Maria

This morning we woke slowly and got up around 8:30. It had been quite a night. After we went to bed around 10:00 there was a huge lightning storm that blew through the area where we were staying. The lightning lit up our room and the thunder crashed. Instead of jumping up and running to watch at the window, my normal thunder storm mode, I stayed in bed in a semi-dream state. The traveling had caught up with me. Arvin too. So we dozed and watched the flashes and listened to the crashes. It didn't last too long. At one point several fire engines went by on Broadway, the street where Helena's apartment is. We could see the colors of their lights coming in the window shades and hear their loud sirens. (Did I mention that Helena's apartment really receives the street sounds very well?) At last it was relatively quiet and we both slept the night through.

When we got up Helena had already left for work, so we took our time showering, dressing and having some cereal, fruit and yogurt for breakfast. Then we walked down Broadway in search of a coffee shop for our morning espressos. It was starting to heat up. Today is supposed to get up to 90F, much hotter than we are used to. We found a lovely breakfast shop where we had our coffees and some fresh fruit. It was delicious. We complemented them on the quality of the fruit. The staff were very friendly and we talked quite a bit with them.

As we walked home we stopped at "The Book Shop" to check out their collection of used books. Helena had told us to go there. That is where we met Maria shown in my blip photo. We stayed and talked to her for literally two hours. We all hit it off marvelously and talked about all kinds of great things. What a lovely gal. We were lucky she was there as she only works there one day a week. It is her nephew's store filled with books from a store she owned until two years ago. We bought a couple of CDs of classical music and I ordered a very special gift that she makes. I won't say more about it as this message goes to Facebook and I want the gift to be a surprise. Maria is going to make a new one especially for us and ship it to our house back in Bellingham. What a sweetie.

Now we are at Helena's relaxing in front of the air conditioner. This was a great way to start our visit. We needed a quiet day to relax