Okay. It has been a long time since I wrote a blog, and for that, I am sorry. Although I don't think anyone was bothered too much by it.
I am back from my vacation to Italy and Greece with Kat, and although I am practically broke now, it was well worth it. To make things easier on you as well as me, I uploaded my pictures to Picasa webalbum, and you can view them using the link at the end of this post. They all have captions, and there are A LOT of them, but we went to Venice, Bologna, Milan, Athens, and Santorini, all of which demand lots of photos. SO, I will keep the post short, since the photos and captions are better.
We flew to Venice from 'Paris' - Beauvais airport is an hour north of Paris, FYI - almost got on the wrong bus, but Kat saved us.
VENICE -
Apparently this city floods. A lot. We opened our shutters to see three inches of water washing all the way up to our hotel entrance.... We walked out of our room, and the cleaning lady frantically points outside, shaking her head, telling us "ACQUA!". Kat and I shrugged and said "We know..." Luckily we found rubber boots about 30 minutes after wandering through the water in our shoes. We did not use a map because the city is not that large, and wandering is fun. We saw the Rialto Bridge, Piazza San Marco, and lots of stores. Lots of flooded stores, too. We opted out of museums here because seeing the city sounded better. We ate well, lots of pasta for me, pizza for Kat. I came back with a Venetian glass candle holder and a carnivale mask.
We took the train from Venice to Bologna, where we met up with Jenna, who lived in the apartment beneath me in Seattle for 2 years. She now goes to the University of Bologna. We stayed with her and her 4 awesome multi-lingual roommates.
BOLOGNA -
It rained the first day, but happily Bologna is a city of porticos, so we were covered almost the entire time. Jenna showed us the campus, the library that sits on top of Roman ruins, the statue of Poseidon that was designed to make nuns blush, and the church that got the economical facade because it was supposed to be bigger than St. Paul's and the Vatican would have no such thing.
We saw the anatomy theater, which was so cool! We did not make it to the Anatomy museum because we were tired, but that was okay. For dinner two of the nights, we went to the grocery store and bought mortadella, bufala mozzarella, olives, and Lambrusco wine. DELICIOUS. The third night we ordered pizza...I wish pizza in the states was anything like pizza in Italy.
We went out to Transylvania bar for 'message night', which is where all the tables have numbers and you send messages to other tables via the waiters. It sounds cool, but everything was in Italian so we could only understand what was translated for us.
We got up early (8 am!) to go to Milan by train.
MILAN -
This place is like an Armani ad. I have never seen more good-looking men in designer suits in my life. Incredible. We were only here for one night and one morning, but we were blessed with good warm(ish) weather. We went to see the Duomo, got a little picture happy, ate some gelato, then wandered for hours until we literally stumbled across an incredible little food joint on a back street where I ate squid ink risotto with calamari and Kat had tagliatelle with mushrooms...so good.
We wandered a little the following morning, got lunch, and then headed to the airport to go to Athens. On the plane to Athens, I had an hour-long Italian lesson from the lady sitting next to me, she spoke not a word of either English of French, so it was definitely an experience. She also kept pinching my cheek and saying how beautiful it was that I was trying to learn Italian from her. She waited with us at the baggage claim even though she had no bags...odd.
ATHENS -
We arrived at our hostel at 10:30 at night. When we came up from the metro, it dawned on us that we were in a very shady neighborhood. It turns out it is one of the worst in Athens! Oh well, we survived. Our hostel was nice, amazingly. We ran back out to grab two of the greasiest gyros known to man, then ran back to eat them in the room. We got up the next morning, headed to the Acropolis - which is INCREDIBLE.
Then we met up with Kosta, a friend of Dino who I worked with at Costa's restaurant in Seattle. He spoke perfect English, and took us out to a great souvlaki place for lunch. We wandered around the flea market, then all around the Acropolis getting a history lesson while we walked. After a few hours of wandering, Kosta went home and Kat and I headed back to the hotel for a much-needed nap. When we woke up, we walked back to the foot of the Acropolis where we found a fantastic Greek restaurant, whose owner lured us in with his talk of Moussaka. And I tell you, he was not exaggerating. It was the best Moussaka I have ever had! We also had fried calamari, and pita with tzatziki. The charming waiter brought us two free shots of porto each, and then we each had a Greek coffee. Fabulous. We headed back early because we had to get up at 4:30 am to get to the port the next morning.
We woke up, got to the metro station at 5 am, just in time for the first train, got to the platform, and a man comes up to us and tells us that there is no train because the metro is under construction (there were no signs for this, not even in Greek). Take this bus to this stop and catch the metro from there. Okay, sure. We go to the stop, where there are no signs for this bus, tap on the kiosk window where there are two men sitting. One opens the window and I say is this the stop for the 11 bus? He says 'yes.' and shuts the window before I can ask another question. The bus finally comes, and we get on with all the other vagabonds that hang out in that quarter of Athens. After about 2 blocks, the bus stops dead in traffic. After about 20 minutes, we get out of the traffic, and get stuck behind a garbage truck. At this point, the bus driver is yelling and honking and everyone on the bus is grumbling 'malaka' (one of the only Greek words I know, it turns out it is one of the most used). At this point, Kat and I are starting to panic that we might not make our ferry to Santorini. After about 10 minutes but what felt like forever, we break free of the garbage truck. The bus driver floors it, we think maybe we might make it, and then he turns a corner and STOP! there is another garbage truck. This one only lasted a couple blocks, and then we see a sign for Tavros (where we were instructed to get back on the metro), pointing to the right. The bus stops, but the bus stop says Tepma, and everyone gets off the bus, but everyone goes left, away from the sign. I feebly ask the driver where Tavros is. He points to where everyone is going, which may I remind you, is AWAY from the sign. We followed the vagabonds to the train station, got on the train, and got to the port in time. Mind you, all of these signs were only in Greek, and the only reason we could semi-read them is because Kat was in a sorority.
SANTORINI -
Well, after an 8-hour ferry ride, we arrived on a Sunday afternoon (in a very orthodox country) in the off-season on Santorini. The man from our hotel picked us up at the port, but he spoke virtually no English. That was an AWKWARD car ride. We were staying outside of Fira, but we didn't know how far or how to get there. The man (we never got his name), pointed to the road and said "bus." So we go to the bus stop, not knowing what side of the street to be on. We wait for 30 minutes, then start walking away. We see the bus coming after about 50 meters, so we run back and barely make it, only to find out we were on the wrong side of the road. So we crossed the street, and waited another 20 minutes, and decided to start walking again. Well, after about 2O meters, we see the bus coming. So we run back, get on, and it turns out the town was only 3 stops away...or about 15 minutes on foot. Wow.
We wandered around Fira very briefly, we were hungry and virtually everything was closed. At this point we didn't know if it was because it was a Sunday or the off-season. We stumbled upon a family-run joint, it felt like we were crashing a family dinner, but they served us nonetheless, and it was delicious! Pasta with lamb, Greek fries, and a Greek salad! We headed back to our non-insulated summer house which was FREEZING. We slept in two pairs of pants, two sweatshirts (with the hood up), a scarf, and socks. When we woke up in the morning, we were feeling a little...hopeless. But once we got outside and discovered it was sunny and there was what can only be described as an EPIC bakery across the street from our hotel, things started to look up.
We hopped on the bus to Ia for the day, which was deserted, and it felt like we were on a movie set. We took pictures left and right, walked around, ducked into the one open cafe for a Greek coffee while it rained for 10 minutes, then waited an hour for the bus (the hours are only posted in Fira, for some reason). We got a late lunch, sat around drinking more coffee, then watched the sunset. The next morning, we ate breakfast at the EPIC bakery again, walked around Fira, ate lunch, and then headed to the port for what would be the longest 30 hours of our life.
GOING HOME -
We got to the port at 2:30pm, the ferry left at 3:30, and then we got into Piraeus (Athens) at 12:30 AM. The bus to the airport didn't come until 1:10 AM, so we stood around waiting, surrounded by a pack of stray, but friendly, dogs. We hop on the bus, which gets us to the airport around 2:20 am. Happily, there was a cafe open. We eat a pastry, and pass out on a bench. We were woken up once at 3:30 am by a guard speaking Greek, but because I don't know what he said, we just went back to sleep. At 6:30 am we were woken by another guard speaking Greek, this time after I just looked back helplessly, she asked if I spoke English. She then told me that we could no longer sleep in the airport. We moved to another chair to wait for our check-in time...at 9am. I slept a little more, sitting upright with my feet on my suitcase. We checked in and discovered that the foodcourt was open. They had a Sbarro, which for some reason had a giant American breakfast, and I couldn't help it. Our plane took off at 11:20, then we took the bus into a metro station in Paris, took the metro to Gare de l'est, and waited 2 hours for our train. 2 1/2 hours after that, we were back in Bar le Duc. And boy, were we tired.
So, here is the link to all of the pictures from the journey:
http://picasaweb.google.com/koehn.kathrynEnjoy!
Home Sweet Crap -
I am still hanging out with the normal French crew, but I have made many other friends in recent weeks. I spend time with Sylvie, who happens to be the mother of one of my favorite and brightest (and incredibly polite) students, Jules. Sylvie and her friends and I get along great and we have tea every once and awhile (they all have kids so they are all busy busy busy). Sylvie has put me on her insurance and lends me her car when she doesn't need it. (And I love driving manual transmission!). I have also made friends with the son of Coco (a friend of Sylvie), and his friends, but they are only here on weekends as they are away at school. It has only been getting better living here, amazingly enough. I would have thought I would be home sick by now, but as the date to leave gets closer and closer, I find more and more reasons to stay.
