory Reconsideration. This is another Long Story! :eek:

Will try fill you in on more detail when get home.

Oh, one thing, I can highly recommend the Emergency Walk-In clinic at St Thomas' Hospital!

Hugs from Herne Hill.

Pyxis

Still having trouble with Photobucket. So no photos still.



Had to laugh; when in Montenegro. I was talking to the breakfast waitress about the language, and I said that of course, the most important word to learn was the word for the loo!
Then she said that next most important word that people asked to translate was 'internet access code'!

So there you are, folks! Before you go abroad, learn the local word for loo and for internet access code!
Gotta get our priorities right!




On Friday, our last full day, we spent the day at the huge Lake Skardar, which is half in Montenegro and half in Albania.
Firstly, we went on a boat which sailed up the lake and then into a river. We saw cormorants and egrets, and the crew stopped at one point so people could have a swim. Not me, as I need to be able to feel the bottom. The crew pulled up some wild water chestnuts that were growing in the lake. They were nice!
They fed us snacks of the local fried doughballs, which are yummy, and the local soft cheese, and the local grappa-type spirit.

Then we landed up the river, and were taken to a local small-holding up the mountain, to meet a family and have lunch on their terrace, of local produce. They grow their own veg, and the meat and fish is very local too. We looked around their vineyards and then had a lovely sing on their restored threshing floor, set into a stone circle.
We had dinner too, of locally-caught trout, which was lovely! And then another sing!

We drove back to the hotel, where the staff, who had taken us to their hearts, gave us a farewell glass of sparkling wine, for which we sang a thank you! Then it was fall into bed for the early start to the airport on Saturday morning.



Very, very interestingly, the border-crossing into Croatia (the airport was Dubrovnik), was much more involved than when we had arrived; because of Croatiia being in the EU, whereas Montenegro isn't, so the immigration checks into the EU were more stringent.

Funnily enough, Croatia, although it is in the EU, doesn't use the euro, whereas Montenegro, which isn't in the EU, uses the euro! I got confoosed! Luckily at the airport they did accept euros, because I was puzzled what kuna, the currency, was all about! :rotfl: (in my defence, by then, my brain had ceased to work coherently!)

It was a bit annoying, because we boarded the plane dead on time, and everyone was on really quickly, and we were all set to depart dead on time, when the pilot announced that we couldn't go because there was a log-jam at Gatwick due to bad weather.....fog and rain apparently. All very strange.
So we had a half-hour wait on the tarmac with no engines running; because of the delay, the very jovial pilot invited people to see the cockpit! I was straight up there, of course! Sat in the captain's seat, wore a pilot's hat, and had my photo taken with my hand on the controls!
(How old am I? I know, I know!) Well. I thought I'd probably never get another chance of sitting in a BA pilot's seat on a commercial aircraft!

Then when we got to Gatwick, it was sunshine! So flummoxed about the delay, but hell! it's an ill wind!

michaels

ukmaggie45 wrote: »

Still in London (long story) but we're headed for Stafford later for overnight hotel and hope to make it home tomorrow.

Visit fairly disastrous for me, but I did get to hear Tim Peake speak, :j and even managed to do an 11 minute video of him talking about the trip from Kazakhstan to the ISS.

Got PIP result - standard rate for both Daily Living and Moving Around, so car goes. Only good thing is it's an Ongoing Award. Have applied for Mandatory Reconsideration. This is another Long Story! :eek:

Will try fill you in on more detail when get home.

Oh, one thing, I can highly recommend the Emergency Walk-In clinic at St Thomas' Hospital!

Hugs from Herne Hill.

Probably too late but hopefully the policy changes announced yesterday will make things better for you going forward.

zagubov

Welcome back, LJ! Hope you're still going to lots of gigs!

Been to Croatia before, stayed in Zagreb which was very interesting. Always wanted to visit Dubrovnik, as it sounds beautiful; also as its name make it sound it's like in the depths of Russia but it's actually closer than Greece!

Happy birthday CK!