Pictures - Lots of 'Em!
When it rains, it pours. For those of you wanting to catch up on the last six weeks of my life in pictorial form, you are in for a treat tonight! Make yourself a cup of tea first, though. And pace yourself. I've picked through the hundreds and hundreds (and hundreds) of pictures I had to choose from, and there are still LOTS for you to wade through if you so choose.
Click here for pictures from Joints in Motion in Athens.
Click here for pictures from our Athens vacation time.
Click here for pictures from Part One of our cruise:
Mykonos, Greece and Kusadasi & Ephesus, Turkey.
Click here for pictures from Part Two of our cruise:
Patmos, Rhodes, Lindos, Crete & Santorini, Greece.
Click here for pictures from our time in London.
And last but certainly not least... Wedding pictures! Here's
Part One and
Part Two, because I had a really hard time narrowing them down. (Thanks, Kristen, for doing such amazing work! We love them.)
So there you go! Enjoy. I've certainly enjoyed experiencing every moment that is captured here, and I'm so excited to share them with you :)
Labels: Greece, Joints in Motion, London, My Life, Photos, Travel, Wedding
Day Nine
Our last day at sea, and I'm actually okay with that. I wouldn't have wanted it to be any shorter, and we both finally have our sea legs, but it's getting tiring to power-explore all these amazing places with so much gusto, and starting so early in the morning. We just don't want to miss time to see these places - making every moment count.
This morning, we woke up to RAIN - and lots of it - on the island of Crete. We hooked up with Tara from Winnipeg and Diane from Kelowna and hunted down a local cabbie who took us up to the Palace of Knossos, a driving tour of the old city in Heraklion, and 'the two most beautiful Greek Orthodox churches anywhere.' I'm not really any kind of expert on Greek Orthodox churches, but I'd imagine you'd be hard-pressed to find any more spectacular. I'll wait for pictures, because words won't cut it.
I think that what stuck out for me was just people-watching in Heraklion, around the square and in the churches. Few people could pass - on foot, on a bus, driving a car - without making the sign of the cross, and the two churches were full of locals putting their coins in a slot and lighting a candle, or methodically kissing every single image of the saints. It made me think about what my faith means: a personal relationship with my God, a relationship full of freedom and grace. It made me feel so fortunate.
Back on board for lunch. Around 3 pm, we began our approach toward the island of Santorini. I'm not really sure what to say. I've heard from so many people that approaching Santorini by boat is one of those essential life experiences, and now I know why. I was awestruck.
Santorini *was* a circular island until around 1600 BC, when the volcano in the centre of the island erupted violently - causing the centre of the island to literally drop into the sea. What's left is a crescent moon shaped island with deep cliffs where you can see all of the ancient layers of lava and sediment that created this island before the eruption. The villages of Thira and Oia are on the tops of these cliffs and mountains. From a distance, these clusters of whitewashed homes and shops look exactly like snow. In the centre of this moon shape is the volcano, still active - this black island that looks like the moon itself.
The ship docked in this water near the volcano, where we were transferred to the shore by tender boats. As I mentioned earlier, Thira is at the top of the cliffs - nearly 600 very steep steps up on the old cobblestone walking trail. Or a short, picturesque gondola ride. Or an adventurous (slightly smelly) 20-minute donkey ride.
Friends, Lindsay rode a donkey. Up an incredibly steep cliff, at sunset, overlooking the caldera in Santorini. Pictures to follow.
Santorini, for me, was one of those life experiences that scared me. I'm not sure if other people can relate but sometimes in those absolutely perfect moments, I find it a little bit hard to breathe.
Once you identify that moment as one of Those Moments, you are left with a critical choice. You can try to dissect it and find some fault, so that the moments that follow (the rest of your life) won't run the risk of disappointing you. Or you can choose to let go, embrace it fully, and LIVE. I've had a few of these moments over my 26 years, and I'm ashamed to admit that I've chosen the former more often than the latter. I'm getting better. And last night in Santorini, I definitely chose the latter. We walked along the cliffs and stopped at an outdoor cafe with a view of the caldera. It was kind of perfect.
Then, after dark, it was back to the boat for the last time. We met up with the two younger couples we'd been having dinner with, and enjoyed dinner together. Then we packed and got ready to go to London in the morning.
This concludes Phase Two. Four days left in London, then we're home on Tuesday night. I'm so content. What a fantastic adventure :)
Labels: Greece, My Life, The Boy, Travel
Day Eight
Today, we took a half-day tour of Rhodes and Lindos, on the island of Rhodes. It was incredibly interesting. The island has a long history of war and occupation by different countries, and it's only been an official, independent part of Greece since after WW2. During different periods in history, when different people groups lived here, they built their own communities in their own architectural styles - making it the strangest island we've visited so far.
For starters, the city of Rhodes is completely surrounded by an old medieval wall built by The Knights of St. John. The first part of our tour took us to the 'old city' in Rhodes, around the central fortress. Any tour that includes a moat is fine by me. Plus, we got to see catapult balls, which made me happy (not really sure why, it was just cool). The streets were made entirely of black and white pebbles, hand-laid in intricate patterns. It was gorgeous.
From there, we took a bus to the town of Lindos. Along the way, we got a tour of a local family-owned pottery shop where they showed us how they make their famous pottery with local designs. In Lindos, we toured an ancient acropolis...
Crap. Internet time is over. To be continued from London tomorrow night :)
***LATER***
Or from the Athens airport on Friday morning.
So we toured the acropolis in Lindos, which was a freaking long way up, but the view of the beaches and the village below made the journey well worth it. The entire village is a designated historic/archealogical site. Which also meant that our tour bus could not drive us to - or pick us up from - the main village. Our options were as follows: catch a town shuttle bus OR walk 12 minutes pretty much straight uphill. We picked option A, but fate intervened in the form of lots and lots of elderly American tourists who swarmed the bus stop just as the shuttle bus was pulling up. They cut in front of us, bony old elbows out, and Geoff even took a cane to his foot. It was all over so quickly, and before we even knew what had hit us, the bus was full. And so we walked. Sigh.
From there, another 45 bus trip got us back to the town of Rhodes. We found an out-of-the-way family restaurant with an outdoor seating area where we had an amazing lunch - the best gyro I've even consumed, no question. We spent the afternoon just checking out the town, then headed back to the boat (no adventures this time!).
We had dinner with our assigned tablemates again: a couple from Atlanta celebrating their 1st wedding anniversary, a couple from South Dakota celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary, and a couple of Calgary nearing the end of a month-long backpacking adventure. We had such a great time with all of them - incredibly friendly and funny. Every meal we shared with them, we were the last table sitting and chatting while the staff cleaned up around us.
Labels: Greece, My Life, The Boy, Travel
Day Seven (continued)
So the last time I left you, Geoff and I were happily sipping hot chocolate and warming up in an internet cafe in Patmos. There was really not much happening, most of the shops were closing up early (tourist season is pretty much over here), and it was COLD in the wind outside - so we headed back to the boat early.
About an hour and fifteen minutes before 'all aboard' time, we decided to head back out to use an ATM we'd seen about three blocks from the ship. We strolled around the neighbouring streets a little, looking for some cheap bottled water, when we heard the sound of a ship's horn blowing. Strange. We checked our watches, and we still had nearly an hour until we needed to be back on board. Again, the ship's horn blew, and we could hear garbled announcements being made. We weren't really comfortable with any of this (and we'd successfully procured some cash and some water at this point), so we decided to head back. At this point, it's still a full 50 minutes before 'all aboard' time. When we reached the block where our boat was docked, we were able to understand the announcement: it was a 'last call' paging Geoffrey and Lindsay Wright, because the ship was just about to leave port. Um, NOT GOOD. We began scurrying/slash/running toward the boat, and the crew was outside, yelling at us to hurry and run faster. We made it on, and they closed the doors right behind us. Within minutes, we were at sea - a full 45 minutes ahead of schedule.
No one ever really figured out what happened, other than fully panicking the people we knew on the boat! Apparently, Patmos just wasn't that interesting - or else people were cold and hungry - and everyone was back early except for us, and they decided they'd like to leave WAY ahead of schedule. Not cool. But a pretty funny story, now that we're a day or two removed from it :)
Labels: Greece, My Life, The Boy, Travel
Day Seven
Okay, any day that starts with a 5.30 am wakeup call is either incredibly good or incredibly bad. I'm counting this one as good, even though I was muttering some pretty unpleasant words under my breath as I was making myself presentable and dragging myself into the breakfast area. Ugh.
We needed an early start because it's been an incredibly full day... By 7 am, we were off the boat and loaded into buses in Kusadasi, a port city in Turkey. From there, a 15 minute drive took us to the ruins of ancient Ephesus, and I'm still trying to find words to explain what I experienced this morning.
Ephesus was pretty cool. It was a city of 250,000 in its prime, but a disappearing harbour and disease eventually caused it to die out and become covered in eroded dirt and sediment. It was re-discovered almost 140 years ago, and teams of archeologists and historians have been working since then to unearth and reconstruct what they can of the city's remains.
First, it was HUGE. It's a pretty significant city, and I was not expecting it to be that big. We walked for a long time, just exploring all the different sites and buildings - the parliament buildings, the baths, the shops, the library, the brothel, the theatre, the town market square. It was incredible. Their technology and infrastructure (like running water and a sewer system) is almost unbelievable. And all the roads were still largely intact, which made it a really moving experience - just knowing that you were walking the same steps as John and Paul and so many famous people from history. They are working on uncovering the area where they believe Paul used to do most of his preaching, outside the synagoge at the end of the market square we saw. It just kind of blew my mind a little bit. I know my faith is real, but this experience made it real in a different way. And learning from seeing how the Ephesians lived and how their culture worked and what it valued makes Paul's letter to the church of Ephesians so significant to me. I'm still processing.
The bus returned us to Kusadasi, where we were given a tour of a store that sells authentic handmade Turkish rugs, and they showed us how they are made. Sounds a little bit lame, but it was actually really interesting. From there, we had free time to wander through the bazaar area. The bazaar was one of those life experiences that we just exactly like I'd imagined it would be like - big, crazy, pushy, total sensory overload. Does that make sense? It was the same thing when Erin and I spent time in the UK and travelled outside of London to see stone fences surrounding cottages with thatched roofs, and sheep wandering around the countryside - exactly how you imagined rural England would be like. It gives you this funny feeling that, no matter how foreign the experience might be, it's somehow familiar to you.
Then it was back on the boat for lunch with some more Americans, this time an older couple travelling as part of a biblical tour from the southern US, very vocally religious - and kind of amusingly racist. During lunch, we sailed through the Strait of Stamos, a point where you literally see Greece on one side of you and Turkey on the other side, a couple of hundred metres away.
And by 3 pm, we were docked on the island of Patmos. Here, we broke off from the organized groups and figured out for ourselves how to reach the top of the hill, where we toured two monasteries dedicated to the apostle John, who was exiled on Patmos. We also got to step inside the cave where he received the Revelation, which was pretty incredible.
These experiences are definitely making me think, and adding some context that I know few Christians are lucky enough to see and touch and experience first-hand. Today was a very big day.
Labels: Greece, My Life, The Boy, Travel
Day Six
Day Six began with some good old-fashioned Manitoba teamwork. There were about 12 JIMers out of the 130 who registered for the same cruise that we did - so a few conversations with the front desk, and we'd arranged a 15-passenger bus to take us all from the hotel to Piraeus, a port city about 45 minutes outside of downtown Athens. From there, the morning was a whirlwind of check-ins, line-ups, safety drills - and then we were off...
The afternoon was not particularly noteworthy, other than the fact that it was nice to finally have an excuse to slow down and relax for a while. We had lunch on our own (a beautiful table for two overlooking the sea) and explored the ship for a while. Geoff was feeling a little seasick when we hit a rough patch midafternoon, and I tried very hard to be supportive - but he looked so funny! He was totally fine after he lay down for a while. Which is good because we pulled into the island of Mykonos just before dusk and it was time to go explore.
Mykonos is beautiful. It's an entire island where every single building is whitewashed twice a year - making it overwhelmingly pristine-looking, and incredibly distinctive. We found some of the famous coastal churches and windmills, and spent the rest of our time wandering around the harbour area, through all the little shops set up on a literal maze of cobblestone streets (pretty much the definition of a tourist trap).
When we got back to the ship, it was time for dinner, which was another adventure. We were seated with two American girls who immediately apologized for being American - they assured us quickly that they had not voted for Bush in either election. Kind of funny.
We didn't take in any of the late-night stuff - still recovering from the 10K, and (as you'll see in our next post) we had another early morning coming up...
Labels: Greece, My Life, The Boy, Travel
Day Five
Today began with a 7 am wake-up call, a quick breakfast, and then a lot of waiting around. We geared up for the marathon, and then met all the other Team Canada 10k-ers in the hotel lobby - a literal sea of bright (s)lime green. Trust me, NO ONE looks good in this colour. But it's so awesome to be able to spot your teammates from a mile away. The full marathon folks left even earlier than us - some as early as 5.15 am - to get to their event. So I really have nothing to complain about!
We left the hotel at 8, then walked 10 blocks to the Olympic Stadium, which was the start and finish to our race. And then we waited... In the rain. The official race start was at 9.30, and by then I was SO ready to go. Something about being in the middle of that huge group of people, all hyped up and ready to go - it makes waiting almost unbearable.
Geoff and I started strong and - I'm VERY pleased to say - passed a whole slew of green pinnies. And it must have been a good pace, because we kept it steadily right to the end. The first 5k was uphill, sometimes a gradual incline and sometimes not very gradual at all. That's the bad news. The good news is that what we learned in science class was indeed true: what goes up must come down. And we enjoyed turning around and returning the final 5k downhill. Around the halfway point, Geoff and I were joined by a lady from BC named Theresa. Theresa and I had actually connected by email over the last couple of months, talking about training and walking tips. It was so awesome to actually get to walk the race with her.
The weather was absolutely perfect: cloudy, 17 degrees, a slight breeze, and on-and-off drizzle. Unfortunately, this also happened to make sections of the road slippery, and I spent about 2k close to the end trying very hard not to slip. I'm feeling some of those muscles tonight (skating muscles, it feels like), from tensing up and over-compensating.
When we were around the 9k mark, we started to hear all kinds of commotion behind us. Sure enough, it was the first-place full marathon runner, being escorted by police, news crews, and even a helicopter. It was very, very cool to be so close and cheer him on as he ran right past us toward his record-setting finish. We were psyched. Right up until we neared the gates to the Olympic Stadium, the grand finish line in sight. When we got there, the marathon officials informed us that we were finished, because they'd needed to clear the finish line for the full marathoners and we'd missed our 90-minute cutoff point to finish. It was momentarily very disappointing, but I sucked it up and realized pretty quickly that we'd accomplished what we came to do - we just missed the cool fancy stuff at the end. We still received our completion medals. And although we were not eligible to receive an *official* race time, Theresa had attached a pedometer / timer to her water bottle holder, and so we have our unofficial official time. A kind of heartbreaking 1 hour, 30 minutes, and 46 seconds. Heartbreaking, that is, until I realized that that's a pretty killer 10k time for a walker! A million thanks to Geoff and Theresa for keeping me moving, especially when I hit my wall of absolute exhaustion around 7k. I didn't need to stop once, and they kept me talking and laughing through the whole thing.
After the finish - following all kinds of typical JIM hoopla - we stayed for a bit, then headed back to the hotel to shower and change and find some lunch. Later, we returned to the stadium, where I got to accomplish one of my major goals for this trip: cheering in my Team Canada teammates, including Jen who was the very last person to complete the full marathon at just over 7 hours. For once, it wasn't the other way around. And it felt so good.
Believe it or not, I still had some energy left (I said SOME...), so Geoff and I headed from the stadium to the ruins of the Temple of Zeus, then set out on a mission to find Lindsay some Starbucks. This has been a goal of mine since we arrived here (this girl NEEDS her coffee and I was rapidly entering a state of withdrawal), and today we finally managed to hunt one down. I have never enjoyed a caramel macchiato more in my life.
At 7 pm, we met the whole team for our Victory Celebration Dinner, which was lots of fun. We all received grecian olive wreaths to wear during dinner, which made us all look RIDICULOUS (but it was a little bit fun). Every single JIM participant crossed their finish line today, so we had a lot to celebrate.
And now, finally, I can SLEEP. And Lindsay needs her sleep. It's been a long, emotional day - but such a good one. My body is tired and my legs feel about 79 years old (a vast improvement over my past two JIM adventures, but STILL). But my heart is so happy.
I wish I could explain what JIM means, but unless you've been here, I don't think you can know. Today was incredible, and I had been expecting nothing less. The people who take on the challenge of successfully completing a JIM project are very special, and when you get them all in the same place with a common goal - it's a kind of magic, I think. It really makes you realize that there's a lot of good left in the world, and that if you are truly determined, anything is possible. So many of them were not runners until they signed up to do this earlier this year, and the smiles on their faces when they hobbled into our celebration dinner this evening pretty much say it all.
Geoff's already asking where we're going next. And who are we kidding... I may take a break, but I'm not finished yet. There's still no cure, and I still haven't RUN one of these things :)
We're meeting up with about 15 other JIMers to leave on our cruise tomorrow morning at 8. On to Phase Two of this amazing, fabulous adventure...
Labels: Greece, Joints in Motion, My Life, The Boy, Travel
Day Four
Today started with another amazing breakfast. It's such a good thing that we ended up in a good breakfast hotel... Geoff and I are both pretty serious breakfast people, and it's a nice start to our days here. Today, we ended up at a table with Brad - the Global photographer on this trip - and his wife, and a girl named Christine from Ontario who is running tomorrow and has arthritis herself.
From there, we set out on a capital-A adventure to go find the Marathon Registration building on the outskirts of Athens (I was registered with the JIM group, but Geoff registered himself - so we needed to go pick up his race kit on our own). All we knew was that it was called the Olympic Complex sometimes, and sometimes the Hellinikon Centre, that it was close to a blue bridge, and that the Olympic fencing event had been held there in 2004. And that it *might* be blue. Awesome. We tried out the tram for the first time and actually found it with no problems at all. It helped that - once we got close - we just followed the giant mob of skinny people in white running shoes. It was about a 45 minute ride each way, and almost half of that was along the Aegean Sea shoreline, past beaches and palm trees and waterfront cafes - and all kinds of wonderful things that we totally don't have at home.
From there, we came back to Athens and hopped on the metro to go to the National Archaeological Museum. It was a very big building full of lots and lots of really old stuff, excavated from all over Greece and dating back to around 7,000 BC. Geoff was totally enthralled by this bronze gear mechanism thing - technology that looked as intricate as a wrist-watch, and it predated Jesus by about 80 years. I think what impacted me the most was how NORMAL all their stuff was. These people thousands of years ago went about their everyday lives using tools that we still use today, and jewellery that seriously did not look that old or strange. And the dedication they showed to their art - the intricate details coaxed out of clumsy materials that would have taken years to complete.
By midafternoon, yesterday's busyness - and this week's jetlag - totally caught up with me and I was DONE. We headed back to the hotel so I could get a quick nap in. Totally didn't happen because SOMEONE who shall remain nameless fell asleep before I did and snored so loudly that sleep was not an option for me. Argh. It gave me time to go over my speech and make sure my hair was cute. But SERIOUSLY.
:)
At 4.30, more than 100 of us met for the official Team Canada picture, and from there we headed into the Hero Celebration Dinner (pasta party). As always, it was so good to meet more of the team, and it really focused the whole group on why we're here and why it's so important. All the people who have raised more than $10,000 for JIM so far were honoured, and I was a little surprised by my total - $22,500. Amazing. We've come so far since these projects started in 2001, and it made me so grateful for all my family and friends who've been such an incredible support. Our team in Athens raised $671,000, and JIM has raised more than $23 million since it started in Canada in 1999. It's amazing what all our small accomplishments add up to. I know that $23 million has made a HUGE impact on arthritis research in this country. I wish that all of you could come along on a JIM trip to see all of this happening first-hand, because it's incredibly difficult to explain what it means.
At the dinner, I got to share my story, and - ARGH - I cried way too much again. I blame the jet lag.
And then came the evening's special surprise - a pep talk from Jeff Galloway (very, very cool if you're a running geek). He had lots of insight on the course itself, and on the historical significance of this race. I still think it's creepy that the messenger guy DIED at the end, but whatever. I'm sure tomorrow will be fine :)
So after a Team Manitoba meeting, we're winding down for the day (it's around 9 pm here). Feeling not-so-great about tomorrow - I'm in lots and lots of pain today and pretty tired - but I know it's about getting up, putting on my shoes, and doing my best. My worst fear (finishing dead last) happened in Lausanne, so I feel like there's nothing to lose tomorrow. Plus, Yvonne's here from BC (Mom knows what I mean), and I'm pretty sure I can kick her ass :)
The 10K starts at 9.30 tomorrow. I know it's the middle of the night there, but I'm sure if you say a little prayer for us today, the message will get here.
Labels: Greece, Joints in Motion, My Life, The Boy, Travel
Day Three
This morning was ROUGH. Especially because Lindsay had a little time change mix-up and was halfway ready before Geoff kindly pointed out that it was still the middle of the night. Ugh. In my defense, we have a room with no windows at all, and it's black as midnight in there in the middle of the day. Which kind of brings us back to the sleep/time sensory deprivation torture we were discussing earlier...
We got up for real around 7.30, in time for our Team Canada meeting downstairs at the hotel. It was loooong, but we got some good info out of it from our tour organizer and national coordinator. I think it just felt long because we were just about literally dying for breakfast. But the wait was worth it - the hotel put out an unbelievable breakfast buffet, and Geoff was smiling again.
Once we were full, we set out for the Acropolis. It was very hot, very crowded, and very lots of stairs and hills. Makes me respect all the people I know who've visited during warmer months, and busier tourist seasons (though I know there are lots of people in town for the marathon this weekend). It was only supposed to be 24 degrees today, but under the sun up there, it felt insane. Add in the glare off the white marble that's everywhere up there... Kind of overwhelming. I was glad for the over-priced (warm) water I'd purchased before our ascent. I'm not really sure how to describe what we saw up there. The history is kind of overwhelming. The renovations they made to *update* and *modernize* the place were completed 400 years before Jesus was born. That's kind of crazy to a Canadian girl, whose country has only existing for a tiny fraction of that time. One of my books said that Greece recently celebrated its 2,500-year anniversary of democracy. That history, and the realization that this society has been here for such a long time, made it such a beautiful place to me. And the views of the city were spectacular. Until I realized that I'd earned that view by climbing stairs and steep hills - and I'd need to go back down again.
Before our descent, we took in the Parthenon, the Theatre of Herodes Atticus, the Temple of Athena Nike - and all kinds of other really old stuff. The theatre were especially interesting to me, having studied theatre history in university.
From there, we explored the Ancient Agora - essentially, Athens' main mall and 'downtown' from around 600 BC. Lots of cool stuff here, all old and crumbly. The most interesting thing to Geoff and I was the wall the Romans built out of pieces of all the Greeks' important monuments. Kind of incredibly mean. I'm sure the Americans would call it 'repurposing' or something equally PC.
It took a little bit of effort to locate the Herakleidon visual arts museum, the next place to cross off our list. Again, our hunt was well worth it. The neighbourhood was super-cool, and the museum's exhibits were excellent. Their claims to fame are their permanent Escher and Vasarely exhibits, and they had a special showing of Frank Scavullo celebrity photographs. I absolutely loved it. Definitely my style - and speed - of art.
From there, we saw a whole bunch of things in kind of quick succession:
- The Monastiraki flea market area
- Hadrian's Library
- The Roman Agora
- The Tower of the Winds
- More of the Plaka
- The National Garden
In lots of these sites, museum employees spent most of their time yelling at tourists for stepping or sitting on old rocks in the ground. Funny, until you look around and see how stairs and columns made of marble and solid rock are smooth and totally worn away by millions of hands and feet over thousands of years. Kind of put things in perspective for me - my brain is still trying to process all of what I'm looking at. OLD to me just doesn't mean THIS old. I knew in my head that things THIS old existed, but it's something else entirely to see it and touch it (or not touch it, when the museum employees are watching).
Geoff took pictures all day. It's kind of hurting me to have to wait to post some of them. Though we'll need to edit them, because he's been taking pictures of stray dogs and cats - and one turtle - ALL DAY. And mocking my fear of birds. It's been rough. I had one bird in particular who was after me at lunch, without a doubt. I kept on kicking at it to keep it away, and Geoff kept on telling me not to kick it. It was obviously pure self-defence.
Everything here seems to shut down by the early evening (and 'evening' can mean 2 pm here). Around 6, we went to the main city square - admittedly, in seach of Starbucks. We did not find Starbucks, but we did find The Shopping Street - literally block after block after block of stores, from quirky little one-offs to major label stores that Lindsay cannot afford, even when the honeymoon excuse is factored into my shopping math. Lots of fun to window-shop, though, and I did get my coffee after all.
And that's pretty much our crazy-full day! It's 9 pm now, and I'm pretty much ready to crash again. Just needed to get this all out of my head before it disappears.
Tomorrow, the real JIM stuff starts - including race registration and the Team Canada pasta party that I'll be speaking at.
Labels: Greece, Joints in Motion, My Life, The Boy, Travel
Day Two
Our Toronto - Zurich flight was so full of kids, I'm not really sure how to describe it. No question, the loudest flight I've ever been on. But there was this funny little girl who kept on turning herself upside down instead of walking through the line in the terminal, and frustrating her parents - much to our amusement. Come to think of it, it probably wasn't that funny. We were just extremely sleep-deprived at this point.
On the flight, they were showing a European version of America's Funniest Home Videos, which was probably not funny - but seemed like the funniest thing in the world while we were watching it. Again, sleep deprived. Which also happens to be one of the torture methods I've been reading about...
The dry stupid airplane environments also caught up to me on this flight - and I got a nosebleed about half an hour into the flight. EW. It turned into all kinds of drama because we were close to the front of the plane, and the drink cart had *just* passed us. Meaning that the path to the 'regular' class washroom was totally blocked. I got up and asked a flight attendant if I could please use the first class washroom, explaining the situation despite his crappy English. Apparently, this was a HUGE deal. He finally let me, but made it VERY clear that this was an exception. Excuuuuse me. Anyway. The situation ended sans drama, but it was kind of a weird, un-Lindsay-like little mini-adventure.
By 3 pm, we were checked into our hotel, and allowed ourselves 20 minutes for a catnap. Totally against the rules of international travel, but we were SO tired.
After that, we were ready to explore our new neighbourhood. Well, really we were just ready to sleep. But a little walking tour distracted us from that for a little while. We checked out the nearby Plaka neighbourhood - full of tiny cobblestone streets packed tightly with shops and restaurants, mostly really touristy. The area is kind of tucked between the Temple of Zeus (which is across the street from our hotel) and the base of the Acropolis. Very cool, because it makes it extremely difficult to get lost - these sites are so incredibly high up, you can see them from almost anywhere.
We also found the Aeropagus, which was basically just a big rock with stairs up almost to the top. We climbed it (me with a little bit of coaxing), and the view made the effort worth it. This rock is where the first homicide court was held, and it's also where Paul used to preach and convert people to Christianity.
From there we walked for a while and, despite all the tall monuments, we found ourselves a tiny little bit lost - and it was started to rain. On top of that, some of Athens' wild dogs decided they'd like to join us on our walk (Lindsay was largely unimpressed). We turned down a narrow side street, and found ourselves outside a restaurant boasting a full Greek menu and an umbrella-covered rooftop patio with an incredible view of the Acropolis. Sold. And totally worth the FOUR FLIGHTS OF STAIRS to the top. Ugh. Geoff bravely sampled the stuffed lamb, and I stuck with moussaka and calamari. All amazing. We were so full, but decided that we still needed to try the baklava for dessert - and it was so incredible. Geoff suggested adding an exclamation point to that last sentence. The baklava was that good.
(!)
We walked back to the hotel in the rain - the LONG way, kind of unintentionally - and 'crashed' would be an understatement...
Labels: Greece, Joints in Motion, My Life, The Boy, Travel
Day One
(Bear with me... I have a little bit of a pet peeve against people who go on and on about their vacations, all self-obsessive and annoying. Unfortunately for you, this site is primarily my personal journal - and so it's up to you whether you want to read or not :)
Geoff's friend Alan drove us to the airport on Wednesday morning. No big adventures, which is always a good thing when you're at an airport. It was Halloween, so I wore my cat ears (purchased especially for this occasion). I pretty much got winked and meowed through security. A little creepy, but I had amazing service all day. I'm pretty sure I could have smuggled ANYTHING with those ears on.
At the airport, we met up with Chris (the JIM coordinator and trainer for our team) and four other women who were travelling to Athens with us for the race. We were only with them until Toronto, though - for some reason, Geoff and I were the only people on the Manitoba team who flew through Zurich. Everyone else flew through Frankfurt - and we beat them to the hotel in Athens by a good 5 or 6 hours.
The only *real* adventure we had in the air was a medical quasi-emergency in the middle of the night, somewhere between Toronto and Zurich. An older (okay, forget politically correct - OLD) woman on the plane started feeling sick and was disoriented and clammy and shaky. Her husband and the flight attendants reacted quickly - and kind of over-reacted - and it turned out she'd just been late taking some meds. But it all resulted in lights on and loud talking, interrupting our only chance for sleep. Awesome. I'm glad she's okay, but SERIOUSLY. It made for a long day on Thursday.
I hate long flights. I always forget how much I hate them, but I really do. I'm cool for about four or five hours, and then the full-on claustrophobia sets in and I have to concentrate on breathing properly and think about as many other things as I can. On this flight, I had lots of TV episodes to distract me: The Office, Arrested Development, Entourage. And a great book that I started reading just before our trip: The Shock Doctrine (Naomi Klein). Reading about torture and unethical psychological experiments really kind of put my flight panic into perspective. Until I got to the chapter that talked about how depriving people of a sense of time makes them go crazy, and I realized that - with the time changes - we'd totally missed an entire night. And that made me a little crazy again :)
Labels: Greece, Joints in Motion, My Life, The Boy, Travel
