whoa this thing still exists

Jordan is almost 1.5 years old.  =)

hello xanga

I received a spam email from xanga so I thought, "hmm, what was my last entry?"....

HOLY SMOKES. that was a long time ago.

I HAVE A BABY NOW.  Jordan is 1 month old.

EuroTrip VI: MYKONOS

Greece has a bunch of little islands, and we went to Mykonos.  It was probably one of the best places that we went to for the entire trip.  We had to take another ferry from Piraeus to Mykonos.  It was really windy on the ferry.  We also had some problems with booking the ferries... our one tiny disaster in Europe, but it didn't spoil this awesome trip so it's not worth writing about~

The entire island of Mykonos has a uniform color scheme: white and blue.  Greece is pretty much built on rocks.  Mykonos is known for its beaches, and windmills.

All the buildings are the same colors.  It's kind of neat.  We stayed at a place called the Kymata and it's right by the famous windmills of Mykonos.

On the left above is a general view of the towncenter.  It's gorgeous.  White and blue houses made of rocks.  On the right is a picture of "Little Venice".  It's sort of like Venice because the buildings are on the water, but in my opinion, it looks much better than the real Venice.  Venetian water is very brown, dirty, and smells a little.

We ate at this restaurant the most.  It was right on the water, and the sunset was nice.  I had a lot of seafood pasta, and I also tried the lamb.  The dishes look very simple and normal, but they were delicious... best lamb I've ever had.

So this is Paradise Beach... There are a bunch of other beaches on the island, but this one is the best straight beach.  There's one called Super Paradise Beach, and it is a gay one, I think.  Oh yea, these beaches are all nude beaches... It's like Adam and Eve.  But anyway, the water is really clear, and you get to see little fish swimming in it.  The sand is crazy nice.  I don't know why people pay more than $50 for Aveda skincare products like their exfoliants... because this sand was like the same thing, except that there was lots of it.  You rub the sand on your feet, and it feels smooth, not sticky or dirty.  This was the best beach I have ever been to... times a million.

We also walked around the old port in the towncenter, and that's when we found Petros...

It's the famous Mykonos pelican!  He decided to take a walk into the restaurant, then to the streets, and we followed him.  A bunch of other tourists stopped what they were doing and decided to follow the bird, too.  It was kind of funny.  The shop owners were upset that the pelican was stealing away their customers.

Jessica really missed Andie and Bailey so she went crazy with taking pictures of other people's pets.  The dog belongs to the owner of the gyro place that we ate at.  The best lamb/pork gyros ever.  The cats were kind of random.  There are cats everywhere in Mykonos.

We did laundry in the room and hung them up.  They didn't dry very well.  I also left my flip flops in Mykonos.    I left them by an old Mykonos man's "house".  You can see that his door is rotting away.  I have a theory that this guy is a long time native of Mykonos who refused to change his lifestyle.  He's not really a homeless guy since he obviously has a home, and no one is taking it away from him... but he looks like he's just living in a junk yard.

Jessica decided that we should get a caricature done.  All along, I thought it was a bad idea.  The guy looked like a schmuck, and it turns out that my 10 Euros just went down the drain.  This was the ugliest picture I have ever seen.  I am never getting a caricature done again.  I got robbed by a perv.     .... since we got robbed of 10 Euros, the punishment for Jessica was no more gelatos for the rest of the trip!

While we were killing time in Mykonos, waiting for our ferry back to Athens, we stopped by the only Catholic church that we found.  It looked pretty plain and simple.... but it's a lot more "elegant" than the hundreds of Eastern Orthodox churches in Mykonos.  Most of the churches were smaller than the size of my bedroom, and shaped like an igloo.

The sunset on the ferry was nice, but the view of Mykonos was much nicer.  I want to go back~

EuroTrip V: ATHENS

I didn't really know much about Greece.  I learned a little about the mythology stuff, and also the weird teacher-apprentice homo stuff that was the norm in ancient Greece.  I also knew that Pete Sampras is Greek-American, but basically American... Mark Philippoussis is Greek-Australian.  I know that gyros are freaking good, but Greek salads... not so good.  I know that I'm intimidated by Nicholas Peppas, the UT BME/ChE professor because he's kind of mean.  He is Greek.

What I didn't know was that plane tickets into Greece are extremely expensive... so we took a 24-hour ferry.  When I first heard about the ferry.  I was thinking like... ferries in Bangladesh, with a dude rowing it, and you just sit on the wood chairs and get splinters on your butt.  24 hours of that would probably kill me.  I would probably also jump off the ferry into the water.  Fortunately, the ferry we took was basically like a cruise.  It was called SUPERFAST FERRIES.  We took a train from Venice to Ancona, Italy.  From Ancona, we took the ferry to Patras, Greece.

Lots of 18-wheelers, RVs, and cars get on it.  There are multiple levels of garages, and the ferry travels "super fast"   The ferry had everything: disco, bar, restaurant, pool, casino, shop, and the world cup showing on many TV screens.

The cafeteria was pretty fancy, but it was pricy.  The view from the boat was nice.  You get to see some Greek islands as we pass by them in the Adriatic Sea.  Besides the port fees and ridiculous price to ride the ferries during the peak time of the summer, there was one drawback to the ferry:

These cabins were terrible.  When I woke up, I hit my head.  It was also hot and uncomfortable.  At least the shower and toilets were clean, though the shower flooded a little.  When we got to Patras, we had gyros for the first time in Greece.

It was the cheapest meal that we've eaten, after spending a lot of money on food in the expensive cities.  Greece is awesome.

We took a train from Patras to Corinth, then from Corinth to Athens.  It was our "travel day"... Athens is one tough place to get to if you don't fly in.  So many train rides, in addition to the day-long ferry.  Once we got to Athens, we settled in a hostel called Athens Backpackers.  It was run by Aussies.  It seems like everywhere we went, the hostels were run by Aussies.  Are there even any Australians left in Australia?!

The hostel was in a good location.  We had a great view of the Acropolis from the roof, where there was a bar.  We met a lot of people from Australian and New Zealand.  It's weird to hear their Down Under accent even though they look Greek or Indian.

The view from the roof of our hostel was great when the Parthenon is lit up at night.

Of course, we visited the Parthenon.  It was all ruins and very, very windy.  There was a dog up there that looked like it was going to die.  I gave him some water, but he didn't want to move.  The temperature was definitely up to 100 or so in Athens.  This city is one hot place.

We saw a couple of ancient Greek theaters.  One of them was actually still being used for shows.  It was a long climb up to the top of the Acropolis.  We saw a lot of temple ruins and a great view of Athens.  Greece is a whole bunch of rocks with some shrubs here and there.  That's probably why beef is so expensive in Greece, and lamb is actually cheap.  Yum~

Athens was a lot of walking around... shopping, boo.  It was boring.  We came across this intersection that was super crowded.  It was just an American who happened to be in Athens... and the store closed down just so that the snobby American can shop there.  The local media and "fans" were waiting outside with their cameras.  It was none other than 75-year-old super model Pamela Anderson.

I was much more interested in eating more gyros for 1.60 Euros a piece.