Chris and Megan

Well I need to blog about some Athens Details so here is my lame post.

If there were one place other than England I would want to live in Europe (that I have visited) it would be Greece. The people are friendly, they have a new metro system (thanks to the Olympics), the prices are very reasonable, and the food is great. I don't think we had any bad food while we were there and a total meal actually cost us under 10 Euro. Amazing.

The history is good too, but the Greeks need to get over the Elgin marbles (The pieces of the pantheon that were taken back tot he British Museum by Elgin). When you go to the Pantheon the pieces left are 10 times more weathered then the ones in the British museum. The British actually saved history by removing them, so Greece just let them go. You don't see Italy asking for all it's stolen art back do you.

The markets are unreal, selling a bunch of tourist crap, but still unreal. On Sunday's the areas around the markets turn into a huge lawn sale, where anyone who needs to sell their crap spreads it out on a sheet and people actually buy it. I think this was the biggest garage/lard sale I have ever seen.

Also a note to Olympic peeps: What to know what a city does with all the stadiums and infrastructure? Yeah nothing, but let it rust. It is a real shame.

The plane ride back was very eventful. Four Italians got on the plane with a large carry one suitcase and a box that would have never passed anyone's dimensions of a carry on item. The thing was huge, big enough to take up two plane seats. Good thing for them that the plane was only half full, but the item had to be moved 3 times before people stopped complaining about it. The Italians of course couldn't let it get placed in the baggage area of the plane, they need it in the cabin. The messing around with the package actually caused Megan and I to miss out on the candy being handed to the rest of the passengers, because we of course were right in the think of the Italian group.

Enough about Greece.

A quick shout-out to my wife on her Birthday. She got to play with the Largo Argentina cats, ate some gelato, and we both had a fantastic dinner.

I was commenting to Megan that we have some really good dinners, that we may not want to go out that much when we got back. The response to which we both laughed. Fast food why do I miss thee.

 UPDATE 12/23/2007:

Here is something for the guys

   Yes those are real women modeling lingerie

Now here is something for the ladies.

  The crowd shot of mostly men crowding the window for a glimpse yaws wide open, and drooling and looking just plain stupid.

Our trip to Geneva started out as part business, Megan wanted to visit the Lutheran World Federation (kinda like the wrestling kind...and Jesus).

Well on a short hop like this you take a turbo prop (propeller) plane that sits about 50 people, but there are only 10 people on the flight. Yeah, who would want to go to Geneva in the winter. So the flight attendants find out who speaks Italian, and who speaks French, and the rest who speak English. The best thing is that you are flying an airline call FlyBaboo. I know you could get a Airline like JetTransfer9000 Inc, but that isn't nearly as cool as FlyBaboo (and I bet they don't have a nice lounge area).

So we arrive in Geneva in time to take part in the Le Escalade celebration. This celebration centers around the town of Geneva fight off the Sack..somethings, a good thing to celebrate. Well when you get their the celebration actually more centers around one woman, who legends has it, who through her pot of vegetable soup on the SackThingys and the painful screaming awake the Geneva army to save the city. Heck even a special cholocate vegetable pot is made up for this celebration (the coolest chocolate concoction I have ever seen). So there are fair type things going on, warm wine and veg. soup everywhere, and a late night parade, all fun things to try out.

While messing around the old town we decide to see the excavations underneath St. Peter's Basillica (yeah I know they're everywhere). Seems they uncovered a 4 century church, some Roman tombs, and an ancient prehistory kings tomb, all built on the same spot. Seems the tomb came first, then the Romans came and decided that the spot must be important so they made it a place of honor, and then the Christians came and decide it was a holy place to put a church, and then they needed to go bigger. Cool stuff.

We still had some time, so we decided to hop the border into France. We found a small market (thanks to one of Megan's friends) and had some lunch and bought candied clementines. These candied clementines looked like the small orange that a clementine is but completely translucent which means that it was good for you. Wow.

Now on to the best part, the food. Yes Geneva has a great selection of all ethic food as you can imagine. We actually found a Mexican restaurant, which was expensive (everything in Geneva is), but so so good. Next Thai, then some standard Chinese, and some of the local French sandwiches. Good times.

So remember the business part of this trip, well this was scheduled for Monday morning. Now with having the Chinese food the night before Megan's got a bit of minor food poisoning and had to cancel the business portion. So no Swiss Lutherans , no World federation, and worst of all no paster on paster grudge matches in the iron cage of dooooommmm.

Now to come full circle, the trip started in Italy and must end in Italy, but not without Italian drama. Seems some Italian didn't like the custom agents and decided to have words with them. Not civil words, screaming at the top of his lungs words until the police escorted him into the holding area for bad people who fail at the custom's checkpoint. Seems his wife was pissed to and decided to give the custom agents a piece of her mind as well. She got through and just took off. I am telling you family entertainment at it's best.

Traveler's Note: Geneva has the best bus system where you can get a hotel outside of the city center and be fine.

So November has been busy if you can believe that.

The begining of the month Megan and I saw my parents, and entertained them for a week. They saw that week as a vacation, but they still managed to see all of the best of Rome, Pisa and Pompeii.

Next Jillian stopped by after her "30 minute" drive over to our place (you will have to ask her). We have some good times, even if Megan got the Bird Flu half way through Jillian's stay. This was our first time at the restaurant Pastario's, which is a chain restaurant but also the most extensive selection of pasta and pizza I have yet to find in Italy. If you want a kind of pasta, go to Pastario's.

The next weekend we took a train up to Assisi and spent the weekend up there.  It was a beautiful small italian village, with several large churches and wonderful streets and alleyways.  It was really cold though, in fact you could see where several of the surrounding hills were coated with a light dusting of snow on there peaks. The wind would also whip through that town like a wind tunnel making it even colder.  The nights were awesome, almost everyone would leave the streets and all you had were empty dark (and somewhat spooky) streets that you could wander around.  The restaurants were fairly expensive, but the food was good.   Going home was our first experience at changing trains, but everything went smoothly (yes I am partly amazed at that).  For some reason I found the train trips this time very relaxin, it could have been that we were in first class on the way to Assisi and in our own room on the way back.

After Assisi, Megan's parents showed up and we had some more family fun and became tour guides again.  I have noticed that everyone loved the salsiccia dish Megan and I had perfected over the year.  It was a quick whirlwind of activity and pounding the pavement as Bev and Wayne only had 4 days to see Rome. 

During this weekend Megan and I also went on our Necropolis tour under St. Peter's where you see the parts of a ancient burial city (buildings and tombs included) and you get to see "the bones of St. Peter".  The only really weird part about the bones are that they told us that NASA designed the containers for the bones, but they really only looked like regular plastic boxes.  I couldn't see what was so special that they needed NASA to build them.

After Megan's parents left, the next weekend was a weekend to rest and recuperate before heading off to Switzerland and Greece and then heading home (Dec 26th).  We went to Piazza Navona to search for some art to bring back with us, well the piazza had turned into a fair type atmosphere with a carousel, game booths, and food vendors. We bought a few thing, like our Christmas witch, and headed off in search of the painters and art merchants.  We only found a few left, hopefully they will be back or elsewhere.

Well that's November in a nutshell. 

Yeah! The parents are here and we are having a great time, and yet there have been some interesting things happening. I was so proud that my parents made it to Termini from the airport, which can be a bit daunting. I picked them up at Termini and everything was great. We went back to the apartment and had some home cooked Italian dinner, then to bed.

The next day we introduced the parents to the crossing of roads in Rome, the forum, the Colosseum and most importantly Gelato. A fun day for all, nothing too tough. The beers my Dad and I had at lunch were massive, like a mini keg in my hands.

Today it got a bit more interesting. Like normal we all got up and headed to the commuter train we take into the city (only one stop, but it is worth it). Well the train pulls in with a large cloud of smoke following it. We all looked at the smoke and then at the passengers on the train and decided that no one was running for their lives so it should be safe. We got on and hoped that the back of the train wasn't on fire.

Well we made it to the metro station, and there wasn't any fire. So we went about our tourist business. We visited the Trevi fountain early in the afternoon and I told my parents that we would visit at night when the lights were on, and they could through their good luck coins then. So we went on to visit the Pantheon and Piazza Navona and have some more gelato. We decided to go to dinner and we came across about 200 armed police (Carbenari?). Well they seemed to be surrounding a protest against Vodaphone cutting about 1000 jobs in Italy. So we get a front side seat to the disgruntled Italian telecom workforce.

After dinner we decided to head back to the Trevi fountain and see it all lit up. We get there and the place is swarming with Polizia, the fountain is turned off, and the water is a deep red instead of clear. Well word starts to circulate that someone dropped some red dye into the water. When we got there they had the fountain shutdown, so that the dye didn't continue through the fountain. Well they were draining it, and it seemed that dye had left a ring around the fountain. They had about 10 experts/managers/people in charge directing 2 people who were going to power wash the marble monument. They seemed to start the process and it seemed to be working, and from other news sources, there is word that the fountain is clean and clear again. So at the end of the day, the parents didn't get to through their coins and they got to see what a red Trevi fountain would look like. Oh well we will have to go back.

What an exciting and interesting day. Now time for sleeping.

Our Fall Rome Apartment

Well we have settled into the Rome way of life again.  What is this the rome way of life, well it has to do with quite a few things.  So for your viewing pleasure, the list of things that bring about the Rome way of life.

• Tiny Rooms - for some reason the Roman's love apartments,bathrooms, or kitchens that make you physically contort in order to get into them.  Yes, ancient Romans were about 4 foot nothing, but come on!
• Staple meal: can't go wrong with pasta.  When the grocery store has aisles dedicated to nothing but pasta that take up about a 10th of the store, you quickly figure out what the staple is.  We have quickly reverted back into cooking pasta every other meal, the sausauge hear is awesome.
• Fearing the grocery store because of a language barrier.  In the US definetly money talks, here not so much.  The clerk at the grocery store will ask you if you have the exact change for the groceries.  Well you have no idea what they said and you don't know why they just won't make your large bill that will cover the groceries.  For me it is a double-team when it comes to the grocery store.
• Crazy drivers.  Hell if you though driving in Minnesota was bad, that ain't nothing, at least there is a semblance of order.  Not here, riding in a taxi is a wild experience.  You don't so much stay inside the lines as you weave all over them and avoid other traffic.
• Late Meals.  Lunch is at 3:00pm and Dinner/Supper is at 9:00pm, this is strictly to be adhered to.
• No TV.  You would be surprised that you don't miss TV too much.  There are always other things to do, like learn the damn language.  Oh and most US networks now offer old TV episodes online.
• How Italians seem to be able to cook without any measuring devices.
• Glad you brought some Tuperware from England because Italy wouldn't know the first thing about technology like that.
• Where you have to visit the grocery store at least twice a week, because you couldn't hold any more food in your fridge if you wanted to.
• Listening to the trickle of water.  You have to love it when you hear running water in the subway and know it will never be repaired.  That it will just become it's own little stream.

Well that is all I can think of right now.

One major improvement over our last time in Italy is that the grocery store we go to is an actual open 12 hrs a day, every day of week, grocery store.  They actually have more than pasta, but the pasta still takes up a good portion of the store.

 Italy isn't all bad, the history is amazing, the churches and art are gorgeous, and the fresh food/cheese/pasta is the best.  (I am never going back to pre-grated Parmesan cheese again)

So a couple of days ago we hefted our 100 pounds of gear and headed of to Gatwick leaving London behind.  That part of the journey wasn't difficult at all, and everythign worked out as it was suppose to.

So we get into Rome, go through customs, and retrieve our luggage and  then hop on the train to Termini,  all this went according to plan and there was nothing to worry about.

Here is where the story gets interesting, now since our landlord's mother was going to give us the key to the apartment, but she then had to stay in the apartment for the night and head back on the train in the morning.  Well since we didn't have a place to stay that night we had to find a hotel for one night in a couple of days, so we weren't picky.

So the plan at Termini was for Megan to stay with our luggage at Termini and I was going to go get the keys to our hotel and then come back and pickup Megan so we could take a bus to the apartment, get the keys, and then head to our hotel on the Metro.  Needless to say that plan fell apart on the first leg.

So I got on the Metro and went down to the correct stop and I had to do a little looking for the correct road.  I headed down that road and I got to the place Google Maps said the hotel was but it wasn't there.  I went searching down several other roads, and finally had to back track to find the entrance (which didn't have any large sign above it).  I then found a note, written to "Victors", which I took that the note was meant for me which said head to Vaile Manzoni to some firm for check in, which according to the instructions was on the back of the building.  Well I didn't have a map on me and I went around the back of the building and there was no Viale Manzoni or check in firm.  I had to knock on our hotel door and get some very friendly man to provide me with a crude map that says the Vaile Manzoni was actually several block behind the hotel's building.  This man also lent me his phone card so that I could call the hotel number if needed (I had brought my England phone, but I found out that it was out of minutes).

So I get to the check in firm, and it takes forever to get the keys so by this time it is about an hour past when I left Megan, about 8:30pm.  The nice woman at the check in firm reminds me that the Metro (underground train) only runs in Rome until 9:00pm.  Since I was so used to the tube closing down around 12:00pm in England, I didn't even think about it until then.  Well I got the keys and ran back to the Metro station I took to get down to our hotel and went back to Termini.  I found Megan, and we decided to still try the bus route to the apartment.  So we waited, and waited, and waited and waited.  Buses in Rome really don't follow a schedule they basically show up when they want.  Well we waited for about 15 minutes and said screw this lets take a taxi.  We got a taxi fairly quickly and finally got to the apartment.  Our landlord's mother, who spoke about as much English as we spoke Italian, help us in and showed us the apartment.  Well Megan and I were a bit dismayed at the size of the apartment, it is very tiny.  We both took solace in the fact that we had only 3 weeks to find a place that would allow us to stay for only 3 months (I took at least a month and a half last time).  We dropped off our big luggage and headed off to our hotel.

Well since we couldn't take the Metro, we had to try the bus.  We got to the bus station, with help from our landlord's mother, and once again proceeded to wait.  Well after another 15-20 minutes, I was impaitent at this point, I hailed us a taxi and we took off to our hotel.  Megan and I know our way around parts of Rome to know how to get to certain locations by just look for landmarks, well the taxi seemed to be taking us for a bit of a ride.  Well no tip for you. 

We finally get to our room, which at this point we are very tired and haven't had any dinner, and we just went to sleep.  Neither one of us slept at all that night, nerves maybe. 

So the next morning we take the Metro back to the apartment, which is very accessible, and we meet up with our landlord's mother again.  Well we run through the apartment and find out that the apartment has even less stuff than our previous Italian apartment.  No Towels, minimal linens, on small pan and one small pot, and very little closet space.  Well it is only for 3 months right.

The place is in a really quiet neighborhood, with a park about a block from our apartment.  Some of the shops around the area, seem to suggest that it is in a really high scale neighborhood.  We will see.

Well as our last trip while residing in England we decided to head to Ireland (Dublin) for the weekend. We wanted to try and get to Scotland as well, but money being tight we had to pick one or the other.

We saw several cool things, we went to Trinity College to see the "Book of Kells" which is a medival decorated bible.  I really wanted to get a copy of the book, best thing we could do was a dvd of the book.  

 We also visited the biggest tourist spots of Dublin, the Guinness Storehouse, the Jameson Distillery, and the Temple bar area.  The Guinness Storehouse was a great tour, and then you pint a Guinness to enjoy while looking out over the town.  The Jameson Distillery was a bit lacking because they don't actually make whiskey in Dublin anymore.  Megan got to be a whiskey taster, which was instead of lunch she got a bunch of whickey to drink.  

 Wierd thing about Dublin is that there was more American English spoken then I have heard in one location all year.  We even broke down went to an American cafe restaurant, best burger of the year.

The last theatre production that we will see in London was last Friday.  We went to "Spamalot", and it was frickin' hilarious.  It was basically Monty Python's Holy Grail, but adapted to a theatre stage.  You have your black night, and your nights that say "Ni", and the french castle, and then you introduce singing and a couple other ideas and you get Spamalot.  I would recommend it.  When I saw the bunny rabbits stuffed toys I had to get one, you know the bunny rabbits with "big pointy teeth".  It is awesome, and Megan immediately adopted the rabbit and was playing with it during some of Act 2.  Good old stuff animal entertainment.

 Our next excursion was to the "London Dungeon" which was marketed to us as a horror house/ride through some of London's past, black plague, Jack the Ripper, etc.  Well we got fast track tickets off the web, which got us into the building and through all the lines right away.  Then the let down began.  If you think standing around for about 2 hrs and being told about London's horrorific past is scary, then you defintely want this tour.  If you are like me and want some real fear, avoid this place like the plague that they couldn't make scary if they tried.  The biggest insult was I was coming up with scarier ideas for the place when we were still progressing through the crap horror.  Conclusion: worst haunted house/horror ride ever, don't even waste your time picking up a brochure for the place.

 The Thames festival is going on this weekend, and I really can't seem to bring myself to care.  I have been to one too many festivals, and this one seemed very tame compared to some of the others.

Our honeymoon was last week and we spent it in Spain on the island of Majorca in a town called Santa Ponsa ( pics ). It was a bit of paradise; clear skies all week, great sand beaches, and wonderful blue water. For one week, we did whatever we wanted to do which was a great feeling, if only for a week. Ever think about how you obtained so many responsibilities?

We had some good beach ( pics ) time, we when on a boat trip, we played 54 holes of miniature golf ( pics ), and basically just relaxed for the week. We also traveled into Palma (the capital) to see the cathedral ( pics ) and what was going on. Oh yeah, last Friday, devils invaded the beach with fireworks and things got crazy ( pics ).

The good:

• The water, beach and sun
• The food - we found a great Indian restaurant which we loved and the seafood was wonderful as well.
• The miniature golf - the 54 holes we played where all in a single min-golf setup with coy fish, and turtles and waterfalls. The holes themselves weren't that difficult or interesting but the setting was well worth it.
• The boat trip was just a relaxing trip on the water. There could have been more freebies on the trip, but oh well. There was a lot of sangria though.
• The feastival going on was wild, shop, fireworks, music, all sorts of craziness.

The bad:

• The food - there was barely any authentic Spanish food, this town was a huge commune/tourist stop for British and German vacationers and it really catered to them. There were at least 10-15 British style pubs. I was disappointed that I only got a very small sampling of Spanish food (paellas). Oh and a hamburger there was actually a ground pork patty, the steak sandwich (or burger) were the beef hamburgers; that took a while to figure out.
• Getting to Majorca. We had to get up early 4am and get to the airport (Gatwick) before 8am, well the bus we needed to take didn't come until 40 minutes later and then it just left us two stops down the road, we needed to go further. So we wait for the next bus, which is only about 5 minutes behind the first one, and then we get back on our way. Thank god we left early, we got to every other stage of the way without incident but we ended at the gate about 5 minutes before boarding.
• Getting home from Majorca. We had to leave Santa Ponsa on Sat at 10:00pm and make our way to the airport through a series of buses (some of which where the last buses of the night). So we reached our gate at about 12:30am with the airplane board at 1:19am. We got into London about 3:15am and we had to make our way back home using the bus system that stranded us on the way to the airport. Well turns out that the instructions the London transport website gave us wasn't as detailed as it could of been, and we search too long for a connecting bus stop and we missed the next bus. So at about 6:45am we where on the correct bus headed for home, only after staying up for about 22 hours. A nap (kip here in the UK) was in order.
• Catalan is the main langauge, which isn't spanish. It is a mixture of Spanish and French, which drove us a bit crazy.

The festival was celebrating the anniversary of Spanish King - Rei Jaume II "liberating" the island of Majorca from the Moors or Islamic rule or something like that. Supposedly Rei Jaume II landed in Santa Ponsa beach to take control of the island. Well the celebrating consists of shops and local vendors that setup for the weekend and sell things, then there are locals that dress up as Christian crusaders or Islamic soldiers and camp and party for the nights on the beach, and then there are the fireworks.

Megan and I found ourselves in one of the firework shows, which consisted of a band of 15 drum players, a bunch of devils with fireworks, and strings of fireworks above everyone's heads. Well the local idea is to run under and through the fireworks, and dance with the devils while they are holding showering fireworks in there hands. I can only explain this through the photos and the movie (large file) I created. The movie is partly of Megan and I running from the shower of fireworks.

It was a great week. Now it is back to work and getting ready to move to Rome again.

 My Favorite Images: