BUÉK!!!

What is it like that New Year so far?
We are still having the old one sunny 4pm, 25C on the sun, and very pleasant in the shade.
We had a lovely xmas in six-some, since Szonya and Drew left for home it's a bit quieter...
Martin and Sharon are taking us out for Alan's birthday meal, we were not allowed to know where;
afterwards there will be Beatles music on the Bo Didley city park till midnight, a few drinks in one of the surrounding bars, and that's all done for joining your time-frame... hey, I should blog, too, I put it there, lazy me...
Happy New Year and Everything!!! pics show visit to Cedar Key and/or Manatee Springs (where we managed to see more of those magic creatures) and the xmas tudukin, which was nice,but the ham was voted better, and our chef with the xmas tree.

merry xmas from a sunny place...

It is xmas Eve, in a crisp sunny morning in Gainesville, Florida (10C) everyone still sleeping at Martin's after a wild night of margaritas and a game called Apples to Apples or something like that, our first night 6 of us together, and it seems to be a pleasant combo so far...
It'll be a short report till the others emerge - there is a big xmas tree to decorate, family in Budapest to skype - the big xmas happening is right there already with great excitement for little Hani and Feco for sure. The next door apartment where Szonya and Drew is staying just full of splendour and space. We had a very enjoyable and Interesting(!) fortnight in Dunedin, Melody made sure we had something fascinating to experience every day - though just the walks on the beach were sufficiently fab, even when it was unseasonably cold. More details will come through in due time.
The worry is that Zoltan stopped sending homework - all I know is that the written exam's result is out, and he passed that, too. I am very worried, as there was a sudden stop to communication, which is not in character.
anyways, the pictures show mostly Alan everywhere as I made them - Dali museum St Petersburg, botanical gardens, pencake breakfast, etc - all "Melody adventures" rest will follow... should try that picassa album thing as I made hundreds of them. ooops surreal picture has to wait, only 5 images are allowed it seems... have lovely times dear blogfollowers, Alan is up, relative early riser lately... roll on Xmas! (we are having a tu-du-kin for xmas dinner tomorrow, guess what that is!!)

Dunedin Holiday Parade

last Saturday we took part in the Dunedin Holiday Parade, so there!!
My head sporting antlers (one green one red) one hand leading a cute doggie called Lyl, the other one having a glove puppet wriggling,Alan and Melody similarly attired, with Napoleon a luckily good natured and rather large labrador, and of course Melody with her Jessie,
as part of the local Dog Rescue contingent -
as they say, a "once in the life" experience. I know now how J.F. felt riding his limousine amongst the boisterous crowd, though he was a tad less apprehensive, maybe... We were well received, there was so much holiday goodwill, that one could definitely got giddy on it... The sun was out, we only froze our ass off in the periods when it hid away.
Afterwards a decent cider (on tap) for me and lots of beers (some of them very good says Alan) for the others and all the celebrated dogs admitted in the House of Beers establishment and catered for with dog-dishes. Have I mentioned that the USA is a weird place, where one shouldn't say "weird" or "strange" because that sounds derogatory, so from now on it is "fascinating", interesting" or even "different"...

Both in Gainesville, and here, and even in some less touristy bits of New Orleans, people say hearty hellos and wish us well on the street and they look as they mean it.
This morning we were on our way back from our egg-benedict and oat-meal pancake breakfast at Kelly's when a bloke just hit Alan's shoulder to wish him again a good day, he nearly jumped out of his skin. When a Mancunian is tapped on the shoulder, he tends to instinctively punch...

Which reminds me, both England and Hungary have under zero (C) temperatures and snow.
so even though it is windy and sometimes rainy here, it gets still over 10C. Record cold weather is forecast for the next few days however.

Picture shows Alan and Jessie at home at Melody's and Melody and me joining the for our first welcome drinks at Rosie's last Tuesday. We are 1 minute walk from that bar...
lots of other photos were made of the beach, boats, quant houses, food etc - but as mentioned - they have to wait for a camera-lead back in Gainesville.

Dunedin

We made it to Melody,s via the casino adventure in Tampa. So the only "public" transport available was the casino bus, $60 return from Gainesville to Tampa, including Hard Rock Casino membership, 2X$5 meal coupons and 2X$25 casino betting coupons. Martin and Sharon took us to one of the WalMarts to the pick-up point. The mini-bus was 45min late on a very cold very early morning (thanks again kids) but it was a quick and fairly comfortable ride. The casino was out of our world - enormous, plush, glitzy, with carpets, chandeliers etc - and just big, big and big with endless lines of slot machines, poker-tables, noise of these machines, rock-music and announcements continuously. We managed to park our bags and set to feed our coupons to one of these millions of complicatedly twinkling machines. I have to say we enjoyed the experience as the randomly selected beasts which we managed not to understand how to operate, decided to spew endless number of winning tickets - 21 in number - and we claimed back $34 in cash!! And the meal coupon bought us a good sized chinese dish, surprisingly tasty.
the psychology to stay with the machines and spend our winnings worked, but luckily we had no time to do that, as in no time Melody arrived to collect us, and since then we are in her attentive care.
Her house is lovely, friendly and Melody-ish, the doggie, Jessie ditto, the garden includes an orange tree and a grape-fruit tree full of their produce, and the sun is warm - though in the shade it is still quite chilly. We are a few minutes from the beach, the place is just magic. We had a welcome drink in Melody's favourite bar run by her friends, had about 10 hours sleep - and after a morning of thinking and organisisng (by Melody, who ofcourse is a professional organiser) we decided, that we'd give Key West a miss... the area here is so nice, we'll have so much to do when we are not lazing around the house which is also would be just fine...
pictures will come later when we are back to Gainesville.

done New Orleans...

the hotel St Pierre was a bit rickety - but Louis Armstrong stayed there, so who am I to complain...
We had a very enjoyable 3 days listening to music, eating and roaming those beautiful streets in the French Quarter where we stayed, the Garden district, going by tram, by ferry to the other side of the mighty Mississippi... on the way we stayed over in Pensacola beach, where we had our first proper US restaurant meal, and it was just marvellous. Also the view from our room was just a wide ocean - and sky - and nothing else... returning from New Orleans we managed to catch a horrendous cloudburst that wouldn't stop, so we had to cut our journey, sleeping in Panama city, which was also an experience. Next day everything was clear and shiny like if all that rain nver happened, so we managed to see Wakula park and lodge, and took part of the springs boat trip. I was dreadfully cold, as I had no warm cloths, and the sharp winds might have been all the way from Lancashire... but we saw all the wildlife - all the birds, alligators, turtles insisted on being seen. And not forgetting those mystical creatures - manatees! Yes, we saw them quite close by.
sorry about being short - but I cannot do justice to all the beautiful, weird, tasty, weird, interesting and weird things... Sharon lent me her old camera, so I could make photos, maybe I talk more about it all when it settled... even though it is colder here than usual, it still makes it up to 20C during the day, while it is snow and freezing temperatures in both Hungary and the UK... glee glee and glee... we are planning our trip to Melody next week, to St Petersburg and other parts of more to the South of this enormous peninsula, maybe more boat trips to the Keys
see how it goes.
pictures show tram inside, garden district, music scene, street...
the point is really, that this country is so bloody giant - days of days of interstate highway, we done 2000miles and didn't get very far from Florida really, though we gone through a bit of Mississippi and Alabama before Louisiana... all flat with trees and trees and water everywhere...