Requena - Water and Wine Festival

After a 4 hour bus ride south we arrived in Valencia. It was now time to prepare for our main events of the trip: La Tomatina (the main event) and the Water & Wine Festival (and add-on event that our tour company offered). We arrived in Valencia around 3:30pm and our first event started at 8pm. So after a little last minute shopping it was time to depart by bus for the all night water and wine festival in Requena, just outside of Valencia, to celebrate the town's grape harvest.

This is a local festival that our tour company has sole access to which basically means our group would be the only foreigners at the festival. The locals keep the itinerary fairly hush hush so we did not know exactly what was going to happen. The tour guides said they usually have all of the local bands play while leading everyone through streets of the small town, with trucks providing free red wine all along the route (BYOV - bring your own vessel - aka cup) and some of the locals stay up in their balconies and dump water on the passers-by. To elicit a water dumping or hose down you are supposed to stand under their balcony and chant "agua, agua, agua!" Hence, the reason its called the water and wine festival.

When we arrived we made our way up through the old town of Requena where what appeared to be the town mayor was blessing the wine harvest after a series of fireworks. Then we heard the bands playing some where in the distance. Fortunately, we were hanging our with one of the many tour guides and she said they may be at the bull ring. Bull ring? Yes, the town had its own bull ring - it looks like a mini coliseum.

The four of us (Steph, tour guide girl, an Aussie guy and I) ran up to the entrance to try and get in but noticed everybody had tickets to get in. Since it was so hectic and so many people going in all directions the tickets didn't account for much because we were able to sneak in. Yep, sneak in! Here's how:

Standing there wishing we could get in, our Aussie friend said, "I'm going in". He had found a corner of the yellow dollar-bill-sized tickets on the ground. He got in line, held up the ticket corner and just walked in with the crowd of locals entering (it was quite obvious that only locals had tickets to the event. We thought he only got in because he had dark hair...a tall blond Aussie might have stuck out a bit more! ha!). After the shock factor of him just waltzing in wore off, we decided we had to try and get in as well. The tour guide girl took a piece of paper and tore it in to 3 ticket-sized pieces. We ran to another entrance and while the people taking tickets were distracted tearing tickets of others, we just jumped right thru the barrier. Nice moves, huh?

Since it was really full we had a bit of trouble finding seats but eventually wedged our way in. At this point the crowd was already rocking, singing and dancing to the bands (brass and percussion) who are all wearing different color shirts like teams, spread throughout the ring. They took turns playing different songs as the music blared around the ring and you couldn't help but join in, especially on the O'le...O'le O'le O'le...Ole chants! The atmosphere was amazing as everyone eagerly awaited the featured attractions, the bulls.

Now, before I go to much further let me clarify that we knew in advance this was going to be a "fake bullfight". Or "play bulls" as the tour guide said. No bulls would be injured in this event, but people might and funny enough, they were (I thought it was funny, but Steph did not). Basically they bring a bull out and young men run around the ring baiting the bull who chases them as they then hurdle the side wall to get away. "Play bulls" are small bulls. They looked big to us but the guide insisted they were maybe a third of the size of a full-sized bull fight bull. And mind you, the guys out in the ring are amateurs so small bulls is the only way to go. Here is a short video of one bull running around the ring.

By our count there were around 10 bulls on display, one at a time. There were a few close calls with huge "oohs" and "ahhs" when a guy would narrowly avoid being taken out. It all went fairly smooth with only a couple of guys getting hit by the bulls but quickly jumping up with huge cheers. That is until Bull #8 when this poor guy was a little too daring and got absolutely hammered by the bull. He got hit, flipped, knocked down, and trampled on. OUCH! You could tell he was passed out when the bull was done by the way his limbs just flopped like a doll. Luckily all his fellow dare devils came to his rescue to distract the bull as they drug him out of the ring and over the wall while he was still unconscious.

Don't get too worried. There wasn't any blood and he didn't get gorged but I highly doubt he made it without at least a couple broken bones. Strangely, the crowd watched as he disappeared within the arena walls, then the bands took up playing again and out came the next bull. I guess the crowd really understands that that's the name of the game.

There was also one really good guy who a couple times was able to wait for the bull to charge him, then put his hand on the bulls head as it lowered to buck him and then jumped over the bull - NICE! Too bad I wore flip flops. I could have hurdled a bull!

After 10 exciting bulls, the show was over. Everybody exited onto the streets where the bands were all playing next to a tanker truck full of red wine hosing people down. I'm talking firefighter water hose amounts of wine flooding the crowd. It was quite a site and great way to start the parade! (And what a waste!) Check out this quick video.

What's interesting is that the entire town takes part in this event. The younger generation does the walking and most of the wine drinking while the older generation watches in laughter and dumps water from their balconies after the agua chants. Even old gray-haired ladies had their hoses or buckets out dousing the people below with water. One particular sweet little old lady was out on her balcony looking down at everyone with a "you all are nuts" kind of look, then stepped inside her dark apartment only to emerge with a big bucket of water! I bet she paraded in her glory days! You could tell she was having fun!

Coming up on 1:00am the parade started moving through the streets, music blaring and everybody singing and dancing. To top it all off free red wine was given out through the entire parade route. There would be a big yellow truck with a huge container of wine with people taking cups and filling them up for you.

At one point I ended up getting my shirt ripped into a toga as a couple of locals, whose shirts were also ripped as this is somewhat part of the tradition, looked me up and down motioning to my shirt then they all grabbed hold and ripped it for me.

After parading down many streets amongst multiple water dumps and hoses, it was now 3:30am, time to catch the bus back to Valencia for tomorrow's show, La Tomatina. Back to the hotel by 4:30am and on the bus to La Tomatina by 7:30am. Sleep? Who needs sleep? Steph's only concern was that she was going to stain the hotel pillows with her wine-dampened hair...and when you are about to participate in a huge food fight within mere hours, a shower doesn't get put high on the priority list! :)

Apologies for the poor photos in advance.

Photos of the water and wine festival

Barcelona Part 2 - Gaudi Day

We woke up early to make it to La Segrada Familia (pictured) - a cathedral Gaudi started in 1884. If you are not familiar with Gaudi's style the easiest way to put an image in your head is that his buildings often look like he was living in the 1970's and he was high on something.

His style was modern beyond even today's standards - often colorful and fairy tale like. La Segrada is no exception. It is a monumental church that will eventually hold 13,000 people and is planned for completion around 2026. From a distance it looks like a sand drip castle, but once you get closer you see the immense and surprising detail of amazing sculptures and colorful fruit bunches at the tops of the spires that make it looks almost like Candyland. And the inside is no different - intensely colorful stained glass windows and windows in shapes you have never seen on a building. Columns that defy normality and look like stone trees supporting the vast space.

Just as we were about to label Gaudi a true crazy, we came upon the part of the tour that showed how all of his unique and modern shapes were all derived from nature....tree trunks, honeycomb, leaves...and all the science that goes with it. He conjured up architectural masterpieces from natures' inspiration - and it is all truly magnificent. We vote this one of the most amazing structures we have ever seen in our life and plan to make a trip back in the 2020's to see it in it's completed glory.

After seeing Gaudi's masterpiece we moved on to go see Park Guell (designed by Gaudi) and two of his more popular apartment buildings La Pedrera and Casa Batllo. Park Guell was truly Candyland. It was originally meant to be an exclusive area for upscale homes but that plan never caught on - but Gaudi had already created a magnificent welcoming to the area in the form of two unique houses flanking the metal entrance gates, with dream-like stairs leading to a flat area with a wave shaped bench stretching the whole edge of the platform made from a beautiful mosaic of colorful tile. Only pictures can do it justice.

We took a break at the park and enjoyed a picnic of bread, jamon, cheese and fruit that we picked up from the market that morning.

After taking in Candyland, we moved on to see his famous apartment buildings including the house of bones....the strange thing is that they were built so long ago and they stick out like sore thumbs in the city blocks - but they are unique. Again, only pictures can do them justice. We only admired these buildings from the outside although we hear the insides are just as unique. After a long day of walking, we started heading back towards out hotel.

I mentioned yesterday that we would come back to the city being walkable...well, it is but it's easy to walk too much. Steph's left foot was really starting to hurt - she limped out of bed on Day 2 and by end of Day 2 was limping nearly every step. We are going to call it a muscle strain because by the end of Tomatina (in a couple days, her foot was good and swollen...and this blog was written by Steph flat on her back in bed with her foot propped up!)

Although we had an early bus the next morning to Valencia, we attempted to go out. There is an infamous bar called Kentucky that we went searching for. Unfortunately, we found it with a sign saying they were on holiday til mid September. We tried. On to Valencia......!

I posted a few of our Barcelona photos with more to come when we get back.

Barcelona Part 1

We had a bit of a confusing time figuring out Barcelona. When we scheduled the trip we intentionally took a late Saturday flight after reading about how the Barcelona evening doesn't start until late. Dinner not before 9pm with activities going well into the morning hours.

Our flight arrived at 9:30pm so after getting to the hotel to check in that put us out and about around 11:30pm looking for dinner. We walked and walked but couldn't find anybody eating dinner other than the tourists at the overpriced tapas restaurants. We DID find a whole bunch of restaurants but no one was eating! Now tired, hungry and frustrated, we finally stumbled on a great little Italian place (we're in Spain, we know) which made seriously good brick oven pizza. After having my share of pizzas in Italy I can say it was mighty good.

The next morning we decided to tour around the Gothic area and hit the Picasso museum. Barcelona is a rather large city but if you are only concentrating on pieces of it at a time, it is very walkable...or so we thought (more on that later). The Gothic area was very neat - old buildings, art markets, narrow cobbled streets where we found the museum. It was started during Picasso's lifetime by a good friend who donated his own private collection of Picasso's works; it was further enhanced when the artist himself donated thousands more pieces from his own collection. (Thousands includes many sketches, drawings and unfinished pieces as well). It was fascinating to watch the progression of his work - from very naturalistic to his ultimate cubism. His copy of Velázquez's Las Meninas was intriguing. Taking such a famous, naturalistic painting and turning it in to another fascinating, but completely different version of itself.

The museum had at least a half dozen versions of his "copy" and many of his sketches and practice paintings - you could see the progression of the different elements of the picture come together in what was the "final" picture - the largest one. Although that picture was amazing, we ended up leaving the gift shop with a copy of one of his Los Pichones paintings - pigeons! Yeah, we loathe pigeons - they are dirty, annoying little birds but they are every where we go in Europe so in a way they are a true travel mascot and his paintings made us realize we do have a bit of a soft spot for them.

The rest of the afternoon we ended up strolling the streets of Barcelona eventually winding our way down to the port and beach where we ran across the Barcelona Head in the picture above. Funny enough it was created by American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein.

Finding dinner the second time around was much easier - we realized that although dinner doesn't start til 9:30ish, everyone does eat then and eats quickly - most food was out of site by 11pm. We found a great outdoor modern tapas bar - our food came out and it looked nothing like we thought we ordered (steak for Steph and fish for Josh). Steph's was paper thin slices of a tartar looking steak with a pile of rocket and cheese shavings in the center. Josh's fish came out in a cylinder shaped stack on his plate (not the fillet we were expecting). But the steak was tasty with a great balsamic drizzle and the fish was in the cylinder somewhere intermingled with pastry and a creamy sauce also accompanied by a balsamic drizzle. All that with a lightly chilled local Spanish Rioja - what a meal!

We called it a night after dinner as we were looking forward to an early start the next day to see La Sagrada Familia - Gaudi's greatest vision (I say vision as it was, and still is, a long way from being completed...more on that later).

Redbull and Shakespeare

Things have been rockin' here in London this weekend.

Steph kicked things off Friday night at a Kyle Minogue concert at the O2 dome which she said was fun.

Saturday was the last of the Shakespeare summer performances at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park so at the last minute we hopped on the train and rushed over to try and get tickets. Luckily we were able to score two grass bank seats for Romeo and Juliet.

It was a nice evening weather wise and we enjoyed the performance. Sorry but I'm not a performing arts critique so I'm not going to rate the show. Who knew they both died at the end, that's no fun...

Ha ha, just kidding, I did learn a little Shakespeare in high school.

Anyway, we are going to have to explore Regent's Park a bit more because what little we saw made it look like a great space to hang out in.

Finally, to round out the weekend we had passes to the RedBull Air Race in London today. What a show! I don't know how the pilots do what they do, flying that fast, that low to the water with such G force. For those who haven't seen this Air Race here is a quick clip. Sorry for the lame music. Just mute the sound when it starts.

The weather wasn't good but the racing was very good! And to top if off an American pilot won the race, nice one!

Oh, if your curious about the title a popular night out drink is Redbull and Vodka.

I guess its back to work tomorrow...

Finally a little dose of summer

As some of you know I've been moaning about not having much summer weather (hot weather). Well I think summer has finally started, even if its just short lived because the last few days have been fairly warm - in the mid-eighties. This is a heat wave in British terms. They have even been calling it an Indian Summer because its warm and dry. Not sure about that one but hey we'll go with it...

Luckily there was a festival, Sundae on the Common '08, sponsored by Ben & Jerry's (yep the famous one from Vermont) on Clapham Common which is only a few minute walk from the flat. A bit of rock music and all the free ice cream Steph could handle. From Chunky Monkey to Bohemian Raspberry to Cookie Dough we tried our best to sample them all but you can only eat so much ice cream.

We went with our New Zealand friend and his British girlfriend who are moving back to New Zealand in September. We had a great day on the common enjoying the music, soaking up the sun, eating the ice cream and people watching. One of the best parts was only being 10mins from home instead of the usual long commute home after a festival.

In other news its fairly slow from here until we head to Spain at the end of August. Steph better watch out because I see loads of flying tomatoes in our future.

Feedback Needed on Travel Idea

Ok travel buffs. We just found the ultimate travel itinerary. 18 weeks, 13 countries from London to New York by bus (the long way 'round).

Oz Bus - London to New York

Also intriguing is the London to Sydney trip which probably fits us best even though its only a mere 13 weeks.

So now we need some feedback. We think this would be incredible but we want to hear feedback from others.

Is anybody interested besides us?

Our thoughts.

First, 18 weeks on a bus sounds tough. Second, 18 weeks off work, also tough. But that would cover your travel desires for a good few years...and there was mention of camping so apparently we'd not be in the bus all-day-every-day. I guess situations like these define "leaves of absence". (Lots of people in Europe take extended leaves from work to travel, do charity work, or what ever their hearts desire. I think as Americans we get set on the American-dream-track and there's no chance/thought of derailing for most of us. After a monumental, fulfilling and exciting trip like this, some of us might even be ready to settle down.... ;)

Cruise Photos

I have uploaded all of the cruise photos.

Cruise Photo Collection

There are quite a few so you may be interested in the Flickr slide show option. Once you choose a set to view you can can hit the slide show link for easy viewing.

We're off to central London for some fish and chips then to do some last day sightseeing.

It's a shame its almost over...

Recovering back in London

We are back in London after our fantastic trip. The flight home was delayed so we got home later than expected but we made it. After the shipped kicked us off bright and early so we spent the whole day in Venice flying out late last night. We did some more sight seeing, shopping and had some good Italian pizza and gelato.

Today we are resting up because it was a such long day yesterday. Garland and I just got back with some Indian take away for a late lunch. He actually had Indian food for lunch and liked it. Crazy I know.

We have a couple more days with Garland and are going to do a bit more exploring in London. If the weather is nice tomorrow we may try to get to Stonehenge.

I'm working on the pictures and should get them posted shortly.

Garland says, "Tell everybody hi for me. Its been so much fun and so so exciting. Tell them I have a lot of stories and photos to show off and I will see everybody soon. oh yeah, Hi Mom and Dad!"

Bomba

Our last port of call was Split, Croatia. Now, if you are anything like any of us - you probably know very little about Croatia. In talking to a few others it was supposed to be a beautiful country with beaches, mountains, rivers and as always historic towns. Since its fairly new to the tourist scene its still very unspoiled and still very Croatian. After going to a few other historic cities we decided this was the perfect place to get a little outdoor adventure so we scheduled a rafting trip down the Cetina River.

We made our way outside of Split to a quant little town called Omis, where we met up with our rafting guide, Marco. Before we set off we had a quick safety demo and a bit of training on how to paddle as a team. What is bomba you ask? Bomba is a Croatian word; we used as a command in more dangerous rapids. When Marco yelled "Bomba" we had to all get down in the center of the boat putting our paddles on the side of the boat so he could navigate the rapids and interesting situations safely. Bomba! (After a bit of research it appears to mean grenade or bomb so I'm not sure if I'm spelling it right, but you get the idea).

The Cetina (set-ina) river isn't all class 5 or 6 rapids but does have a few bomba rapids. We cruised along the river navigating the rapids, paddling on the calm stretches and stopping occasionally to swim, explore caves and jump off the rocks! Yep, I said jump off the rocks!

About mid way through the trip we tied up on shore where Marco said he had to navigate the next set of rapids without us. We could either take a short walk on the outside of the river or to go through a small cave. Easy right, well if you choose the cave there's no turning back and you must swim through about 10 meters of 5 degree celsius water (40 fahrenheit) and climb up and down numerous rocks and boulders to make your way along the side of the river. Garland wasn't super happy about the near freezing water part but after a little encouragement we said we'd take the cave. It was a GOOD choice.

The entrance to the cave was short climb away and hidden by a ice cold waterfall. We walked through the waterfall and climbed down into the cave where there was a small pool of water. This was the cold swim and there was no turning back. I could tell Garland was nervous and he asked Steph to go first. When she got about half way across she turned and gave us the cue to follow. At this point Garland had nervously climbed up a rock above the water so I went in first. You must know I'm carrying a waterproof jug with our SLR camera and the camcorder so I needed to keep it out of the water as best I could. As I went in Garland and quickly followed. He jumped off the rock straight on my back. As the ice cold water stung my skin he landed on me and dunked me under. Trying to keep the camera jug arm out of the water I was swimming with one arm and a frantic Garland on my back who was doing his best to hang on and stay out of the chilly water. At one point I lost a flip flop and dunked the water proof jug but we made it across all in one piece, albeit cold but adrenaline filled. And we even had dry cameras in the end ;) It was so much fun!

The remainder of the cave exploration was just as exciting keeping the adrenaline going. We climbed from rock to rock, over small gaps and around some crazy ledges all in the very little light. It was a bit scary at times but was an absolute blast.

Exiting the cave we found ourselves at one of the serious rapids that Olympic rafters use to train on. We had an amazing view of Marco as he passed the challenging rapid.

Getting back in the boat we navigated quite a few more rapids until we reached a place called Devil's Pass where we stopped to take a break. This was the deepest part of the river which had a great rock cliff to climb up and jump off. And we did! Too much fun. We have video of Garland and I jumping off. (Steph, having gone cliff jumping in Hawaii was content being the camera woman for this one)

The rafting trip ended with some lazy paddling to the end of the line. We were exhausted! It was time to get back to Split, grab some lunch and find a beach to briefly relax at before boarding the ship for our last night at sea.

I'll get the pictures up as soon as I can...

Mykonos

Ahh - picture perfect Greece - narrow, cobblestone streets just wide enough for walking and the occasional moped shaped by tall white-washed buildings with bright blue shutters and doors - all framed by the majestic turquoise blue Mediterranean ocean. Wow. Enough said.

Well not quite enough - we might as well tell you what we did while on this little piece of paradise. The sites, sounds, and people made for a day to remember in Mykonos. It seemed like every corner we turned there was a friendly face smiling at us or saying hello.

So as you can tell from the picture above Garland and I rented a moped. Steph wanted to do some shopping so we decided it would be fun to get out of the town and cruise the island. What a blast! We speed from one side of the island to the other seeing lots of the beaches and white houses Mykonos is famous for. At one point we ended up at a remote rundown lighthouse on the other side of the island from the cruise ship with what seemed like nobody in sight for miles.

After a few hours on the beach we decided to have a quick and easy gyro for lunch. We ordered two pork and one chicken filled pitas with tomato and seasoned greek yogurt spread all topped with french fries. Yummy. While ordering I was chatting with the lady who was serving us asking about the yogurt and other random questions that I usually have, one being, "how do you stay so skinny working around these amazing gyros"? She said she has a gyro every day but then sticks strictly to salad for dinner. Funny huh. She even gave me the recipe for the yogurt spread. Then, later in the day after our moped ride we were thirsty so we went back to the gryo shop to grab a drink. Well I guess I made a good impression because I ended up leaving her shop with a big bucket full of the yogurt spread. How cool! We brought the bucket to dinner on the ship to share with our table mates then gave the rest to our head waiter.

Here's what Garland had to say about Mykonos.

"Well lord it was hot and we had to take several breaks, but we saw some cool stuff and the people are usually really nice but the people in Mykonos are even more nice. Mykonos has really nice beaches that are warm and the water feels so good. Josh and I swam in the ocean waiting for Steph to finish shopping and we just swam out just sort of treading water and then Steph finally got there. We dried off and got on the boat. I really like Mykonos. Athens had better history but Mykonos was just better overall.

During the trip I met an 11 year old girl who sits at our dinner table from New Jersey and we became friends and started hanging out on the ship together and her mom is really fun as well. We all are having a really good time."

Finally, a bit of mid-cruise analysis from Garland. I'm paraphrasing here...

So far its been a really good experience. I didn't realize there was so much in the world to do and see. Its really cool to meet people from different countries like our table mates and waiters. Adrian, our head waiter, from Romania is so cool. He lets me have two main courses every night for dinner. (Tonight it was 2 sirloin steaks and a dessert). Our other waiter, Jeronimo is from Dominican Republic and is fun.

Up next is Croatia...

It was hot, hot, hot! (in Athens)

"Hot" was the word of the day in Athens - it reached around 95-98 degrees Fahrenheit. We hopped off the boat as soon as it docked and made our way from the port to Athens via the metro. We were already sweating from every pore by the time we got to the train (the cruise ship gave us directions to the train however they failed to mention that it was at least a twenty minute walk. We might have opted for a taxi had we known). Anyway, once in city centre, we came out of the train station and there it was - ancient ruins perched upon a hilltop above us - amazing! We started the tedious climb up the hill, stopping frequently in the shade to guzzle some water and rest. The sweaty climb paid off when we got to enjoy the temple of Athena, the Parthenon and a couple other sites that I'm afraid I'd have to pull out the book to tell you their names. Regardless - the structures are impressive. It is hard to imagine man made those monstrosities over 2000 years ago, some even in BC. Oh, and I got yelled at by an Acropolis staff person. Josh was going to take my pic in front of the Parthenon and I raised both my arms to the sky being excited by the monstrous building behind me....as I did a lady frantically blew a whistle and motioned for me to put my hands down - huh? Fortunately, there were some other tourists right next to us (who took the great photo above) and they said "she is telling you to put your arms down - its considered disrespectful - you're not the first to be whistled at". Well - you learn something new every day...I am going to have to google that to figure out how I was disrespectful of the gods, I assume.

After taking in all the history on the hilltop, we headed down the hill to the Plaka - the shopping area! haha - no, I did not walk away with much - actually only a 1 euro charm of the Greek eye - for good luck! Garland snagged a cool bronze bull. We stopped for lunch at an outdoor restaurant with water misting fans (purposefully chosen). The food was all great - chicken souvlaka for me, lamb souvlaka for G and chicken and pasta for Josh - all uniquely Greek and tasty! We then made our way through the Plaka towards the Temple of Zues - something Josh was looking forward to. It did not disappoint. Although very few columns remain in comparison to its glory days, the remaining dozen columns are quite impressive.

After admiring the temple of Zeus, we headed swiftly back to the boat boarding at 7:10pm (last call being 7:30pm or the boat leaves you!). All in all, it was a hot, hot, hot day accompanied by some of the oldest and most impressive structures we have ever seen. We decided you could have probably cooked an egg on some of that marble (in case you didn't realize - most, if not all, of the structures are made from solid marble - whoa!). Although lunch was good, the heat curbed our appetites and Garland made up for it at dinner putting down a shrimp cocktail, two (I said two!) main courses of pork loin, finished off my linguine marinara and had two scoops of chocolate ice cream and claimed he still wasn't full.

A bit of tidy up before we go. First of all, internet access isn't what we had hoped. Its tough on the ship and at a port of call its difficult because we are so limited on time. Our apologies but we will do the best we can until we get back to the UK. We are blogging almost every day but can't post it straight away which is why you are getting 3 entries at once. Second, to the Draper family all is still well. We are having a fantastic time and are meeting some fantastic people. As we speak Garland's actually at the arcade with a girl his age that sits at our dinner table from New Jersey. And finally we are at port tomorrow and will have a phone if any urgent has come up or if Kathy wants to quickly check in. We should be ashore between midnight to 1pm EST.

Thats all from here. Off to Mykonos...

Cruising to Greece

The cruise has been a big hit so far. Plenty of food, sun and activities to keep us all entertained as Garland writes below.

"Well our cruise is awesome! It has put put golf and a rock wall which I dominated (of course) lol jk. But it has almost everything you name it. Josh and I have been having so much fun so far. And we have been ordering room service at 1 and 2 in the morning. Tomorrow we make it to a port and hit Greece! And now all I can say at 2:17 in the morning is...look out Greece here comes Garland and the Nolands!"

We climbed the rock wall which was a blast!

Today we are in Athens, Greece. It's supposed to be scorching hot but we are going to brave the heat in the name of Social Studies. Even though Garland doesn't totally agree or may not be totally enthused because we are on vacation, but we are going to give him a bit of "Real Social Studies". The living breathing and inspiring sites and sounds of ancient Greece. I know I'm excited.

Before I go let me give a quick parent disclaimer. The trip is going smooth and we are keeping Garland out of trouble ;). We have loads of photos and video to show you. He's having fun, loving the unlimited ice cream (only after solid meal of course) and totally enjoying meeting so many people from other countries and cultures. Tonight we took in a musical show that was a musical covering movies over the years before a midnight swim. Try not to worry, all is well from Europe.

Andio (goodbye in Greek)...

Starting in Venice, Italy

After arriving in Venice I must say I miss the summer heat. Being in London now for our second summer it just doesn't get and stay warm like it does in KY. It's nice to get a dose of it even if just for a few days. We had a fairly easy trip into the city but had a bit of trouble finding our hotel. Even the second time around all the streets look the same and are just not labeled the same on our maps...gees. We had a mid-night dinner then wondered around St. Marks Square giving Garland his first taste of Gelato. Anybody think he liked it? Walking around the square and around the canals was so peaceful and so Venice. Amazing!

The next morning we toured a bit more of Venice taking Garland to see the Rialto bridge, the markets, and all the shops. One of the big hit's was the fish market and all of the different types of fish.

Here's what Garland wrote about his first of two parts in Venice.

"Well, we started to pack for Venice again and boy we packed more than we realized, which we learned after we got lost after and had to walk for 2 hours. We had a normal flight about two hours and we flew right on the side of Venice and it was amazing...but when we got there it was nice and warm. We took a bus to the outside of Venice and then took a water taxi into the city,which took about 30-45 minutes. Then we started to get lost and boy it sucked. We would think we were going the right way but we would get so far only to have to turn right around. The only reason we got lost was because the narrow streets are either horribly marked or not marked at all. But eventually we got to our hotel. Then we went out to eat and after Steph decided to show me gelato! I loved it! it's better than ice cream. The guy who we got them from gave us a discount so that all 3 of us could get one because he couldn't give change for our big money. We all ate our gelato out in ST. Mark's Square and Steph named the water on in the square pigey water because all of the pigeons there poo and even die in that nasty water lol. Then we all went back to our room and went to sleep. The next morning we all got up and went out to explore some more of Venice it was long but fun. At the end of the day we hopped on another water taxi and then we went down and got on our cruise!"

Bon Voyage!

Garland has landed

We had an exciting day yesterday because Steph's nephew Garland arrived to start his holiday. He had to fly over by himself and with a little help from the Detla staff he didn't have any trouble. It took a few movies, snacks, and naps but he made it through ok.

Once he landed and dropped his luggage, Steph took him to see a bit of central London including the Eye, Big Ben, the London Zoo and the London Aquarium. The photo was taken in Trafalgar Square outside the National Gallery. In just one day away from KY he's already becoming a transportation expert, navigating planes, trains, the tube and the double decker buses. Finally after a big day we decided to take it easy for dinner having pizza just around the corner from our flat here in Clapham.

As any of our previous visitors know, to ease the effects of jet lag we set a goal of staying up until 10pm the day you arrive and it was no different for Garland. He struggled through dinner but after the pizza he went over and beyond staying up until midnight. What a trooper! Although I think he's paying for it this morning as he's a complete zombie ;)

I posted a few of the photos from day 1 and we will continue to post updates throughout his trip so keep an eye out. Today we head to Venice to catch our cruise to Greece and Croatia.

One last note. Garland says to tell everybody he is doing great and having fun so far. To his mum and dad he says, "don't worry, I'm ok".

The President's Real Arrival

I need to to clarify on our last post as it wasn't totally accurate.

What we saw fly by the window was not President Bush but his arrival convoy that includes a back-up 747, a 757 jet and four helicopters, the presidential limos, his security force and other things that go with him when he travels. I'm not sure why all the fighter jets were in the convoy though...

Anyway, he didn't actually arrive until mid afternoon yesterday where he was quickly off to Windsor castle for tea with the Queen.

Yesterday we kept an eye out for Air Force One but it flew directly over the flat so I could only briefly see the bottom of the plane.