North Face Forever!

1/17-1/20

To begin, sorry for the delay of this post. The next ones should come more regularly.

Also, since the poll is closed on the trivia question about brooke we are able to inform you that the answer to the question of what food brooke found that she would eat every day if she could is...... Stuffed Grape Leaves!! congratulations to the few of you who didn't pick baklavah which she decided was too much (it's soaked in honey in Greece.... drenched and dripping honey)

We arrived in the Athens airport at 7:30 in the morning. We were greeted by a man holding a sign “Jacobson” and took a taxi to Hotel Economy. As we drove through town, we saw a variety of super chic hotels (and some dump-looking ones) and I kept hoping our hotel was nice, or somewhere in the middle. It turns out that Hotel Economy was a pretty sweet hotel that was pretty nice and in a great location.

When we left Mykonos, we were bummed about leaving too early for their delicious complementary breakfast, so when we made it to our Athens hotel in time for breakfast, we were overjoyed and immediately went to eat. The food was pretty good…there was coffee, delicious hot chocolate, steamed milk, and a couple of juices. Best of all, there was water. For the food, there was cereal (that tasted horrible), delicious toast (and a toaster!), and the finest in canned fruit. They also had breakfast cakes, which I personally liked, and ate way too much of. (Ken: Brad ate all of it, in case you were wondering.)

We took a nap afterwards for a few hours, and woke up fresh and ready to go around 1pm (or 13:00 if you will). When we first arrived at the hotel the quasi-kind attendant gave us a map and circled some of the premier historical sites in Athens. Deciding we didn’t want to miss any of the goodness, we embarked after our nap for the archeological museum, filled with priceless treasures from Greece’s glory days over 2,000 years ago. I think we all remember how great those days were.

In 2004, Athens hosted the Olympics, and the city began a massive amount of construction and renovation in order to prepare itself for the massive influx of judgmental foreigners and television cameras. The archaeological museum was a part of this effort, and it disappointed no one (except for the French, of course). We were thoroughly impressed by the museum’s massive collection of statues, busts, vases, and pretty much everything and anything that would fit on a pillar. The museum itself was impeccably designed, especially the museum café, which was full of awesome modern architecture and design, a marked contrast to the museum’s ancient collection. The gift shop was also quite cool, and provided us with a few decent to above average reading materials FOR FREE. Once we got over our shock and awe at the museum’s generosity, we left the gift shop and the museum very satisfied.

After our delicious museum experience, we walked towards the neighborhood of Psirri which our book (the MTV travel Europe book…the only book worth being called a book) said was an “up and coming” hotspot in town. The neighborhood didn’t disappoint, full of quirky and interesting shops, made all the more beautiful by the dusk light. A couple of highlights of this gem were stores dedicated to one of Greece’s professional soccer teams (one store even had an inflatable chair---CrAzY)., and a street with a series of upscale restaurants.

Although all of these restaurants were quite nice in their own way, one particularly caught our fancy. It was called the ice grille, a beacon of warmth in a world that’s oh so cold. The restaurant featured incredible ice cream with real pieces of fruit or chocolate and even baklava served with every scoop, as well as an incredibly chic and modern upper floor. After surveying our options, we decided this was the place for us to eat, sat down upstairs and surveyed the menu. Our server was a tall and sheepishly handsome young Greek (not as handsome as Nathan of course, because nobody is), who had a penchant for conversation and witty one liners. We chatted with him for a bit and then placed our orders, but unfortunately he returned with bad news instead of food: the restaurant was out of chicken. Grief stricken, we returned back to the street in search of another restaurant.

We found one at the bottom of the street, and what it lacked in style, it made up in atmosphere. It was a homely, family sort of place, with pictures of famous patrons (or just regular Greeks, how many Greek celebrities do you know?) plasterd to the walls. There was also a live band, which was very cool. We ordered some delicious food, and after the meal were treated to a dessert of yogurt, honey, and fruit. We were a little reticent at first because we thought it was mistakenly placed on our table since we did not order it, but at the urging of our waiter we dug in, and it was quite tasty.

Not having our penchant for dessert completely satisfied, however, we returned to the ice grill for some ice cream, which they did have (we saw it through a glass case so we were pretty confident). The ice cream was wonderful, and we went downstairs, where our old friend (we’ll call him Mr. Awesomakos), the waiter who served us before. As we were standing in front of the register, Mr. Awesomakos noticed our matching North Face jackets. He pointed to each one and then declared ‘North Face forever!’ And so it was.

After ice cream, we returned to our hotel, and very quickly fell asleep. The next morning, we woke up early and immediately went to breakfast. We ate the usual: bread, hot chocolate, and canned fruit for Nathan. Afterwards, we headed back to our room, got cleaned up, and left for our busy day of touring.

We quickly headed to the Acropolis to start our day. We began by hiking up a hill and finally reached the entrance and location to buy tickets and enter. We started by walking around the beautiful sites of temples and the ampatheater, and then we headed up and saw the Parthenon. It was really incredible because we were at the top of a huge hill, so not only were there beautiful ruins, but also a fantastic view of the city, which literally surrounded the Acropolis and was absolutely huge. It was truly a Pythagorean experience…it just felt RIGHT.

Afterwards, we wandered back down and walked through the Agora, the former center of commerce. It was another beautiful place to see and it was amazing to read about the history behind the Agora and the frequency of change that occurred in Athens throughout different ruling civilizations and time periods.

After visiting the Agora, we decided to travel towards another historic site, the Temple of Zeus. On the way, we noticed on our map that there was a synagogue nearby. We found our way to the synagogue, which was unfortunately closed except for two days of the week. We got out our cameras to take pictures of the synagogue’s façade, and were immediately approached by a police officer and another man who was not in uniform, who asked to see our passports and student IDs. We showed these to him and showed him our Jewish star necklaces, which we had usually kept tucked under our clothes just in case. When the man not in uniform saw our stars, he pointed to the police officer, who nodded in approval who told us they were just trying to protect the synagogue and that we could take pictures. It was a scary experience, but looking back it’s comforting that the synagogue was so well protected.

We continued on towards the temple of Zeus, and on the way saw the Parliament building, where we can assume very important business takes place. The building had several ceremonial guards standing in front, whose outfit and footwear was awesome, although it probably would impede with them actually dealing with a real crisis, should one occur. We took pictures with them, and they remained perfectly still throughout, which is pretty impressive. Since the Greek army (to our knowledge, but who knows?) doesn’t do anything especially meaningful, the guards were most likely Greece’s most highly trained, diligent soldiers.

Near the Parliament building and on the way to the temple was the Greek botanical gardens. Although it was winter and not a lot of flowers or trees were in bloom, the gardens were very well designed, vast and ordered, with statues and sculptures throughout. We wandered through the garden and made our way over to the Temple of Zeus.

We entered into this beautiful and after maybe giving our tickets to people who “scammed” us for a free entry (it is hard to say if they worked there or just wanted to use us to get in…) we walked over to the huge pillared temple, the majority of which had disappeared over the years, except for a few pillars and part of the roof which rested on top of the remaining pillars. It was hard to picture what the complete temple must have looked like, but the remaining structure was still pretty impressive. There was also a pillar that had fallen over and broken into cylindrical segments, which was very cool.

After we walked around a bit, we headed back towards the shops. Then, Nathan spotted the most amazing find of all time…A PYTHAGORAS T-SHIRT. Yes, it is true. It is an authentic Greek shirt and it is of one of my all time favorites, good old Pythag. It was definitely a relief to get something “mathy” our of Greece, and now I will have it forever! After I bought my shirt, the boys were jealous and wanted to be “European” as well, so we went into a couple chic and trendy European stores: The Pull and Bear and Bershka, homes to deliciously tight jeans, pink shirts for men, and European sweatshirts. We spent a lot of time there and the boys happily each purchased a shirt, and Nathan even bought two. (Pictures will be posted shortly of the overwhelming deliciousness.)

After a great day of shopping we only had one more craving to satisfy…so we headed for another Gyro (by that time our most favorite food). We bought delicious Gyros and since there was not a place to sit and eat, we went into the nearby (and very fancy) McDonalds to eat. Our Gyros were delicious (except that I couldn’t finish mine, again). Satisfied, happy, and very full, we left for our hotel and finally we able to use the internet. We pretty much just surfed the rest of the night, played a bit or checkers, and watched music videos on TV. A fun time was had by all, and we happily went to bed, excited for our next and final day in Athens.

For our third day in Athens, we had already visited many of the ancient historical sites, so we decided to hike up Lycabettus hill, which overlooks the entire city. The hill was a farther walk from our hotel than any of the other sites which we had visited, and so we got to walk through some areas of town which we had not yet seen. The most exciting of these was Kolonaki, full of ritzy shops, restaurants, and clubs. The neighborhood even featured a Jamba Juice-esque smoothie shop, which we frequented happily.

The hill itself was a nice climb up a concrete path, with many seating areas on the way up which provided great looks of the city. The top of the hill was equally incredible, providing a view of the entire city, including most of the places which we had visited up to that point. It was a nice final sight to cap off our time in Athens, and once again demonstrated how large Athens was, as buildings stretched for as far as the eye could see in all directions. The top of the hill also provided an ideal backdrop for the start of Brad´s promising modeling career. Wearing fashionable European t-shirts also never hurts.

After descending from the hill, we toured the Kolonaki area a bit more, then went for dinner and coffee to a café which was near our hotel. We bought some food and ascended the stairs to the second floor of the café, and found to our surprise that there was trash piled everywhere, on all of the tables and on parts of the floor. It was as if the employees of the restaurant simply forgot there was a second floor to the restaurant, and the patrons were none too keen on reminding them. Not wanting to be the whistle-blowers ourselves with our limited Greek, we went across the street to Everest, another café which is part of a Greek chain. Everest was much nicer and cleaner, and provided a good view of the plaza across the street. We drank our beverages and talked there for a while, and then returned to our hotel to sleep for our very early plane flight the next morning. All in all, Athens was a very fun city with some great cultural sights, and delicious Gyros and baklava at every corner. We left the city excited to return to a country where we could communicate in its ´mother tongue,´ and looking forward to the start of our program.

Mykoyes please

*Please don’t be shy in commenting on our blogs, or just saying hi. It’s nice to know who reads it and to hear from you. I’ll write a question at the end so you feel obliged to comment and answer it. Oh and send emails. Plllllease (theamazingtres@gmail.com). You can do both if you’d like. I’ll mention the best email we get in my next blog thus giving you eternal fame.*

We seem to have made a habit of throwing off our sleep schedule. It being the ‘off-season’ there seems to be an absence of night life on the Greek islands… or life in general for that matter. Point being we went to sleep late and woke up later.. I think.. All I know is that by the time we woke up we had about an hour before our ride took us to the airport (conveniently our ride was the same person who drove us to our hotel, was in charge of television programming during breakfast, and seemed to be the general operator of our hotel). Though we only had about a half hour, I had a busy day planned for us. We had to go into town, check the electronics store for something (next to “The penguin has spoken” laundry store), go to the souvenir shop, make it to lunch, and grab some baklava before our trip to the airport. We succeeded in all of our tasks except the baklava. I assume there will be more of it in Athens. Took the flight from Santorini to Athens airport. Got some zinc from a very nice lady in the airport pharmacy. Got some delicious food. And then boarded our next flight to Mykonos.

Let us take this time to give thanks to Brooke who single handedly organized our trip to Greece! She found a great company and reasonable rates and (so far) everything has worked out swimmingly. Props to Brooke.

When we got to Mykonos there was a travel representative waiting with a sign “JACOBSON.” It also had another name of some kid who was on the same flight as us (and happened to be going to the same hotel as us… very suspicious) We followed her into what seemed to be pretty much a personal vehicle and she drove us to Hotel Elena. The mystery boy went into her co-worker’s car, but we all went to the same place. She was very nice and along the way she told us a couple awesome facts about Mykonos.

Trivia Question (no cheating):

Which one of these is not a law/practice in Mykonos:

There can be no chain stores/restaurants.

Houses must be painted white with colored doors/windows.

Houses may only be two stories tall or less.

Everything is closed on Wednesdays after noon.

She also told us that it’s beautiful here and that youngins like ourselves would enjoy the night life and the beaches, if it were the season for either of those things… Mykonos is a gorgeous little island. It’s crazy that these islands are complete ‘ecosystems’ (or whatever) within themselves.. that people can be born, raised, and live here permanently. (Like in Santorini all the kids took buses from around the island to go to school in Fira).

Anyway, we got into Mykonos in the evening (Kalispera-good evening) and checked in to our hotel. It was definitely a step or two (or like ten) up from hotel Margarita. Really elegante (Spanish, not a misspelling) and beautiful. Having recently arrived on this gem of an island, we did the natural thing: took a nap. And apparently at like 9pm (21:00) Brooke came by to wake Nathan and I up… but Nathan kept sleeping and I said “I’ll do whatever you want to do,” half asleep… so we slept into the night. (Kalinikta – Good night).

Having had a solid nap of about 4 hours followed by a full nights sleep, we were well rested for the day of adventures ahead of us. And what better way to start the morning (Kalimera – Good morning) with a delicious breakfast buffet. In additional to the bread, butter, jam, cake, and coffee/tea of your average breakfast, this buffet actually had real food to offer us! Fresh eggs, meats, cheeses, fruits, pastries/croissants, cereal and the like. It was delicious, to see the least. (And in case you were wondering, Ken, I had all of the above on my plate(s)). After a delicious and filling breakfast our first inclination was to take a post buffet nap, but our consciences/brooke told us otherwise. So we decided to go out and explore. The women from the night before as well as the hotelerista told us we should walk to a beach. We had the choice between generic-named beach and Paradise beach. I have no idea why we chose the generic-named beach, but we did.

Along the way we passed through a beautiful little area with homes/shops all around. We stopped in and out of a couple shops and then made our way down to the pier/beach. You could still tell that we were out of season but the lack of open shops, but it was still more lively than Santorini. We walked a ways down and around the pier. Found some crazy windmills (aka the power plant of the ancient Greeks). We also saw, from a distance, some important island with Ancient Greek ruins. Unfortunately ships only run there on Tuesdays and Saturdays or something, so we missed it. But the windmills sure were cool. We continued walking along the coast for quite a ways. We ended up at another beachy area that was pretty deserted. We also found a hotel being built/repaired. (Pretty much everything on these two islands was trashed/messy/being repaired.. we feel like they go crazy with their hotels every year and end up repairing and rebuilding and cleaning them in March before tourist season. ) Lalala

Following the coast line we saw a soccer-esque stadium with many a people in it and decided to investigate. As it turns out it was a soccer field filled with school children running amuck. We decided it was kind of sketchy for three tourists to be chilling with all the school children and decided to move on. We went to the beach on the other side of the island (clearly a big tourist spot on season) and found that off-season it was a bus stop for the kiddies! Apparently Greek children go to school until about noon where they have mandatory recess for an hour where they go to the bakery and play on the futbol field.. then they take the buses home. Brooke should be a teacher in Greece (math is the same in every country… or is it language. Shoot.)

We eventually left the school bus stop intent on exploring more of the island. We walked up a massive hill and found an abandoned hotel (abandonded cause of the off-season) and found a place on top of the hill to sit and look at both sides of the island at the same time! Brooke thought it looked like the sound of music hill. We continued up the hill, stopped for some coffee/drinks, and tried to find our way back to our hotel. We eventually did (find our hotel). It was a long, but beautiful walk. I won’t bore you with the details.

After we returned to the hotel and used the internet a bit, we decided to find a place for dinner. [while we were using the internet we watched Olympic prelims for women’s volleyball where I met Glinka, an amazing/huge Polish volleyballer. She is really, really cool.] We asked for directions to a good place and tried to follow them (Nathan and brooke got the directions, in case you were wondering) and ended up at the pier by the same place we had lunch (oh yeah, we had lunch at the pier area). There were 3 restaurants open.. one was the one we had lunch at, one was ritzy and above our means, and the other was our remaining option (as brooke would say, settling is settling.)

It was kind of a little barish/café. But it got the job done. We came in and found a pasta-monger eating pasta in the corner. There were also two middle-aged plus men playing backgammon at a table. And a man or two at the bar. We found a seat and were served by a nice man. He kept rifling through the tv stations after we had ordered, until eventually he found the futbol game! It was a Greek league game (and once it started a couple more people came in). The owner spoke to one of the new arrivals in Greek as he sat down.. the only thing I could pick up was probably ‘Yasas’ and ‘Lua-Lua.’ The later I had never heard before, and they both laughed when they said it. Soon we would be introduced to the greatness of Lua-Lua… Well now in the story actually. Within five minutes or so of the game starting the forward from the Olympikos scored!! His name: Lua Lua. He was a baler, to say the least. We finished our food and returned to the hotel to finish the end of the game. I think Nathan and broooke went to bed and I stayed up to watch the game (ended with a score of like 6-1, Lua Lua had at least one more goal. Ballin’ )

Then we woke up early and flew to Athens. (too early for breakfast I’m afraid, it was quite sad.. I think brooke took it the worst actually.)

Athens was nice. Very nice, see one city and you’ve seen them all I say.

In Athens we saw a really nice 5 star hotel, and Nathan suggested that there are now 6-star hotels. Ever heard of them? Have you stayed in one? Discuss.

Hotel Margaritaville

(Don't forget to fill out the trivia question on the top left!)

As we speak I am blogssaging … blogging while receiving a massage. It’s pretty much the greatest thing in the world, other than bloggercising, of course. During the past two days we’ve been in the picturesque island of Santorini. The landscape looks like it could have been a painting instead of reality.

We started off our journey to Greece in the same way every culturally sensitive traveler should, by learning several important Greek words from our handy phrase book which Brad provided. Much to our dismay, despite a several hour layover in the Athens airport and a couple plane flights, the only Greek words we managed to pick up were please/you’re welcome “parakalo,” thank you “epharisto,” and hey! “ya sas.” I was hoping Greek worked a little like binary, with all other Greek words being some combination of parakalos, epharistos, and ya sas’, but unfortunately this was not the case either. Thankfully, pretty much everyone we came into contact with spoke some degree of English, so we got around just fine.

Santorini also provided us with our first taste of Greek culture, which is pretty awesome to say the least. Our first experience was at breakfast our first day on the island, at our hotel, Hotel Margarita. Breakfast was served in the main room of the hotel, a room which also contained a flat screen tv broadcasting the latest in Greek morning programming. We ate fairly lengthy breakfasts, so we were treated to many fine programs. While we couldn’t actually understand what was going on in the shows, we felt we got a pretty good taste of their content.

The finest of these programs was beautiful in its simplicity. For those Greeks who preferred to hear the news instead of read it, Greek television obliged with a program which consisted of someone reading the newspaper and pointing to the headlines. Another fine offering seemed to be some kind of expose about people who choose to place their clothes in plastic bags before putting them in suitcases. Shocking indeed!! If this television didn’t prove scintillating enough, there was a periodic noise coming over a loudspeaker which sounded like a low budget leftist political party spreading the good word. Doubting that the Greeks had political parties, or government for that matter (since government staples such as town halls, police, or fire stations were nowhere in sight), we inquired the meaning of the loudspeaker noise to the hotel attendant, who spoke English pretty well. She informed us that it was a fishmonger (a man who sells fish with a weight minimum of 200 lbs.) yelling ‘fresh fish.’

After we ate breakfast, we set out to explore the island. It became pretty evident that we were on the island ‘out of season,’ since most everything on the island seemed to be closed. This was exacerbated by the fact that our first day on the island was Sunday, so many shops were closed which usually stayed open during the off season. With most of the normal attractions closed, we decided that the best way to explore the island was to walk from the biggest town, Fira (where we were staying), to the second biggest town Ia, which our travel book said was a 6 mile walk which should take about two hours.

Before leaving, we stopped so Brad could play an especially cruel claw game, which provided three chances with a big claw and three chances with a little claw, each going for a different section of prizes. The little claw clamped tightly to the prize until it reached the top, giving a false sense of hope, then immediately released the prize before it moved forward to the drop area, preventing anyone from ever getting the prize. As for the big claw, Brad had his eyes set on a soccer ball toy with a spring attached to the bottom. For the hilarious results … see for yourself(video to be posted eventually - brad).

After playing the depressing yet hilarious claw game, we started off towards Ia, but were slightly put off by the fact that we were seemingly going the wrong way since the coastline was on the opposite side of us that the book said it should be. Confused about this detail, we decided to ask a few people in Fira about how to get to Ia, one at a small market and another at a gas station. They reinforced the notion that we were headed in the right direction despite our instincts, although they seemed utterly perplexed at the idea that we were planning to walk all the way from Fira to Ia.

Also in Fira, we picked up a couple more members of our party, in the form of stray dogs, who we named Poopsmith and Baxter. We met them on a main street, and after we did little more than acknowledge them, they refused to leave us. Poopsmith was the more loyal of the two, remaining right beside us and displaying a penchant for walking on the short stone walls on the sides of the road. Baxter was a born daredevil, darting in front of cars and only barely moving to the side as they approached. While they seemed very much like stray dogs at the beginning, by the end they seemed a lot more like pets, and so it was very sad when we needed to say goodbye.

The walk didn’t disappoint, with beautiful houses, rolling hills, and breathtaking cliffs and ocean views. The walk was longer that the book said, though, and by the time the 2.5 hour mark rolled around, we were feeling pretty hungry and slightly disgruntled. After 3 hours we finally made our way into Ia, and, after asking around and getting escorted for part of the way by a very friendly senior citizen, we managed to find a restaurant that was open. Baxter darted off, never to be seen again, but Poopsmith followed us into the restaurant and laid down right behind our table. The restaurant owner shooed him out once, but he dutifully reentered.

The place mats of the restaurant had a more detailed map on them than the map our book, and we discovered that we had taken a road which snaked around the other coastline than our book suggested, and thus added a few miles to our journey.

Our food was delicious (except for Brooke’s pizza), and after we finished the restaurant owner gave the rest of the pizza to Poopsmith and called a cab for us to get back. The cab took us along the road which we should have taken to begin with, and the drive back took less than 10 minutes. During our conversation with the driver, he asked us if we had walked to Ia from Fira, and then snorted with laughter when we answered in the affirmative. Since we didn’t really see anyone else walking on our trip, this sentiment seemed to be warranted among the locals.

Once we returned to Fira, we headed back to our hotel, and, exhausted, took a nap for a couple of hours. Brooke tried to wake Brad and I up to watch the sunset, but we declined, opting for sweet sweet sleep. After our nap, we went out for a night on the town. However, being that it was the off season, the ‘town’ for us consisted of an internet café. This was no ordinary internet café, however, but a 24 hour gaming zone, where we saw people playing Counterstrike, World of Warcraft, and my personal favorite/addiction, Warcraft III. Through a combination of skype, working on Brad’s resume, and a vending machine named Snakky, we somehow managed to spend 5 hours in the internet café. Exhausted, we immediately went to bed after.

The next day, after our awesome previously described breakfast, we decided to take a bus down to the south of the island, where there was supposed to be an exquisite red beach and some nice ancient ruins. We decided to take a bus down (an option which we didn’t have the day before since it was Sunday), and walked down to the bus station in the center of Fira. Unbeknownst to us, the next bus to leave (at 2:00) coincided with a nearby school being let out, and so the bus was nearly filled with schoolchildren returning to their part of the island. Not wanting to stand out too much as Americans, Brad and I decided that the only true way to blend in was to speak solely in Spanish. We were feeling pretty smug until a girl sitting next to us began to play a Greek version of “Hips Don’t Lie” by Shakira, which we did not understand much of.

Luckily, the bus let off soon after, before our masterfully crafted disguise unraveled further. We walked from the bus stop towards the beach, and about halfway down we ran into an Austrailian couple at another bus stop, waiting for the bus. We said our hellos and headed towards the beach. Much to our dismay (especially Brooke’s), the red beach was more like a ‘dark pile of stones,’ a bit disappointing, especially compared to the incredible beauty of the rest of the island. Due to the rather lackluster nature of the beach, it was surprising that there were several restaurants and bars around the beach (all closed, of course), all referring to the beach in their names. Maybe, in the end, the beach was as out of season as the restaurants around it.

Not to be deterred, we found a hiking trail a few hundred meters past the beach, which led up a hill. From the top of the hill we had a great view of the caldera, and, some nearby islands. The view was stunning, and the sun reflecting off the water was beautiful as well. We sat there for a while, and then headed back up to the bus stop where we had seen the Australian couple before. Surprisingly, we arrived to find them still there, waiting for the bus.

We began talking to them, and discovered that they had done the same walk which we did, and also took the same wrong road. They also had the same reflection that there was no one else walking on the road. Based on this conversation we determined that they were basically the older version of us. The couple also commented that the sunset was exquisite the previous day, which did not please Brooke very much, especially because at this point the sun has clouded over, so the sunset prospects were not very promising.

The bus came a few minutes later, and we walked back to our hotel. After we got to our room, we discovered that none other but the same Australian couple was staying in the room next to us. We were very surprised, but we probably should have seen it coming in retrospect. After talking to them for a bit more, we put on some warmer clothes and headed up the hill to watch the sunset. Although the sunset itself was not all that amazing, we climbed to a rooftop at the water’s edge, which provided spectacular views of the cityscape, the water, and the clouds, so the experience was incredible. After watching the sunset, we ate at Goody’s (a Greek fast food restaurant which I liked but Brooke and Brad did not), spent a little more time in the internet café, and then went back to our room to sleep.

Much like blogsaging, all good things must end, and Santorini was no exception. What Santorini lacked in activities, it made up for in breathtaking views, as the pictures hopefully conveyed (pictures to be posted eventually –brad). Next stop and next post: Mykonos.

Going to Ελλάδα (Greece)

(We just made two posts so if you'd like to read them in order go down to the other one first!)

We went to bed around 4:00 last night and woke up at 8:00 to get ready and head to the airport to go to Athens. We spent most of the night talking to the man at the front desk of the hostel to see if we could store our extra luggage there. He kept saying that it was probably going to happen, and then that he was 99.99% sure, on and on, and that he had to wait for his boss to come in. It turns out that the wrong boss came in and we would have to wait until morning. He said he would leave a note for the next man who worked the front desk to talk to the boss when he came in. So anyway, at 8:00 in the morning, we woke up and got ready. Brad went and talked to the front desk man, and of course he had not received a note, and he quickly told us that we couldn’t leave our things in the hostel storage while we were gone.

After that, we frantically brought our equipaje (luggage) with us to the metro to go to the airport. Brad informed me that he heard that it takes about an hour to get there…I panicked, since I had planned for a 30 minute commute without extra luggage to lock in the airport. After I freaked a little, we decided to get a taxi. (When we left the airport from Madrid, we got stuck with two taxis because we couldn’t fit all of our things into the trunk of the taxi, so Nathan hid until we actually got a taxi and then popped out to come with.) Brad flagged down a taxi and we rushed up to him to load the car. He was surprised by how much stuff we had but we convinced him to let us put our bags in the front seat and on our laps.

Once we were in the taxi, we made conversation with Miguel…..

(Brad's interjection)

So, there we were. Stuck at our stupid hostel with all of our bags because someone lied to us about storage and bosses and weightlifters. He had told us as long as we weren’t hiding bags of cocaine or Saddam Hussein that we would be fine.. he lied. We ate our free breakfast (Ken: Specifically we had a choice between a croissant or Donut or cornflakes, coffee or Hot Chocolate, and Orange Juice. That means there are 6 breakfast options. 12 if you include juice or no juice. We all went with the Croissant/Hot Chocolate/ O.J. option.).

Our plan was to take the metro to the airport, put our bags in la cosigna (baggage storage) and get to our flight by 11:30. It was 9:00am. It takes 1 hour to get to airport by metro. At this time Brooke started kind of “freaking out”, kind of a strong word.. but yeah. I believe the phrase “We don’t have enough time” came into play. And that’s when my upbringing kicked in… so thanks parents for making me freak out about being late to the airport and missing my flight.. which has never happened before. Somehow I got in my mind that that we were going to be late and get screwed over and blah blah.. so I think I thought that our flight left at 10:30 by the time we left the hostel. Or maybe I just thought it was an hour later… either way I thought we only left ourselves one and a half hours. So we started kind of worrying, and decided to flag down a taxi by the metro stop rather than go into that unknown underground abyss. I am very skeptical of Spanish Taxi drivers, no offense to anyone who reads this blog and happens to drive taxis in Spain. We were about to give up hope and just take the metro when all of a sudden, like an angel from the heavens, drove up our dear friend Michealangelo. In English: Michael the Angel. He was awesome. He loaded up our stuff.. yeah, all three of us actually can fit in one taxi, go figure. He was really friendly and helpful, spoke with us a bit. I even trusted him enough to discuss tips with him and what would be normal tipping amounts for, say, restaurants… or taxis.. Needless to say we tipped him, for possibly saving our lives. At that time we went in the airport, found La Cosigna, stored our bags (Brooke checked in and checked our one big backpack, it’s Northface by the way. Quality. Represent.) And then me and Nathan rushed up to check in, had a little trouble with the machines so we went to real life people who got us our tickets. Then I actually had the time of the flight in front of me, and found out our flight was at 11:30am and it was only like 10am… Again, thanks parents who influenced me in making me worry about this. You know who you are. (Ed: Brooke, the metro would have taken an extra hour.. we actually would have been late.) But now I know to trust our instincts. (end brad)

We made it to the airport (side note: Madrid Barajas Airport is the nicest airport ever. It is even better than the light up tunnel in Chicago O’hare) and spent some time wandering around, checking out the shops, and then we went to our gate. We found the first drinking fountain since Philadelphia, and promptly filled up our bottles. Then we boarded the plane to Atenas (Athens). I immediately fell asleep and since the plane was fairly empty, Brad moved to his own row in the back once we were in the air. I woke up to some delicious Kosher airplane food, which consisted of crackers, orange juice, applesauce, and they came around with fresh bread. I was impressed by the service. After we ate, we immediately fell back asleep for until the announcement came that we were starting our dissent into Athens. Nathan and I were really out of it, but Brad said that the islands were absolutely beautiful from the plane. I guess we will see pretty soon…

Once we got our bags, I was disappointed to find that I didn’t get a stamp in my passport because we didn’t leave the European Union. Lame huh! Nonetheless, my spirits quickly lifted when we were met by George, a Holiday Tours representative with our flight information and itinerary for the next week. He showed us all of our documents and answered questions. I was very impressed by him, and thankful that the tour we booked was in fact not a scam… (Brad comment: I think we all were.)

So now we are waiting at the gate to head to Santorini tonight. I am personally so excited to see the Island and spend time in a sunnier climate. As Nathan tells me, “the rain in Spain falls on the plain,” i.e. Madrid, so I am ready to get to the sun. Brad and I are typing now, and there was a small child talking really loudly. I made the comment that the kid sounds like he is speaking gibberish but it is probably Greek, but then Brad confirmed that it was gibberish…Weird.

It is time to go wait to board the plane.

Αντίο (Goodbye in Greek),

Nathan, Brad, and Brooke

P.S. Get ready for Gorgeous pictures of Santorini, and…
THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS TOUR-Archimedes, here I come!

The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plane.

10/1/08 – (written on 12/1/08 in the airport in Athens waiting for our flight to Santorini)

(Currently 13/1/08 in an internet cafe/gaming center in Thira, Santorini)

After our blogging in the hostel we decided to branch out and make some new life-long friends. I noticed a very approachable looking young man sitting by himself in the bar lounge (where everyone hangs out at Mad Hostel). The characteristics of an approachable person in this situation are a) not using a lap-top, b) not already engaged in an intense conversation, and c) appears to be a chance that the target may speak English if our Spanish fails us in a given conversation.

After befriending him we found out he was Eric, a young man from Philadelphia in his early 20’s and while in the hostel he became friends with an originally German girl named Sara, who learned English partially in school in Germany and then moved to New Zealand to become an official Kiwi (so she has the kiwi accent which is pretty cool). We also found out that they were world champions in the game of ‘spoons’ and that they had been bringing the competitive game to the bar lounge for the past few days.

(For those of you who don’t know, spoons is a card game/elimination game for 3-7 players where there is always one less spoon on the table than there are players [for you math majors: for n = number of players f_n= n – 1 spoons]. The goal is to grab a spoon each round; to not be the eliminated soul without a spoon. There are two ways you can get a spoon: you can hold four-of-a-kind and thus gain the right to grab a spoon, or you can grab a spoon once someone else has grabbed one. This means when one player has four-of-a-kind he tries to take a spoon without others noticing, but everyone eventually notices and there is a mad rush for the spoons. Each player gets 5 cards (though we are used to the variant where you only get 4) and the dealer starts the game by taking a 6^th card and discarding one that he doesn’t want. The player to his/her left then picks up the discarded card and chooses any of the 6 cards to discard to the next players pile. This creates a circle of card passing. Thus eventually people will gain 3 of a kind and wait for the 4^th card to come, and it eventually will because no one else has any use for it (they would only have one of a kind by keeping it). One person gets knocked out each round and thus one less player plays in the next round. At two players the game is fairly stupid… so you usually just restart. You can also make up your own variants by using objects other than spoons. We discussed moving on to sporks, then forks, and finally knifes for the ultimate spooning action. (As they say, spooning leads to forking which eventually probably leads to knifing.. I assume)

Where was I?... umm yeah, so they were pretty cool. Eric was kind of loud, but funny. Sad things like “this isn’t facebook” or “this isn’t your church social” when people weren’t passing cards fast enough. They were pretty fun, and before you ask I did manage to win 1 of the 3 games I played. The third was lame, because this new guy, Lauwren (pr: lou [from the word loud] + ren [from rent]) from Finland came into the game and in the second round I was dealing and everyone else grabbed spoons so it was just me and L – dawg. And we both went for the last spoon, but it slipped from our grasps and flew off the other side of the table. Now Lauwren seemed to be a very shy Finnish boy and so I figured I had position enough on him to walk around the table and get the spoon, but as it turned out he dove across the table to grab the spoon. Mad respect to Lauwren.

But enough about spoons. We all went out later that night to this Irish Pub/bar to meet up with some other people we met at the hostel including Jose Pepe (Mexico), Eddie y Roberto (San Diego), Lauwren (Finland) and others from our hostel that we met there Eva (pr: effa; Germany), Milta (Argentina), and two American girls visiting from their study abroad in France who apparently didn’t make a lasting impression on me. As it turns out we didn’t meet up with Jose Pepe, but he has a crucial role later in the story.

(sidenote: And I thought this post would be shorter, don’t get too used to it. Right now it is my/our journal and later on I’ll probably keep my own journal of daily stuff or what not that will probably eventually be sold into my memoirs… until then, enjoy the free sample.)

The bar was pretty cool, when we came in there was live Irish-ish music and we found our friends in the back. Once we settled in the live music actually stopped, and was replaced by oldies (Brooke says 80’s not oldies) such as ‘footloose,’ ‘loveshack,’ and others. To further prove my point, Brooke knew all the words to all the songs. The waitress also came by to see if I wanted anything, but as it turned out my first bar drinking experience came in Spain in an Irish pub/80’s disco where a Spanish waitress asked me in perfect English what I wanted to drink (I asked what was good) and of course I ended up with a Heineken… great Spanish experience. But it really was a good experience in the end. Nathan, Brooke, Eric, and Sara all went home around 1:00am (Brooke says it was totally later than that… like 1:30am). I decided to stay after and got to know the remaining few pretty well. Milta and Roberto were really great with me, speaking in Spanish that I could understand and helping/correcting me whenever they could. It was also cool learning more about the Finnish and German cultures and Eva and Lauwren’s experiences in Spain. I also spoke with Eddie/Roberto about their surfing addiction and life in SoCal… not to be rude but most of you probably wouldn’t understand, you have to have a SoCal mental(ity) like me. After a bit we decided to move on and ended up at a salsa-ish bar… where we found a room in the back, past the bathrooms to just chill and kind of learn salsa from Roberto and Milta. We then went back to the hostel and ended up hanging out in Milta and Eva’s room (which had its own shower by the way, so lucky) and had some really interesting conversations about different cultures/languages/random stuff. It was really cool and a good group of people to hang around. I went back to the room around 4:30 where Brooke was still awake… when I asked her if she was just up worrying about me she said “no... I was just jet lagged… but I worried a little. We can’t do this one phone thing.” Pobre Brookey, if you’re reading this I’m sorry if I kept you up. And don’t worry everyone, we’re each going to have a phone soon upon our return to Spain. Lets see…

We kind of slept in and met up with Eva, Pete/Tom (shit I forgot about Pete/Tom… I feel so bad), and Eddie to go to brunch and an art museum. [***Pete/Tom was introduced to us by Eric (they were roommates). Eric nicknames everyone and he is also bad with names (related) and thus when he met Pete/Tom he couldn’t remember if it was Pete or Tom… and thus his nickname was born.***] Anyway, Pete/Tom tried to find this restaurant he had seen the day before that he thought looked good, but after a while we gave up on it and had to find our own place. Then Pete/Tom went off to a different museum and we went off to Reina Sofia, an art museum (he had already seen it). There we saw a couple temporary exhibits and tons of Picasso and Dali. It was pretty awesome and a very nice museum. (Student discount half off, only 3 Euro). I also really liked this one exhibit which was a video exhibit showing the same scene from two views… it played around with perspective and there were two of most things in the scene, but people kept moving them so that in one screen you saw one item while in the other you could see both… was really cool (if you want more info I’ll tell you another time). Then we went back to the hostel where we met up with Jose Pepe de Mexico.

Now Jose Pepe may seem like your average Mexican/Spanish citizen (dual!), but he’s not. He just so happened to have gone to a musical the night before… something we had been considering doing that night. And we’re not talking a small time musical like the one 5 min. walk from our hostel, Quisiera Ser (I wanted to be…) or even the probably cool Queensical “We will rock you.” Nope. Jose Pepe would not settle for those musicales. He went to Disney’s “La Bella y el Bestia.” (“The Beauty and the Beast”). After much hard internet research regarding the subject I found the place and number for the theatre. Jose was amazingly nice and helpful and he helped me out by talking to the person at the theatre for me to make sure we would be able to get tickets, find out about timing/seating and even helped me get directions there. Lets all give our thanks to Jose.

Needless to say the show was amazing. It was probably a little bit lower end than, say, a Broadway show… but I was immensely entertained. I also helped translate a little bit for Eva who, as of now, speaks minimal Spanish. Pete/Tom was there as well… but he has little to no Spanish… at least he’s American (San Fran actually) and knows the Disney Classic well. Also, I hate the song “Human again” or in Spanish “Humano otra vez.” The English version is horrible because it wasn’t in the original Disney movie and the added scene in the new version doesn’t fit, and I don’t appreciate it. “Humano otra vez” actually was kind of cool to hear, just because I recognized it… But yeah, we definitely didn’t understand every line of the show, so it helped a lot to know it fairly well. It was also hilarious to hear all the little Spanish kiddies/ninos singing the songs. And the nina in our row asked “?Que paso?” when Gaston kissed Belle and then Belle slapped him back. She also started bawling around the time when the Beast was revived as a human… we weren’t sure whether it was the shock of him dying, or his human transformation, or a combination of the two that caused it… but it was kind of hilarious. Pobre cita.

Oh. And we had dinner before that. Then back to the hostel, which I think is where Brooke’s blog picks up. With the crazy desk guy who me and Nathan had fun/long convo’s with and assured us he would help us get our stuff stored at the Hostel/talk with his boss/leave a note to tell the next person what the deal was… none of which happened. He also told us that his Bolivian friend who was with him was a Champion weight lifter in Bolivia… but he sounded so convincing. We still believe him, to this day.

Yallah Bye, talk to you soon.

Bradley, Brooke, Nathan’s sleeping again.

36 hours later (Treinta y seis horas despues) ...

Welcome to our first real post on theamazingtres blog! Contrary to what you may be thinking, it's not the first real post just because it is authored by Brad. It's actually the first real post because we're actually in Spain! We are currently sitting in the common room of our hostel and first home in Spain, Mad Hostel. We survived the Las Vegas, AZ blizzard of '08. We survived the Silverthorne, CO wind gusts of '08 (and I survived my first skiing experience). We survived the unforgiving streets of Philly (more on that to come). And here we are, finally, in the amazing city of Madrid, Espana.

Quick warning, this post goes into a bit of detail so if you are not REALLY interested in ever aspect of our lifes I'm sorry... the detail is necessary for our loving parents and family. Feel free to skip a couple paragraphs to get to Spain.

So quick recap of the beginning of the trip for those of you who weren't there (or those of you who forgot). I woke up at 6:00am, showered, said goodbye to my sister, and got Jamba Juice. Then we met at Denver International Airport where Brad was astonishingly 5 minutes early. We checked in and had some quality family bonding time (see pictures below) before we said our goodbyes. We showed our tickets and passports to M. Jackson (which I can only assume stands for Miss Jackson... I am for real) and then we were off to the gate. Unfortunately only Nathan and myself had seats so we waited at the counter for someone to find Brooke a seat. When the lady got there she informed us that the flight was full and we would basically have to wait for volunteers to get her a seat (volunteering was tempting for me to say the least). But then she realized she had one seat remaining for Brooke. So we all ended up having seats, though they were not together. There was also an army platoon at our gate that was traveling to Philadelphia to go to a camp there. Seeing all of them and their families saying goodbye was pretty intense, even more so than our goodbyes. And though they all were allowed to board first, as thanks for their service, apparently the airline decided that early boarding was thanks enough and United placed them all in middle seats. This, however, granted me the opportunity to sit next to a soldier and talk for a bit. Long story (actually about 3 hours...) short, he was in his 4th year in the army and didn't know exactly what they would be doing at the base. I found this out in the first 2 minutes and slept/stared out the window/listened to music for the remaining 2 hours 58 min.

We arrived in Philly and I was immediately tempted by a philly cheese steak airport restaurant. I decided to hold out for the real deal, so we proceeded to try to change our seats to sit together on the longer flight to Spain. As it turned out, that flight was packed full as well so we couldn't switch yet, we'd have to wait until we got on board to try and switch around :/ During this time we also got in touch with a friend of ours, the Josh Rogouff , who we decided to meet in the city of Philly. We took the train there and met up with Josh who came straight after work to show us around. Our layover was about 5 hours, but with security and train time that didn't leave us too much time to stumblebum around Philly. Luckily Josh is an experienced city boy, and he showed us all the key sites including the 30th street Train station, part of the campus of Drexel (where he attends), the two competing, neighboring pizza parlors by his house (California Pizza and Village Pizza), and his house. After seeing his bungalow bedroom and meeting his housemates, we proceeded to California Pizza (the worse restaurant with better pizza) to grab a quick bite to eat. Afterwards Josh took us back to the train station and bid us ado. Shoutout to Lauren Fredman.

We got back to the airport with an hour or so before our flight would take off. After sitting down for a little bit at our gate we heard in a Spanish accent "Jacobson" followed a little later by "Ross" and "Stern," "please come to the desk." We decided this probably meant we weren't going to be allowed to get on the plane and would thus be stuck in Philly forever. Thankfully they only wanted to check our identity or something silly like that and we proceeded to board the aircraft! (For those of you keeping track this means I did not get an athentic Philly Cheesesteak... which, by the way, Nathan seems to think is made with cheese wiz.. who told him that? seriously?) (edit: ok, after a lot of hard research I see where he might have been led to believe this... if you don't believe it either, read it for yourself here. )

Alright, well we got on the plane and after a little bit of fanagaling Nathan switched seats with a nice Spanish man and ended up in the very back of the plane. He then traded my aisle seat with a random american girl so I could sit back there in the aisle. Brooke just sat in the middle seat hoping no one would come up to her and tell her to move. (though she assumed every person who was walking towards us was gonna kick her out). Another nice Spanish man eventually came up to us, asked her if she wanted to switch, and then left for her seat. Each seat had it's own TV screen (mine broke half way through the flight..) and we had several movies, tv shows, and songs to choose from. I watched part of 310 to Yuma and then started watching "Nannie diaries" in Spanish. I decided it would be best for my Spanish skills if i watched it 15 minutes at a time and then went back and watched the same part in english. The goal was to watch the full thing this way and then watch again in Spanish. But half way through my tv brooke so i started reading my spanish dictionary. I got through the A's and some of the B's. (Brooke just informed me this is very long. I tend to agree.. but maybe i'll make a poll on if we appreciate Brad's long blogs or not).

I didn't really sleep much, but Nathan had sporadic(Brooke edit: hope it's not sporadically) nappings throughout the flight. Brooke had slighlty less nappings and slightly more watching of classic TV shows like "Numbers" and "Malcom in the Middle." People mad fun of me for wearing my Trix are for kids shirt. We ate crappy plane food, which was decent to bad. We were "awoken" with orange juice and crappy donuts. A Brazillian flight attendant informed me and Nathan (while Brooke slept) that we should visit his city in Brazil where there is a female to male ratio of 20:1. He also told us to wait until 50 to marry. He seemed to have learned from experience and he also brought me orange juice and tried to fix my tv, so naturally we trusted him blindly. We found out that cats in Spain meow like this "rrrrrooooooowth." We landed in Spain and brooke was in a bad mood because "she didn't sleep enough."

Stepping off the plane to Spain was pretty weird.. it's kind of surreal that we can be sitting down for 6:45 hours and switch locations in the world so drastically. We went down to get our Passports stamped and Brooke whined about how he didn't stamp her passport, but stamped her visa instead. I told her that her Visa is in her passport but she wanted to get a square stamped like she saw "in the movies."

We went to find our luggage (mine was first, brooke's was last) and then checked out storage space for our stuff while we visit Greece. We took taxis to our Hostel, but they made us take 2 taxis cause we had so much stuff. So i went in one by myself with this man who i do not respect anymore. Long story short we got there first and the meter read 20 euros but he charged me 30 euros because there is an airport surcharge. I had asked for a reciept but he just gave me a stupid hand written one. Very skeptical i argued with him for a bit and then gave it to him and decided not tip him. Then Brooke and Nathan arrived and I asked their driver about it and he said the surcharge is like 6 euros.. so my driver ripped me off 4 euros... i think. I hope he's happy. I think it was a different cab company though so who knows. Maybe I'm just a jerk for not tipping.

Finally to Mad Hostel. See for yourself, it's awesome. We're in a room with 4 beds/lockers and our 4th roommate is Barbara and she is from Brazil. (Like Canser de ser Sexy - Music is my girlfriend.) The facilities are pretty nice, the person at the front desk was very helpful and willing to switch between english and spanish to help us practice and still understand everything well. The common room has a bar (currently closed), some computers, some plugs for laptops, sitting areas, vending machines, and a TV that was recently on Disney Channel.

After settling in for a bit we decided to explore our surrounding blocks and grab some food. The area is pretty cool, but maybe it's just cause i really like seeing different cultures/cities. Especially the little convenience stores (which conveniently have huge rubix cubes). We ended up finding a nice little brewery/taparia/food place called Naturbier.

Quesiton: What do you call a beer that's mine?
Answer: Naturbier! (pr: Not your beer)

Question: What do you probably call natural beer in GermanSpanglish?
Answer: Naturbier! (pr: Not your beer)

The food was pretty good, though probably a little pricey.. plus water cost us 3 euros per person. Beer or wine would have cost us the same for probably a little more liquid for our money. (We're legal and we didn't even have the heart to drink here... i'm ashamed).

We also went into this little accessory shop where we were just looking around. We were followed by one of the employees possibly in case we had any questions about the assorted scarfs and belts, but more likely to ensure we didn't steal anything.

We found a theatre nearby our hostel where we are considering checking out a musical! There is also a musical somewhere around here called "We will rock you," it's a Queensical the musical (kinda like seussical the musical).

We napped a bit not cause we were jet legged but because it was ciesta time. (And also because Brooke was jet-lagged). It was probably a good idea.

Alright, sorry this was so long. I'm sure they will be shorter in the future, don't worry. Until then make sure you do the following:

1) Click on the poll somewhere on this page to tell me that you appreciate my long posts (if you do)

2) Make a Skype account so that you can talk to us!! Our skype name is theamazingtres .
If you'd rather just talk to me my skype name is Bradley.Samuel.Ross .

3) Post a response on our blog so we know you're reading! You might have to make an account here but it'd be well worth it. You can also email us if you'd like at theamazingtres@gmail.com

Thank you all so much for reading what you could of my long post. Thanks also for your love and support! We miss you all and hope to hear from you soon. Not sure of our plans for tonight, we're probably going to try and go out and see what we can find! We leave for Greece in two days. Until next time -

Brad, Brooke, and Nathan
Chau