Welcome home Remus

 Remus  2 Responses »
Dec 152011
 

Finally – the day Remus is coming home is here! We have been doing some preparations and last minute shopping these last days and feel… …not really prepared to become first time cat parents. On the other hand we feel very confident about Remus and his background.

It all began more than a year ago when we both started to talk about getting a pet. We both love animals but Greet is more of a cat person while Fredde is more of dog person. It proved to be an easy problem to solve – get a cat that has somewhat similar characteristics as a dog. After some research we found Abyssinian and their long haired cousins Somali, they seemed like a perfect match – the outgoing nature of a dog and sweetness and lap quality of a cat. Later it even turned out that Greet’s Swedish teacher at ‘Folkuniversitetet’, Natalia, is the owner of several Somali cats. Natalia was very nice and helpful and proved to be a goldmine of information about cats in general and especially Somali. After visiting a cat show in town last summer we fell in love with this breed of cats.

Our dream of becoming cat parents to one of these wonderful creatures started when Natalia told us that one of her friends and fellow Somali breeder was expecting kittens in August. It did not take long for us to realize that we were ready to extend the family 🙂

We visited S*Foxglove’s in Trelleborg to look at the kittens and it was love at first sight! It did not even take one minute to decide that Remus was going to be our new family member. It has been very long months waiting for Remus to come home but we have visited him a couple of times and we could follow him on S*Foxglove’s. We are very happy with S*Foxglove’s and definitely recommends them.

Finally we were on our way to S*Foxglove’s to pick up Remus. Once again we were surprised over how much he had grown since last time and how much more ‘cat’ he had become. The first thing Remus did was to lay himself by Fredde’s feet. When all the paperwork was ready and we had tried to tire Remus by playing with him for almost an hour we were ready to go. A very quick stop was made to say hi to Grandma and Grandpa Nilsson.

Remus at Grandma and Grandpa Nilsson.

Remus at Grandma and Grandpa Nilsson.

On our way home Remus demonstrated that he might have a future career as a cat Houdini. He managed to wriggle his way out a closed soft cat travel bag and to our big surprise we all of a sudden had a loose cat in the backseat of our car. Fortunately, all Remus wanted was to be held and comforted and after a while we could put him back in the case (the rest of the way home Greet held the small gap by the zippers closed with her hands).

A curios little Remus was at last home.

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First Remus was shown the toilet and then was busy investigating his new home.

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Remus enjoyed playing with his new toys; God only knows how much energy he has for playing 🙂

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After playing Remus was actually tired and crept into Greet’s lap for some cuddling, patting and lots of purring.

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The night went very well and Remus only woke us up once or twice by walking on our pillows wanting a little attention. Otherwise he slept soundly between us 🙂

In the morning he enjoyed some nice wet cat food, he has quite an appetite.

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It feels wonderful to finally have our new family member with us. We welcome you Remus with all of our hearts! A special thanks to go out to Natalia and especially Susanne and Mats at S*Foxglove’s.

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Heading home

 Bali  No Responses »
Dec 082011
 

It was with mixed feelings we got up this morning, very sad because we are leaving this amazing place and nice climate but it is going to be very nice to come home again as well. To see our families and friends again, we have missed you guys very much!!!

We had a nice breakfast and made a list of last things to buy. The list was quickly worked through at Hardy’s and we went back to our room and started packing. Everything had to be unfolded and checked for unwelcome travel companions. We checked out and had a relaxed lunch at the beach restaurant of our hotel.

In the middle of the lunch Fredde came up with an idea and went on a secret mission for Kees…

We spent the waiting time at Denpasar airport playing cards and at Jakarta we managed to buy one last souvenir. The flight back felt very long but we did manage to get a few hours of sleep, watch some movies and read our books.

We took the train from Schiphol to Zwolle were Margreet’s father picked us up.

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Kuta

 Bali  No Responses »
Dec 072011
 

Fredde woke early and finished of some blogs until we had a late breakfast. Yesterday we had spotted a nice ceramic store and went there after breakfast to try and get some bargains, we had some success 🙂

After careful planning on how to travel to Kuta, what taxis to take, how long it would take and how much it would cost we went out to the main road and waved down a taxi. It turned out to be no problem to get a taxi to Kuta on meter and after half an hour in heavy traffic we had arrived on the main road in Kuta. Kuta is where all the surfers stay and hangout.

It took at least 2 minutes before someone tried to scam us with a lottery ticket together with a hotel promotion etc. Amazingly, Greet won 2nd price ($1000) and Fredde 1st price (a free luxury stay at a hotel). Of course we both knew it was a scam but the guy was just so tiresome and stuck to us like a leach. We decided to use a more direct but rude method – ignore! It worked! Although we dislike being rude to people and ignoring them, we dislike even more to be hassled every other step we take.

There were a lot of big modern surf shops on the street with in between cheap bars and street shops selling all kind of things. Even though we are going home tomorrow we decided both to get some new nice flip-flops in one of the surf shops.

We took a much needed lunch break at a wonderful sushi-place, Take. Take was the real thing with big picture menus (luckily 😉 ) and way too many nice things to choose from! We decided on a seeweed salad and Miso soup as starter and some nigiri and a couple of exciting rolls for our main. It was absolutely delicious food!

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Very satisfied and with full tummies we continued up the shopping street into Legian. Here we actually found a nice little shop with souveniers and ‘junk’ we actually liked 🙂

Extremely warm and exhausted from the walking and heat we took a taxi back to Sanur. We found Martine and Kees by the pool (arrived one day later than us) and we took one last dip in the water this vacation. Our last dinner was spent at a traditional Bali restaurant together with Martine and Kees; it was really nice and very good food. The perfect end to a perfect vacation 😀 !

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Sanur

 Bali  1 Response »
Dec 062011
 

Today the alarm went off at 5:30 am, it was early but we wanted to catch the sunrise over Lombok and Gili Air from our beach at Meno. The show started around 5:45 am. It was a really amazing sunrise and once again the pictures can’t capture the beauty of it all.

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It was nice to have such a nice and early start, no stressing just packing, going down to the pool, have breakfast and chill until we got picked up by our boat to Trawangan. Uni paid us one last visit and we had one last pineapple 🙂

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Martine and Kees waved us off from the beach as they had one more day in paradise before we will meet up in Sanur again on our last day on Bali.

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Silke and Torben had arranged to hitch a ride with our boat and it was very nice to be able to hang out a little more and talk before their adventure will take them to Munduk 🙂

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We had a different boat back to Bali via Lombok which was much nicer and maybe a little faster but most important less bumpy!

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After half an hour drive by car we got dropped off at our hotel, Peneeda View. This time we did not get so very lucky with the room, it was ok but not much more. To be honest, since it’s our last days here and we will just stroll around town looking for some souvenirs, eat some good meals and enjoy the pool a little our rooms doesn’t matter so much 🙂

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We got greeted very nicely with flowers around our necks and a welcome drink at the beach restaurant.

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After some well needed and very good lunch at the hotel we headed downtown for some scouting for souvenirs. We started off at Hardy’s, a big outlet store with nice fixed prices. In earnest, we are sick and tired of all the hassling from everyone to buy things.

We went for dinner to Massimo, a genuine Italian restaurant recommended by our guide book. It was the most crowded restaurant we had seen so far on Bali and it was definitely worth trying. We agreed that it was one of the best Italian restaurants we have both ever tried. Greet tried a ravioli and Fredde a risotto, it was both mmm – yummy 😀 and then some ice creams for desert: oh my god!

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Last day at Gili Meno

 Bali  No Responses »
Dec 052011
 

We had our usual nice and relaxing breakfast at Mallias Child 🙂

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After breakfast Fredde was busy once again with the camera and took some pictures of the local wildlife…

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We decided to take a walk around the island and ran into our friend Uni.

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The rest of the island was more desolate and barren and had quite a few empty and ruined bungalow villages.

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But the cactuses in full bloom were very beautiful.

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We had a nice view of Gili Trawangan from the other side of Meno.

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The rest of the day we relaxed on the beach; most of the time we snorkeled and read our books. Uni came with a surprise for us – small eremite crabs. They were really cute little buggers 🙂

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Silke and Torben had a close encounter with one of the crabs

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Of course we had our afternoon fruits as well.

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The snorkeling today was as amazing as the other days although it was a little less clear water and only two encounters with turtles. We saw a really beautiful crayfish today as well, it was black/purple with white/yellow dots and it was really cool to dive down and watch it crawl on the corals.

Our last dinner we had together with Martine and Kees at Mallias Child, it was very nice like always. One of the local cats marked its territory on our umbrellas, the light went out a few times and a big crab walked on the walkway outside – a normal evening at Gili Meno!

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