A Week Away

Just got back from a week up in northern California. It was beautiful weather along with record breaking highs. About 400 acres of Mt. Diablo caught fire, not due to the heat but to a fallen power line. Anyway, I was less than 15 miles away from it and was able to snap a few pictures when I went to pick my cousin up from soccer practice.


So for the weekend Megan and I headed to the city to visit another cousin and had a blast.

We went to a fun little block party with good food...

visited some neat little shops in the mission district...
Paxton Gate


... where I found a little something for my christmas wish list..


A one of a kind Laurie Brown Peanut necklace. Odd I know but it looked good on.

826 Valencia, Dave Eggers' pirate supply store and tutor center.


...barbecued...

Haha, we didn't BBQ the pig. That was from the block party/food fest
...and bowled.
Soo obviously I'm not that great of a bowler, but can still have a good time!

ARTitecture

Here are several pictures of archways and doors that I took in various places.

This was the courtyard at our school center. It was a nice place to read outdoors

This was the entrance to the top of Lykavittos hill

This was the door to a small basilica at the temple of Artemis

This is a pretty little window in Delphi.

This was a Stoa in the old Agora.

This is one of my favorites, it was on Paros right next to City Hall where we had class everyday.

This is a door in Paros and the purple on top is dried flowers.

This is the entrance to our apartment/hotel area in Paros.

These are just a few shots around Paros.





These are some from the island of Naxos.





These were on Santorini. The first five were all locations in Sisterhood of the traveling pants. The door and alley is the house the girl lived in, the church is the one she sketches, and the dock is where she meets the cute fisherman. What's funny is that all these places were super spread out but in the movie it felt like they were all walking distances. The fishing port itself is about 300 feet BELOW the house! What a fun hike!

Culinary Madness!

After making some delicious garden fresh heirloom tomato salsa I decided to sit down and watch a little television. What do I choose to watch? None other than Emeril Live: "A Taste of Greece". Today's little post could be more appropriately titled: Christy Pre-recorded: "Her Taste of Greece". So let me start out by saying that I was initially a little disappointed with the cuisine. Good food was hard to find. In Athens, as it is a large city, there are TONS of little fast food places with lots of different kinds of sandwiches and meat and cheese pies. But the bread to stuffings/fillings/toppings ratio was about 70:20.... So much bread! Anyway, the longer we were in the city we were able to find some good places and experience some good, greasy, greek cooking. Being on an organized school trip we had lunch just about everyday and this nice little restaurant that had a planned menu for us. Since my camera has an amazing food mode option I decided to be a tourist to the max and take a lot of pictures of my food to enjoy again and again.











This first dish was one of my favorites. It was a mix of fresh vegetables: Zucchini, Aubergine, Tomatoes, Potatoes, and the best sauce with tons of oregano
This next one was very similar to the previous dish, except that instead of zucchini, the squash like substance this time was okra. In greece all the vegetables were gigantic so when I got the plate I ate the okra and due to it's large size thought is was zucchini and then thought hmm this tastes odd. With another bite I thought maybe it was just a different type of squash, a taste I didn't really care for, but to be polite I finished the dish. It wasn't until I had another meal where I was conscious that this squash was okra that I decided that that stuff is terrible!
These stuffed tomatoes and bell peppers were one of my all time favorites. my fall back dish when I just didn't feel like being very adventurous. They sere stuffed with a seasoned rice of lots and lots of spices, and had a good tomato sauce on top. Always served with a side of fries or giant fried potatoes.
At home I eat fish quite regularly and in Athens fish was pretty expensive for this cheap ass college student. When our lunch restaurant had it for a lunch option I was so excited!! Minus the side of carrots and okra this was the best meal I had at.... whatever the name of the restaurant was.

Here is another staple dish in greek cuisine. Chicken Souvlaki. I wish I had taken a picture of the souvlaki from the fast food joints to show you the comparison.... cubes vs. real meat. Souvlaki is the greek term for our shish kabob. Here we have grilled chicken and veggies (1 onion slice and 1 bell pepper slice) and of course a side of fries and rice.

Well those were my food pictures from Athens. As for now I'm going to start making some good ol' sloppy joes for tonight's dinner! You can be expecting another greek food post or two in the future!

Thanks for nothing

So as I mentioned in a pervious post, the day I was scheduled to fly out of Athens there had been a pre-planned air strike. That's the way they do things in Greece. When there is a strike they are scheduled about 2 weeks in advance so everyone knows how to make their travel arrangements and which neighborhoods to avoid. I was there during one, and other than having to take the bs rather than the metro, I would not have known there was a strike. Most local greeks we would speak to told us that it is the American press that really over exaggerates the political activity and calls the strikes riots. Anyways, back to my trip home. Our group hears of a planned air strike so we all call our air lines to confirm.US Airways claims no knowledge of a potential air line hold up so I'm put to ease. We board the ferry and shawn sets the stop watch on his iPod to log the amount of time traveled back to L.A. I arrive at the Athens air port at something like 1 in the morning and have to wait in the airport, not even the terminal, for the US counter to open up at 8 in the morning. Needless to say I didn't sleep a single second on those terrible uncomfortable plastic chairs. We go through security and make it to the gate. 30 minutes pass and we are asked to exit the gate and re-enter security and wait in another gate area until we can go back to ours. In the mean time I finish the only book I had with me and now have to deal with boredom. When we finally board the plane an announcement on the speaker says we will be hanging out on the tarmac for about an hour due to the planned air strike. The pilot told us that Athens has already had 3 previous air strikes and the Government finally put their foot down and said these air strikes are illegal, so in the airports' retaliation, air traffic control decided to delay every single flight. We finally take off and I'm ready to fall asleep and wake up in America. I take two Ambien and say good night. When I wake up there is another announcement from the pilot saying that there is a violent thunder storm in Philly and we don't have enough gas to circle around and wait for it to blow out so we make a "quick" landing in Albany to refuel. At first this reroute wasn't too bad because it meant that my layover to L.A. wouldn't be as long. Well more time went by and we had to wait for some mechanic to come sign us off before we could leave, but being that it was Sunday we had to wait long over an hour for him to arrive. That meant more bad news. By the time we landed in Philly I missed my connecting flight and had to stay overnight in some ranky dank Ramada Inn.I was suppose to meet my family in L.A. and get on a plane with them to Maui but of course that didn't work out because US Airways doesn't "fly to very many major U.S. airports"....? Are you serious? Isn't that what your company name implies? Well when we landed in L.A. the next day Shawn pulled out his iPod to reveal how much time had spend since our departure from beautiful Paros.... 48 hours!! And I still had another 15 before being reunited with my family in the tropical paradise. Which it truly was.

That first picture was a sunset from Mikonos and the second was a sun set in Maui.

Creeper

To begin the retelling of my adventures in the birthplace of western civ, I'll begin with admitting that I am 100% a total creep. I took many many pictures as it kept my occupied as I wondered around the ancient cities. This first stalker photo I took was at a church on All Saints Day. After a long night at club "Tub E" in Gazi (gay dist. of Athens), we had a field trip planned for the morning to tour the Agora and visit the church on the grounds during the Saints Day celebrations.Over heated, slightly dehydrated and a little impatient, I waited for the rest of the group to gather to move on to other various locations in the agora (picture to the right). I had a seat with two other girls on the trip to relax while we waited to continue with our tour. In the mean time, an elderly lady was at the church with her granddaughter and was preparing a vigil. The little girl with her was possibly the cutest thing in all of Athens and I just had to take a picture of her perfect curls that I was so envious of. I captured a surprisingly good picture of her with only one shot and to top of my own satisfaction with the picture I said aloud: "Oh yea. That's a good one." in a somewhat seductive tone. Immediately after the remark I realized the girls sitting next me didn't quite have the same sense of humor as me and my friends at home.
Centered between them, they both turned to look at me and accompanied by a laughing deliriousness onset by the glaring sun, told me how creepy I was. Feeling no need to defend my self I agreed to just how creepy it was. HOWEVER I think they too would have found this picture to be, indeed, a good one.

Home Sweet Home

So I arrived home last night at 1:45 in the morning. A long exhausting trip on my way home from Greece. I can't wait to share all my pictures. Okay maybe not all since there are over 600! Once I'm unpacked and back from an express trip to LA tonight I'll give all my faithfully dedicated readers a post a day.