Sunday, April 15, 2007

Greece. Not a bad place at all.

Well we're back from Greece. It was a lovely place to be I must say. The weather was outstanding the whole time we were there. It was bright and sunny with not a cloud in the sky.

Our hotel was great. It was convereted from some old building that was there in there at some point in the 1990's and it was really unique and charming. It was amazing to lie in bed and stare at these stone walls and think: "Someone was livng here 1000 years ago."

We stayed in the the old town of Rhodes which, I didn't quite realize going in, is actually a 100% old medevil town. I was a bit disconcerted at first as it's full of crumbling buildings and parts of it are bascially old ruins. It began to grow on me as the days went by though and by the time I left it I was in love with it. It's got it's tourist trappy type of places but they're a million percent better than the New Town which is just outside the city walls. The New Town is over run with Versace, Dolce and Gabbana, Hugo Boss, endless crappy restaurants, Subway (!), and hotels. Basically it's a name brand shopping mall where as in the Old Town there are shops that sell that stuff but it's all small businesses. The Old Town is full of charming places to discover too. It's not very big and maps of the place seem to have been made up by a blind man who has never been there so I thought it was bigger than it was the first few days as I wandered randomly through it.

We found some AMAZING food there. The first night we we went to a restaurant that was good but was, as we found out later, way over priced. We had a conversation with a retired Scottish couple who, it turned out, were staying at our hotel. We were into our appetizer at another restaurant and I saw them out front looking at the menu. I went out to get them just as they were walking away and told them this place was great so they came in and sat by us. We had a great time eating and talking to them for about 3 hours after that. Fantastic time. We ended up hooking up with them on the final day and sitting at another cafe for about 3 hours whilst sipping wine. They were really great people.

The best stuff we saw in terms of sites were all in the Castle of the Knights of St. John. The Castle was HUGE. It was extremely well maintained as well. There was also an archeological museum that was a lot bigger and more impressive than I had expected. It was housed in part of the castle that hadn't been fixed up which added to the "old historical" feel of the place.

I tried to see if there was any scuba diving but apparently that doesn't start for a month or so. Ah well, I'll have to fullfill that dream another day.

Babagenouche and I had a great time poking around, eating great food, getting sun and relaxing.
Babagenouche's Aunt and Uncle were super kind and picked us up at the airport late Saturday. We finished off my vacation (Babagen has another week damn her!) with a lovely breakfast and a wonderful Sunday lunch with the family.

A great 5 days.

I've posted pics on my flickr account.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Greece is the word.

Well tomorrow Babagenouche and will be off to Greece! I've checked the weather forecast and it's calling for 4 days of temperatures between 14 and 20 degrees Celcius.

We'll be staying in the old town of Rhodes. It's a Unesco heritage site...so...why you can actually stay in hotel there is beyond me but apparently it hasn't changed much in a few thousand years. It looks something like this:



I'm really hoping to get some of this in:

I've never really gone diving before but there's a place you can go diving for 30 Euro's for the day! Whoo hoo!

Anyway, I'm not bringing any school work with me so maybe I can stop worrying about it for 10 seconds.

It should be a great time. We'll be there until Saturday. I'm looking foward to much relaxing, good food, warm weather, a bit of adventure and maybe a night out of dancing! Who knows? Could happen!

I'll post pictures and a report on Sunday.

Monday, April 02, 2007

It's Been Yonks

Well I know I haven't posted much lately but I swear I tried to post on Friday and my browser crashed after I spent hours working on a lengthy and gut bustingly funny post. Alas it has vanished into the digital abyss.

Well, I'm on vacation for the next two weeks for Easter break. I've just been paid - they only pay you once a month here which is causing me great consternation - and I've spent the last few days trying to get a good drink of England. I've had a wonderful time. I spent Friday in an alcohol induced haze as I hit our The Plume of Feathers - my favourite local pub. Saturday I went for breakfast at a lovely cafe we've discovered in Debden then went to see a play called Tom Fool. The play was massively well reviewed and highly disappointing. This is the third such play I've seen that fits this description and I'm starting to wonder what the hell is wrong with English theatre critics. Anyhoo... Sunday Babagenouche and I went to Brick Lane which is much like a larger better version of Kennsington Market. We stopped off at a place called Leytonstone which is the first place I found I really actually liked in the East End of London. Something about it just feels neighbourhoody in a good way. I went to a place called Primark which sells the cheapest clothes in Britain. I managed to buy a pair of jeans and a sweater for 17 pounds.

This all lead to today's trip to Oxford. Now this was awesome! It was Babagenouche's idea and, as usual, it was a great one.

We went down to get the bus at Victoria station and I was immediately impressed. I'd been into central London before but I really dug this area. (Have I mentioned I live in nowhere land in the east end?) Anyway we got a seat on the front window at the top of a double decker coach and enjoyed a lovely ride to Oxford. I was absolutely amazed at how amazing and beautiful Oxford is! It's incredible! I've uploaded pictures to my Flickr account so check them out.

We toured around the colleges of Oxford itself and they're absolutely incredible. HUGE! You walk into these gates or door ways off the main street and next thing you know there are big parks and masses of buildings that are somehow hidden within the city itself. Here's me in Magdelene College.
The architecture is incredible and the city is a-hoppin with all kinds of people and energy. We were lucky to have great weather to boot. Mabye this country ain't so bad after all.