5 posts tagged “greece”

Ok, I know it's a few days late, but apparently I've been really bad at blogging lately! Here's the 2008 recap:

January

• January 1st: Shadow breaks my nose. Happy New Years!
• January 13th: I get smacked in the nose again at a CERT drill and realize that my nose really is broken.
• January 17th: I started EMT school - so exciting!

February

• February 28th: My first of many encounters with the neighborhood turkies.

March

• March 8th: Houseboat weekend with Brigitte and Amber!
• March 15th: Mather Air Show Day One: lots of patients to practice on!
• March 16th: Mather Air Show Day Two: more patients!
• March 26th: My hospital rotation - a life changing experience!

April

• April 18th: Rivercats baseball game with Dad, Brigitte and Amber
• April 19-20th: CERT Mobex - disaster drill in Clovis

May

• May 10th: Kati graduates from UGA - Mom, Dad and I flew back for a fantastic weekend in Georgia!
• May 13th: NREMT exam - I passed and am officially an EMT!
• May 24th: EMT party - absolutely hilarious - everyone came dressed as some sort of victim... it was great!

June

• June 10th: Metro's CERT team is called up to help out with the local grass fires
• June 21st: Saved my first patient at a CERT event

July

• July 14th: Visited my customer in Houston. Hot and sticky. Ate more steak than a girl should!
• July 20th: Kati moves home from Georgia!

August

• August 8th: Joanna and Chris come to visit!
• The rest of August - Kati and I go to Germany, France, Italy and Greece... it's the trip of a lifetime!

September

• September 14th: Met Mike! :)
• September 24th: Had a close encounter with a tomato hornworm. Had to call Julie in for backup.
• September 26th: Went to the Neil Diamond concert with Kati!

October

• October 9th: Went to the New Kids On The Block concert with Julie, Mindy, Amanda and Chris.
• October 16th: Selected for the Sarah Weeden jury - little did I know it would last two months!
• October 31st: Halloween party!

November

• November 1st: Went to the Madonna concert with Adam and Eva!
• November 4th: Barak Obama is elected president
• November 26th: Thanksgiving vacation at Lake Almanor
• November 15th: Second Annual Friends Thanksgiving!

December

• December 11th: Sarah Weeden trial ends
• December 30th: Kings game with Mike
• December 31st: Mike's New Years Eve Party - LOTS of pig!

All in all, I'd say it was a fantastic year! Who can complain?!

Hope everyone had a wonderful New Year! Mike's party was a blast - they roasted 120 pounds of pig! It took four of them just a few minutes to cut it all up (lots of practice apparently!). Here's a picture of the pig on the spit:

It was insanely delicious! The party was a blast!

As you probably know, today is my birthday. It's been fantastic... it's 2:30pm and I'm still in my jammies! I've watched a bunch of episodes of "ER" (thanks Mike!) and some "Friends" reruns. It's been wonderfully relaxing!

I won some really cool tickets at work... last night Kati and I went to see Neil Diamond. We had such a blast... that man is still 100% selling out arenas! He sang all of his classics (shoot, he sang "Sweet Caroline" TWICE!) plus some new stuff off of his lastest CD. What a cool prize to win for dressing up!

I finally got around to uploading all of my Europe videos... enjoy!

These first two are a band that was playing in the metro (subway) in France... they were amazing! In fact, every metro all over Europe had these incredibly talented musicians!

 

Next is a little safety video that Kati and I were inspired to make on the plane from France to Italy. You see, they started in on the whole water landing thing, however, Kati and I realized that we weren't really flying over any large body of water:

The next is our Eiffel Tower video. Sorry it's sort of sideways, but work with me. We discovered that when you ask for water in most of Europe, "with gas" means sparkling and "without gas" means plain old tap water. For some reason this struck us as hilarious (I swear we're both grown adults). Thus, I present to you, the Eiffel Tower - with gas (get it... sparkles?):

Finally, our Greek video. Needless to say, we were just goofy at this point:

On that note, I'm off to bed!

I know, it's taken forever to get to this. Jet lag killed me. Then I caught the "plane cold" which just today turned into a sinus infection. Fun times.

 

That said, without further ado, here is my review of the fabulous food Kati and I scarfed in Europe! Click on the names below to see pictures of each dish. 

 

Germany

There was pretty much nothing that I didn't love in Germany. Of course, I grew up on it, so how could I go wrong? Some of my favorite dishes:

Schnitzel (pounded veal that is breaded, fried and you squeeze lemon on)

Kaesspazten (a doughy noodle that is covered in cheese and onions)

Apfelstrudel (a delicious dessert that is an apple filled pastrey)

Rouladen (beef wrapped around pickles)

Pretzels (just like Oma used to make them - way better than Auntie Annie's!)

And, of course, there was beer. It was delicious. Never as cold as we tend to drink it here in the US, which I actually like better. My favorite beer was the last night... I had a delicious hefewieizen that was to die for. Kati fell in love with what they call the "Radler" beer. Basically, it's beer that's flavored with Zitronenlimonade, or lemon lime soda. If you're not a mjor beer fan, it's a good way to go.

 

France

Crepes (they come in a wide range of flavors... I loved the ones with the dark chocolate in them)

Chocolate Croissants (these were awesome in France... I ate more than one every day!)

Roasted Chicken (this seemed to be a big French thing... we had a lot of chicken)

French Champagne (we had this at the mMoulin Rouge. DELICIOUS!)

Baguettes (I have never tasted French bread this delicious before)

Apple Beignets (these had an apple filled center that was like a pureed apple sauce)

We also had some fantastic wine while we were in France... in Saint Emilion I had a glass of merlot at this little sidewalk cafe... it didn't taste like alcohol at all!

 

Italy

Spaghetti (I discovered that tomato sauce in Italy tastes much better... it's much less sweet and more like real tomatoes)

Canolli (I had one of these as soon as we got off the plane in Italy... it was to die for!)

Gelato (I fell in love with the chocolate)

The first day that we were there Kati and I shared this amazing salami sandwich... rather than having mustard and mayo, they used this spiced, olive oiled bread... it was so flavorful! We also had this wonderful, but simple, pasta dish on the ferry. It was linguine pasta, with bell peppers, all with a little bit of olive oil. Simple yet incredible delicious - one of the best pasta dishes we had!

 

Greece

Greek salad (I'm not a huge fan, but this was delicious. I even ate the feta cheese!)

Kati had this fantastic pastry (that I can't remember the name of) which had a creamy custardy center with a phyllo dough outside. Sometimes it was even vanilla cream. Yum! We weren't there very long and were still craving pasta, so we ended up eating spaghetti while we were there (I know...). It was really good!

 

Diet Coke is also different in Europe. Besides the fact that they never serve it with ice (we had an Italian waitress tell us it was because Italian women teach their sons that it will hurt their tummy), it had a different taste. Less Splenda and more natural sweet. I sort of liked it! We also had a really hard time getting water that wasn't carbonated (or "with gas" as they said). I felt like I was ordering toilet water when I asked for tap water!

Well, that's it for the review. Enjoy!

Yeah, I have no idea how to spell out hello in Greece. I'm sure it has like five thousand letters, of which 4,999 are consonants. So hello.

Day 13: On The Way To Greece (somewhere between Italy and Greece)

So we took the early morning bus to the metro to the train to the ferry (yeah, talk about a long day...) I swear, there is no form of public transportation that we haven't taken on this trip. We're officially metro gurus and have pretty much mastered the bus system as well. We're staying away from taxis because we got ripped off in France, but other than that, the experience has been great! The ferry ride was pretty cool - we were on it for just under 24 hours, so we got a room... I'm thinking ferry like the little boat that takes you out to the Statue of Liberty (speaking of which, did you know she's in France too? I got really mad and then Kati reminded me that they gave her to us...) no, this was like a cruise ship. We were like two little kids... there were casinos, a pool, shops, movies and a nice lounge. It was such a blast!

Day 14: Still on the Way To Greece (somewhere in the middle of the Aegean Sea)

After the ferry got us to the main island in Greece, we hopped on a bus to take us across to the other port and then on another 5 hour ferry to head out to Naxos... we spent most of the trip choking on cigarette smoke in the "first class" cabin. Apparently all of Europe hasn't gotten the memo that smoking kills... everyone does it here! The seas were a lot rougher on this trip... when you walked it was like being super tipsy. The good news is that I did not get seasick. I was worried because I had gotten sick before when I was little and didn't think that either the 24 hour ferry or the 5 hour would be good times to pay homage to the porcelin gods, but thankfully my stomach felt fine. We spent about four of those five hours watching Baywatch and Saved By the Bell reruns. We arrived in Naxos at 11pm! Thankfully, our hotel picked us up!

Day 15: On the Beach! (Naxos, Greece)

Today we went to this great little cafe and had the most delicious breakfast... fruit, bread, hot chocolate and fresh squeezed orange juice. I haven't had fruit that fresh and juicy in a really long time! We just walked around the little town here to do a little shopping and are planning on eating lunch soon. After that we're heading out to the beach and then back to the hotel for a little nap... my kind of day!

I probably won't blog again until I get home... after today we're spending one more day in Naxos (to chill on the beach), one day in Athens (sightseeing more ruins) and one evening in Munich with our cousin Bernd... then it's time for home! It's been a fantastic three weeks!

Stay tuned for pictures when we get home!

I'm ridiculously excited. Kati and I are planning a backpacking trip through Europe. We've been emailing, calling, etc back and forth for the last week making all sorts of exciting plans. We've got it narrowed down to four countries: France, Germany, Italy and Greece. Tonight we're working on swapping air miles to make sure that we can both get over there for free. We'll see if it all works out!

 

Europe, here we come!