This post is from Mid-September; apparently I neglected to upload it at the time.

I made it to Albania safely without any problems.

After I left the States, I landed in Rome and took a high-speed train to Naples, Italy.  On the train was a group of four wild middle-aged women from New York City.  They were on vacation without their husbands and they were raising all kinds of hell.  We had a blast on the train!  Once in Rome, I then hopped on a slow local train to Sorento.  No A/C, rats, standing room only....and the train stopped at EVERY station.  Lots of gypsies (beggars, thieves, scammers, pickpockets) along the way.  Finally arrived in Sorento after passing Pompeii.  I went into Sorento with my tour group and had a chocolate and limoncello tasting.  Limoncello is an alcoholic liqueur.  It tastes like grain alcohol mixed with lemons.  The chocolate, however, was divine.  we sang some Italian songs with the Limoncello Master, Anthony. Mostly songs by the rat pack (Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr,) I found my way to the harbor and sat down on a bench to watch the sunset.  An adorable Italian grandmother sat down next to me and started talking...in Italian to me.  I responded with what Italian I knew (probably 20 words or so), but she kept on talking to me.  After a few minutes her daughter joined us.  She could speak English fluently as she is a tour guide in Spain.  So we all three laughed and talked together while watching the sun go down.  I love how friendly Italians are and how they will happily engage in conversation with others.

The next day we took a boat to the Isle of Capri.  The water along this coast is the bluest water I have ever seen.  We visited the Blue Grotto which is a water cave which is accessed by a small four person boat.  Once inside, when you turn and face the cave entrance, all of the water eerily glows iridescent bright baby blue.  It was an incredible sight; I'm not sure it was worth the 20 Euros to see it, but I am glad I at least got to experience it.

After this tour, I started the second part of my tour in Eastern Europe.  Eastern Europe is not generally a tourist destination, even less so now because of the mass migration of people fleeing the Middle East and Africa.  I flew into Prague, Czech and ate a meal at a restaurant that served me my drinks via a train.  Yep.  They put my drink on a flatbed car and delivered it to my table.  Tom would have never left this restaurant!  It was so much fun.  I admit I ordered more drinks than I would have just so I could watch the train come, stop, allow me to take off my drink and put my empty glass in its place, and watch the train disappear down the tracks into the kitchen.

Our first stop on the bus tour was Kutna Hora.  Kutna Hora is a church which is decorated with the remains of 70,000 humans.  Way back in the day, it was a monastery.  One of the monks went to Golgatha and brought back some dirt form the mountain.  Everyone heard about it and decided they wanted to be buried at this church with the holy dirt.  Needless to say, the church soon ran out of room.  So one of the more 'artistic' monks started making decorations out of the human bones.  Another thought it would be neat to construct pyramids of human skulls.  Anyway, the result is an interesting, very creepy church which has made it onto the list of UNESCO heritage sites.

The next day we traveled through Poland, parts of which look a LOT like Switzerland and Germany.  Who knew?!  Now I understand why so many countries have tried to invade this land over the centuries.  We made a stop at the Auschwitz and Berkenau concentration camps.  The experience was quite sobering.  It is chilling to see mankind at its worse.  We then made it to Krakow, Poland which turned out to be one of my most favorite cities in Europe.  The city is absolutely stunningly beautiful with a very large city center square, cobblestone streets, ornate four-story buildings bordering the square, and a beautiful cathedral.  I took a bike tour of the city and in the afternoon I visited the Krakow Salt Mine.  Down deep in the salt mine, the workers have carved out statues, rooms, and even an enormous chapel out of the rock salt.  It is amazing to see that these things were carved, not built.  It definitely was a highlight of the trip.  The next stop was in Zakapone, Poland which could pass as a Swiss ski village if you weren't aware you were in Poland.

Next we moved on into Slovakia.  More mountains, more beautiful scenery.  We stopped and rode in a Russian tank with a kindly, a-little-bit-crazy Slovakian man named Joszef. The tank ride was the best 15 minutes of the entire tour.  He took us straight up mountains, slid down the other side, through a river......nice and muddy of course.  It was a blast!

From Slovakia, we made our way to Budapest, Hungary.  Budapest is a HUGE city, lots of fun, too much to see.  It would take a week to see all of the historical places, monuments, museums, and sights.  We took a dinner cruise on the Danube River.  We then headed over to Croatia.  Getting from Hungary into Croatia is difficult.  Hungary has erected barbed wire fencing all around its borders to keep out the migrants.  They stop every vehicle and search it.  Our bus was there for over three hours while they inspected everyone's passport, searched the bus interior as well as the luggage holds.

The next destination was Plitvice National Park.  It is an unblemished, amazing
natural wild area filled with tall waterfalls and beautiful lakes colored teal and green and blue with waters so clear that you can see the bottom of very, very deep lakes.  We ended the tour in Split, Croatia where I got to spend the night within castle walls.  It was a fun tour and I am glad I was able to experience Eastern Europe.  I see a return trip to Krakow in my future.