21 July ’04, Wednesday. First a little more on Eger…. We really enjoyed this small town for it’s history and the beauty of the ruins and still standing structures. As I had mentioned earlier, those brave 2000 men, women, and children that stood firm against 60,000 Turks that had already taken everything that had stood in their way….it had to be special. To the Valley of the Sirens…. This is a valley that has many small caves that were the hiding place for the many Egerites in battles from centuries to centuries. Today they are used as wine cellars for many different families who have farmed from a small to medium sized grape orchard. The primary wine is a stout red and has many versions of “Bull’s Blood”. Actually I found the Cab to be my vino of choice. Now for food we lucked in to a wonderful pension for dinner on our first night. Pension Bacchus is worth a mention just in case someone has fallen upon this site and is looking for a good place to have a great dinner with great wine for great prices….(I didn’t get a cent for saying this…). Ok, now back to our campsite just outside of Michalovce. As navigator, Louise has heard me say a many a thing. Some good and some not so good about her navigating expertise. Well, getting to this lake and the campsite took some really good guess work and good navigating as well. She was BRILLIANT !! We were looking for a place to soak up some sun and if possible soak it up at some lake front too. As we made it through the gates and checked in we were thinking this was going to be wooonnndddfffuull. I think we let the heat of the day, the wet of the lake, the size of the pool at lakeside, and the end of the day sway us a little on this campsite. Now not all was bad… the pool was beautiful, and the weather was HOT, HOT, HOT. The only negatives were that there was no big or small town close by so we could get any groceries, the shower water was cold or COLDER, and the lake had a mud bottom with weeds and was luke warm. Now having a lake with warm water might not be all that bad, but with the temp reaching into the mid to high 90’s….well…. I personally could take only 2 days of this and I wanted to move on. We are heading toward the mountains and a little reprieve from the heat (I hope). Today we traveled deeper into Slovacia and our goal was Gorafsky Dvor which is close to Cerveny Clastor. All this is right on the Slovakia / Poland border (Slovakia side) and the High Tetras Mountains. It is beautifully amazing…
Just after arriving, settling in, and sitting down to dinner, one of the campers beside us pulled on his Scottish Bag Pipe, Tarden Kilt, and welcomed us in (at least we felt like it was meant for directly for us). “Rena” A. van Iterson (from the Mac Dowdell clan) is a Historian Ceremonial Piper and we couldn’t have been more pleased than to have heard him play we also had the pleasure of meeting Mattanja, Rena’s wife ….Many Thanks for the evenings entertainment. We were also greeted by Peter and Ann Crofts from England. Boy, are they ever “Travelers”. They have seen more of America than we have, and have had the opportunity to travel much more of the world as well … Tomorrow….we can’t wait !!!
Just after arriving, settling in, and sitting down to dinner, one of the campers beside us pulled on his Scottish Bag Pipe, Tarden Kilt, and welcomed us in (at least we felt like it was meant for directly for us). “Rena” A. van Iterson (from the Mac Dowdell clan) is a Historian Ceremonial Piper and we couldn’t have been more pleased than to have heard him play we also had the pleasure of meeting Mattanja, Rena’s wife ….Many Thanks for the evenings entertainment. We were also greeted by Peter and Ann Crofts from England. Boy, are they ever “Travelers”. They have seen more of America than we have, and have had the opportunity to travel much more of the world as well … Tomorrow….we can’t wait !!!