Picture Gallery #1

Ruby doesn't feel like writing, even though her parents insisted she write something. So this is what she wrote:

"I feel like I caught a sickness that makes me not write. It makes me feel like there is an egg beater inside of me and I get cranky. My arms and legs feel like they are only socks."

We decided to wait until later, and she could write some captions about pictures. So here they are:

(Actually, I'm going to write the captions for the first two).

Laundry day, with everything hanging out in the sun on the terrace (as seen from our living room).

Walking home from the Riva along the waterfront.

Now for Ruby's travelogue of a trip we took near our house (out of town).
This is an example of Croatian countryside. We went here on a hike.

This is an old hermitage built into the cliff. A hermitage is where a hermit lives. Hermits were people who wanted to live a simple life. So they moved into big holes in the cliffs and built around the outside of the hole. My mom says they did it for religious reasons.

Celeste on a beautiful trail leading into a quiet area.

Aaah! Signs pointing in all directions! These ones point to the hermitages and two tiny limestone churches.

Celeste: outstanding in her field!



There were a gazillion wildflowers!

Standing on a hermit's porch. It was hot, and I smelled wildflowers. They were growing all over the porch.

On the edge of the road, with a long drop down. And WOW! No railing!

I found a FAIRY hermitage!

A close-up of the fairy hermitage.

Celeste says: "We found this written on a cactus. It is plant graffiti. I thought it was a cool idea, but it was mean to the plant. That's what my mom and dad [and Ruby] said."

Ruby again: >EEK! We're being boiled!!! Well, actually, it's just a stone well where we ate lunch.

Celeste says: "Well, the sun was boiling us."

The view! We decided to hike down to this place and look off the edge. We had to follow a trail into the woods and climb up a steep, rocky slope, and we got to a meadow with wildflowers of every color. The view was just amazing!

Here we are in the middle of the wildflowers. We found a big stone pit that we thought was an old lookout's house. There were two of them, one big and one small. I thought the smaller one was way too tiny to be a house.

Celeste says: "It was very rocky and we could see a good view of the ocean and an island. We saw some goats on the way up, so I watched out for goat poop. I tried not to touch the flowers as I jumped from rock to rock. It was just a little game."

Mama loved all the wildflowers there.

We saw a wild asparagus hunter and so we started looking too, and we found a whole handful. They're kind of purply-green and smaller than usual asparagus. We ate it for dinner!

Finally! Cold water on our feet. I felt like my feet were going to be worn down to stubs when I took off my shoes.

After this, we walked to a bus stop and caught a bus back home.