My husband Will and I have developed the habit of spending part of November and/or December in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. During our visits these past four years, we’ve noticed that as soon as the Day of Dead (Nov 1-2) celebrations are over Christmas decorations appear on buildings and streets. We northerners find it a bit jarring to see Santa Clauses in snowsuits and boots, reindeer, and our traditional Christmas trees juxtaposed with palm trees and swimsuits.
No doubt Mexicans display these decorations partly for snowbird tourists, but they seem to enjoy the festivity. Our hotel desk clerk was pleased when I admired the suggestion box she’d creatively decorated. I wonder if part of the appeal is that red, green, and white Christmas colours happen to be the colours of the Mexican flag.
Most Christmas decorations we saw for sale were similar to ones available at Canada Walmart, although occasional stores sold Mexican piñatas. Unfortunately, they were too bulky and fragile for us to bring home in our suitcases to add a Mexican flair to our own Christmas decor.
Mexico is a predominately Roman Catholic country and Christmas is ultimately a religious celebration. From December 1-12 some 400 processions wind through the streets of Puerto Vallarta and culminate at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. These parades commemorate the appearance of the Virgin Mary to the peasant Juan Diego on December 12, 1531. Our hotel organized a procession for staff members and invited hotel guests to attend. They asked to wear white although the dancers appeared in colourful costumes.
The candlelight processions include both Aztec and Christian costumes and motifs, mariachi bands, and singing by all participants (the organizers gave us song sheets). Food stalls filled the park in front of the destination, Our Lady of Guadalupe Church.
We found it a beautiful way to welcome the Christmas season. With luck we’ll continue our Mexico habit next year.
In September my husband Will and I flew to Split, Croatia, to visit our son Matt, who is living there for a year. Before leaving, Will plotted a 10-day road trip from Split through mountains, lakes, and charming towns in Croatia and neighbouring Slovenia. Matt took a holiday from work to join us.
Our trip began with a couple of glitches – the long range weather forecast predicted rain and unseasonably cool temperatures and the airline lost our luggage with our warm and waterproof clothing. Our first stop on the drive was the Mall of Split, where we bought rain ponchos, umbrellas, toothbrushes, and spare t-shirts, underwear and socks.
Day two was Plitvice National Park, about three hours north of Split on the scenic mountainous route. We spent six hours at the popular park walking by hundreds of waterfalls and clear, green lakes. The views were awesome and we were comfortable in our five layers of clothes. The rain held off until the end of our walk, but I wore my poncho the whole time for warmth.
Selfie on the lake boat ride
The following day, we drove to Slovenia. The highway wound past cornfields and picturesque towns, including Novo Mesto, birthplace of Melania Trump. At Ljubljana airport we were reunited with our luggage, which Split Airport had eventually located and kindly flew to our next destination. Dressed in our warm jackets, we enjoyed an evening walk in Ljubljana’s downtown riverfront cafe area which buzzed with people and activity. It was lovely to see the castle, buildings, and bridges lit up on a dark clear night.
In the morning, we rode the funicular up to the castle that dominates Slovenia’s capital city. The highlight was the tower lookout’s 360-degree views of the surrounding area. The recent precipitation had fallen as snow on the mountaintops, which made the city’s backdrop extra spectacular.
After our Slovenian lunch of sausages and cabbage soup, we had dessert and cappuccinos at the rooftop restaurant in Nebotičnik Skyscraper (12 stories) for more panoramic views until rain chased us into the National Museum of Slovenia. The museum portrayed the history of Slovenian peoples from Neanderthal to the present time.
Oldest musical instrument in the world – 60,000 years old Neanderthal flute from the Divje babe cave
From Ljubljana, we settled in Lake Bled for three nights. On our first walk, the lake was stunning in the late afternoon light.
In the morning, we walked up to Bled Castle and around the lake. At the far end, we hiked to a viewpoint with views of Bled Island and Bled Castle. The day’s weather was perfect – sunny and high of twenty degrees Celsius (68 F).
A lite lunch at the Bled Castle cafe Bled Island with church in middle of the lake, Bled Castle at the far end
On our second full day in Bled, we did a day trip to Vintgar Gorge. Since COVID, the Triglav National Park has set up a system of timed entries and one-way trails to reduce congestion during the crowded summer season. We found the gorge didn’t outshine similar ones in our Canadian backyard, but the return path with views of Bled Castle and valley villages made the trek worthwhile. The park charges 10 Euro per person which includes helmets for protection from falling stones and banging your head on the rocks jutting out from the side of the gorge’s narrow boardwalk trail.
The following day, we set out for the Julian Alps, took a wrong turn, and found ourselves in a five-mile tunnel. Half-way through it, Matt’s phone pinged: “Welcome to Austria.” Oops! Our car rental was only insured for Croatia and Slovenia. At the Austrian end, a lineup of delivery trucks stretched for miles.
To avoid getting stuck in the lineup, Matt found us a route through Austrian villages and a mountain pass back to Slovenia. We stopped at Kranjska-Gora, a resort town that reminded of us of Banff in our home province of Alberta.
For several hours, we drove the fifty switchbacks (they are numbered) up and over the Vrsic Pass. We stopped at viewpoints with vistas of craggy mountains and a Russian Chapel constructed by WWI Russian prisoners of war who built the road. Many died in the process and are buried near the chapel.
Mountain sheep brought traffic to a halt on a switchback turn
Saturday was caves. First we visited Predjama Castle, built in the mouth of a cave. Guiness World Records lists it as the world’s largest cave castle. The original owner was a robber baron who possibly used the 12 miles of tunnels leading into the mountains to hide his booty.
View from castle cave window
Postojna Cave was massive, impressive, and fun. A 10-minute train ride took us deep into the cave. A guide led us on an hour-long walk through the multitude of formations. The walk ended at aquarium of olm, a cave salamander completely adapted to life in underground water. Since food isn’t plentiful in caves, olm only eat every ten years. Scientists estimate their average lifespan is 68.5 years.
Matt, Susan, & Will on trainOlm in aquarium
After the caves, we left Slovenia, re-entered Croatia and headed for the coast. Our last days of the road trip were sunny and warm. We took the slow and winding coastal route back to Split, stopping at seaside towns and villages.
The summer-like weather prompted us to swim at one of the numerous beach coves along the coast. Quite a change from our cool, rainy days at the start of our drive and a fabulous finale to our road trip.
On today’s BWL author blog, I write about some of interesting research I did for my historical novel-in-progress, A Killer Whisky.https://bwlauthors.blogspot.com/
Last month I visited the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. The museum portrays the impact of war on Canadians from pre-contact to the present day. Before the Europeans arrived, indigenous settlements had warrior training areas, where youths learned skills with bows and arrows and clubs for the tribes’ battles with their enemies. French explorers heightened these conflicts by introducing guns to the weaponry and forming alliances with tribes to aid France’s quest for control of fur trading territories.
In 1759 Britain defeated France on the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City and took over the land that eventually became Canada. Seventeen years later the American Revolutionary War brought an estimated 45,000 US colonists to Canada, where they could continue to live under the British crown. The United States invaded Canada during the War of 1812 in an attempt to drive the British from the continent, but the loyalists held them back.
At the turn of the century, Canadians moved to fighting overseas. Over 7,000 volunteers rallied to the British cause in the South African War (Boer War). World War One was the first foreign war that engaged the entire country of Canada and affected every aspect of daily life.
My journey through the war museum’s WW1 galleries began with panels that displayed images of eager young Canadian men leaving for war.
Who knew married men needed a wife’s permission?
When the men arrived on the battlefields, life in the trenches quickly lost its glamour. Mud, rats, and disease prevailed. During long hours of boredom, some creative souls made trench art from discarded materials like shell casings, brass bullet cartridges, and chalk.
A viewer in the museum provided a visual of a chlorine gas — eerie and strangely alluring. The Germans first released the poison gas cloud during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, taking the Allied soldiers unawares. Troops fled in all directions. Thousands suffered burnt lungs or suffocated. The Allies quickly responded by developing increasingly effective gas masks for future battles and retaliating with their own poison gases.
A cloud of poison gas in Ypres. Photos from Collier’s New Photographic History of the World War (New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1918) Most touching was the museum’s display of the dreaded telegram, which could arrive any minute with news of a loved one’s serious injury, missing-in-action report, or death.
Outside the museum, the tulips were starting to bloom in Ottawa, earlier than usual this year due to the winter’s low snow cover and mild weather in March. Each year, Ottawa hosts a tulip festival that goes back to World War II. Following the Nazi invasion, Princess Juliana of the Netherlands took refuge in Ottawa with her two children. Her third daughter, Princess Margriet, was born at the Ottawa Civic Hospital. A section of the hospital was declared Dutch soil so that the baby would hold Dutch nationality exclusively. Two years later, Canadian troops played a large role in the liberation of the Netherlands. After Princess Juliana and her children returned to their homeland, she sent Ottawa and the Canadian people a thank you gift of 100,000 tulip bulbs. Since then, the Dutch royal family has sent tulip bulbs to Canada’s capital every year and Ottawa celebrates each May with a tulip festival. This year’s event takes place May 10-20th. During my Ottawa stay, my high school friend and I walked to a park near Dow’s Lake to enjoy the beds of colourful tulips.
On January 25th, I fell on an icy Calgary sidewalk and injured the muscles around my hip. During the following week, I thought I was recovering enough to do a hike in the mountains and then a long walk on ice-covered Lake Louise. Two days later I couldn’t hobble across my kitchen without feeling pain. This prompted me to see my doctor and a physiotherapist.
An X-ray determined no fractures, broken bones, or misalignment. The physiotherapist thought my injuries were relatively minor and said they should resolve in a few weeks with rest, exercise, and physio treatments. The problem was that I was scheduled to leave in two weeks for a hiking holiday in Arizona with 33 members of my Calgary hiking club. The physio and I doubted I’d be able to hike by then and, if I could, the exertion might set my recovery back, as it had done on the earlier hike and Lake Louise walk.
I still planned to go on the trip but prepared to spend some or all of the days resting my hip in the Airbnb house my husband Will and I were renting with some other club members. I downloaded numerous books to read and organized writing work to do on my computer. It wouldn’t be terrible to relax outdoors in warm sunshine and I’d still enjoy evening dinners and entertainment with the group, but the prospect of missing the main purpose of the trip was disappointing.
My progress through four physio sessions was slow. I faithfully did my exercises and barely stepped outside for two weeks. The weekend before we left, I tried a few neighbourhood walks. After half an hour, my hip was sore and I couldn’t wait to shuffle home.
Will and I flew to Phoenix on February 20th and spent the next day walking around Scottsdale. My hip was fine but tired by the end. I still decided to try the shorter version of first hike the following day. To my surprise, I felt no discomfort with my hip. Nor did my muscles bother me much the next morning. So I joined my fellow hikers again and then again on day # 3. All of these hikes involved clambering over big rocks. How many rocks could there be in Arizona?
Day # 4 featured a hike along Saguaro Lake, which I’d done seven years earlier and recalled as being relatively easy. The elevation was less than that of first three hikes and the lakeside trail was mainly dirt with small rocks to step around. A picnic lunch and relaxing boat cruise on the lake followed and then an evening at the Silver Star dinner theatre with 1950s & early 60s that brought back memories.
The fifth day’s hike was longer the previous ones (about 14 km vs 8 km). I suggested to my housemates that we do something shorter, but they wanted to go with the group and I went along. I’m glad I did and I enjoyed the first half of the hike, but my hip ached with every step of the last section. I decided 8 km was the limit for my hip. The highlight of this hike was a rare crested saguaro cactus. The abnormal growth formation at the top is found in one in roughly 10,000 saguaros.
On day # 6, we drove to Wilcox, Arizona, our gateway to the Chiricahua National Monument. The first afternoon we did an 8 km hike over comfortable terrain to a view of Natural Bridge.
For our final hike of the trip, the plan was to do a 14+ km long loop. After six straight days of hiking, nine of us opted for a shorter loop through fabulous scenery at a leisurely pace. It was the one day I wanted to keep on walking at the end.
The forecast called for rain starting at noon, but the sunshine stayed in the park. Will and I enjoyed a late lunch at a beautiful viewpoint.
Now I’m home and my hip still feels a little sore, but I can’t say the seven days of hiking set my recovery back. I’m grateful I was able to experience so many wonderful sights and great companionship on the trails. These days, I’m giving my hip its well-deserved rest, doing my exercises faithfully (more or less), and trying to avoid another fall on Calgary’s icy sidewalks.
On today’s BWL Blog, I write about my fun and busy winter escape to Arizona and my less enjoyable fall on ice in Calgary. https://bwlauthors.blogspot.com/
Last May my husband Will and I saw the John Steinbeck play, Of Mice and Men, at the Leeds Playhouse in England. This theatre experience was different from our one the previous week in London. Tickets in Leeds were about a quarter of the London price. That Tuesday the Leeds theatre was a quarter full and we were probably the only non-Brits present. In London we packed the theatre with a large number of tourists.
Of Mice and Men is set in the United States during the Great Depression. It tells the story of two migrant workers who dream of owning their own farm. Being Steinbeck, their dream turns to tragedy at the end. Before seeing the play, I wasn’t familiar with the story, but afterward references to the novel kept popping up. This began later in our holiday, when we visited Alloway, Scotland, the birthplace of Robert Burns, who is widely regarded as Scotland’s National Poet.
Burns birthplace cottage, Alloway, Scotland
Viewed as a poet of the working class, Burns wrote in a light Scots dialect. He’s affectionally called Rabbie by his Scottish fans. Of course, we’d sung his song/poem Auld Lang Syne on numerous New Year’s Eves, but on this visit we learned that another Burns’ poem, To a Mouse, was the inspiration for Of Mice and Men. Burns wrote the poem after he accidentally destroyed a mouse’s nest with his plough and realized that, with its nest gone, the mouse wouldn’t survive the winter. These lines inspired Steinbeck:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy!
When I returned home from my trip, a library book I’d put on hold was waiting for me: Prince Harry’s memoir Spare — I confess I read it. While discussing his teenage lack of interest in literature and academics, Harry says the one book that grabbed him was Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, which was assigned in his English class. He liked that the book was short and, unlike Shakespeare, the plain language didn’t need a translator. Most of all he could relate the story’s themes of friendship, brotherhood, and loyalty to him and his brother William. The brothers’ story ebbs and flows through Harry’s memoir and crashes at the end.
In 2009 Burns was voted the greatest Scot by the Scottish public in a contest hosted by a Scottish TV show. Since then Burns has run into criticism. Some feminists interpret his lusty poems and lifestyle as sexist. He had twelve children by four women. Seven were illegitimate, including the first four by his wife Jean Armour. By Scottish law they became legitimate after the marriage. According to a museum plaque, Jean raised one of the illegitimate children born after she and Rabbie married — it gets complicated.
Others criticize Burns for accepting a job as bookkeeper for a Jamaica slave plantation. In the end, he didn’t go to Jamaica for personal reasons.
It might also be that the Scots dialect in Burns’ poems has fallen out of favour with younger readers, like Shakespeare’s language for Prince Harry, and doesn’t resonate with an increasingly diverse public.
But many Scots around the world still adore Burns and celebrate his birthday, January 25, at Burns’ dinners, which traditionally include such iconic Scottish features as a bagpiper greeting guests and a whisky toast to the haggis.
Calgary’s first snowfall of the season has got me dreaming about my holiday in California this September. The main purpose for the trip was to attend Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in San Diego. My husband Will (an avid mystery reader) and I spent four interesting days attending panels and events like Speed Dating for Writers and Readers and the New Author Breakfast. Both were more fun than I’d expected and popular enough to fill the large rooms by 7:00 am. When we weren’t occupied with the convention, we enjoyed the views from our hotel in the San Diego Marina.
After the convention, we stayed an extra day in San Diego to see a little more of the city. We walked along the boardwalk and took the short ferry ride to Coronado Island, an upscale vacation beach community. The highlight was a concert in the park featuring a great cover band. Hundreds of people gathered. Since we didn’t have chairs, we stood at the front and danced to songs like “Witchy Woman” and “One of These Nights” made famous by the Eagles.
From San Diego, we drove to Julian, a “hippie” town located in the apple-growing hills east of the city. In addition to exploring the quirky, historic former gold mining town, we gorged on apple pie – arguably the best I’ve ever had. A half dozen bakeries produce pies for tourists, many of them day-trippers from San Diego.
Sunshine, warmth, ocean, books, wine, apple pie — pretty much a perfect trip!
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