Hoo-Wee, It’s Hot!

Kaposvár • Sunday June 17 • 06.00 • 16°C/60.8°F Cloudy & cool

The church bells are ringing…it's 6:00 a.m. I could not sleep, so I brewed coffee & made my bed & folded yesterday's laundry (few here own a clothes dryer or an air-conditioner), and so I welcome the new day…unfortunately,  Western Europe is in the the thrall of an unprecedented heat-wave that is burning the continent down…massive fires are scorching France & Spain & Portugal…same as the western U.S. states…we have experienced record temperatures ourselves, here in the south of Hungary: afternoon highs reaching 36°C/97°F, last week, and projected again for the end of the coming week…in between, local temps have reverted to seasonal highs in the low- to mid-80's (Fahrenheit)…nice…I was reading a report, this morning, that the Iberian peninsula has had 20 days of temps above 40°C/104°F and could possibly pass their all-time record of 47.3°C/117.14°F…now that's hot, Vegas hot.

Last week, Kathleen announced that she had finished her course as a travel agent and has opened for business…I hope any of you reading this will turn to her for all of your travel needs…http://KeenDestinations.com…and Kate did mention a Facebook page where you can get information; however, I am not 'on' FB, so I can't say…but do check it out!

Speaking of travel, I did make a trip to northern Slovenia, recently, to try my hand at what's called 'hut-to-hut hiking' in the Julian Alps (that's what the mountains are called in Slovenia; Italy calls their side of the mountains, the Dolomites)…a friend from New Orleans, Lyle Breaux, met me in the capital, Ljubljana, and we spent most of a week in the Lake Bled area, where said hiking takes place…unfortunately for us, we could not find the trail to the hut we had reserved for a night and had to retreat back to our B'n'B near the lake…neither of us wanted to spend the night in the Alps, outside…on our return, Lyle had a message waiting for him, that his wife, Anna, was in an accident Uptown, in NOLA…this precluded us making another stab at finding our hut the next day…it's just as well, as I need to spend more time in  researching the degree of difficulty that is entailed in these mountain trails…and find out why we could not find the appropriate trail, or more specifically, why there is not better signage on the trails.

Oh, bother. More later.