Wes’s Life

As I men­tioned before, I went to Europe for two weeks and had an won­der­fully eye-​opening time. I had wanted to visit Ire­land and it turned out my family had been plot­ting to visit Europe any­ways and that Ire­land was one of the coun­tries. Good I thought, how little I knew. It turned out to be two weeks and four coun­tries and if arith­metic strikes your fancy at all, you’ll notice a 3 and a half day visit per coun­try. Granted our divi­sion wasn’t as even as we took four days in both Ger­many and Ire­land, three days in Paris and then a night, a full day, and a morn­ing in London. The rest of the time was con­sumed by the drone of tur­bine jets, the rattle of metro cars, the whir of a train’s engine, and the rasp of tires to the road.

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I’ll be away for the next two weeks in Europe. Expect some new pic­tures when I get back.

Hello every­one,

I really haven’t writ­ten any­thing in a good while, have I? Well things are going good nonethe­less. Summer can be boring, but amidst the dull hum­drum of work and class I have done some fun stuff.

I went to Disney World along with my par­ents, my sister and her hus­band, and my brother-in-law’s family. It was a lot of fun, espe­cially watch­ing the kids really enjoy every­thing.

This past week­end, I went up to Mass­a­chu­setts to visit my girl­friend and that was a lot of fun. I stayed with her at her grandmother’s house in Fal­mouth Heights on Cape Cod. I don’t believe I have ever been that far north, so that was pretty cool. We also vis­ited her other grand­par­ents and had dinner with them, which was very nice. It goes with­out saying that I had a good time.

This coming week­end I am headed to Myrtle Beach for the July 4th week­end, so that should be a lot of fun. Espe­cially now, since a friend of mine is coming down as well.

In between all the vaca­tion, work has been good. I like the vari­ety that it offers me and the options I have to com­plete a task. There is no real set way to do some­thing, other than get­ting it done.

Hope every­one else is having a good summer. While it’s nice to have a break, I am look­ing for­ward to school in the fall.

I wrote my meals down in a nice Mole­sk­ine note­book, the one divided into five parts for travel (Bed, Food, People, Sights, Facil­i­ties). On a side note, I don’t rec­om­mend this, I would say go with a stan­dard non-​divided note­book simply because it allows you more flex­i­bil­ity and reuse. I won’t use this book again simply because I write more about the food than I do about the Sights and I com­pletely ignored Facil­i­ties. If you con­sider your­self cre­ative, I highly rec­om­mend the non-​lined ver­sion as you can draw and write in what­ever way makes you happy.

Get­ting back to my orig­i­nal intent for this post, I want to explain how I will write every­thing down. I will write it down in a per day format; how­ever, I don’t remem­ber the days so it will be in a num­bered day format.

Day 1:
We just arrived in Rome and decided to eat near our hotel/appartment. We all got rather large slices of pizza. I myself picked out a piece cov­ered in sweet toma­toes.

After eating our pizza we wan­dered around and found a gelati stand and I got lemon gelati.

After get­ting into our apart­ment and set­tling down, we decided to ven­ture out and find a restau­rant for dinner. We ended up a little past the Trievi foun­tain. We sat down for a night of con­fu­sion and Euro­trashi­ness (a con­stant through­out my trip). Our waiter was speak­ing only Ital­ian, but we fig­ured out later he spoke Eng­lish, but even then he would only speak Ital­ian. We ended up eating three pizzas: margharita, sausage and proscuitto. We also go meals for our­selves. I ended up eating lasagna.

Day 2:
We were near the Vat­i­can, I think, and stopped at a nearby restau­rant. The food there was good, I ended up get­ting ravi­oli and it had spinach inside, which imme­di­ately stopped Chris from eating any of the remain­ing ravi­o­lis. The best part of the meal was the straw­ber­ries with ice cream that I got.

Once again after wan­der­ing around we got some gelati, I ended up get­ting straw­berry this time and it was awe­some.

For our last night in Rome we ate at the Opera Cafe. This restau­rant had a hard time making very well known Ital­ian dishes. They couldn’t do chicken parmi­giana, cano­lis and Veal Milanese. The food was good enough though. I ended up get­ting Veal Scalop­ini.

Day 3:
Having arrived in Athens we went to the hotel and stashed our bag­gage and went to the Plakka. It is appar­ently noto­ri­ous for hawk­ing wait­ers that try to pull you into the best restau­rant in town. We ended up going to one such restau­rant, but it was very good. I had pastitico, which is basi­cally a Greek ver­sion of lasagna. We also got some fried cheese and an appe­tizer.

Day 4:
For lunch we got fried cheese again as an appe­tizer and we had pork gyros. In terms of all the gyros we ate, they were right in the middle, not hor­ri­ble but not the best.

We went to Piraes and got some seafood. This is basi­cally a Greek ver­sion of the Har­bor­place in Mary­land. We sat right on the water and stared at the fish right below us. The water really needed to be cleaned.. Any­ways, I ate the Al Tuna pasta which was a pasta with tuna, toma­toes, garlic and basil.

Day 5:
Arriv­ing in San­torini, we wanted to go to some­where close to our hotel. We ended up at a restau­rant three min­utes from our room, two of those min­utes were spent walk­ing up stairs. I had pork kebob and it was a nice loca­tion because it was built into the crater. While wait­ing for our food we were enter­tained by a pair of cats, one of which wanted to play and the other didn’t.

Day 6:
We decided to have con­ti­nen­tal break­fast deliv­ered to our room because the wind was really acting up and there was tons of fog until late in the day. It wasn’t any­thing spe­cial, there was cereal, sweet bread, ham and cheese sand­wiches, normal bread, coffee, tea, hot choco­late and an over-​sweet orange drink.

For lunch, we ended up in Oia and ate on the roof garden of a nice pizza restau­rant. We got the typ­i­cal Margharita pizza and also tried a Greek pizza. I also man­aged to get desert, which was a great lemon pie. The only prob­lem with the pie was there wasn’t nearly enough lemon flavor for me, but I like it sour.

We went to Fira for dinner and walked around for a while and ended up at a place called Sokrate’s View. After the usual assort­ment of appe­tiz­ers (warm feta, fried cheese, Greek salad) I had some­thing com­pletely orig­i­nal: Pasta Sokrates. Which was a nice light seafood pasta. It was excel­lent and I will prob­a­bly end up there again if I return.

Day 7:
My par­ents, Josh and I went to Fira bright and early and had crepes. My mother and Josh ended up with sweet crepes and I ended up with a sausage, tomato and cheese crepe. My dad got a bacon and cheese omelette.

We drove around the island today and went to Vlach­dia beach and ended up eating at the touristy named restau­rant, Acrop­o­lis. I am glad we ended up eating there any­ways because I had the best gyro of the whole trip there. The meat was excel­lent and the pita was nicely toasted.

For our last night we wan­dered around Oia in search of a good restau­rant and ended up at Strogili (I think that’s the name). Once again we had the usual appe­tiz­ers, which I am start­ing to get tired of. I had Beef Fillet Stroganoff, which isn’t the typ­i­cal Beef Stroganoff. There was no bed of noo­dles, instead it was pre­pared with a very sim­i­lar sauce.

Day 8:
Once we arrived in Mykonos after the high-​speed ferry, we ate at the Petino’s restau­rant, which is where we were stay­ing. I had a “spe­cial” ham­burger, which was dif­fer­ent. It had feta, bacon and and pep­pers on the inside of the meat. There was no roll to speak of and it was longer than it was wide.

Since we ended up eating around four, we ate late and sans Cres­saty. We went down to a place on the beach and got pizza and desert. I got a warm brownie with two scoops of ice cream and my dad got a very light cheese­cake topped with straw­ber­ries.

Day 9:
Once again we par­took on a no frills, noth­ing spe­cial con­ti­nen­tal break­fast.

We went to Mykonos town today and once again had gyros, which were middle of the road. How­ever, the cheese pies there were awe­some. They were in a phyllo dough and it was very flaky and greasy.

We ven­tured around Mykonos town some more and ate at a fish tavern along Little Venice, an area known for seafood along the sea. I had a very good Salmon pasta in a great cream sauce.

Day 10:
We went to a place down the beach from our hotel called La Playa. They had the second best gyros that I have had so far. The meat was extremely good. How­ever, I also got a waffle with straw­berry ice cream. My dad got “apple pie” which was two crepes with apples and cin­na­mon in them and topped with two scoops of ice cream.

Then we had the best dinner in Europe. It was at Kali­do­nios, a tiny little place that you couldn’t find if you were star­ing right at it. We came across it after my request for lamb. We found a lovely French restau­rant, but we agreed that we wanted lamb. So we took a left and there it was. We saw the prices and they were very rea­son­able and we sat down. Then we gawked at the 9.90 euro cover charge and then set­tled down after we real­ized it was only 2.90 euros. I had the best lamb chops that I have ever had there. They were cov­ered in this won­der­ful sauce and they were extremely tender.

Day 11:
After arriv­ing at our hotel around 9 o’ clock. We needed some­where to eat that was still open that late. We were directed to a restau­rant around the corner and had the cheap­est restau­rant for three people in Europe ever. We got two pizzas: one Margharita and one with hot­dogs. Yeah, you read that right hot­dogs, we thought that they meant sausage, but they were not kid­ding. Oh well, it ended up being only twelve euros. That’s includ­ing a 1.5 liter bottle of coke and when were used to paying upwards of two euros for a quar­ter liter, that was amaz­ing.

So that is what I ate on my trip. I tried to keep it brief. If anyone is inter­ested in the addresses and phone num­bers for La Playa or Kali­do­nios, just leave a com­ment and I will post them.

I am back from my trip to Greece. Once I get the pic­tures back from my friend’s laptop. The trip was great.

Italy had some great food and even better gelati, but the apart­ment we stayed at was quite bad. Cherif and Chris shared the main bed, my father slept on the fold out couch and Josh and I slept on cots in the same room as my father. Noise would res­onate off of the Roman walls up to the vaulted ceil­ing of the apart­ment and echo around the room even with the win­dows closed.

We stayed at a Mar­riott in Athens, Greece, and it was a fairly stan­dard Amer­i­can hotel aside from the bidet. It was the tallest build­ing in the imme­di­ate vicin­ity and had a pool on the top floor. It was fun to sit up on the pool deck at night and look out at the Acrop­o­lis.

In San­torini, Greece, we stayed at Pega­sus Suites. We had some minor prob­lems because they didn’t have the rooms that we had requested and there­fore we had one bed and one bath­room and we requested two beds and two bath­rooms. They moved a single bed in for me, but it ended up work­ing very well. Pet­rosh, one of the guys that worked there, made every­thing great because of how kind and help­ful he was.

For Mykonos, Greece, we stayed at Petinos Beach Hotel and that was the best hotel we had. It had two couches, one of which I slept on, and a bed and one bath­room. It also had two bal­conies and sev­eral places to sit. As you could guess from the name it was right on the beach of the Aegean Sea. The pool deck of the hotel had a row of chairs that sat right over the water of the sea.

I will post tomor­row about all of the food I ate and where to get the best meals.