Plitvice lakes, Croatia

My fourth and last trip of 2018 took me (by plane that is) to Croatia. DH and DD Joyce went with me during this short trip (we left October 13 and arrived back home October 19, just before our grandson's second birthday on October 20). At the Zagreb Airport we took a rental car and drove for 2 hours to our "hotel" near the Plitvice Lakes. It is quite difficult to find an address in Croatia, because the streets don't have names, only numbers, so even with our GPS we had to ask directions several times and still managed to pass by our hotel twice without noticing it. Anyway, we went to the Plitvice Lakes 3 times on a row, taking hikes along the lakes and waterfalls. Nature and the outdoors are great and so beautiful there, so we did enjoy it very much. On the fourth day we went to a cave nearby and the fifth day we spent in Zagreb.
Note: during the hikes I had difficulty climbing the stairs, could not catch my breath and upon return home I went to the docter for that, found out that I had a lack of oxygen in my blood, needed a transfusion and some extra iron to produce new red blood cells.

Russia

In 2018 I will be traveling a lot. My third journey this year leads me to Moskou, Novgorod and St. Petersburg in Russia, which cities I have visited together with my DH on August 17-24 2018. This short trip has been booked through OAD, however executed by the Russia Academy. Its founder, Drs Marie-Thérèse ter Haar (very well educated, multi-languist, writer) became our tour guide. Though she knows her facts and figures about Russia, she was highly annoying during the whole trip, because she did not know when to shut up and just kept on talking about Russia, history and the politics. It seemed to me she has been brainwashed during the years she lived in Russia. We visited the Red Square and Kremlin in Moskou, some of its gorgeous metro stations, a kolchoze in Novgorod and a.o. the Hermitage and Fabergé museum in St. Petersburg. All together, the cities are certainly worth a visit, but with another tour guide.

USA

Our larger vacation for 2018 will be in the USA, starting May 16 until June 6 2018. We will be starting in Denver and travel by rental car, visiting a lot of National Parks in Utah, Wyoming, like Custer State Park, Glacier NP, Yellowstone NP, Teton NP, Dead Horse Point State Park, Mount Rushmore,  Horse Shoe Bend, Antelope Canyon, Arches NP, Mesa Verde NP etc. Really looking forward to this one. Most of our adventures can be read on my FB page https://www.facebook.com/sylvia.vandersteen.1 

Norway Tromsö

Starting January 2nd, 2018 Joyce and I will visit Tromso (Norway) trying to find and capture the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis). We will return January 6th, so it will just be a short break. So we booked a tour to see the Northern Lights and our host really did do her utmost and drove us to several places, but it did not work out unfortunately. While we were quite disappointed about it, one night we looked out of our hotel room window, and behold, there was a flash of green light in the sky! Although it was very difficult to capture, we saw it and somehow managed to capture it on film. Althought it wasn't that spectacular, we can check it off our bucketlists, but still I want to see it again when I have the chance. We also booked a whale watching tour, but the sea was very rough, and Joyce got sick.