The Little Prince

Here he is giving his first royal wave.

And here he is on camera with mum and dad.

We're going to have a celebration

People are celebrating the birth of Little Prince Cambridge today. There has been bell ringing and a 41-gun salute and someone even made the Niagara Falls turn blue.

The baby has not been seen in public yet and it is driving the press mad. Here is my suggestion of what the young prince may look like when he is eventually seen by the public.

A new royal baby is born

One babe to rule us all,
One babe to bind us.

A royal baby has been born today to William son of Elizabeth and Kate daughter of Michael at 4.24 pm who is destined to one day rule over us all. Mother and baby are well which is great news.

We have also learned that the baby weighs 8 pounds (lb) and 6 ounces (oz). In metric that is 3.79kg. I am posting a picture of a fish weighing exactly this amount so we can see how much it is.

Pickling gherkins

It is time to pickle gherkins. Marika bought 17.5 kg of smaller cucumbers and now we are chopping carrots, putting the cucumbers into jars with dill and pickling liquid and boiling the jars in a big metal pot. 

Nelly the dog thinks she is a human and ate the carrot we gave her.

Back to reality

We woke early for the last leg of the trip which was over 800 km through Serbia, across Hungary and back to Banska Bystrica.
The campsite looked cheerful in the daylight. We fed a hungry dog and spoke to our neighbours.
Once we got on the Serbian motorway we whizzed through Beograd and into Hungary. As we drove through the Hungarian puszt or steppe it just looked like more fields and farms till we stopped for a wonderful final meal at an old country estate about 80km south of Budapest. Finally I got a feeling of the special life of the Hungarian plain.
Then we headed on and after the wild Balkans, Hungary looked very tame and well-maintained and the drivers appeared models of good sense and calm sobriety. Then we crossed over into Slovakia at about 9pm. We had covered about 3000 km and 8 countries in our trip. Time to give Mrnous a rest and sleep in our own beds and tell our traveller's tales.

Monday in Macedonia and Serbia

In the north of Greece there are no motorway signs to Macedonia. Instead there are signs to the last tiny Greek village on the border called Evzoni and this is how you know you are going in the right direction.

We broke camp and were on the road at 11.30 - nearly  12 hours later we arrived at a campsite come sports hall come dance hall just over the Serbian border near Vranje with the name Enigma. I tried not to remember the film, 'Hostel'.The owner Marko was not completely sober when he met us.  About 5km to the west is the Kosovo border.

On the way we had stopped for a last Greek meal by the mountain river at the same place we stopped at on the way to Vasiliki. Then we travelled on the nearly empty motorway to Thessaloniki.
After that we travelled on a single lane road to Macedonia. Macedonia looked wild and beautiful but we had no time to stop. We bounced along the rough 'Motorway of Alexander the Macedonian' with all our pots and pans rattling in their cupboards. From time to time a lorry tried to crush us or run us off the road but without success. The brave camper van with Captain Maros at her helm battled on.

I cannot recommend night-time Balkan driving as an enjoyable experience. The Serb road from the border was narrow, unlit except for blinding lights from cars going the opposite way and badly marked. For at least three years they have been working on this section of road. The hard shoulder is for overtaking and yesterday a Czech bus crashed into an unlit parked lorry on the hard shoulder in Serbia.

Later we sat at the side of the Enigma swimming pool sipping a cool drink. The more we sipped the better we felt. A jazzy Latin American style music was playing. No one was trying to remove our  kidneys. There were Italian, French and Austrian vehicles in the carpark. They could take their kidneys. Things were looking up.

Sunday in Vasiliki

We arrived last Sunday evening and now this Sunday was our last full day in Greece. We had our coffee at the harbour and tried to follow a vintage car with a dog in the back wearing a Grace Kelly scarf but it had quickly driven onto the ferry.
More windsurfing and swimming.
In the evening we went to sit out on the beach and Katka and I had a last evening walk around the harbour. It seemed busier now and there are a lot more children.

We looked over the wine-dark water towards our camp and across to the mountains and over in the direction of the islands, and we said goodbye to the yachts and the fishing boats and the bars and restaurants, the balconies and the old ladies peering from them and the people selling candy floss and corn on the cob, and the bakery and the crowd of happy holiday makers and the silent cats and the little birds which would all be waiting again for us if we were to return again one day in the future.

A restaurant with a view

We had our coffee and bought some presents and food or indeed food that would be presents. We sat next to a group of Serbs at the cafe. It reminded us that soon we will set off for Macedonia and Serbia. I will start to read the Rebecca West again.

In the afternoon Maros went windsurfing and I went to take some more photos of windsurfers. Katka is working hard on her tan.

In the evening our Olympians came to collect us and take us to an excellent restaurant up on the mountainside. Katka and I went up on the bikes. Ivan first took his wife Marta on the back of his moped, then he came back and brought Maros. The view was fantastic, the roast lamb was delicious, the Greek beans in tomato sauce were also an unexpected revelation. It was a lovely evening.

Katka and I then flew down the mountain and back to earth on the bikes in the dark.

The charms of Vasiliki

After breakfast we walked along the shore and into Vasiliki. There were the fishing boats in the harbour and round the harbour wall are cafes and restaurants. We went to Katka's favourite bakery and bought good bread baked on the premises and two different pastries. Everything was tasty and good and by 11 nearly all sold out. We took our purchases to a nearby cafe and had a coffee and ate our pastries. On the next table were the proverbial older Greek men who sat and drank their coffees and continued the great Greek tradition of debate together. As we sat there the
group grew and when we walked back it was already a mini conference.

We watched a boat conversion whereby one man with a chainsaw created an airier cabin on a fishing boat by sawing off the back of the cabin. The man with the saw was perhaps the same guy who set up a water tap next to an electrical box on the camp.

Just walking round the port was great fun. It is lively enough to be enjoyable and with plenty to see and do, but not overcrowded or noisy.

When we got back it was very hot. Katka wanted to start cooking but luckily was persuaded to wait. Maros went to check the waves and surfing conditions and Katka and I cycled up to a viewpoint over the bay to look at all the windsurfers.

In the evening we went to look at the yachts in the harbour. Now we are enjoying camp life in the evening. The children are in bed, the cicadas are not as insistent.
All is well.