Honeymoon Part II - Prague

We've been back about 10 days, but I didn't want to leave our blog readers hanging about our honeymoon, so here's a quick report about the second half of our honeymoon in Prague, Czech Republic. As we mentioned last time, we took the train from Budapest to Prague where we spent three nights. We liked Prague a lot, although it was noticeably more touristy and crowded. It's a beautiful city, with lots of little alleys and old buildings to explore. This picture gives a good idea of the architecture and the crowds:

We spent one day just wondering around on our own, and on another day we took a "free" walking tour. There was no charge for the tour but the guides work for tips. The tour lasted three hours and was actually very informative so we didn't mind tipping our guide. As you can see from the above picture, the weather was cloudy and cool, but pleasant enough. We also appreciated that most of the US, including Boston, was caught in a major heat wave while we were there, so we didn't mind the cooler weather. You can see the rest of our pictures, but we pretty much walked, drank beer and people watched. Overall, we had a very relaxing time on our honeymoon, both in Budapest and Prague.

We've been married a little over three weeks now, and as I suspected, not a whole lot has changed, which isn't surprising considering we've already been living together for over five years. We got the rest of the pictures back from the photographer, but we haven't sorted through them all yet. (We did post a few preview shots of the wedding and reception but there are lots more to post.) We're also creating a photo book of our favorite pictures.

Honeymoon Part I - Budapest

So we're on our honeymoon, and the following is a report of our time in Budapest, the first stop of our two city mini-tour of Eastern Europe. We arrived after an overnight flight from Boston through Munich and took a "minibus" to our hotel, the Best Western Hungaria. The hotel was what I would call nouveau Soviet chic, which means the building had an industrial feel to it, but you could tell the management was trying to overcome the communist influence. The staff was mostly young and good looking, and there seemed to be a young lady in a maid outfit perpetually cleaning the doors and wiping down various surfaces every time we walked through the lobby. I only noticed her because she seemed out of place, and she was always chatting with the elderly concierge hosts who didn't seem to have anything to do.

We took a short nap, but in an effort to overcome jet lag we forced ourselves to stay up and went out for a walk, landing at a "build your own falafel" place for dinner. We didn't quite know how to order, but we ended up with healthy and filling sandwiches. We got soft serve ice creams on the walk back and called it an early night.

The next day we had the included breakfast at our hotel, a sort of combination between Turkish style (tomatoes, cucumbers and feta) and German style (soft boiled eggs, brown bread and salami) breakfasts. It was an odd spread, including super-runny scrambled eggs, watery juice and a coffee machine that dispensed coffee about three ounces at a time. We took a swing by the train station so we would know where to catch our train when it was time to leave, and after a bit of searching found the Metro and took it across the river so we could explore the castles of the "Buda" side of Budapest. The weather was threatening rain and it did rain a bit now and again. We had coffee while overlooking the Parliament building, then walked up and down the walled area, searching at first for the Labyrinth (a glorified wine cellar where we declined to pay the $10 entrance fee), and then for something cheap to eat. We ended up getting sandwiches, where Jaimee had the tuna and I the salami. We both remarked that for a landlocked country they seemed to eat quite a bit of fish here.

Parliament Building from "Fisherman's Bastion"

We walked down the hill and over the picturesque "Chain Bridge", into the city and back toward our hotel. We found a cute little wine bar and had a couple glasses of wine before getting an early dinner of vegetarian tapas and more wine at a little cafe recommended in our guide book. We went back to our hotel, but again in order to not fall asleep too early we went out for ice creams at McDonalds and enjoyed the free wifi. McDonalds in Europe are the equivalent of coffee houses in the US. It seems people socialize and use them as meeting places. In the US, I'd be mortified to be caught hanging out at McDonalds, but it seemed acceptable in Hungary, especially when the Internet was faster than what I have at my own house.

Day three was more walking around, this time to the beautiful "Hero's Square" where we caught a brief military presentation of some kind. We walked all around the park nearby, stopped for a quick coffee at a square-side cafe and then walked back into the City Center. We were on a mission for a nice piece of orange chocolate cake (something Jaimee got in her head that she wanted), but most of the cafes we found in the city center were overpriced. We eventually ended up back at the same wine bar as the day before where they in fact had a delightful orange chocolate cake, which we had with some wine. We remarked that our glasses of wine were at least twice as big as the previous day, which we chalked up to the fact that they must have remembered us and were happy to see us again.

But we got the bill and realized we actually paid for "double" pours of wine, even though we didn't explicitly order such. They were still only $5 glasses of wine, which is a good deal, but not as good as the $2.50 we thought we were paying. In any event we left with a bit of a buzz and had greasy gyros from a takeout place, which contained a spicy sauce and definitely hit the spot. We got lunch supplies for our train trip the next day and retired back to our hotel where we uploaded pictures and planned our visit to Prague.

The hotel breakfast was packed the morning of our train ride to Prague, many of the people evidently on some sort of organized bike tour. I can't say I envy them given the rainy and cold weather. We had leftover Hungarian currency so at the train station we bought a bottle of wine and converted some of the money into Czech money, although we're still left with a 500 forint note which the change person was only going to give me one Euro for it. The current exchange is about 285 forint to the Euro, so I kept the bill as a souvenir. Which is stupid because I never would have paid one Euro to have a 500 forint bill souvenir, but out of principle I couldn't let the exchange person rip me off. Alas, this brought back memories of our around-the-world trip. We have a box full of currency from around the world, that I don't believe we've looked at once since we've gotten back. I'll be sure to reminisce when I put this 500 forint bill into the box when we get back.

The train ride to Prague was fairly pleasant and uneventful; we shared a six person berth with a family traveling with a little well-behaved boy. At first we just took the compartment next door which only had a German couple in it, but a few stops in we were kicked out by another German family. Our reserved tickets were window seats, although the country-side through Hungary and Slovakia was fairly dreary with the sky being mostly gray with on-and-off showers.

So far our impressions of Prague are positive, but we noticed a huge difference in the number of tourists. Prague is packed with tourists, including what seem to be large groups of men, seemingly on bachelor parties. Maybe it's all the cheap beer. We're enjoying the cooler weather compared to what's back in Boston right now. We actually both wore pants today and I used my sweatshirt this evening as we sat at a street-side cafe for dinner of pizza and beer.

Married!

After five and a half years together, and countless trips and excursions we finally got married! July 16, 2011 Jaimee and I said our vows in front of close family and friends in Guilford, Vermont. My Aunt and Uncle, Betsy and Neil graciously allowed us to use their house and garden for the event, and it went off exactly as planned! The weather couldn't have been better, and all the hard work by everyone paid off in that the grounds looked beautiful, the food was amazing, and we had our perfect Vermont wedding.

We leave later today for our honeymoon in Budapest and Prague, but I wanted to post a link to a few pictures from the wedding. When we get back we'll hopefully have more pictures, as well as pictures from the reception which took place the next day.

But in the meantime, I hope you enjoy these pictures. We certainly enjoyed being there when they were taken. Thank you to everyone who helped create a truly memorable weekend.

Vermont Wedding

Summer Plans...

Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial kick-off to summer, so we decided to celebrate it with a trip to the beach! We went to Kennebunkport, Maine for the weekend. We decided to go there after getting an email offer from a "resort" that got our information from the Boston Travel show that we went to a few months back. See, mass marketing works! The hotel was adequate but nothing special, but we had a nice, relaxing weekend. Here are some pictures from the weekend:

Kennebunkport Memorial Day

The weather wasn't great, including one very overcast day, but since we were so close to the outlet stores of Freeport, we took a ride to do some shopping. I even managed to find my wedding outfit at a most unlikely place. It will be a nice, summery outfit, perfect for our garden wedding. Speaking of, we've been slowly finalizing the plans, and have almost finished the invitations. Because we're having the wedding and reception on separate days, we actually have two invitations. We sent out the ceremony invitations already, and the reception ones should get mailed soon.

In addition to our Maine adventure, at the beginning of the month, Jaimee and I participated in the New York Five Boro bike ride. It's a 40 mile ride through all five boroughs of New York City. We had fun visiting New York and it was definitely fun to ride through the city, but the ride was overcrowded, and there were actually bike traffic jams. At one point, because of construction on a bridge we were stuck on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (without cars) for about an hour. It was pretty crazy. We tried to get some pictures, including a few to show how many people were on the ride:

Tour de Boro 2011

We got back from Maine to super warm weather in Boston, which is gratifying after such a long, cool Spring. We're definitely looking forward to the summer.

It's Nice to Be Loved

Living in New England we are lucky to be surrounded by loving and supportive family and friends. Last weekend we experienced that love first-hand when Jaimee's step-mom Sandi organized a beautiful and well-attended bridal shower, in anticipation of our wedding this July. Jaimee's sisters enjoyed planning the party, which was originally supposed to be a surprise, but because of Jaimee's sleuthing skills, she found out about it well before hand. Here's Jaimee with her sisters and step-mom:

From Wedding Shower

Jaimee's mom did do a surprise visit all the way from Idaho, so at least we were able to get one surprise:

From Wedding Shower

Jaimee received many awesome gifts, that we've put to use right away, including a few sets of nice glasses, an amazing coffee maker and various other kitchen items. Some of items will take some getting used to, such the set of "rolo" shot glasses, which I found out pretty quickly you need to hold on to when pouring:

After the shower, Jaimee's dad hosted a joint birthday party for me and Jaimee's step-mom (she's April 3, I'm April 5). It warms my heart to be part of such a loving family:

From Wedding Shower

Readers of my last blog post took note of the fact that I said I didn't get the memo regarding a yellow biking jacket, so one of my gifts was a bright yellow jacket along with a memo:

Now when I do my group bike rides (or even when riding solo), I'll be highly visible and safe!

Lonesome Lake

As promised, here's an update of our latest winter adventure at Lonesome Lake hut in the White Mountains (with pictures). It started, like many trips to New Hampshire do, with a stop at the Liquor Store right off the highway. We had to stock up on "nips" to keep us warm in the hut, and we also wanted to pick up some Sortilege, that super-yummy Maple Canadian Whiskey that our Canadian couchsurfers brought us a couple months ago. We couldn't find Sortilege in Massachusetts, but we'd heard it was available in New Hampshire. Sure enough, they had a huge display of it, although they were the small 375mL bottles which was disappointing, but it just meant that we got two!

The hike into Lonesome Lake hut is fairly short, a little over a mile, but like many trails in the White Mountains it is very steep - it gains about 900 feet in that one mile so it was a good workout. The lake was completely frozen over so we could take a shortcut across it to get to the hut:

From Lonesome Lake

The setup of the hut is a large main building where the caretaker keeps a wood fire in the evenings surrounded by two unheated bunk houses separated into rooms with four or six beds each. The entire compound sleeps about 45 or so, but when we got the hut, the very nice caretaker told us it was only us and one other couple that night. So we had privacy on our anniversary after all. We soaked it up that first night because on Saturday night the hut was filled to capacity, half of them a "Women of Newburyport" group. They certainly took advantage of the short hike in as they carried in at least a dozen bottles of wine.

Our friends Michael and Liza met us at the hut on Saturday morning and we did a day hike of two 4,000 foot peaks in the area. The conditions were amazing. The trail was already packed out by other snowshoers and although there wasn't much sun, there also wasn't any wind so it wasn't all that cold (as long as you kept moving). It truly was a winter wonderland. We summited both North and South Kinsman, making it peaks 17 and 18 in my quest to hike all 67 4,000 foot peaks in New England.

Even though supposedly the hut was packed the second night, no one shared our bunk room with us so we had the room to ourselves again. Of course, the temperature in the room was in the single digits so we didn't spend too much time in the room itself; mostly we were bundled up in our sleeping bags. I'm a pretty warm sleeper so I was comfortable in my 25 degree down bag, while Jaimee had borrowed her dad's 0 degree bag. It took up most of her backpack on the hike in and out but she claims it was totally worth packing in.

We had a great weekend at the hut, and I'd totally recommend Lonesome Lake as a place to try out "winter camping" as it's a short hike in, the hut is very comfortable (even with 40 or so people), and the setting is beautiful. We're already planning our next outing, probably to Carter Notch Hut at the end of February. 

A Winter Adventure

With this posting I may have to really rethink the whole "Chasing Summer" title for this blog. I just spent three days enjoying the aftermath of the "Blizzard of 2010" up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. (Jaimee could not go with me as she had to work.) Last Sunday night New England, especially coastal areas like Boston got hammered with snow. Boston alone received 18 inches of snow. Before the storm, we spent Christmas Eve to Christmas morning at Jaimee's dad's house in Shrewsbury. We had a lovely, festive time, and pardon the inside joke (but let's be honest, only "insiders" are really reading this anyway) no churches were burned down on Christmas Eve. We left Shrewsbury Saturday evening and drove down to Cape Cod where we visited with Jaimee's visiting Mom and her brother and sister. The storm began rolling in late Sunday morning, and although we had plans to return to Boston on Sunday night, we spent another night and braved the roads back to Boston on Monday. Although by Monday most of the snow had fallen, the roads were still somewhat treacherous and parking in the city was a nightmare. Our downstairs neighbors were out of town so they said we could park in their driveway, but that meant I had to shovel it. It took over two hours to shovel out the driveway wide enough to park the car. Dealing with this much snow is certainly never something we had to deal with in Seattle.

However, the timing of the storm couldn't have been better with respect to my planned trip up to the White Mountains. I spent two nights with our friends Liza and Michael at the AMC Zealand Falls Hut. The hut is rustic, only heated with a wood stove that they stoke between 4PM and 9PM each day. The hut has bunks for about 35 people and it was filled to capacity each night. This meant for cozy accommodations especially in the main room with the stove. We had a great time though, playing games and meeting new people. Not only did I meet someone who knew one of the Appalachian Trail through-hikers I met last summer while hiking the Long Trail, but I also met people who knew my Aunt and Uncle, Neil and Betsy. One guy said he'd house sat for them, and another said he used to work at the West Hill Bike Shop when my uncle owned it. It truly is a small world.

We also got in lots of snowshoeing during the day. The first day was a relatively easy snowshoe into the hut because the trail was already broken out. The second day we took the trail up to Zealand Mountain which was not already broken out. It took the three of us five hours to break through snow that was often up to our waist deep. We eventually got to the summit, which sadly had no view. Although it is a 4,000 foot peak so it helped my friend Michael who is attempting to climb all 48 of New Hampshire's 4,000 foot peaks in the winter:

The third day we returned to the car via the summit of Mount Hale, another 4,000 foot peak. Again, waist high snow where we took turns breaking trail to reach the summit. Hale actually had somewhat of a view and the day was beautifully sunny, so we enjoyed basking in the warm and calm summit:

It was a lot of work snowshoeing through the mountains, but it was a ton of fun and I hope to get up to the mountains more this winter. I'm not necessarily trying to climb all 48 New Hampshire 4,000 footers in the winter, but I am keeping track of which ones I've climbed; I'm up to 16 peaks climbed (and now two in the winter). You can see the rest of the pictures from my hut adventure here.

Now we're finishing packing up and are headed to Neil and Betsy's for the weekend. We might get in some cross-country skiing, but overall hope to have a relaxing New Year's. 2010 was a tremendous, life-changing year for me and Jaimee and I'm hoping 2011 brings more adventures and fun!

Nannyhood in the Neighborhood

I've been working as a nanny for about a month now for Asa's nephew Jonah and another little girl, Grace. The kids are now five and six months old respectively, so you can imagine how hectic the days can be.

From Nanny Shots

This job has been working out quite well for me for a variety of reasons. It's a great deal different from my last job as an intensive special needs teacher in a public middle school. I don't attend staff meetings that don't apply to my students anymore (always a huge waste of my time). I don't have to work with assistants who aren't very cooperative. I don't have mountains of paperwork or deadlines (except for feedings). And now we can go on walks throughout the day, including walks to the neighborhood shops, banks, and libraries, making it fairly easy for me to keep up with errands and chores. This includes my eight minute walk to work. It's so nice to be a walking commuter! And let's not forget that I only work four days per week (10.5 hours/day). I love my Fridays off!

From Nanny Shots

There are some similarities, however. I still change diapers though its much different when the diaper isn't worn by a 14-year old. I still structure my day ahead of time, to allow for walks outside and certain amounts of playtime between naps. I still have a super rushed meal time, though now it's me chowing down while the kids are napping (you never know how long you'll have), instead of racing through my lunch after my long walk to the staff room and then my wait at the microwave for the other 10 teachers, and then a sprint to the bathroom, all in the 30 minutes allowed by the bells.

The job is very fun for me, and I hope also for the babies. We've gone to the park a couple of times now, though Jonah has been asleep both times by the time we roll up in the double stroller. We get to walk the dog, Story at the Arboretum. We spend time outside visiting with the very friendly neighbors at Grace's house. And we sing and play throughout the day. All of our time walking around in the stroller has helped me learn our neighborhood and West Roxbury too. We can go to the grocery, the libraries in both villages, parks, and coffee shops and restaurants. And, look at these babies, they are a hit everywhere we walk! People are always asking after them and wondering if they are twins.

From Nanny Shots

Being a nanny is not without its challenges, though. Grace has been going through what her parents call a sleep strike, not wanting to sleep in her crib. She will sleep in the carrier or in my arms, but this will not be a long term solution (I hope). When one baby is hungry, both are starving once the bottle comes into view. This makes for some intense seconds until I get everyone positioned for a group feeding. And when one baby is tired, that doesn't mean both are. But crying and clinginess are contagious, so if one is tired and clingy, I've usually got both kiddos attached to me. Sometimes its a bit wild, like while I'm wearing a sleeping Grace in the carrier and trying to get Jonah off to sleep, by bouncing him in my arms. Luckily they both tend to nod off in the stroller; if only we could walk for two hours at a time twice a day, everyday!

From Nanny Shots

Because the babies are so young, they are changing a lot all of the time. I've noticed big differences in Jonah and Grace in the four weeks since I've started watching them full time. I'm very excited to keep watching them grow, develop, and learn in the months ahead.

In other neighborhood news, Asa and I had the opportunity to walk to the polls last week for election day. We hadn't been able to do that in a few years, as Seattle moved to all-mail-in ballots. Our polling place was the local church in our village, three blocks from our apartment. We were impressed with how organized they were and how quickly our line was processed. It was a pretty low tech situation, with small counters and felt tip pens to fill out our paper ballots, but the turn out was impressive and it seemed like voting was a family affair for many of our neighbors. Here's a photo taken outside our polling place, the Greek Church.

Our first guests, and a perfect Fall weekend

We'd been in our new apartment for less than a week before we entertained our first visitors. Our friends Kate and Kyle from Seattle came to visit us last weekend. They are the same Kate and Kyle whose wedding we went to over Labor Day in Seattle. It was great to see them, and the weather in Boston turned out to be just perfect, especially Saturday. It was one of those perfect Fall days; crisp and sunny, warm in the sun, yet cool in the shade. If only we had more days like that, Boston weather would be great. As it was, the previous week was rainy, muggy and steamy warm (temperatures reaching into the 80s) with Friday being a real "soaker" as they say around here.

However, Saturday was perfect. We visited the very cute Roslindale Farmer's Market (is anyone not on Facebook?) in the morning and then embarked on a major walking tour of Boston. We didn't calculate it, but we must have walked over 10 miles, covering just about all parts of the city. Boston is a very pretty city, with great architecture and between the Charles River and the Bay, you're never very far from the water or boats.

Sunday, the weather wasn't quite as nice, but we ventured out of town to go apple picking at Tougas Farm in Northboro, Mass. It was pretty much peak apple season, with over 20 varieties to choose from. We especially enjoyed the "under appreciated" Empire variety, a cross between McIntosh and Red Delicious. I don't usually like Red Delicious, but Empires were quite tasty. In addition to over 20 pounds of apples, we also got apple cider donuts, and together with the apple cider we'd picked up at the farmer's market at Saturday, we had our fill of apples!

As an aside, we paid $25 for 20 pounds of apples (1/2 a bushel), which seemed like a good deal until we stopped at the grocery store on the way back to get ingredients to make an apple crisp, and discovered that Empire apples were on sale for $0.99 a pound! So, in other words, we paid extra money for the privilege of picking our own apples. Although, the apples we got looked better and we got a bunch of different varieties. And we had fun, so there is that.

Our apartment, thanks to lots of diligent work by Jaimee in searching out cheap furniture, is coming together quite nicely. We've uploaded more pictures to Our Apartment album. Despite not being there for long, it's starting to feel like home. I'm also getting into a groove at work (starting week three!), although I can't say I've contributed too much to the team just yet. But, so far I like the work and my co-workers, and I've already been paid, which of course is the real reason I got the job in the first place.

An Adirondack Adventure

Things really came together for us since our last post. For starters, I was offered a job at one of the places where I'd interviewed. Prior to our trip to Seattle, I'd given the company my list of references but because of the holiday (and because I knew some of my references were on vacation) I wasn't sure how quickly they'd be able to contact them and then make me offer. However, when we landed in Boston from Seattle I had a message from the recruiter with my verbal offer. We made it official via e-mail the next day. My start date is this coming Monday, September 20. I'm excited for the job. I'll be working for an Internet Marketing company doing some programming and data manipulation. I'm excited because their primary programming language is Python, a language I've never used before. I'm really glad they trusted that I'd be able to learn it quickly enough.

Second, we found an apartment! As we might have alluded to in this blog, apartment hunting in Boston was a real challenge. We looked at dozens of places, but apart from one place where someone else rented it between us seeing it and telling the landlord we wanted it, none of the other places grabbed us. Until we saw a really cute third-story attic apartment, advertised on craigslist as the "tree-house apartment". It's the top story of a three-unit building in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston. It's essentially a big studio apartment with five large sky-lights and plenty of closets. It's within our budget (although more than we were paying in Seattle, for less space too) and it's within walking distance of both Roslindale village, with numerous shops and restaurants, and the commuter rail station where I'll be just a 12 minute train ride to my new office (the office is on the 7th floor above the train station at Copley Place in Boston). We'll show some pictures after we move in on September 25.

So, with the job and apartment all squared away, we decided to take a mini-vacation during our last week of "freedom". We drove up to the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York for what we thought might be a few nights of camping. Our main purpose in going up there was to climb Mount Marcy, the highest point in New York state. Unfortunately, we did very little planning with regard to the trip so it didn't work out quite how we would have liked.

For starters, it took a long time to get there, and we got kind of a late start so we didn't get to the area until after dark. Then, the campground we'd planned on going to was closed for the season. Since Mount Marcy is really close to Lake Placid, there were plenty of hotels, but none were very cheap. We found a little "cabin" in nearby Saranac Lake, which was habitable but full of mouse poop and if we turned on the gas heater we felt like we were going to get asphyxiated. We ended up sleeping on the bed in our sleeping bags, although we did use the little gas stove to cook our camping food.

From Mt Marcy

The next day we climbed Mount Marcy, which was a 15 mile round trip hike with about 4,000 feet of elevation gain. As mentioned, it's the highest point in New York (and therefore all the Adirondacks) at 5,344 feet. Despite the length, the hike was pretty easy, except for the summit push which was quite steep and the top was very windy and cold. We took a few quick pictures and headed back down.

From Mt Marcy

In addition to being a state highpoint, Mount Marcy has historical significance as well. In 1901, Theodore Roosevelt was camping in the area when President McKinley was assassinated. He was summoned to take over and he then became the youngest President ever at 42 years old. (President Kennedy would later become the youngest elected President at 43 years old).

There was a campground at the base of the mountain, but they charged $40 per site to camp! Plus, "room tax" of 10% and $10 a day to park! That would add up to $54 to camp for the night. Seriously? Even though that was cheaper than a hotel room (or cabin) nearby, we felt that was a ridiculous amount to pay for camping. So we left and got a hotel room in nearby Lake Placid. We probably violated all sort of regulations but we cooked up our camp food on our camping stove inside the hotel room.

We then came back to Massachusetts, stopping for one night to visit my lovely Aunt Lisa and Uncle Dick in Catskill, New York on the way. We had a quick visit, but we enjoyed catching up with them and having a nice dinner. We came back to some sad news regarding Jaimee's family though. Her grandfather spent the day after his 90th birthday in the intensive care unit of the hospital. He'd been having various health problems over the past few months, but he got a bladder infection that sent him to the hospital. We visited him at the ICU and he was not doing that well, barely aware of his surroundings. As of this writing he's still there and hanging on, and we're all hoping that he can pull out and survive the infection.

Back to Seattle

We just got back from a wonderful, albeit short trip to Seattle. It completed a full circle for us, returning to where we left last August. We stayed with our friends Greg and Laura, the same people who we stayed with our final two weeks in Seattle. It was a whirlwind tour, similar to the type of visit we used to do when visiting the East Coast; we visited many, but not all, of our friends spending a few hours with each group. We also went to two weddings, one of which was south of Portland, Oregon (about a four hour drive each way). In between the weddings and visiting we found time to go to many of our favorite Seattle places, including several yummy meals.

The trip started out on a good note leaving Boston when, on account of hurricane Earl, flights were rearranged. We originally had a flight to Seattle connecting through Houston, but instead they "bumped" us to a direct flight! This got us into Seattle two hours earlier than planned. However, because we'd prepaid for our rental car we couldn't pick it up early unless we paid for an extra day (which, according the helpful rental agent would be three times our online daily rate, plus taxes of course). We decided to wait. Then they "upgraded" us from a compact car to a Ford Flex! It's a nice car, but it seats seven and doesn't get the greatest gas mileage. We complained and tried to get a compact car like we'd requested, but in the end were saddled with the Flex. (It was actually very comfortable but ended up getting 20 mpg; it cost over $50 to fill up the tank!)

Then more travel-related snafus occurred with the first wedding we went to. We had to drive to Hillsboro, Oregon for the wedding on Saturday, but when we showed up at the wedding location it was empty with no cars or anybody around. We didn't have the invitation with us, nor did we have Irene's phone number so we had no idea what was going on. Eventually as we were walking around someone came up to us and asked if we were there for Irene and Chandler's wedding. We said we were, and he said the wedding had moved to a new location about 45 minutes away! Apparently she'd e-mailed/messaged me somehow but I never got the message. Anyway, we found the new place, but missed the wedding. We did enjoy the reception (along with the open bar) and excellent cake.

From Back to Seattle

Then the next day it was back to Seattle to meet some friends for breakfast. This began the baby tour part of our visit, where we got to meet all the new babies from our many friends who had babies while we were gone on our trip. We met up with Lynn and her son Theo and Sadie and her son Angus (who was born February of 2009 so we'd met him before). Here's everyone in front of the big Lenin statue in Fremont:

From Back to Seattle

We then had a nice barbeque dinner at Greg and Laura's house where we met more babies: Jeff and Rae's daughter Addy and Brendan and Sara Ann's son Jasper (who we'd met before in Boston). On Monday we went to our second wedding down in Gig Harbor, followed by the reception in Tacoma. It was a beautiful morning ceremony and yummy brunch reception. Here are Kate and Kyle walking off into wedding bliss after brunch:

From Back to Seattle

The rest of our visit consisted of seeing more friends - Lane via a quick visit to his house, Chris and Cass and their daughter Caroline at lunch at a Thai restaurant, Greg and Erin and Betty at Elliot Bay Brewery in Burien, Corey at Bauhaus Coffee and Andy, Kendrah and their son Charlie along with Goldin and Kiyoshi at Agua Verde for dinner. But despite all this running around, in honor of our trip we found time to play a game of Scrabble over mochas as the glorious Caffe Fiore in Ballard, and in honor of many a past Seattle Sunday, we had Bloody Mary's at King's Hardware in Ballard.

From Back to Seattle

I'll close this post with a few thoughts about what it was like returning to Seattle. I thought returning might make me miss Seattle, but although I love Seattle and always will, I don't really miss living there. It's a wonderful place, but now a place I can enjoy as a tourist and visitor instead of a resident. I'm not quite to the point where Massachusetts is my "home" but it's getting closer. (Does this mean I'm "homeless"? Maybe...) As I've said before, I think moving to a new location after our big trip has helped psychologically in that many things in our life are new and different, which eases the inevitable letdown of returning from our trip. Jaimee and I are both starting new jobs (more on that to come), we'll be moving into a new apartment (at some point when we find a nice place) and meeting new friends. The Seattle phase of our lives is over, and we're on to new things. I'll always cherish my time there, and plan on visiting as often as I can. Our next visit will be November of 2011 when the North American Bridge Championships will be held in Seattle. I guess I better start practicing now so that I can put on a good showing with all my old bridge friends next year.

One final note on the pictures. This trip was an experiment to only use the camera on my new phone. I love the phone, but the camera takes some getting used to. It's not very good in low light and because you have to press so hard to the take the picture, too many photos are blurry. I think I'll continue to bring a point and shoot for our travels as it's easier to use and takes better pictures. In any event, you can look at all the pictures online.

Long Trail Report - Week 1

I'm happy to report that I made it through Week 1 of my Long Trail hike. I came off the trail after five and a half days and 85 miles in order to come back to Boston to do some job interviews. Yes, reality is starting to slowly settle in. After the interviews tomorrow and early next week, I hope to get back on the trail.

The first week was awesome. My cousin Bevan joined me for the first three days and we had a great time walking through the woods. Here we are getting dropped off at the Appalachian Trail in Williamstown, Massachusetts. (The Vermont border and official start of the Long Trail is 4.1 miles away):

From Long Trail 2010

There are three-sided shelters every five to 10 miles along the trail, so I based how far I'd go each day on which shelter I wanted to stay in that night. Bevan carried a three (!) person tent for the sections with me, which we used one night. The second night together we stayed in one the shelters. The scenery we walked through was amazing, particularly Glastenbury Mountain. There's an old Fire Tower on top and the views over all the Green Mountains were very nice.

From Long Trail 2010

Bevan even found his 700th geocache up near the Fire Tower. Good work Bevan! After his wife Tammi picked him up on the third day, I resupplied from a stash in Tammi's car and continued on. I packed a one-person tent and got to use it twice; once I pitched it inside a shelter to double as a mosquito net, and a second time I pitched it outside in the pouring rain. Both times the tent worked like a charm. I camped by a few lakes, including beautiful Stratton Pond, the biggest body of water along the Long Trail. Combined with a climb of Stratton Mountain, it would make a lovely day hike, or short backpacking trip.

From Long Trail 2010

Since this beginning part of the Long Trail overlaps with the Appalachian Trail (AT), I got to meet many, many AT thru-hikers. They are a varied and interesting bunch, to say the least. They're also very social for the most part and I enjoyed chatting with them and hearing about their journeys. All the hikers use "trail names" to refer to each other, in many cases they don't even know each other's real names. Since I was only out on the trail for a few days I didn't get a trail name, but when I continue on the Long Trail later, maybe I'll get one. Apparently, you can't name yourself; someone else has to give you the name.

I created a Picasa album of my pictures so far, including a map of where most of the pictures were taken. I'll keep adding to it when I pick up my hike, hopefully next week.

Multiple Fourth of July Celebrations

One of the advantages of being in New England for the 4th of July is the number of different celebrations. Each town it seems has its own party, often on different dates in order to not collide with each other. We already mentioned last week's 4th of July parade in Guilford, but this past weekend we followed that up with celebrations in Somerville, Massachusetts and Catskill, New York.

Somerville, the town right next to Boston where we're staying for the month of July had their Annual 4th of July Fireworks on July 1st. There was music by several bands, including a performance by the US Navy Band. The fireworks were quite impressive, lasting for over 30 minutes and we were very close so we could see them launch from the ground before exploding up in the air. Our apartment is really close to Jaimee's sister Janelle's apartment so we just walked over to her place and watched the fireworks together.

From July 2010

From July 2010

From Boston we drove over to Catskill, New York to visit my Aunt and Uncle Lisa and Dick. They were hosting their own celebration, the 7th annual summer party to benefit the Thomas Cole Historic Site. This was held at my Aunt's house right on the Hudson River. The party was amazing. There were 350 guests, two huge tents, a live band and an amazing fireworks display, launched from the edge of my Aunt's property by the river. We felt honored to help my Aunt and Uncle put on this fundraiser and had a blast (no pun intended) mingling with art lovers and others from the Catskill (and New York City) community. We also were blessed with incredible weather (hot, but since the party was in the evening, the weather was cool enough that the temperature was just perfect). Here's a picture of the festive tent, set up for the 350 guests:

From July 2010

Then we topped off our 4th of July celebrations last night by having a wonderful dinner with Jaimee's dad and step-mom in Shrewsbury. We love being close to them and being able to just drop by for dinner and a visit. I even picked up golf clubs for the first time in several years and went to the driving range with Jaimee's dad. (I hit a few good balls, although I definitely need more practice before I'm anywhere close to his level of play).

All in all, we're certainly getting right into the swing of things (again, no pun intended) living in New England, albeit we're still in travel mode as we're in a new location almost every night and aren't working (although I do have a few job leads). It's funny how easily we've adapted to not being on our trip any more. I think moving to a "new" city has helped our transition. I've been reading with interest the blog posts of our friends Gillian and Jason who we met in Thailand (and then met up with later in Laos) who recently returned home from their trip around the world, as it shows the many different emotions that surround the completion of a big trip. (Their friends, also returning from an around-the-world trip a few months ago wrote a very touching blog post illustrating the emotional roller coaster that is returning from a big trip). Everyone reacts differently and I think us not returning to the same city and the same jobs has helped us acclimate to living in the USA again. I don't mean to over-dramatize coming home, but for us, being with family and friends has really helped us not miss the road too much (although I think I could very easily just jump back on a bus or train and go visit new places tomorrow).

Iceland: a beautiful cherry on the top of our trip

Iceland is amazing! I can't imagine a better place for the last stop of our trip. Although we only have four days here, and are just barely scratching the surface of what Iceland has to offer, the scratch that we've done has been pretty nice.

Our visit started out on a slightly stressful note though. We took a 10:30 PM flight from Frankfurt, which was scheduled to arrive around midnight local time (it's about a 3 1/2 hour flight and Iceland is two hours behind Western Europe), but the flight was delayed by about an hour and we didn't arrive until after 1 AM, and after taking the bus into Reykjavik it was almost 2 AM. We had scheduled to stay with a Polish couple through couchsurfing and we had their address and phone number, but it turns out we were dialing the wrong country code. We were using the SIM in our phone that we got in Greece so we didn't know that we had the wrong code, only that the phone number didn't work. After walking around for a while (even at 2 in the morning it wasn't even close to dark) we eventually found the apartment, but after ringing the bell and knocking on the door, nobody would answer! We didn't know what to do, but in the end decided to just "camp" in their yard. We unfurled our beach mat and sleeping bags and slept for a few hours in the back yard.  Around 8 AM we tried ringing the doorbell again and this time they answered. They're not sure why they didn't hear us the night before, but they welcomed us in the morning before heading off to work.

We spent the day exploring Reykjavik, which is a very cosmopolitan town, full of little cafes, restaurants, book stores and other little shops. We were lucky to have a beautiful blue sky day, with temperatures in the high 50s, low 60s. Here's the famous concrete church, called Hallgrimskirkja. We didn't get to climb it because it was busy with funerals, but it's quite a sight and because it's on a hill, it can be seen from all over town:

From Iceland

We also visited one of the many outdoor geothermal public pools. For a 360 kroner ($1.75 US) fee we soaked in a gigantic outdoor hot tub. These pools are everywhere and are centers of social life. Instead of going to a coffee shop (although they do that too) groups congregate and hang out soaking in hot water. It was quite fun.

Iceland has a reputation for being extremely expensive, but Iceland was hit especially hard by the recent financial crisis and their currency took a huge hit (thanks Financial Crisis!), so in dollar terms prices are half or less what they were two or three years ago. So, while Iceland is still not cheap (restaurants in particular are still quite costly), it is not at all prohibitively expensive. For example, we ended up renting a car for two days to do some touring and it cost 19,000 kroner (about $90 $145 US) for two days. This includes taxes and insurance! Update: I realized later I must have miscalculated the exchange, and it's actually $145 for the two days, which is on the high side, but still better than we could find on-line when doing research.

We also scored a free tent for out little excursion by just asking. We went into an outdoor store and inquired about renting a tent to do some camping and although they didn't rent tents they told us to check the hostel across the street. We went in there and asked and they said we could just have a tent! Some German tourists had bought it and didn't want to bring it home so left it at the hostel. We were surprised, but they just let us have it. It's not the best tent in the world, but it was more than sufficient. (See a picture of it in action.)

For our road-trip we toured around what's called the Golden Circle area, a loop of about 200 miles or so that visits some waterfalls, National Parks, hot springs and geysers. Here's a short video of a geyser called Strokkur. It erupts every five minutes or so. You can watch the water recede into it and then bubble up and explode. There were gangs of kids (heard screaming in the background) who would stand downwind from the geyser and get soaked by the water.

From Iceland

We tried to get some pictures of Eyjafjallajokull (no, I didn't fall on my keyboard, that's really how you spell it), the volcano that caused all the flight cancellations last month, but it was covered in clouds so we couldn't see any steam. We also saw plenty of huge waterfalls, including Gullfoss, which had a beautiful rainbow across it:

From Iceland

We've had a blast (no pun intended) touring around in our rental car. The scenery is just amazing. Iceland is very beautiful, and there is a lot to explore. It's a great time of year to visit Iceland since the sun doesn't set until almost 11 PM and then rises again at 3 AM which means it's never completely dark.

We now have about 24 hours left in Iceland (and on our trip). Tonight we hope to camp in a hot spring area and take a dip in some open-air geothermal swimming pools near Hveragerdi. Then tomorrow before our flight to Boston we're stopping at the Blue Lagoon, a famous spa/outdoor hot pool to do some last minute relaxation before getting back to the US.

We can't wait to see friends and family again, but it's sad that our trip is almost over. It's been 297 days since we left Seattle last August 15th. Iceland has been a great last stop, and I'd highly recommend it as a place to visit, especially now while the dollar is strong against the kroner. (And note to our Seattle friends, Iceland Air flies direct to Reykjavik from Seattle.)

Switzerland and Germany, briefly

Because of the way we arranged the last couple weeks of our trip, after two nights in Venice we took the train to Zurich, Switzerland for two nights. Two days each in Italy and Switzerland is obviously an absurdly short amount of time. The train ride from Venice to Zurich made this all too clear. It was a gorgeous ride through tiny mountain towns and beautiful countryside. Every bend of the train had me wanting to get off and explore the surrounding villages and mountains. But, our schedule didn't allow us time to do that. I was sad about this, but similar to the cliche that it's better to have loved and lost, I suppose it's better to have two days as opposed to none.

From Zurich

We met up in Zurich with our friend Aaron from Seattle. He's lived in Zurich for about a year now, and definitely has mixed feelings about Zurich and Switzerland in general. It's a very orderly place, but almost too orderly, almost to the point of creepy orderliness (he's not allowed to do laundry on Sunday for example, and he's heard of apartment buildings where you're not allowed to take showers after 10PM because of the noise of the running water). Everything is very regimented; there are rules and regulations for everything and he finds the people to be very stiff and hard to get to know. However, the city itself is beautiful, sitting at the top of Lake Zurich, nestled between mountains and lots and lots of greenery. The city also has wonderful old architecture, including several churches, and the largest clock face in Europe.

We took a day trip with Aaron and his friend Eva to the German town of Constance, about an hour away by train. Contance is popular with vacationing Germans (redundant, I know, as pretty much all Germans are vacationing) and like Zurich, is set on a large lake amidst mountains. Constance is popular with Swiss visitors too as a place to do shopping as availability, selection and costs are better than in Switzerland. While in Constance we climbed to the top of a cathedral for amazing views of the town and surrounding countryside.

From Zurich

Having only spent less than 48 hours in Switzerland (with about eight of those in Germany) we know that we definitely want to come back. We saw loads of people riding bikes, and we would love to come back to do some biking and hiking. We didn't get up into the mountains this trip but it would be really fun to do some hiking and camping on a multi-day backpacking trip through either the Swiss or Italian Alps some other time.

Now we're off to Iceland, the last stop of our trip. Our flight leaves from Frankfurt, Germany so we booked a train from Zurich to Frankfurt where we take a plane to Reykjavik. It was difficult to find a couchsurfing host in Reykjavik, but at the last minute a Polish couple who lives there said they could host us. We have four days in Iceland, and we're not sure what we're going to do there. This Polish couple said they would host us for our first two nights, and after that maybe we'll rent a car (although the prices were ridiculously expensive, so we may nix that plan). Possibly we'll do an organized tour. We found a pretty awesome website that lists so many incredible activities to do in Iceland. I feel like a kid in a candy store looking at the possibilities. We'll post details on what we end up doing after we decide.

Our Ante Pentultimate Destination: Venice

It seems fitting that after beginning our trip in expensive Australia, we're ending it in expensive Europe. We've come full circle budget-wise in our travels. Turkey and Greece were not too bad on our budget, especially since we couchsurfed six times between the two countries. In Venice, we tried to find a couchsurfing host, but with no luck. The pickings were slim (only seven available hosts, and we only contacted one that we thought looked promising); later we found out that there were more hosts in the larger neighboring city Padua. Oh well, next time...

The 31 hour ferry ride from Greece was surprisingly pleasant. We didn't have a cabin, but we staked out an area in one of the lounges where we could unfurl our beach mat and alternately sleep and sit up. We read and played plenty of games. The only complaint about the ride is the high price of coffee: between 2.20 and 3 Euros ($2.70 and $3.70) depending on which part of the ship we bought it from.

We got into Venice in the early afternoon, and I was immediately reminded by how beautiful a city Venice is. This is my second trip to Venice, and I think it's one of the world's prettiest cities. Of course, it's pretty in one particular way: old buildings, old bridges and canals, so if you're looking for variety, Venice isn't the place. We walked around the evening we got there and got some amazing sunset pictures:

From Venice

We found a place to stay by making our way from the ferry jetty to the train station and standing around looking lost. A man approached us asking if we needed a place to stay. Jaimee and I had determined earlier that our budget for a room was around 50 Euros ($62 at $1.23 to the Euro), and it was as if I'd learned nothing from all our visits to countries where bargaining is the norm, because when the man asked us what we were hoping to spend, I blurted out "50 Euros". Would it have hurt to start lower? Anyway, not surprisingly, he had a room for 50 Euros and he sent us with a map to his hotel where we were greeted by his wife.  After a quick confirmation call to her husband on which she screamed at him, mostly in Italian but with the phase "Speedy Gonazalez" thrown in, we were shown to our room. It was a large bright room with a shared bathroom down the hall, but the neighborhood was great and since at this point it had started to rain, we took the room so we wouldn't have to wander around Venice in the rain with our backpacks.

Without our packs, wandering the streets of Venice was all we did. Well, alternating between stopping at cafes for wine or coffee and buying slices of pizza on the street. And gelato, at least twice a day (so many flavors to sample - I definitely recommend the pear!) It's cliche, but getting lost in Venice is part of the plan. There were several times when we'd walk around, somehow ending up repeatedly in the same wrong spot, but we didn't care. Every street in Venice is beautiful, and down each little alley is another small cafe with outside seating. After months of pinching pennies we somewhat spent with abandon (well, for us anyway), but it was totally worth it. Despite the hoards of tourists, including lots of young backpackers and many school groups, the city has plenty of very romantic and quaint spots.

From Venice

We didn't do any of the "touristy" things, apart from the aforementioned walking, as every sight was packed with tourists; there were long lines to get into the Musei di Piazza San Marco, Gallerie dell' Accademia, and the Peggy Guggenheim museum. Plus each museum was between 10 and 12 Euros ($13 and $15) each! That's a pizza dinner for two with beer and then two scoops of gelato! We also didn't take the vapporetti (water buses) because a one-way ticket costs 6.50 Euro ($8) each. That's the price of two glasses of wine. Plus, Venice is pretty compact and perfect for walking. We estimated that we walked an hour for the distance that we would have taken a vapporetto. Wouldn't you walk an hour for two free glasses of wine?

It might seem crazy to pass up such beautiful sights for what is in the long run, small amounts of money. But, museums will always be there, right? And, we needed to save our money for train tickets to our penultimate stop of Zurich, Switzerland. We almost fell over when we were told the price was 179 Euros ($220) for the two of us. Train travel in Europe is not cheap. We left the train station and investigated alternatives. We tried looking up buses (not convenient and not any cheaper) and flying (cheaper, but not to Zurich), so in the end we bought the train tickets. It's a six hour trip, covering a distance of about 550 km (330 miles). In Zurich, we'll stay with our Seattle friend Aaron who works for YouTube (Google) in Zurich. We won't have very long in Switzerland though as we fly out on Sunday to Iceland! We're really cramming a lot into our last week!

Athens and a strike!

We're visiting Greece during an interesting time. They've been hit especially hard as a result of the global financial crisis. The government is essentially bankrupt and almost defaulted on its debt a couple of weeks ago. It got rescued by a loan from the international community (i.e., Germany) and as a condition of the loan the government had to impose a series of "austerity" measures to limit its expenditures. This has resulted in protests by people whose wages or services were cut.

Not that it's the Great Depression or anything even close, but we couchsurfed with a local named Panos in Athens so we got to hear first-hand about some of the cuts. He works for a local university and his salary was recently cut 7% and his father's government pension was also cut (including withholding a lump-sum payment he was owed). Panos is not out rioting in the streets (and his dad was actually on holiday when we visited), but Panos did have some interesting things to say about Greece and the crisis. I won't bore our readers with the details (feel free to ask me about it sometime) but the essence is he thinks the government wastes a lot of money and wishes they'd cut military spending (per capita they spend more than eight times what Germany spends on military spending, he pointed out). In that respect, it was a lot like a conversation I might have in the USA.

Panos was a great tour guide. He took us all around the city, including a nice night out with some of his friends. The Greeks are notorious for their late nights, and on Saturday night with Panos we stayed out until 4AM drinking Ouzo at a tiny street-side cafe. Earlier in the evening, we sat outside an outdoor concert by the band Thievery Corporation, then a Jazz Festival for more outdoor music, all the while surrounded by throngs of happy, partying Greeks. Let's just say if you measured the crisis in terms of coffees consumed or street-side cafe visits, Greece wouldn't be registering a crisis at all.

Although Panos claims it has nothing to do with the crisis (and says it was always this way), we continue to notice massive amounts of graffiti. It's everywhere, and it's definitely the worst we've seen on our trip. I guess every county has its one issue. Australia had flies, India had garbage, Egypt had street touts and Greece has graffiti.

From Athens

We had a whirlwind tour with Panos in Athens, including Sunday spent at a beach in Sounia, south of Athens. We met many of Panos friends, all cosmopolitan young people speaking very good English, including one guy, I kid not, named Adonis. Like I said, if this is a country in crisis, bring it on!

We left Athens this morning for Patra, northwest of Athens in order to catch a ferry to Venice, Italy, our next destination. We were supposed to catch a ferry at midnight, but there was a ferry workers strike so our boat is delayed six hours and won't leave until 6AM. Since we were already planning on hanging around until midnight we figured instead of getting a hotel room we'd just hang out in the train station or something, although now we're starting to maybe regret that decision. Patra is a little run-down and we're not sure what we're going to do for the next four hours before we can check into our boat. We're currently writing this blog post at a little cafe basically waiting until they kick us out.

If all goes well with the ferry, we'll arrive in Venice on Wednesday morning (it's a 31 hour ferry - yes I said 31 hours) where we'll probably spend one or two nights before heading off to Zurich, Switzerland to visit our friend Aaron. Crazy that we'll be back in the USA in a little over a week!

A Cretan Adventure

When we decided to visit Greece, we didn't really know where we'd end up going. With 227 inhabited islands (thank you Wikipedia), plus numerous places to visit on the mainland it was a bit daunting to decide where to go. We chose Rhodes to start because it was close to Turkey, but from there we had many choices. We're definitely glad we added Crete to our itinerary.

Crete is the largest of the Greek islands by both population and area. Most of the people live along the northern coast, and we landed off the ferry in Iraklio, around the center of the north coast. Although a definite stop on the tourist trail, Iraklio had a sort of rundown feel to it. There was graffiti everywhere, and there were many beggars and street kids trying to sell us stuff as we walked around.

From Crete

Now is the part of the blog where we describe things that we didn't go to see; The Archaeological Museum is apparently quite nice, and the Palace of Knossos is the main tourist attraction of Iraklio. Unfortunately we didn't go to either. We did try to go the Battle of Crete Museum, but it was closed. (I read a little about the Battle of Crete, which took place from May 20 to June 1, 1941 when Germany invaded and "conquered" Crete during World War II, and I was hoping for pictures of the famed glider troopers that Germany used in the battle.) There's also the Cretaquarium (a great name for an aquarium, by the way), "the largest aquarium in the Eastern Mediterranean." Which begs the question, does this mean it's large or small? I assume they mean to imply it's large, but really, how many aquariums can there be in the Eastern Mediterranean?

Anyway, after enjoying a few of the numerous street-side cafes in Iraklio (and honing our backgammon skills) we moved on to our couchsurfing hosts of Irene and Arjan in the small village of Koutouloufari, about 15 miles east of Iraklio. Hoping to couchsurf on Crete we had sent a message to the general Crete couchsurfing group. This was a new method for us to find a host. Normally, the way couchsurfing works is that a surfer (one who wants to stay with someone else) does a search in a given area for hosts and then messages them each individually requesting to stay. However, all the people we requested to stay with were unable to host us for one reason or another. So we sent a message to the Crete Couchsurfing Group saying we were on Crete, didn't know where we wanted to go and wondered if anyone wanted to host us.

Luckily, Irene messaged us and said she'd love to host us. It couldn't have turned out better. Irene is from the Netherlands, having moved to Crete only five or six weeks ago. She moved in with her Dutch boyfriend who's summered here for the past 15 summers. They are relatively new to couchsurfing (we were only their second guests) but they were outstanding hosts. We had our own little apartment, on the second floor of an impossibly cute little Greek house. Additionally, Irene is a chef and she cooked us a delicious vegetarian meal the first night we were there. Here's Jaimee relaxing in our little room:

From Crete

Irene's boyfriend Arjan runs a tour business, called Routaki Routes where he provides customized driving routes all over Crete. There's an audio portion where you listen to information at each "stop" of the route. He drives the routes periodically to make sure they're up-to-date and he took us one of the off-road trips in his jeep and it was a blast. We went all over the mountains of Crete, saw many vineyards, orange groves, churches, a huge agave plant, and a giant cave! He wrote the trip up on his blog (even written in English for those of us who don't read Dutch). Here we are in front of one of the churches on the route:

From Crete

We ended up having dinner at this farm/hotel which we never would have found otherwise, and had a wonderful gourmet meze meal (Greek style tapas) of over 10 different dishes.

It was hard to leave Irene and Arjan, but we took a bus across the island to Chania in western Crete. It was there another couchsurfer (Juan, from Spain) agreed to host us. We had contacted him individually from an earlier couchsearch and his "maybe" turned in an "accepted" while we were staying with Irene and Arjan. We wanted to visit western Crete primarily to hike Samaria Gorge, and this turned out to be a highlight, not just of Crete, but of our entire trip. It's listed as being of varying lengths (from 13km to 18km [8 to 11 miles]), depending on where you measure the start and end but it is invariably listed as the "longest gorge walk in Europe". (Similar to the Cretaquarium discussion above, I wondered, how many gorge walks are there in Europe?) Regardless, it was both long and beautiful.

The standard route is to take a bus to the start at the northern end which begins at 1,250 meters (4,100 feet) and walk down through the gorge to the sea. Then catch a ferry to another town where you catch a different bus back to Chania. In all, it was a 13 hour day, but totally worth it. We took some photos during our hike, which you can see at the end of our Crete album but there are some good ones on the Samaria Gorge information page as well.

Now we're off to Athens. We weren't sure if we were going to go to Athens or not, but the only ferries from Chania go to Athens. We are couchsurfing in Athens as well, and we're supposed to meet up with our host for breakfast tomorrow morning. The ferry leaves at 11PM and gets into Athens (Piraeus) around 6AM. We bought "deck" class tickets (no inside cabin) but it's a full moon and we hope (well, I do at least) to pull out our sleeping bags and sleep outside on the deck.

From Rhodes to Crete

Our first stop in Greece was the island of Rhodes, fourth largest of the Greek islands, and only about 11 miles off the coast of Turkey. As we mentioned before we couchsurfed with Savvas in the main town of Rhodes, called imaginatively, Rhodes Town.

Rhodes was quite nice, albeit very touristy. It gets a lot of cruise traffic and the Old Town was swarming with tourists off the cruise ships. It seemed the favorite activity of these cruise ship visitors was to sit in little street cafes drinking gigantic beers. We wondered why, considering isn't drinking what you do all day on a cruise?

Anyway, although we enjoyed walking around Rhodes Town our first full day, we rented a car the next day and did a tour of the island. It took us all day to drive the perimeter of the island, stopping in several towns along the way. Highlights were the town of Lindos, about 25 miles south of Rhodes Town, where a huge Acropolis dominates above a town full of classic white-washed Greek buildings:

From Rhodes

We also enjoyed the 15th century Castle of Monolithos on the other side of the island, perched on top of a large rock outcrop. It was incredibly beautiful.

From Rhodes

From Rhodes

Here's a map of our road trip.


View larger map

From Rhodes we took a 13 hour ferry to Greece's largest island, Crete, where we are now. The ferry stopped at several islands along the way, and we did a Spot check-in at each port. Here's a map of the route:


View larger map

We plan on staying on Crete for about five days or so. We arranged to couchsurf tonight and tomorrow on the eastern side of the island, and we hope to visit the west side before leaving. So far, Crete seems nice and we've seen our first protests; we saw a group of men near the ferry picketing around an open fire. Not sure what their signs said as they were in Greek. We've also heard that there might be a ferry strike coming up. We hope we don't get stuck on the island, but apparently if there is a strike, they'll give two days warning. Here's hoping we don't get stuck in the islands...although I suppose I could think of worse places to be stuck.