Athens - 3 years later

Dave and I have been married for almost 3 years now - I figured it's time I reflect on the last part of our honeymoon, Athens.

We stayed in the swankiest hotel I've ever been in, in my life. The Hotel Britannia. It's the same hotel that Nicolas Sarkozy stays in, and we got it for a wicked good price because of all of our credit card points. Dave remembers the exact numbers, I do not. We realized that we are 4 star hotel type people, not 5 star.

The view in the restaurant was amazing - we could see the Parthenon all lit up at night and gaze at it while we ate the most overpriced brunch we've ever had. ;)

Our general impression of Athens was, meh. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed doing all of the touristy things of going to all of the ruins, visiting the museums and seeing the changing of the guards. But Athens itself was not our favorite part of our honeymoon. It turned out to just be a dirty city.

The Parthenon was amazing - but would have been better had we been able to walk inside. It was amazing to be in a place that held such history and was so old, I've never been in a place that old.

I enjoyed the history aspect of all of the sites we visited and was slightly bummed that the museum that they were advertising and pushing for the Parthenon was not open yet(it in fact opened in 2011).

In Delphi we almost missed the bus back to Athens because Dave was so obsessed with taking pictures. I almost grabbed his camera and threw it into the ruins. ;) Delphi was interesting, especially to see the open air round theatre. And the town going into the ruins was very picturesque.

My favorite part of Athens was the Plaka. The Plaka is the old marketplace that you can get amazing deals and just soak in the culture. Dave and I enjoyed finding souvenirs for our family and just people watching while we ate at one of the outdoor restaurants.

Hopefully we'll go back to Greece again, and if we do Athens won't be on the top of the list. However, Athens will be on the list when we take our son there so he can experience the history and beautiful ruins that we did.

And yes, you heard me correctly - we are having a baby. I have yet to name my baby blog but keep your eye's peeled ;)

"Wine Tasting" Lievense style

On our last day in Santorini we decided to take a bus to a winery. Both Dave and I love the wine in Greece and neither of us had been on a wine tour before so we thought this was a great thing to do.
The bus dropped us off at a cute little winery. We walked in and looked around a bit, noticing the prices for tours and such. However, when we asked to sign up for a tour we were denied. This being the off season, their one tour guide had called in sick and so there was no one to give us an official tour. :(
Needless to say we were bummed. We entertained the idea of possibly walking to another winery, but figured even if we got there they might also have stopped tours for the season. So we stayed put and decided to do our own tour. We got to watch an educational video about Assyrtiko and how it is made - which is actually very interesting. The grapes that the Assyrtiko wine is made with are thousands of years old, these are the same vines that kinds of medieval times used to covet. As opposed to the European vines, because they were hit with this certain kind of bug that could niether travel over the ocean or stand the acidic/volcanic soil that Santorini is built on.
Anywho, we watched our little educational video and then ordered a tray sampler of the wines they sell. It came with cheeses and olives :) We read the little bio's about each wine and paired them with the appropriate foods.


It was a lot of fun and thinking back on it I really appreciate how well Dave and I work together. We made the best out of what could have been a really crappy day, and had fun despite what seemed to be let downs.
I laughed so hard during that tasting - granted I might have been a little trashed. But we all know Dave's jokes are better when you're a little sloshed ;)

wow - time flies

I got really nostalgic this week and decided to read back over our honeymoon blog.
I can't believe that a little over a year ago we were in Greece! I'm really glad we kept this blog because it's nice to look back and remember. :) We still owe you a post about our "Wine tasting" in Santorini and our time in Athens.
Hopefully I can remember most of it. . . if not I'm sure Dave can fill in the blanks! :)

In Communicado

So we totally owe posts about our last day in Santorini where we tried to tour a winery and then took the ferry to Athens, and then the stuff we did while in Athens (visits to Delphi, tours of Acropolis/Zeus' temple, LOTS of shopping by Adrienne, etc).

However, we're in the Zurich airport right now waiting for our flight to start boarding in 20 minutes and I haven't downloaded the 400+ pictures I took while in Athens (Adrienne will never be so happy to see Katie take back the camera we borrowed).

While we're bummed that our honeymoon is over...and we have to return to real life....at the same time we miss everyone and it will be nice to return to the US and our house. If it makes sense the honeymoon was both too short and getting a bit too long.

Thanks to everyone who left us comments on the blog, it was really nice reading them while we were in Greece, and to everyone who came to our wedding too.

Now that we're back and not planning wedding, going to grad school, launching new site designs right before leaving work for 3 weeks, we'll hopefully have more time to hang out with everyone.....although Adrienne just reminded me that we have a new niece to play with, and my two sister's weddings in the next 6 months.....guess life never slows down.

"Milk was a bad choice"

For some reason, Dave and I thought it would be super cool to spend a day hiking to the center of an active volcano. We figured, "Hey, it's fall, how hot can it be?" Umm yeah, apparently we aren't the brightest bulbs because we forgot these key factors 1) there is no shade on a volcano, 2) just because the temp says lo 70's, it's actually worse when there are no clouds 3) you're hiking on a VOLCANO with molten hot lava inside, with steam and heat that permeates up through the very ground you are walking on. Needless to say, it was HOT!
And being the genius that I am, I didn't pack any shorts. I'm glad I wore sneakers for the climb, because this was quite the climb - but it meant that I was also wearing pants.

We started out enthusiastic and excited about our adventure. But first, we had to get off the island :) We opted to take the cable car down the mountain, I thought it was a great way to see eeverything - it was really beautiful. This is the cable car we went down.

This is the boat that took us out to the volcano. Look at how happy we are, so naive ;)

We made it to the volcano but while we were on the boat we started to realize how hot it was and how doomed we might be. But we tried to stay optimistic.
This is how excited I was about this climb

This is me and my attitude about 30 min. later

Despite the heat and failing spirits - we made it. This is us at the top of the volcano.

And like Dave says "how many people can say they've climbed a volcano?"

Besides it being incrediably hot, and seeing a few puffs of steam, the volcano wasn't that exciting for me. Dave liked that it looked like a whole other planet, but I was happy when it was over.

We then took the boat over to the "hot springs" they warned us that the ocean was cold, but it felt perfect to me! We jumped in and swam out to where the hot springs was, which wasn't as hot as I thought it was. I enjoyed the cool swim after the rough hike, and now that I've climbed a volcano I don't feel the need to ever do it again. :)

Son of a Beach!

So on Thursday we got another late start, and when trying to decide which beaches we were going to hit, we realized we needed to rent a car, which ended up having us not leave the hotel until almost 2PM.

However for all of you who were waiting for it...we got a SMART car! (convertible even). It truly is as tiny as everyone says it is. Adrienne made me pose for pictures with it because she figured everyone at home (mostly her family) would laugh when seeing them.




We then decided to drive to Perivolos, which is the black sand beach here. At least this time I didn't throw a temper tantrum and refuse to go on the sand because it wasn't a real beach (which is what happened when at 3 years old my mother took me to the black sand beach in Hawaii).

Like most everything else the beach was pretty much empty and all of the various cafes, restaurants, life guard stations, etc were closed. However we did find one little section where they had left up the palm umbrellas and chairs. So we grabbed 2 chairs and Adrienne proceeded to quickly start napping while sunning herself. I on the other hand walked around the beach getting pictures, and then settled in with "The Audacity of Hope" by Barack Obama (which so far is an amazingly engrossing view into his political/moral philosophy of government).





It started getting a little cold as the wind picked up and the sun started to set, so we set out in search of dinner. I had read really good things about a restaurant called Lava and Yulie (the owner of the hotel we're staying at) also highly recommended it. Unfortunately we were having problems trying to find it since a large chunk of the beach road was shut down for construction, and of course there were no detour signs. Eventually we found our way around the construction (after the 3rd or 4th try) only to find Lava closed. There were only 2 restaurants open. We checked with the first one and like everywhere else they didn't have their full menu. However the place next door, Aquarius, said they had their full menu, which even included soups! Apparently even though avgolemono soup (or Agamemnon soup as I like to call it to drive A nutes) is Greek, soups in general aren't popular in Greece as this is the first restaurant we had seen offering them. Needless to say we were psyched. What made it even better is that the food was AMAZING! By far the best food we've had in Santorini. We're excited because they deliver to Fira too, so we figure we'll have dinner on the balcony some night.

We then drove back to our hotel and watched Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle.

On Friday we got up early to go to Red Beach which is supposed to have red sand and be beautiful. We had to make sure to get the car back by 1PM or be charged for an extra day. We drove along the highway and found our way to Red Beach. However once there we discovered that you basically have to edge along a cliff and climb over some rocks to get to the beach. Once we made our way there we found the beach to be like many of the cape beaches where it's mostly stone vs sand. In addition all of the beach chairs that had been left behind were broken.

Church right outside of red beach

Trying to skip stones in the ocean

It was a chillier day than Thursday and so A decided we shouldn't hang out on the beach but rather go exploring in the Smart car and find the lighthouse out on the edge of the island. We found it, but unlike the one in Argostolion it's more functional than picturesque, and it's a Hellenic Navy outpost so it was locked up too.

We then drove back to the hotel and handed in the keys to the car. We grabbed some crepes for lunch, which were interesting. The Greek islands are apparently where the majority of France vacations in the summer, so there are little touches (like croissants & crepes) everywhere. We then went shopping for gifts, and of course while shopping I couldn't resist spoiling Adrienne with some stuff from Santorini too.

When we got back to our hotel we discovered the people in the room next to us were from Miami and the people across from us were from Ashland! After 10 days in Greece it was nice to be able to have long discussions with people who had distinctly American accents and shared our culture. We ended up all going to dinner at Archipelagos together.

On Saturday we're touring and actually getting to walk on the volcano!

Santorini Experiences

So now that we've come to Santorini our vacation has slowed down. This is the part where we planned to sleep late every day and just play it by ear on what to do....so far that's exactly how everything is working. Although the first day we did discover that although things on Santorini start late (think 10AM or later) like the rest of Greece, it closes down MUCH earlier than the rest of Greece (10PM vs 2AM).

On Tuesday we really just hung around our hotel room and then explored the town we're staying in (Fira the capital of Santorini). Here's some shots of the gorgeous view from our private balcony:





Unfortunately the majority of the shops were closed either because of the national holiday or because it was so late in the season. However we did have an good lunch of authentic gyros and then we found some handmade ice cream/gelato that was AMAZING! Unfortunately dinner was a comedy of errors, bad food, bad service, and general frustrations.

Wednesday we were in our hotel room until the maid actually kicked us out so she could clean. We then made our way down to the bus station to catch a bus to Oia. Now a couple of things, these buses aren't like the T buses back home, they're super comfy mini-greyhound type buses. However, the roads here are even smaller then they were on Kefalonia, so while the ride is comfy it's scary as hell too.

Now we had gone to Oia specifically because they were supposed to have a "Kastro" (yeah I know if we really wanted to see castles we should have gone to Ireland or Scotland!) and because it's supposed to have the best view of the sunsets in the entire island. Well, once again the Kastro disappointed, it was paved over and really just a place people use to take pictures because once again it has an amazing view (just like the last kastro). Adrienne is convinced that they keep calling stuff castles to suck in all of the western european tourists. Here's the view from the kastro:





Oia was very quiet...much like Sami was on Kefalonia. You can tell it must be hopping during the summer though. I actually enjoyed being able to walk through the uncrowded streets. But the locals were definitely in chill winter mode....even the dogs:



Also Spike you might want to look away because Adrienne totally cheated on you with one of the shop owners dogs who was adorable (she said her plan was to run to the bus with him and pack him her carry-on for the flight home):



After that we did some shopping for people back home, and then the sun was already starting to set (I told you we got a late start!). We were able to get some really neat and beautiful pictures. Here's the best one of us though taken by some nice ladies from NYC who we ended up talking to about the election later (cue Adrienne eye-roll here because I'm obsessed with the election and the polls):



I got this picture afterwards:



Once again dinner was a bit disappointing (not as bad as last night), at this point we really feel like our cousins spoiled us in Thessaloniki, or that the dinner food there is seriously 100x better than here.

Thursday Adrienne wants to visit the beaches.