Lover's hill - A step by step guide to embarrassing your kids

The previous post in this series is here..

The second stop in our all day tour was Lover’s hill aka aşıklar tepesi. This is also called as sunset point.

There is a flat edge from which you can see the rock structures in the valley and get nice pano views. There are cute photo spots and a cafe here. While the kids and our fellow van tourists took a break, we decided to do a 360 view video to Turkish music. The guy who ran this gig promised an edited version in 5 minutes. I was more curious about his editing skills and wanted to sign up. San was already practicing local dance moves with our guide.

If I had a dollar (okay, a 1000 dollars given inflation) for every time I heard “Appa please”, “Please appa”, “Appa NO!”, “let her do it”, “I will never talk to you again”, etc in the five minutes that led up to me getting on that little jig, we could have paid for the entire trip and more. However that is step 1 of of this guide. You declare intent.

Then you act like you are considering their suggestion. Then you go “nah!”, I am going to go for it. Much like how they did things to you when they were babies.

The video highlights reel here is for your absolute enjoyment! This went on the tour guide service’s reels. They contract for Viator. But first, some photos.. given where this was going, the kids took one photo and ran as far away from us as possible. Had to beg Jr. to take a video of our video being made (she Zoomed !)

when we drove out saw a baby horsie walking around with a pack.. These had no owners, they were wild horses. Apparently this place is famous for this type of horse, which was once exported to other parts of the world 1400 years ago!

The HIGHLIGHT of the 40 minutes spent here!

Normally cut out any music that will be flagged as copyright, but in this case, the dancing does not go well without the music, so left it in. Youtube promptly flagged it and said the video will not be visible in a lot of locations. My apologies if you cannot see this video..

Was thinking of setting up this jig at the top of one of our local peaks with a pano view and making life interesting. The guy has some really good edit skills but was thinking I can do “comparable if not better” with all my blogging and video editing experience. He airdropped it right away!

Thoroughly enjoyed this experience.. before we moved on to the next stop..

Charm of old town Zadar and the Sea Organ

The previous post in this series is here..

After a long day at Plitvice we were dropped off outside the old town gate. It was again a mile walk along the wall. This time we decide to walk on top of the wall and see the boats and other sites. 

Went quickly back to our hotel and changed to get rid of the smoke smell on our clothes. The plan was to get a bite to eat (we were jet lagged and it started hitting us) and then see the Sea Organ and go up the bell tower.

Found a nice Pizza place and had it inside. If you don't want smoke, don't make the mistake of eating in the open dining tables. Peopel sitting there smoke or the passersby blow smoke that you can visually see come and settle down on your Pizza!

After that weird meal at 5PM we walked to the Sea organ. It was as amazing as advertized. The sea comes and and pushes air through these channels that make music along a 500 foot? stretch. 

From there we walked through the ancient Roman ruins to the Bell Tower. We could not go to the Church as there was a service and the doors had already closed. 

Walking up this tower reminded us of the Pisa Tower. Same narrow staircase with a window to the town every now and then. We were early for the sunset but decided to stay there on top of the tower for an hour! Needless to say there were a few 100 sunset pics.

Given Squarespace is yet to fix my slideshow gallery display, just gonig to post the pictures here one after the other. For the first time in 12+ years, Squarespace has not followed up on my ticket! This prompts a post of its own on Legacy products.. 

got this pano shot.. and then two other familes joined us.. 

Took this shot and they all asked me to show it to them and they took the same shot and thanked me for the composing.. little moments like that always make my day!

The fencing does come in the way.. 

After the tower we walked back to the market and waterfront, did some shopping, had some ice cream, I managed to get separated from San in that market and we both started singing the family song to get reunited.. saw the usual Chennai beach scenes on the sands there.. with the exception of a lady dressed as a mermaid for photo ops with kids and Mickey mouse's Croatian cousin! 

The town was bustling with activity. We stayed up till 9 and decided to call it a night.

A video highlight...

We still had half a day to spend the following morning before flying out of Zadar..

Shopping day

Black Friday has evolved in the family over the years.. for more than a decade we simply just lost interest in shopping as a family or just started looking at things online. 

Usually we are traveling somewhere to celebrate our birthdays and Black Friday would land smack dab in the middle of a Disney trip!

This year it was San's birthday and both kids were with us and we decided to make the most of it. The girls went shopping bright and early while I did yoga. 

Then to make up for it, Jr. went shoe shopping with me. Three years ago I bought a pair of these Nevados shoes at Big 5. The display piece happened to be my size. Wanted a black walking shoe that could double up as something I could wear to work and this was perfect. It was 25 bucks then and I asked for a discount because it was the display piece and sure enough the store manager gave it to me for 20! Have walked at least 1800 miles in in over the three years and it is finally showing signs of wear on the outside and the sole. So went and bought the exact same thing yesterday! Jr. was amazed by my decision making. Told her, "hey, we went in and out and got shoes in 10 minutes because we know this works great!". This time it was not a display piece and was 30 bucks. Still expect to use this for the next three years!

The Salomon hiking shoes with ankle support that was bought ~2 1/2 years ago has also gone through at least 1500+ miles just with weekend hikes) and the ankle hooks are bent. The laces jumped the hooks during the grand canyon hike because over time the ankle support bends to fit my leg. While the tread is pretty good, wanted to get new hiking shoes. That was again a great bargain at REI. It was a 180$ shoe being sold for 80$. It did get the "paisa vasool" certification from both me and San. This time though I want to be able to replace shoes every year.  This waterproof shoe was actually Jr.'s recommendation. Apparently she had one in high school and early college and it was great. 

Then came the best part of "online shopping". "We" and I use that term loosely, are proud owners of a Karoke machine. San and the kids are allergic to noise, especially any sound that comes out of my mouth! However, after San tried a portable karaoke machine day before yesterday that one of our friends got to a party, she was convinced that we could use one at home. Spent two hours researching what was the best option and finally got this on Amazon. So Ta Da! This thing has many applications. . including but not limited to use as a public address system that can wake up the kids when they are sleeping late! They are not too thrilled about this purchase. The litle one has declared "thank god I don't live at home!" 

I am hoping that this will get me used to singing into a hand held dynamic microphone instead of the iPhone's wired earplug mic! 

In less than a day it will be back to the routine! Haven't blogged in more than a month as the day to day grind has been very busy. It is time to start posting little snippets again.. 

Hope all of you are enjoying the long weekend!