The last of our trip

Family at Epidavros

Gyros come with fries!

Liz loving that she is in Santorini

Fira from our coffee stop

View of Oia

Liz and Terry hiking up the caldera

Last sunset on Santorini 

From Monemvasia we drove to Nafplio. Liz drove the last part of the way to Monemvasia on roads that weren't as crazy as what we had been on before so I decided to give driving in Greece a chance. Yes, I know that I just said I wouldn't drive - but I did pay the 15 dollars for an international drivers license, so I thought I might as well. But let me tell you, I don't drive stick very often. I think of it as in theory i know how to drive a stick, but it really isn't a pretty site. I think the last time I drove a stick shift it was for all of 10mins, late on a Sunday night, coasting through every yellow light in downtown Seattle. Before that, the most I had driven was with my drive with Terry to Montana (8+ years ago!). I thought I would drive for 10mins and call it good, but before I knew it we had hit a small town. Yeeeek! I managed to drive for about an hour and went through two small towns before deciding that Terry should take over before I drove into a small city. Other than Terry reminding me that I I needed to stay more to the left, because I was too close to the parked cars on the right hand side, I did just fine. I may have been swearing, and thought that if I somehow sucked in air, the car would magically get smaller to fit in-between some of the car/streets (think Harry Potter and the knight bus). At least where I drove i didn't have to worry about falling down the side of cliffs or hairpin turns. However, I did have to work on not taking out other vehicles. Yet, I only stalled a handful of times! And a few of those times where in one of the towns when I got flustered by someone trying to turn into me when I had the right away. It was quite the experience and I think both Liz and I are happy that Terry did most of the driving.

So this whole time driving around the iPad has been very, very, handy with navigation. However, I got Terry into a small bind while using the map on the iPad to direct us to our hotel in Nafplio. After finding the road we wanted to take was blocked, I had this idea to go down another street... Well, it was just wide enough for our car but we got to a dead end where Terry had to back down the street a few blocks until there was a space for him to do a five point turn to turn around. We quickly figured out that you don't even try to drive in the old town in Nafplio. We made it to the hotel only to find that Rick Steve's didn't lie when he said it had a lot of stairs. This is when I wish I had brought a backpack and not a roller bag for luggage.

The next day we headed to Epidavros and Mykines. The highlight of Epidavros was listening to Terry belt out Mercedes Benz by Janis Joplin at the theater of Epidavros! This was one of the old theaters that has great acoustics even if you were in the nose bleed sections. He got an applause and when we went to Mykines a German tour group who had been in Epidavros even commented on Terry's singing and how they recognized that it was Janis Joplin.

After driving back to Athens we caught our flight to Santorini. I think we all were expecting a little time to relax at the end of our trip but we still found that we were go go go. So much to see and so little time. We stayed outside the main town of Fira in Imerovigli. It was a quite town were we had a little studio with a great view of the caldera. One day we walked into Fira and explored. We also had 5 euro cappuccino freddos - we were paying for the amazing view because the coffee sure wasn't worth that much. We even walked down all 500+ steps to the old port. On the way we said hello to the donkeys and then took the cable car back to the top. We also checked out the other main town Oia. Everyday between two and five cruise ships would be in Santorini - it was a amazing to watch them come in, but made the towns very crowed. On our last day we took a boat tour to see the towns from a different view, walk around the volcano, swim in sulfur hot springs, and eat lunch on the island of Thirasia. In all three towns that we explored in Santorini I think my favorite part was taking my camera and going down the plethora of staircases seeing what i could capture.

Our trip has now come to an end. Three weeks went very quickly. We had beautiful and very hot weather all but the last day of our trip. The night before leaving Santorini it rained and there was a big thunder and lighting storm. Talk about some intense lighting and thunder! If we hadn't had to get up so early we would have stayed up to watch it. We were rudely awakened the next morning by our ride to the airport showing up 45 minutes early and waking us up. It sort of felt like Home Alone where the electricity goes off and the family sleeps in. However, we didn't sleep in, and our Greek driver didn't get that he was early! Talk about packing fast and rushing out the door. But even 10 hrs later we still think we packed everything.

Santorini pictures

Tonight I'm too lazy to do captions. I think most of the pictures are petty self explanatory. We are in Santorini right now - spent the day in Fira.

More pictures from Greece

First of all let me say that I am not a fan of the Blogger App - it doesn't upload my photos the same way I put them in. However, I don't know how to upload them any other way... So please bare with the unorganized photos.

Hopefully I will get the captions in
The correct order or else have fun playing the matching game.

~ View of Monemvasia
~ Me and Liz in Monemvasia
~ Sunset in Monemvasia
~ Liz and Terry at the first Olympic stadium in Olympia
~ Me somewhere in Greece. It was a rest stop/view area
~ View from our hotel room in Pylos
~ Terry, Angelos, Paul, Older Son, Father from Greek lunch (for a lack of a better word)
~ This pictures is for you Katie! Me hugging a Greek column
~ Liz, Cathy, Mother, Georgia from Greek lunch
~ Another rest spot/view area from our drive today
~ Group photo minus me and the sons' friends

Time with friends and being back on our own

Right now, I am sitting on our balcony in Monemvasia watching the moon rise and listening to the waves crash on the beach. No jacket or wrap needed. Talk about a perfect night.

Trying to wrap my head around the experiences we have been having has been hard. I've been thinking about it for the last two days. Let me start by going backwards. Monemvasia is a town built into a hillside of rock. There are small paths that you can only walk on or take your wheelbarrow on. The paths and steps going up go to other parts of the village. While we walked around there today, we are actually staying across the water on the mainland. This morning we started the day in Pylos and drove through Kalamata and Sparta. The roads are crazy here - people pass whenever they want and half the times on curves. We have been on so many hairpin turns that when Liz got out of the car yesterday she couldn't stand straight because she felt like she was still moving. I'm glad I don't get car sick or else it would have been a horrible, horrible, ride. While the driving isn't the best, the views are spectacular! We have seen millions of olive trees and handful of grape vineyards and watermelon fields. We have seen up and down valleys and all kinds of geological features. No doubt about it, it has been worth the drive. Even though I have my international drivers license I will not be driving here unless I absolutely have to.

Sunday night through Tuesday morning we were in Olympia. We all caught a cold so we laid low and rested. We were able to see where Zeus was supposedly born, the first Olympic stadium, and a bunch of other touristy sites that I now don't remember the names of. After seeing the first five temples/ancient sites they all start to blend together - even though each one on it's own is still very interesting.

The days before that we were in Greece's third biggest city, Patras. The city on it's own wasn't spectacular but the company we had was unbeatable. Being able to go around with people who live in the area, wherever you are traveling, changes the experience so much. We were able to go out to meals and have others order great food, go to places we would never have found on our own, and experienced much more of the Greek cultures that we would have on our own. On Sunday we really didn't want to leave our friends because we knew we would be back to a much more touristy experience but there was still so much of the country we wanted to get to while we were here. Our most cultural experience was going to the "best man's" house of Ian (son of our Seattle friends we met while in Greece - Paul and Cathy) and Eleni (daughter of Greek's Georgia and Angelos). For lunch (afternoon meal around 2pm) there were us (our three plus Paul, Cathy, Georgia, and Angelos) and their family consisting of a mother, father, and two grown sons - none of them spoke English. It's quite the lunch when you have Georgia trying to translate most things for you. The mother is trying to cook more, and more, food because she doesn't think there is enough (there was more than enough!) and all the Greek men are telling/yelling at her to sit down and eat. Oh, and at least four friends of one of the sons came over and joined the whole gang -they didn't speak English either. Oh, and when the Greeks were having a conversation it sounded like they were all yelling. It was quite the lunch. And I can't gush enough about how mouth watering and amazing the food was. Almost everything was from their farm: potatoes, pork and lamb, peppers, Greek salad, pasta, fried zucchini... The list goes on. And then there was dessert. By the end I needed to be rolled out of the house. It's a good thing I took so many PE classes this year so I can eat as much as I want and not have to worry about it.

We have been swimming five times now. Each time the water has been crystal clear and so warm. However, I have to get use to the pebble beaches and occasionally wearing slippers in the water because of sea urchins. Today, while in the water I was scared that my feet would hit rocks (yeah, I'm strange and touching the ground sort of freaks me out) because the water was so clear but the water was so deep that I couldn't.

Before I left, with graduation and work money, I bought myself an iPad. It has been nice to stay in touch with the world (yes, I did choose this, and I am still able to have a vacation - done with school and don't have a job...) but the great/life saving aspect of the iPad has been the map! We bought a SIM card in Athens and have been able to get a signal almost everywhere we have been. So from the back seat I can open up my iPad, go to the map, and see where we need to go. And the GPS is so accurate that I can say make the next right and we will be back on track and then we are. Yes, we still have two "real" maps out... But going through cities can be very confusing! Plus this has saved us from a whole lot of fights trying to figure out which way to go. Hooray for technology!

That is all for tonight. I may get pictures up tonight... Well see when I crash.

If you are really interested, according to Terry, we are at 36 degrees, 41.277" north and 23 degrees, 2.238" east right now.

Finally Greece pictures

~ Terry's view of us when we are walking around/looking at things.
~ The Parathion all lite up at night.
~ View of Patras from our morning drinks.
~ Trucks pointing both ways on the ferry boat.
~ When you are first on the ferry boat you have to turn around and back into your spot.
~ How many people does it take to give us driving directions and recommendations? (Georgia, Thioni, Terry, Liz, & Niko).
~ How I navigate with my iPad.
~ Lunch with the gang. (Niko, Georgia, Cathy, Thioni, Liz, Terry, & Paul).
~ Afternoon stop for drinks and sweets.
~ Our afternoon at the beach.
~ Dinner one night in Athens.
~ Our family in front of the Temple of Zeus.

Sorry there's no real order to the pictures. I'm trying to do this with an App I've never used before. Next time I hope to have it figured out a little more.

****when I wrote the post the pictures where in the correct order. Have fun guessing which title/comment goes with each picture. I would fix it but I don't know how! :( ****

We've had a gorgeous day at the beach followed with lunch at another Greek family's house. It was quite the meal and at the house we went to no one spoke English. More to come on that though.

Patras

We left Athens on Thursday and picked up a rental car at the airport. Terry has done all the driving so far. While I have an international drivers license I have no desire to drive while here. The combination of a a manuel transmission, other crazy drivers, some freaking small roads, and not knowing where I am going does not make a great combination. I'll leave the driving to Terry and Liz.

From Athens we drove to Delphi and looked around the ancient ruins. We then got back in the car and drove the rest of the way to Patras. Our family friends, Paul and Cathy, have in-laws who are Greek-American and live here. Paul and Cathy have been here for almost three weeks and we have had the pleasure to hang out with them and their in-laws. Georgia, their daughter-in-law's mother is a kick and she has been a great tour guide. Yesterday was a delightful day of a short walk and seeing a castle. We then when back to Georgia's home for a lunch and the afternoon was spent at the beach. Everything about the day was wonderful! The food and company were especially nice. We even managed make it to dinner past 9pm! And I wasn't the first person who was hungry.

The highlight of the day was going to the beach and seeing Terry in this speedo. I was aware that Terry was bring his speedo as his only bathing suit, however, Liz wasn't. She was more than a little embarrassed! However, it wasn't until he got out of the water and realized that his bathing suit felt saggy that he might be showing more that he realized. He says "it is like the lycra dissolved in the salt water." When we got back to the hotel we realized that the back of his swimsuit was as see through as nylons! Georgia and one of her friends saw his butt through his suit. They thought it was a little unusually for this guy from Seattle to have a see through bathing suit. We all got a laugh out of the situation. When Terry asked Georgia where he could by a bathing suit she kindly passed on a new speedo type suit that her husband didn't like. It's much better considering people now can't see Terry butt.

Today we took a ferry across the Corinthian Sea and then drove another 30mins to a local family beach. It was amazing. The water was clear, the beach wasn't crowded... So we spent a few hours in the sun and water before having our afternoon meal. Being with people who know what to order is great because you get to try so many things that we would never have known about or tried on our own. We then drove back another castle and had drinks and sweets before heading back to hotel. The day was spent with Paul, Cathy, Georgia, Niko, and Theoni. Niko and Theoni are friends of Georgia.

The most interesting part of the day was taking the ferry boat across the water. Unlike in Washington where the ferry boats have two ends (one where you get on and one where you get off). Here there is only one entrance to get on the ferry. So if you are one of the first ones on you drive on and then turn around. Or you have to reverse your way on to the ferry or drive on regularly and then reverse off the ferry. With small cars this isn't a problem but with big rigs it takes a lot more work.... Yet it doesn't seem to be a problem for most of the drivers.

Tomorrow we are heading to a sand beach south of Patras. From there we will say goodby to Paul and Cathy and head south on our own. While tourists may not like Patras we have had a grand time being with our friends and meeting some locals.

I'm finding that uploading pictures to my blog from my iPad might not be as easy as I thought it would be.... Hopefully pictures will come soon...

Same same but different

I don't know what I was expecting Athens to be like, I did very little researching before coming, but this wasn't it. In my head I can't quite put the city into the category of what I know in terms of Europe or SE Asia. Here is a list of a few things that I have been able to place that, in my head, fit in the European or Asian category. (I'm sure more will come to me later... But this is the list for now.)

Things that remind me of SE Asia:
Our hotel room smells like my room did in Nha Trang, Vietnam. The AC only works when you have your key in a slot while you are in the room. So when you walk in after being out for most of the day the smell is a mix of musty/moldy warm air.
Some streets smelling like sewage.
Trying to cross the street is a little tricky. At some point you just have to start, and keep, walking -while praying that some car/bus/moto won't run you over.
When using the toilet you don't flush your toilet paper, you put it in the trash bin right next to the toilet.

Things where I am reminded that I really am in Europe:
Paved streets and sidewalks.
The toilets are clean and are the western style.
Small spaces - in our bathroom it is easy to multiple task. While sitting on the toilet I can turn the sink on, wash my hands, and spit into the sink easily...
You can drink the water and it taste good.
There are cross walks to get across the street.
Tomatoes for breakfast.
There is a metro/underground.
People smoke everywhere and it is hard to get away from it if you are eating outside.
I don't have to cover myself - I can wear a short skirt and tank top and not get any lewd stares.

Things that remind me that I am not in the US(but don't remind me of any other place specifically):
The first floor of our hotel is on what I would call the third floor. So, walking to our (fourth) floor really isn't fun.

On another note I have been very surprised at how friendly everyone has been. I can't remember having any problems while in Europe before... Or any reason to think that people wouldn't be nice or helpful - but I have been very surprised at how helpful everyone has been. For example, we went to find SIM cards for my phone and iPad (two different occasions) and both people helped set up the cards and made sure that everything worked before sending us on our way. For setting up the iPad we were in the store for at least 45mins trying to figure everything out. The man helping us even said that before we left that he would make sure that it worked because we weren't connecting to the Internet immediately. I guess I was expecting more people to take advantage of how naive we are. (We did pay 10 euros to get to our hotel after we took a bus into town - it was a 4 min taxi ride... But sometimes it pays for connivence after traveling 20+ hours).

We have done most of the touristy things around Athens and have worn ourselves out a little bit already. We are slowly relearning that in this heat you have to sit down and have a drink for a little bit instead of going going going all day and then crashing. I'm still having a hard time eating later in the night. To me it seems stupid to eat a snack at five or six only to eat another whole meal 2 hours later. (Liz just checked what time it was and commented on how she is still on an american eating schedule - 6 o'clock and ready to eat!) We have been making it to at least 7 (most nights) before eating.

In other news the metro/underground went on strike today from 12-4. I do realize that this is a comment occurrence in Greece but it is still new to me. There were extra police around the Parliament and the main square. And tomorrow the taxis will be on strike. I find it bizarre how organized the strike is, and that everything doesn't just strike at once... Or that notice was being given that the underground wouldn't be running for part of today (in Greek and English) ahead of time.

That all for now, it is time to think about where we will go for dinner... It will take us at least an hour get out the door and to the part of town we want... So we will be eating after 7 :)

Getting back to blogging

For the past year or so I have updated my blog with random messages or things that I have found on the internet. There has been no timeline I have been keeping up with but my blog has been something that I have missed. I'm not sure if it was being able to keep track of what I was doing, for myself, or being able to let others keep up with what I was doing. Either way, I hadn't completely forgotten about my blog. And now that I am traveling again I miss writing my blog even more. My blog is another journal but for whatever reason I write it in a different format than my hardcopy/personal journal.

So let me backtrack just a bit...

Part of my reason for traveling the first time around, in SE Asia, was that I had dropped out of school and didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I didn't figure out what I DID want to do on that trip, however, I did figure out what I didn't want to do - and that was teach. It only took me half way through my trip to figure this out. Better now that after finishing a teaching program. So with that in mind, I spent a total of three years out of school before finally figuring out that I didn't know what I wanted to study, but that I did want to get a degree in something and I wanted it sooner rather than later. So i jumped back into school with an idea in mind of what i wanted to study but more importantly with the determination that this time i was going to finish my degree no matter what. In the end, it only took me a little over a year to finish my degree. I changed my mind a month into school after realizing that it didn't matter that I got a degree in if I still didn't know what I wanted to do after school. So, I did it! I can now say that I am a college graduate. And because I have FINALLY finished school I am celebrating with a three week trip to Greece thanks to my parents. And yes, they have come along too to celebrate.

So we will see how long blogging lasts...