Sheep Guarding Llama

Saturday. The day started in Catania on the eastern coast of Sicily.  We have a wonderful hotel here near the airport.  If we return to this region, we will certainly use this hotel again.  It has been great.

We got up, were dressed and fully repacked an hour and a half before it was time for our shuttle to the airport, which we had scheduled last night.  Then we took the kids down to the hotel breakfast.  They love doing breakfast in hotels for some reason, they are never willing to skip that.  It takes forever, though, because they are painfully slow eaters.  So even with an hour and a half it felt like we were in a panic to get through breakfast in time to make it to our airport shuttle!

I ran uploads all night while we slept and we have managed to upload basically everything from the last three months.  That’s a big relief as we have no idea if we will have a chance to upload things again until we return to the US.  It is anyone’s guess what our connections will be like in Ukraine.  It is a very high tech country, so likely it will be very good.  But you never know, especially with rental apartments.

We got to the airport and boarded our Lufthansa flight headed to Munich.  This is our first time ever flying through Munich, or anywhere in Germany for that fact.  We’ve been to Germany, including Munich, multiple times before but always by train, never by plane.  So we have never dealt with a German airport.  Norwegian, Dutch, but not German.

Our flight went really well and we were in Germany in no time.  We had a long layover in Munich, so tons and tons of time to hang out and relax.  We were there in the morning and do not fly on to Kiev until this evening.  So lots of time to camp out and chill.

Munich had a great airport lounge that was essentially empty.  We had the whole place, and several gates, all to ourselves.  The kids could run around, I could take videos, and we were even able to Facetime with the family back home while we waited.  It was a really nice break to our day of traveling.  This is our new favourite airport to fly through.  So comfortable and nice.  And the wifi is excellent.

The kids raided the vending machines in Munich for candy to eat in the lounge while they relaxed there.  I had enough time that I took the chance to set up my laptop and actually get some things done.  Plenty of places to charge things.  There were even lounge chairs for taking naps!

In the evening we got our connecting leg from Munich to Kiev.  It was mid-evening when we arrived in Kiev.  We got our luggage, went through customs and were greeted by Anton and one of his employees at the door.  They had two cars waiting for us so that they could fit all of us and all of our luggage.  This is the easiest arrival in any country that we have ever had.

It was a long drive from the airport, which is on the left bank outside of the city, to our downtown apartment which is on the right bank right in the heart of the city.  It was great getting to see the city right away, though, and we got to take the big bridge over the Dnieper.  We’ve gotten to see nearly all of the great rivers of Europe at this point.

It was pretty late when we got to the apartment.  Anton had taken care of everything.  The apartment was all set, they already had the keys, it was stocked with all kinds of food for us, anything that we might need was ready.  Internet was already figured out and worked really well.

We will see Anton tomorrow.  He did not have time to hang out tonight, they just dropped us off and made sure that we were good for the night.

Our apartment is really cool.  It is a classic 1970s Soviet block apartment built in the USSR during the height of the cold war.  I’ve always wanted to live in one.  This is a really awesome cultural and historic opportunity.  These old apartments are not going to last for forever, they were not built to be around a long time.  Another decade or two and none will be left.  This is a really special and unique experience for us and especially for the kids.

Ours is a two bedroom deal.  Both bedrooms are decent sizes.  The girls got the bedroom with the view out onto the main street.  Our bedroom has the view onto the courtyard behind the building.  We have a small enclosed balcony built off of the living room.  The space is very odd because it was converted from a very old structure.  There is a scary, ancient elevator that was adapted into the building, but we will take the stairs a lot, I would expect.

The oddest thing is the bathroom situation.  The toilet has its own miniscule room.  I’m really lucky that I even fit into it.  That’s not going to be fun to have to live with, but it is functional.  To wash your hands or to take a shower you go to a different room next door that has the sink and the tub, but no toilet.  But the two are not connected.  You have to use the hallway to get between them.

The kitchen is really tiny, we really can’t use it for much of anything.  But the view is nice and we were not planning on doing very much cooking while we are here.

We are incredibly excited to be here in Ukraine and can’t wait to get to see more of Kiev.  We are going out tomorrow to explore.  Tonight, it is time for sleep.  It is chilly compared to where we have been.  The southern tip of Italy going into spring is very warm.  The beginning of spring in north-eastern Europe is pretty cold.  But it should warm up very soon.

Good night from the Miller family is Kiev!

Friday.  This is it, our big moving day.  We started the day in Noto, Sicily, Italy and will finish our move tomorrow night in the dark in Kiev, Ukraine with friends.  What a huge day and the start of yet another amazing Miller family adventure.  There is always so much excitement in the air as we move on to a new country and we are all really looking forward to what lies ahead in Ukraine.  This is one of our rare trips where we are moving to a place where we have lots of friends so unlike Spain, Italy, Greece, Romania, and Nicaragua where we moved without knowing anyone and being completely on our own, we will be arriving and have friends meeting us at the airport and around to help us with things.  There is a lot less to go wrong on a trip like this and after how badly things went in Noto, we are really looking forward to this.

I was up early and managed to do a little posting while I attempted to manage the last minute photo uploads to Flickr.  My policy is to always attempt to have all media uploaded before a moving day because there is always so much risk of things going wrong, like phones being lost or stolen, on a day like this and we would hate to lose things like our pictures.  We have to take our chances with our videos, though.  Our Internet is Noto (and Rome, and Palermo) was always so bad that we could not even attempt uploading videos.  As it is, I am just making do with whatever pictures I can upload and have to take chances with the rest.  It is what it is.

While uploads were going and the kids were just waking up and getting ready to go, I ran down to the bank to hit the ATM for our final round of cash before we left.  Don’t want to travel without any cash available to us.

Back at the house it was a final round of cleaning, some final espresso from our true Italian “on the range top” espresso “machine” and then time to wait for our ride to the bus station.  This was the same woman that had taken me up to the hospital when I had pneumonia.  My pneumonia, by the way, is much better now.  I’m not one hundred percent, but I am not too bad.  I still have a bit of a cough, but it is lingering from before and I am certainly feeling much better.

It was a super tight squeeze right at the end as the last of our stuff did not fit into the luggage for the final packing.  Dominica had to struggle quite a bit to get us completely packed up and not to leave stuff behind.  Our guess is that the humidity in Italy is a little higher than Texas and our clothes and stuff have swollen from that.  We do not have more “stuff” here now than we did before.  If anything, we have fewer things to take on with us.

Our ride to the bus station arrived, I posted our status and shut down the laptop, threw it in my back pack and we were out the door.  Dominica and the girls rode down with her, I took what was left and walked down the hill with it on my own.  It was a lot of luggage to move, but I made it.

We waited at the bus stop and found it a bit confusing this morning as the busses came out of order and ours was late and none were labeled well.  We bought some breakfast foods from the little cart there and the girls played on the playground one last time while we were waiting.  Noto has been a city of playground time for the girls as it was one of our main activities while we were here.  It has been good for them.

We were onto the bus and underway up to Catania.  We are taking the bus the whole way so that it is cheaper and easier.  We are in no rush to get up there as we have a hotel there tonight and do not fly out until the morning.  So we have all day to get to Catania, but transfering to the train in Siracusa would mean moving all of this luggage again and we really do not want to deal with that!

We went through Avola for one last time.  We went past Siracusa.  We arrived in Catania and caught the hotel shuttle from the airport (the bus goes to the airport itself) to our hotel.  It was the same hotel that Dominica had used when she was transferring to Orlando for Tricia’s wedding back in February which was handy as she already knew where to go and what to do.

We got to the hotel and it was really nice.  We had a good room and immediately noticed that the Internet access was incredible.  We managed to do more uploading while in the hotel tonight in a single night than we did the entire time that we were in Rome, Noto and Palermo over a period of nearly three months!  I had almost forgotten what real Internet access was like.

We hooked up our Fire TV Stick to the television in the room as well, connected it to the wifi, and were able to use all of our online accounts.  Such a great system.  We’ve been doing that since we were in Panama and are so glad that we carry a Fire Stick with us, it’s one of those really great traveler’s tips.  It is so useful.

For dinner we just ate in the hotel’s restaurant.  Dominica, Liesl, and I did a vegetarian buffet option that they had. It was rather limited, but pretty good.  Luciana ordered calamari.

Back in our hotel room the girls watched Sing tonight.

After our dinner and movie it was time for bed.  We have power, water, hot showers, fast Internet… life is good again.  Tomorrow, onward to Germany and then Ukraine.  Our second new country (after Vatican City) of 2017.

Thursday.  We are nearly done in Noto so I took the chance to do a long walk and I managed to explore a lot.  I went way outside of town to the west, up past the hospital and up the hill on the main road.  I even saw our fruit guy driving his little truck to the next town.  I did eight and a half kilometers.  Not too bad, and with a lot of elevation changes.

Leftover pizza for lunch.  This is it, just scavaging whatever is in the house.  Tonight is our last meal in Noto.

The house was nearly all packed up this evening.  Hard to believe that it is really time to go.  No more Noto.  We really like Sicily, but it is pretty easy to say that this is the least disappointed that I have been to be leaving a place.  Too many problems, too much stress here.  This has been the roughest of all of the countries that we have lived in thus far.

By later in the evening the house was out of food but the girls were still hungry.  So we decided to take one last walk and get more gelato as a final treat.  Otherwise they would just be hungry.  Why not.

I did a webinar this evening with Starwinds.  After that Dominica and I started rewatching How I Met Your Mother.

Was busily attempting to upload Flickr pictures before going to bed.  Even simple things like uploading photos, not vidoes just normal pictures, is a huge problem here and can take days to get a handful uploaded.  Our Internet is a complete joke even when it works, and that’s not very often.  The struggles of trying to upload stuff never end because we never get to a point of having the things uploaded that need to be uploaded.  There has been a backlog continuously for months.  This is all just so frustrating.   But it is nearly over.  Only hours left to go.

This is it.  We are all done.  Our time in Noto is over.  Off to bed and we have to be up early tomorrow to get underway as we move to Ukraine!

 

The rain was clearly coming today so I went out for a morning walk to do some exploring of the area before the rain hit.  It was a nice day for a walk.  The Internet was down today, so no means of me working.

Once the rain stopped, since there was no ability to work with the Internet down (seriously, I am so ready to be done with Noto) I took the girls out for a walk to go down and get our last gelato in town.  This is it, our  last gelato!

Read bedtime stories and got the kids off to bed.

 

Tuesday.  The clock is running down for Italy.  Just a few more days.  We leave this week for Kiev.

Today we did a bit of work around planning for Dominica’s new business doing websites.  Her business website business is Presidio Productions.  She is working on building up a portfolio before getting too public with it.  I’ve been thinking that websites are a perfect business for her for over a decade now.  But convincing her of that takes a long time.

In a similar vein, I continued working on the design and build of my high performance web hosting system.  That is coming along nicely.

We had pasta for lunch and dinner today.  We are working hard to get through all of our food in the pantry before we leave.  Over the years, we have gotten pretty good at that.  We used to leave so much behind.  Now we can plan it pretty well.  That makes traveling a lot cheaper.

Packing started tonight.  No more buying food and just riding out the leftovers is the first sign that we are about to relocate.  Then the packing starts.  Just a little bit, but the first items are being gathered up and put into suitcases to prepare for the move.