It's Almost Over

Edinburgh, Scotland

We are approaching the end of our planned year of travel. We have had a lot of fun, but sometimes I catch Ronan when he thinks no one is looking, clicking through slideshows of homes for sale in Idaho Falls. Ha! Kris and I were talking the other day that a couple years ago we were dreaming of the day we would no longer own a home and we could travel the world free of the encumbrances of home ownership but that now we dream of having our own home again; of sleeping in our very own beds with our pillows and our blankets, of cooking in a kitchen that is all ours using utensils and appliances that we understand and can find, and of shopping in familiar stores where we know where to find what we need and where we know that we will find what we need. Traveling like this has really been fabulous in so many ways but it has also had its challenges.

Most of the challenges fall into a category of minor frustrations and inconveniences. For instance appliances that don't function or which are significantly different from what we are used to and thus require a steep learning curve to utilize. A good example being the radiant heating systems in our European homes: turning on the heat in one of our apartments included three different switches in three different closets in two different rooms, all this before turning the dials on the individual radiators in each room could be expected to do anything. In our flat in London, turning on the water to the shower unit (because yes, we had to actively switch on the water), turned off the heating system and if we forgot to turn the shower system back off, then the apartment would be freezing when we returned. Oh, and every single outlet in the houses here has its own off/on switch, no big deal once you know that (and judging from the sparks that fly if I plug something in when the switch is already on, probably a good idea), but confusing before you figure it out. We have experienced dryers that don't work, kitchens that have almost no supplies, kitchens that have bewildering supplies, homes that are just plain dirty, homes that are full of cockroaches (but not necessarily dirty... cockroaches are just a fact of life in Costa Rica). Sometimes we cannot find the house easily, or the directions to get in don't work, or the key isn't where it should be. I used to tell the kids about the horror of growing up in a family of seven living in a one bathroom house, well these kids have lived that horror now many times over. Our housing is usually small, and someone ends up sleeping in the living room. We have been wearing the same few outfits each for a year and most of us are ready to never see these particular clothing items again. We usually have no car and we often hike a mile to and from a grocery store, returning home each laden with full to bursting bags over both shoulders.  Shopping in a foreign country means giving up your favorite peanut butter and being prepared to experiment somewhat with foods that may not be familiar. And every couple weeks we pack everything back in our two bags each and take off  by foot and bus and train and plane dragging all our belongings behind us or on our backs. All of these though truly add to the adventure and are at worst minor frustrations and are frequently even entertaining (including the cockroaches).

But there are real challenges too and they are mostly about what we left behind. We left behind a community. Our dentist. Our ward. The YMCA. Our library. Familiar streets and stores and parks. There is a level of security in knowing where things are, when things are happening, and what you can expect from certain people and knowing that they know what to expect from you. We get a tiny bit of that feeling of community when we go to church each week, where it may not be the same people from week to week, and the meetings may not even be in English, but the basics are at least familiar. Besides that and one visit with cousins in England, we have been largely surrounded by people we do not know, who do not know us and who we are unlikely to meet again. It can be a tad isolating sometimes to always be in an introductory mode with everyone around you and to always be unfamiliar with your surroundings. It makes a simple trip to the grocery store just a little more complicated, a lot more if you also throw in a foreign language.

We left behind a home. Our home isn't even waiting for us to return to, all that remains to us of what was our home in Colorado is a ten by ten storage space behind a big orange door. We aren't even completely sure of everything that we will find when we start to open up those boxes stacked there. In fact I have a persistent fear that I probably got rid of something that I am really going to wish I still had and that I will only realize it when I have unloaded and sorted through it all. My other concern is that I will discover I saved stuff that I don't care about, so I guess the real fear is that the me a year and a half ago saved the wrong things for the me now. We miss having our own space though. Some of our homes this year have been great, some of them have been truly terrible, but none of them have quite been our own.

Most of all, we left behind people we love. Of course we have each other, and we have certainly drawn closer depending on one another for everything. And we have a technological connection (for which we are extremely grateful) to anyone we want. We text and call and skype friends and family daily. But it isn't quite the same thing as playing basketball at the park together or sitting next to one another at the movies or staying up late playing games and we really miss and crave those in-person connections. All year long Ronan and Liam have done an online seminary class, again a technological advantage for which I am extremely grateful, but I worry a little too, that they have missed out on sitting in a room of friends learning and goofing off together. Fionnula talks to friends through a computer, but I worry a little that she doesn't get to giggle and laugh and play on a playground with them. We are really looking forward to seeing, in real life, not on a computer screen, at least some of our favorite people in just a week. Sadly, some of our favorites will still be far away from us when we buy a new house in Idaho, but I guess in those cases there continues to be the technology advantage, and hopefully the occasional visit too, since we will at least have an address again.

We truly loved our year of being nomads, and we do not plan to completely give up our traveling ways, but rather to strike a balance wherewith we can explore far and wide and still have our very own pillows waiting for us when we return.

We Love Edinburgh!

Edinburgh, Scotland

We are in beautiful Edinburgh, Scotland! It really is gorgeous here, and not just because Europe appears to finally be getting some sun! The trip from Tralee involved a train ride across Ireland to Dublin and then flights to London and then on to Edinburgh. We arrived here on a Friday afternoon and my luggage didn't actually make the full trip with us, but rather stayed on in London for an extra day. I really didn't mind so much, as it meant I didn't need to drag it along on the bus to our Edinburgh home but rather it was delivered to our door the next day courtesy of the airline. I had jammies and a toothbrush in my carry-on, so the only inconvenience really was making sure we were here to receive it at the door. It all went a lot more smoothly than when the airline tried to replace Ronan's luggage that was destroyed somehow between Miami and Heathrow, that took a full two weeks to be resolved. We spent our Friday and Saturday exploring our immediate neighborhood, finding a local grocery store, taking walks on the numerous paths where it always smells of wild onions, and enjoying our fabulous flat that is spacious, comfortable and clean and, best of all, has two full bathrooms and beds for everyone! Yay! Our next door neighbor is the Chinese consulate and there is a huge rugby stadium and park across the street.

Our real explorations of Edinburgh started Monday morning. We can catch the bus right outside our front door and go pretty much anywhere within the city.  We toured Edinburgh Castle. It poured rain on us, but we persevered and ran between the dungeon and the chapel and the great hall. We checked out the Scottish crown jewels (twice, cause, why not), watched them fire the one o'clock gun, which startled a scream out of a little girl watching behind us and then ate our picnic lunch at a table inside the cafe during the worst of the rain. We walked the Royal mile and saw bagpipers and a woman with spiked and wildly dyed hair sitting at a spinning wheel right on the sidewalk spinning wool and more shops selling scarves than you would think could possibly be sustainable. We hiked up Calton Hill to see Edinburgh's own Parthenon ruins and to look down on the city as darkness fell. We hiked to the top of Arthur's Seat which I hope really is where Camelot once stood and this time consumed our picnic outside despite the killer winds and cold.

We shopped our way along Victoria Street, and I am going to have to agree with Edinburgh and say that *this* is way more likely to be the inspiration for Diagon Alley than anything we saw in London. We found Thomas Riddell's grave in Grayfriar's kirkyard and touched the nose Greyfriar Bobby's statue (and cried a little inside over the story of this little doggie who lived on his owner's grave in the kirkyard for 14 years!).

We went to the zoo where they have pandas and koalas and chimpanzees. It was really a very satisfying zoo day, even if the "penguin parade" ended up being only about 5 penguins marching out of one gate of their enclosure, along the sidewalk, and then back in another, they were still penguins and thus cute. All day long there were keeper demonstrations at various locations and every single time the same keeper was giving the talk. One night there was a big football/soccer game a few blocks from here and lots of fans gathered at the pub across the street before the game. They were loudly singing something to the tune of winter wonderland and shooting green smoke in the air before they all marched off right down the center of the street presumably on their way to the game. Where they lost, we watched it on tv as tickets to a Hearts vs Hibs game only days before the game are pretty scarce.

We did the National Museum, a decision which was met with some initial moaning that we had already seen a billion museums, but in the end they seemed to genuinely enjoy it, especially all the various interactive exhibits in the science sections. And Robert the Bruce's sword was pretty popular too. Our last trip of the week was to Craigmilar Castle on the edge of town. Liam says it was our best castle yet. He is partial to ruins over castles that still have roofs and this one was ruins but with still functioning stairs so they could climb almost all over it, even up on the battlements. It was very cool. It is also where Mary Queen of Scots possibly colluded with her Lords to have Lord Darnley killed, a possibility that has never really been proven but my kids all say she was definitely part of the plot.

We still have a few things we would like to see and do here in Edinburgh, but we also are picking up a car for the duration of our stay and want to explore further afield too so we are working on prioritizing. And then on Saturday we will begin our drive south and eventually back to London from where we will fly 'home' to Colorado.

PS: When people ask where we are from I still say Colorado, even though that answer gets complicated if they inquire further and discover that I go back to the States in a couple weeks and expect to then live in Idaho. Whatever, I am from Colorado.

Castles and Crumbling Abbeys and Beaches and Cliffs and Rain

Dublin and Tralee, Ireland

After two weeks in London and two weeks in Paris, Ireland has been a very welcome respite from crowded trains, tiny apartments and the endless concrete of urban living. Okay, Paris and London do both have lovely parks and gardens, but it isn't quite the same as the cliffs and oceans and fields of Ireland.

We left Paris on Wednesday morning, spent a night in a Bed and Breakfast near Heathrow, and then flew on to Dublin on Thursday. We had the weekend to see all we could of Dublin. We learned all about the 1916 rising at the Collins Barracks, visited many of the actual sites of the rebellion in the city, ate ridiculously huge and delicious doughnuts and took our first taxi rides of our trip so far finding Dublin cab drivers to be immensely entertaining people. But on Monday morning we caught a train to the southwest coast where we are currently lodged in a four bedroom house in Tralee that we have used as our base for exploring. We enjoyed seeing museums and cathedrals, historical sites and monuments, but when we park our car and let the kids loose on a hiking trail along an Irish cliff side, the joy the kids get being in nature or climbing over ruins is blatantly obvious. They are even happy looking at the flocks of sheep from the car windows as we drive by.

So stuff we did before we turned in our rental car:

We drove the Dingle Peninsula, where we got ourselves a little lost
in the narrow one-lane-but- still-two-way-roads that are pretty typical here looking for a lake that we couldn't really get out at, but then we did get out at a beach and played catch with a slightly pushy momma australian shepherd and her tag along puppies. We saw an impressive castle ruin, but only from behind a fence warning us to stay away. We paused briefly at a roadside waterfall and then drove up over a mountain pass in fog that rendered either side of the road virtually invisible.

Next was the Ring of Kerry where we first walked around the top of Geoghan mountain and cliffs and then the Kerry cliffs. The Kerry cliffs were particularly stunning.

Kerry Cliffs

Then we did the Cliffs of Moher too because we were on a roll with the cliffs. It was a fairly longish drive from Tralee, but totally worth it. First we walked all the way out to Hag's Head and back, stopping lots along the way to check out the view of course. It is deceptively far to get all the way out there, but Kris and I had done it before so *this* time we were prepared for the nearly 6 mile trek out and back (not so much last time). And then we went up the stairs towards the O'Brien tower and out the other way to get a good view of where we had just been. It was a great walk and it was an atypically sunny day too (thank you, Ireland!).

Cliffs of Moher

Ross Castle

Our short day was a trip to Killarney where we took a tour of Ross Castle. According to our guide it is the only fully restored tower house in Ireland, though tower houses themselves are everywhere, one of my favorite things about Ireland. After the castle we drove over to Muckross House in Killarney National park and just walked around the grounds some, no one was real interested in the tour inside the house (Kris and I have done it  before. Meh. The castle is way more cool) but they loved the parks and gardens.

Our last big road trip was almost to Blarney Castle, but it ended up being to the Rock of Cashel, because its just too cool. We stopped first at Lough Gur and saw an old tomb and then a Stone Circle. I love stone circles. This one was pretty huge. Ronan speculated that it was probably a sports field. Liam that it was to keep cattle in. And Kris said maybe it was just how they punished their kids, making them move really big rocks. They all were pretty entertained to imagine that these long ago people would be entertained to know that we are all speculating about the importance of this big circle if it really wasn't such a big deal but just something ordinary. Then we drove to Killmallock (and learned how to pronounce it) where we saw a couple abbey ruins and were asked "Are you tourists? Americans? Visiting our little town? How did you ever find it?" Ha! I can't believe the town isn't over run with tourists. But its not. And then we finished the day at Rock of Cashel and Hore Abbey in the wind and rain.

Rock of Cashel

And now we are without a car and planning to just enjoy our little Irish town. There is a great fish 'n chips place. The grocery store bakery makes amazing scones that I can't stop eating and their Cadbury hot chocolate was on sale last week so we are all stocked up. The park has nice walking trails, there is a movie theater and walking mall and I can hear the church bells from our house. It does rain basically every day, sometimes almost violently,  our tv is my laptop, our dining room chairs are all in various states of disrepair and the shower actually ceases to function after two showers and needs a good thirty minutes to recover. But we can work with all that, especially with an adequate supply of scones and hot chocolate.

Wandering through Paris

Paris, France

Paris has grown on me. Our apartment is less than charming, particularly the fact that it was advertised as having two full bathrooms when what it really has are two rooms with showers and sinks and then one small closet with a dirty toilet in it. But when you venture out of the apartment, there is a lovely park less than a block away, at least two fabulous boulangeries where we buy the baguettes that, along with a big wheel of brie, have become the mainstay of our diet, and public transportation that can take us to any number of amazing places in about thirty minutes.

Our best days have been those we spent wandering a bit through the neighborhoods of Paris, especially when our walks corresponded with the two sunny days in what has been a mostly damp and cloudy visit. Today was so wet we abandoned our walk through several gardens a little earlier than planned and came home by way of the bakery so we could buy a few treats and, of course, fresh baguettes. Our first real day exploring Paris was last Saturday, even though we had been here for a few days already, that was the day we finally were feeling comfortable and capable of getting around. It was not a warm day, but it wasn't bad and we got ourselves most of the way to Les Invalides by metro and then walked from there to the Eiffel tower, on to the Arc de Triomphe and the down the Champs Elysees before descending again to the depths of the metro and home. By Friday we were pros at Paris and we spent a beautiful sunny day walking around Montmartre, starting with the Sacre Coeur at the top of the hill and then wound our way around and up and down the hill. We found the house where Van Gogh lived in Paris and the Moulin de la Galette that he featured in several paintings. At least that is what my limited research claims. There is a second windmill just down the street from it that looks basically the same, so maybe it was that one Van Gogh was painting? And of course the Moulin Rouge which I assume was never actually a functioning mill. Saturday we walked up and then down the Seine checking out the bridges and listening to the accordion players and dodging aggressive pickpockets. Then we crossed back to the Ile de Cite and saw the beautiful Sainte Chapelle as well as the very tip of the Island before heading back to the Eiffel tower to witness it light up at sundown and then put on a brief but awesome light show before we headed home late, via bus, to bed.

In between walks we have been mostly visiting art museums and the occasional cathedral. We spent one very long day at the Louvre, which I didn't exactly love overall but did love in parts. As far as an art museum goes, it is overwhelmingly huge and badly lit, but it is also sort of THE art museum. The Mona Lisa is predictably underwhelming, since you stand in a crowd of pushing, shoving tourists until you get to stand behind a barricade about 20 feet from the painting which resides in a protective case on the wall. Meh. But there are other paintings to see and plenty of sculptures and, if you are into that sort of thing, there are Egyptian and Greek and Aztec artifacts here too. London didn't get them all! A better museum, we thought, was the D'Orsay, beautifully housed in an old train station. The artwork sort of picks up where the Louvre basically left off, with lots of impressionists and post impressionists. So we saw lots of Renoir and Monet and Van Gogh and Degas and the whole museum took us only a few hours. Today we saw our last art museum, the l'Orangerie, though we had hoped for one more, the Marmottan, which is almost all Monet I believe but we weren't paying close enough attention and it was closed on our last day to visit it. But L'Orangerie has two huge, oval galleries that each feature four  panels of Monet's Waterlilies paintings and I love them. I could sit there all day. Especially if the other people would go away. The basement also has a collection of normal sized paintings in frames by a variety of artists: Monet, Renoir, Picasso, Matisse. But the real attraction here is the Waterlilies.

     We did not go up the Eiffel tower, I like seeing it from the ground. Same with the Arc de Triomphe. We did, though, pay to go up the bell towers at Notre Dame. The gargoyles were what swayed me. It seems like every place here boasts of the 'best' overhead view of the city, but I wasn't really excited by most of them, least of all the Eiffel Tower view as it would, of course, exclude a view of the tower itself. Besides, there is a decent view over the city just standing in front of the Sacre Coeur. But, no one but Notre Dame had gargoyles, and the view of Paris is only enhanced when viewed behind a horned and bearded monster depicted in stone. For stained glass though, Sainte Chappelle beats out the iconic rose windows of Notre Dame.
     I will never quite get over the trash and graffiti, the general state of disrepair and neglect, the families weaving their way through stopped traffic at intersections begging at car windows or the packs of pick pockets that actually stepped out and blocked our way as we walked along the sidewalk, waving 'petitions' in our faces. Most especially, though, the sight of the homeless sleeping in the metro stations, the metro trains, huddled under window awnings, or just stretched out on the sidewalk across from the Louvre will probably haunt us all for some time. But Paris can be charming too, if you look up from the garbage at your feet, though be careful because if you aren't paying attention you will probably step in dog poop.

From London to Paris

Paris, France

We are in Paris. And we are currently spending our afternoon sitting in our little apartment watching Dr Who because right now Paris is feeling overwhelming and the Doctor seems familiar and safe, weeping angels and all. We arrived via the Eurostar yesterday afternoon and eventually managed to figure out how to get ourselves tickets and get on the underground and then off in the general vicinity of our apartment. Though getting out of the underground station proved to be a pretty big challenge when our tickets would not open the turnstiles. In the end some friendly Parisians essentially helped us all jump the turnstiles and shove our luggage through and then we walked the rest of the way to our apartment rather than try to work out how the bus system worked. And then we listened and nodded and murmured 'd'accord' a lot while a very talkative non-English speaking woman showed us all around our tiny apartment.

Our whirlwind London tour finished up Tuesday with a trip to the Churchill War Rooms, which then inspired us to watch Darkest Hour that night. The War Rooms was the first line of any size we had to stand in through our whole visit in London, mostly thanks to that movie, but it was very cool and now Fionn can recite the names of many of Churchill's pets. Really. We saw other things in our last few days too. We went to the British Museum, the Tate Modern museum, and the Victoria and Albert museum. The general opinion of the Tate modern was that most of it was weird, but we did see an actual Salvador Dali painting and a Degas sculpture, plus the view of London from the top floor is pretty great. The British museum is awesome but also just plain overwhelming, there is so much to see that after awhile I got a little numb to it and I would find myself walking into a new gallery, rolling my eyes, and thinking "Seriously? MORE ancient Greek pottery? Puhleeez." It also does make you wonder if possibly India and Turkey and Greece and Wakanda might just possibly want some of their own artifacts back. And the answer is yes, some of them would. Its also pretty cool to see the Rosetta Stone though (sorry, Egypt). Victoria and Albert was a similar experience of just so many things to see, but I am really partial to the sculpture there nonetheless (Rodin!), even if Liam did keep saying “More naked people?” We also covered many fandom bases when we toured the Globe theater, ate lunch on the steps of St Paul’s cathedral, walked all around St Bart’s Hospital till we found the spot that Sherlock jumped from and the plaque commemorating William Wallace, and of course walked across the Millenium bridge.

On Saturday though we took a break from sight seeing and instead took a train and visited cousins who live in a little town north of London. They fed us chili and let us play with their giant puppy, Bear. Ronan and Fionn learned to play netball and pie face. We walked around their little town and the neighboring St Albans and we just had fun not being tourists for a day.

And then we came to Paris and got a little bit lost and couldn’t find a decent grocery store that first night, were pretty disappointed in our first French bakery and are less than enamored of our funky little apartment. But we did find a good pizza place right away and a theater that is showing Ready Player One in English tomorrow and with some work got ourselves to and from a grocery store this morning so we have bread and chocolate and cheese and fruit. We will relax tonight, venture out again tomorrow, and will adjust.

London!!!!

London, England

We are in a tiny basement level flat under and behind a florist shop and hairdresser in London. Our flat is accessed through a series of gates and uneven stairs behind the street and no one would ever suspect that there are residences back here. Well, I wouldn't anyway, if I hadn't seen them. Our flat consists of a main room that is living room, dining room, kitchen and bedroom to Liam and Ronan and then a bathroom and bedroom opening off either side of it. Both bedrooms have limited walking space, and Fionnula's being deep into the flat, and thus under the sidewalk, is basically a dark cave in which she could sleep all day and never know the sun had risen. The bathrooms are too small for showers and are so each equipped with a shower unit right on the wall and a drain in the middle of the floor. The whole room is the shower, they call it a wet room and hang shower curtains across the doorway and add an extra lip to the doorstep to keep water from running out the door. Its quite clever really, though I do keep tripping as I go in and out and the bathroom does tend to be rather, well, wet after anyone has showered. The washing machine is in the kitchen and the drier is actually in a shed out in the tiny courtyard out front, though there is also a laundry line hanging across the kitchen. It is all very adorable.

We arrived in London around 10 am after an overnight flight in an under booked plane where the kids each claimed their own row and felt so spoiled by the flight attendants that Fionn asked if we could just live on the plane and then made our way to our flat on the tube with all our luggage in tow, including Ronan's very damaged duffel. We realized pretty quickly that we were ill equipped to deal with this year's very cold spring in London but we found a few essentials at a thrift store and made do. Everyday we get on a bus or the tube and head out to explore. We have been to the Tower of London to see the crown jewels and walk where Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth I once did.  We have been to the Natural History museum and the Science Museum. We have stood over  Geoffrey Chaucer's and Charles Dickens' and Isaac Newton's  graves at Westminster Abbey.  We have wandered Trafalgar Square and have taken a tour of Harry Potter sites and inspirations. We have gaped at Van Gogh's Sunflowers and Degas' ballerinas at the National gallery. Today we found platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross station and bought lunch in the market just outside. At the British Library we saw a Gutenberg bible, the Magna Carta, and scraps of paper on which the Beatles scribbled original song lyrics. We saw Peter Pan in Kensington gardens and Paddington bear at Paddington station. We are loving grocery stores that carry a variety of breads and jams, cheeses and curries but missing the fresh mangoes and pineapple of Costa Rica. The ease of communicating, and shopping, and getting around when we can actually read all the signs around us and understand what people are saying cannot be overstated. And we got to actually visit with cousins on Saturday and are doing so again this weekend. We haven't met up with people we already know for months and it was really very refreshing and comforting after so many weeks of  just us five and a lot of new faces.

We have six more days in London and then we are off to Paris. Six days to see everything we can, soak up all this luxurious English, find the boys a full English breakfast, and wait for the airline to finally deliver the replacement to that damaged bag.

San Jose

San Jose, Costa Rica

We are all packed up and ready to leave our San Jose home at 7 am tomorrow and head to London. We have been here for ten days and while we have mostly been relaxing, making use of the hot tub and grill that grace the roof top of our nearly empty condo building, we have also had some opportunities to see bits of the city.

Our first day here we got ourselves onto a city bus going exactly the opposite direction of the church we were trying to get to and when we couldn't make anyone understand that we wanted to get back on a bus going back the way we came, (or maybe they couldn't make us understand how to do that, it's hard to say for sure but definitely someone wasn't fully comprehending what the other was saying) we just did a new search on mormon.org and attended a different ward and decided to figure out the bus thing after church. And we did, figure out the bus route back that is, with a little bit of help from someone who decided to take pity on the lost white people who were way overdressed to be wandering downtown San Jose.

We braved the buses again to go see the National Theater and then again to go see the National Museum. By the following Sunday, we were practically pros at navigating the buses and managed to get to and from the correct ward without any incident whatsoever. Well, unless you count that the cord we needed to pull to announce we needed to get off didn't actually work, no matter how hard or how often we pulled it and so the driver blew right past our stop.

We also got a couple more chances to wander downtown San Jose where there are fancy shops and sketchy shops and people selling things right off blankets and tarps stretched out on the ground. These little blanket shops were particularly intriguing. There were people selling crafts, particularly jewelry, several were selling socks, and many were selling remotes. We saw one man selling Colgate toothpaste. It was all a little bizarre. We found John Lennon sitting on a park bench and bought a dinner of grilled chicken and vegetables right out of the front of a butcher shop and stood in the street eating. 

Kris and I walked daily though our neighborhood of walled up property. Most of Costa Rican homes seem to be behind walls and fences, La Fortuna was probably the biggest exception to that, but still many there too have all of their property behind a wall or fence. Here in San Jose, particularly this neighborhood, it is taken to extremes. Some of the walls here are 10 feet high. Many of them are solid and you can see nothing of the property or home. It is not uncommon for walls to be topped with spikes or razor wire or even electrical wire or any combination of the three. It doesn't seem like a particularly unsafe neighborhood, but maybe the walls and security guards at most corners help ensure that.

Costa Rica has been an adventure. We have loved their beaches and trees and flowers and birds (the birds!), but most of all, the people we have met here have, without exception, been super nice and have tried so hard to help us even when it meant pantomiming that we needed to get off the bus now because the bus was going to turn away from our destination. But we are ready to begin a new adventure tomorrow.