Barcelona

Here are some pictures of our trip to Barcelona in July. Cindy and I met Elisabeth and Valena in Rome and flew on to Barcelona. This picture is in front of the fence at Familia Sagrada.

The Miro mosaic in the sidewalk on Las Ramblas.

The view from the landing at our apartment, looking down the stairwell. We had a third floor walkup.

TThis is the conduit array from the electrical service entrance to the apartment. It's in the entry hall -- sort of a nice geometric pattern.

Elisabeth and Valena in Place Real, close to where our apartment was located.

Place Real in the Barri Gottic, not far off the Ramblas.

Traveling

We are entering a short stretch with lots of travel. Sunday I'm going to London to see about my eyes. Expect to come back early the following week. A friend at the British embassy connected me with a retired couple who have a London flat they rent to British diplomats. They made an exception for me. So I will be staying in Pimlico, SW1, and riding the tube around. The over Thanksgiving is our annual happy confluence of holidays -- we have six days off, starting with Thanksgiving Day. We'll come back to work on Wednesday. We're tentatively planning to take a five day trip to Sharm al-Sheik, Eqypt, right at the point of the Sinai peninsula. That's still tentative. Alma, our friend who owns a travel agency, found out about it. We're waiting to see if there is enough interest. Dec. 5 - 12 we'll be in Baku, Azerbaijan. Cindy is going to be part of an OECD anticorruption assessment trip with people from the EU and I don't know who else. I'll just be a tagalong tourist. (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). OECD is headquartered in Paris, and Cindy is supposed to go to a followup meeting there in March. I'll plan on going with her on that one too.

Our embassy has an OIG team here now for our two-week inspection. Some of the career State people are a little nervous -- it is amazing how the lack of continued job prospects make one have a much more nuanced view of these things. In short, I'm not real worried about it. I figure it is sort of like a professor writing an exam -- he has the option to write one no one can pass, one everyone can pass, or something in between. So we'll see what these folks have in mind.

Weather has been nice -- in the 70s today. Supposed to be near freezing Friday and Saturday mornings.

There is what we call the German store across town near Embassy Row, and I was able to find some cheddar cheese there Sunday. A successful outing. The American embassy is across town from Embassy Row, so I don't make it to the german store much. But this turned out to be well worth the detour.

The Lura Lakes

The approach to the first lake. This is the second vehicle in our caravan. The man at the hotel said our Mercedes 4-wheel drive vehicle would not make the trip. That should have told us something we needed to know, but of course we took it at face value and all loaded into the appropriate vehicles -- Range Rovers, Land Cruisers -- like I say, it should have told us something.

The first and the lowest in elevation of all the lakes. There are seven lakes that make up the "Lura Lakes" region. It is a national park, but illegal logging has mostly left it barren. The highest one is at about 1600 meters. This one I thought was the prettiest in its present state.

On the walk to the third lake.

The last of the lakes, Lake of Flowers. It has suffered the most from logging because of the silting. In the next two pictures the grassy portion is very boggy. I don't know how long it takes for silted in areas to become "firm" or if they ever do, but this one has a ways to go.

As far as one could see, the remains of a forest. None of this has been replanted, either, and there were no seed trees left to provide natural reseeding. I saw very, very few little new trees coming up anywhere.
A good section of the road. This is on the way way down. Some sections were so bad that one of the ladies got out and walked a hundred yards because she knew the car was going to roll off the side of the mountain. Besnik had to stop several times and roll big rocks off the road that had fallen after we drove up. We all agreed that we would have been better off to have seen the first lake and left the mountain, but now at least we can say we survived.

LURA

The first three photos are from the hotel looking down at Lura. There are actually three little villages called Lura: Krej Lura, Fushe Lura, and Gur Lura. We were in Gur Lura. Gur means stone. Gur Lura is the highest in the valley. These little mountain villages are snowed in during the winter. One of the guys at work is an ex-military officer, and he commanded a battalion based at Peshkopi, on the other side of the mountains. When I told him where I'd spent the Fourth of July weekend, he just laughed. He had a company based in Lura; in fact, the old barracks are just down the road from the hotel. He had to visit several times a year. Besnik, who we rode with back from Lura, is from a little town close to Peshkopi, and he told us when he left home to attend university in Tirana, he walked from there to Kurbnesh to catch a ferganz or hitchhike to Tirana, an all-day walk. Same with my work colleague, when he came to visit his family in Tirana, he would walk to Kurbnesh to catch a bus or hitchhike. The copper mine in Kurbnesh blocked the road so there was no through-traffic. There's not a lot of traffic now. There are scores of these little mountain villages in Albania, and understandably they're losing population. In Tirana we know people who live in Tirana but were born in places like this; not unlike Mississippi, where it is not at all unusual to meet people born and raised in the now little and forlorn dried-up towns around the state who have moved to Jackson.

This is supper, waiting to be served. There were about 30 of us on this trip, and a couple of the guys had made the trip a few days before to arrange accomodation for us all at the hotel and to have the meal prepared. They brought me the head and put it in front of me -- Cindy said I was the guest of honor. I guess because I was the instigator and they knew I really wanted to make the trip. Turns out barbecued goat brains are kind of sweet.

After supper they started making toasts. Someone made a toast to our Fourth of July, so I made a toast. Cindy said it was more like a short story. But I explained that we didn't know how to make toasts because of Thomas Jefferson. They were very popular in colonial America, and as happens with anything involving drinking, the more they drank the more toasts that were made, and the more toasts the more they drank until sometimes they became rather rambunctious affairs. Anyway, when Jefferson was in Paris he discovered the French did not play this particular drinking game, and when he became president he discontinued the practice. So it is his fault I don't know how to make a toast. But I'd already toasted enough that it seemed the proper thing to do.

TO LURA II

On the "outskirts" of Kurbnesh. Kurbnesh is about halfway between Rrëshen and Lura. Rrëshen is where the paved road ends. Kurbnesh is close to Oroshi, which if you've read Broken April is where the blood fued killer goes to pay his death tax.

A nice mountain meadow. They are gathering sticks and putting them on the horse to carry back for cooking. Out in the country one sees a lot of this black dress/white scarf mode of dress for older ladies.

Finally, the billboard for the hotel!

And here is the driveway to the hotel, from the hotel looking toward the mountains where the lakes are. The elevation at the hotel I think is about 3000 feet or so.

On the Way to Lura

I had wanted to go to the Lura Lakes region of north central Albania since reading about it in our guidebook. There are seven lakes high in the mountains, and it was by reputation one of the most beautiful places in Albania, albeit somewhat less than in its prime due to illegal logging. It looked reasonably close on the map, and the highway was a nice big red color so it should be reasonably accessible. The prosecutor who is the head of the JIU was familiar with the area, having grown up not too many miles away, and he volunteered to organize an expedition. We left Tirana on July 3rd in a caravan of seven vehicles. These photos are in reverse order.

Immediately below is the old copper mine smelter in Kurbnesh.

You can see the highway from the left of the photo down through the middle. All three of these pictures are looking more or less to the west, the direction from which we had come.

About an hour out of Tirana the paved highway ends, and this photo is the beginning of the "real" trip. The road got progressively worse and worse. It is about a two and a half hour drive from here to Lura with Cindy driving, although our driver on the way home was determined to make it in two hours. It rained once we got there, and on the way back the road was muddy and slippery. One of guys drove our car and we rode in another car.

London

As it stands now, I will be going to London on Nov. 1 for a week or so to have my eyes checked out, and have cataract surgery on my left eye if that's the proper step. I remember being there in April/May of 2008 and writing a lot on this blog -- I've sort of tapered off, if anyone has noticed. But trying to make plans to go has brought back some of those memories.

November no doubt is going to be wet and chilly/cold, don't know which yet. I got my airplane reservations made this morning, appointments confirmed, and now I'm looking for a hotel. The place I stayed before is 132 pounds a night, which will come out of our pockets this time. So I'm looking on the internet for a hotel that is cheaper. I don't know if London is still the most expensive city in the world, or by what measure, but I don't think there are any cheap hotels. I just want one close to a tube station in an area with places to eat. That's not asking for too much. The best deal i've found so far is a Radisson hotel for about 87 pounds/night. That's $142. So wish me luck.

The New Orleans-NY Giants game was on Armed Forces TV last night, so I watched the second half. My first football outing this season. I haven't watched any baseball. I'm not sure I'd know who any of the players are, the newer ones anyway.

So I'm going to post this, and maybe it will help me get back in the blogging spirit.