Harry Potter Lives in Greece! (Rhodes, Greece 12/28/08)

During the night there was a terrible storm at sea. At first, we thought the ship band was performing the Battle Hymn of the Republic in the theatre (which is right above our room) but when it continued for HOURS we figured that wasn’t it and it was actually thunder. There were meter high (that’s a little over a yard people…) white caps in the water right outside our window. We just had to sleep with our motion sickness bracelets on but had no real trouble sleeping through it all night.

First off, Rhodes was amazing! We got to start out our morning a little later then normal. Our tour didn’t depart until 10:30 so we were able to get up later and have a nice breakfast before we left. We took a walking tour around the city. It was very nice because we walked off the boat and into the city. One of the first things we learned is that this island has been occupied by just about every country in the world – including Germany during WWII. There used to be approximately 4,500 Jewish (of the 125,000) on the island but during the war they were all transported to Auschwitz. Now there are currently 33.

Rhodes also has 5 natural ports and just recently became part of Greece – just after WWII Britain took Rhodes and then gave it to Greece (sometime in the 1940’s). Rhodes is also named after the bloom of the Pomegranate tree, not the rose as many people think. (The Greek words for both sound very similar.)

The thing that fascinated me the most about this cute little island town was that their ‘divine patron’ was Helios, the god of sun (not sand as I SWORE the tour guide kept telling us).

**Stupidity Side Note** Honestly, tell me why there couldn’t be a god of sand? If the ancient Greeks had a goddess of wisdom and beauty, a god of the sea, and a god of gods why couldn’t there be a god of sand? It totally makes sense!

Anywho! (back to me) There was a 100 foot bronze sculpture of Helios straddling the second (and smaller) port. Apparently it was remarkable to see (there are no drawings or sculptures of what it actually looked like so they had to reconstruct what they THOUGHT it looked like); it took 12 years to build and stood for about 100 years (300-200 BC) over the port. Around 200 BC the first earthquake of the island made it fall to the ground (their latest earthquake was a 6.9 and happened last year!). The pieces of the statue laid on the ground for about 900 years (until around 700 AD) when the Turks-I think-invaded and took the bronze to melt down and make guns and ammo. All I have to say is I hope he was wearing tighty whities under his loin cloth or toga…

**War Side Note** War seems to be a reoccurring theme over here - This or that was destroyed or stolen during war times. In my opinion, America is VERY lucky to not have a history like that. Maybe it’s just because we are so young compared to the rest of the world. Or, maybe it’s because we have nothing really made of bronze or steel to steal… Either way, I’m happy that I (normally) live in a country where I don’t walk past war time ruins on a daily basis.

Just recently (like within the last few hundred years) they replaced the place where Helios stood. They put up two deer (one on each of the pedestals he stood on). Rhodes has an amazing amount of snakes on the island and deer are their natural predators (tour guide lady make sure that we knew the deer didn’t eat the snakes – they just killed them).

Our tour guide was amazing today. She had answers to every possible question you could ask her and she even brought along some props! After some history and geographical information we strolled down the main tourist shopping area to the Jewish quarter. They are in the process of putting up a small memorial for all the Jews deported during WWII (which is across the street from the town mosque).



After our (very brief, because there are only 33 Jews) tour of the Jewish quarter we went to Hogwarts! O.M.G. What a freaking cool building!! It was actually the Museum of Mosaics (or something like that) but I really thought that Peeves was going to jump out of the wall and scare me at any time and Kyle and I were constantly looking for the Room of Requirement.

The museum housed beautiful mosaics from all over the world. The Italians moved them all to this place (when they were the reigning government – see I TOLD you Rhodes has been occupied by everyone). The Italians were such amazing technicians that you can’t tell where they cut the art (for easier transportation) and put them back together.






After taking about a million pictures at Hogwarts we moved on to another castle we’ll be using to model our Kansas Castle after. It was a former hospital and the building itself was beautiful (I didn’t much care for the gobs of destroyed Greek sculptures. Honestly, once you’ve seen one you’ve pretty much seen them all – sometimes they’re missing an arm, or head, or nose, or penis but they all pretty much look the same to me).
Once we finished up at ‘Webster Manor’ our guided tour was over. Kyle and I headed over to the smaller port to take some pictures of the deer (these freaking things totally amaze me for some reason) and then headed back towards the boat and purchased a couple of magnets along the way.


We’ve kinda hit our stride on the boat. Once we got back we headed to the buffet for lunch and then up to the top floor to sit and enjoy our time together. Kyle thought (and wrote) about earth shattering revelations and I spent most of the rest of my day listening to trashy teeny-bop music and typing out this post.

**Kyle Side Note** Kyle’s awesome, don’t get me wrong. He’s definitely one of the smartest people I know. But that boy doesn’t turn off!! We’ll be sitting somewhere staring off into space…I’ll be thinking about words that make me giggle (like ladle, and edited it) and he’ll turn to me and say something like “So, I was thinking about the religious differences between Christians, Muslims, Protestants, and Hindi…” ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!?! I was thinking that my fingers look fat in this light and wondering what it would be like if I knew someone really famous!

Tomorrow we’re off to Cyprus!

Acropolis=Parthenon (Athens, Greece 12/27/08)

Another early excursion morning. We had a 6:30 am wake up call and were out of the room (except for going back 2 separate times to get the water bottle and my hat respectively – I should have gotten directions to the Hard Rock as well…oops!) at 7:56 – can you tell I’m now Swiss, I tell time like one! We hopped on the bus and our tour guide sounded like a cross between elevator music and a soothing vacuum. I totally thought I was in for a raging snooze-fest. Luckily she, and the tour, got much better. We started by winding through the city streets and along the harbor. EVERYWHERE you look here there are ruins. E.V.E.R.Y.W.H.E.R.E. In the middle of the city-ruins. Along the shore-ruins. In the parks-ruins. At the top of a giant hill-ruins. It’s super cool!

After a quick bus tour of the city they dropped us off at the base of the Acropolis.

**Stupidity Side Note** The Acropolis and Parthenon are NOT two different things in 2 different parts of town. The Parthenon is inside of the Acropolis. “Acro” (think Acrophobia) means high or heights and “Polis” (think Minneapolis) means city. The Acropolis means ‘high city’ and was built in the highest point of the area. I stupidly asked my sister (she spent a month in Greece over the summer before coming to see me-what I wouldn’t give to be in College again!) what was the ONE THING I had to see in Athens and she told me the Acropolis. When she said that I thought to myself ‘What about the Parthenon, I think that would be cooler…?’

Also the term ‘acropolis’ is actually very ambiguous. Every city in the world could have an acropolis – it just happens that the most famous one is in Athens and that’s what you think of when you hear the term.

The Acropolis has some really cool mythology behind it. (Brookie, I hope I get this right – If I’m wrong let me know).

Athena, the goddess of wisdom, came directly from Zeus (somehow, I think she was a part of his head or something…). She had a pet owl and because she was so smart the owl is now associated with smarts.

Well, Athena and Poseidon (the god of the sea) were up chillin’ at the Acropolis and wanted the city below named after them (you can probably guess the outcome). The other Gods got together and said that each of them had to present a gift and the best gift won the right to have the city named after them. Athena presented an olive tree (she struck the ground with her trident and there appeared the tree). Poseidon did the same and his gift was water.

That watered the tree and made it grow beautifully. (If you ask I would have presented something that didn’t help the other guy out. My gift would have been dry rot or termites, or fire to burn the sucker down! I guess hindsight is 20/20)

Probably needless to say, Athena won and the city was named Athens.

The reason the Acropolis is destroyed now is because in the 18th or 19th century the Parthenon was used to store gun powder and other explosives during a war. The gun powder caught on fire and exploded. They left the building to decay and let looters and urchins steal from the area. (Again, if you want the real, complete history break out your text books – my attention span is only so long).

Currently, they are trying to rebuild the Acropolis with the marble that is lying around. (And I mean LYING around I stubbed my toes at least a dozen times on marble columns and stuff strewn about). It will take at least another 15-20 years to rebuild and Kyle and I will be back to check it out…



After a couple of hours at the Acropolis we were able to do a little bit of shopping at the couple of souvenir shops (I got a magnet with an owl on it and ‘Athens’ in Greek – Kyle said I got some style points for that one) then back on the bus. The bus took us to where the first modern Olympics were held. The tour guide said it was built on the site where the first Olympics EVER were held but I’m not sure I agree – I thought I saw a picture of where my sister was running around a dirt track and THAT was where the first Olympics where held.


We loaded back on the bus but some of us wanted to go shopping in the main area of the city. The bus basically slowed down to about 30 mph where it tossed out a couple of people before it continued on to the dock. Kyle and I, of course, got out so we could get our Hard Rock pin. Luckily Kyle has his ‘crackberry’ and is able to Google (yes, it’s a verb now) where we are going. Just around the corner and there we were! We get our pin and found some nice people in the store from the boat as well. They told us how to get back to the boat and the second we hear 30 minute walk after a train and tram we decide a taxi is in our future. An ATM stop and $27 later we are in the comfort of our stateroom drying ourselves off.

The rest of the evening we spent sitting on the top floor of the boat where we could watch the scenery and Kyle read his ‘guns and mud’ book (the 2 things that boys love more than anything in the world – I tease him about it all the time). I worked on typing out the blogs. Tomorrow we’re off to Rhodes!

Merry Christmas! (At Sea 12/25/08)

I just couldn’t sleep past 8AM I was too excited that Santa came. He brought us Shore Excursions! We’re going to go see the Acropolis in Greece and the Pyramids in Egypt. FUN!

We had no real reason to get out of bed so we didn’t. Kyle got to watch come Top Gear on Cruise TV (it’s a British Car show where the just berate stupid American cars – even I think it’s kinda funny). At about 10 am we finally went to breakfast then headed up to our spot in the top floor Lounge to read. It took us about 15 minutes to realize that we didn’t want to be reading – we wanted to be sleeping! So, back to the room for a 3 hour nap (it was great).

The nice part about cruising in the winter is that there’s really not a whole, whole lot to do on the ship. It’s not warm enough to sit outside and get some sun (or really be outside for that matter) so we just didn’t. I didn’t feel bad about taking a three hour nap!

After our nap and lunch Kyle decided he wanted to climb the rock wall. We figured that would take at least an hour with all the signing away your life and getting hooked up and stuff that needed to be done. It took about 10 minutes.

So now what? Back to the top floor lounge for some game playing!

We had Christmas dinner in the buffet again. We did everything possible to get in the actual restaurant but on our way to dinner we decided that we did not want to be the only people at this big 10 person table…we also didn’t want to be there, alone, with this one other couple like we were the night before…basically if the only fun people at the table (Heidi and Kevin) didn’t make it to dinner we didn’t want to go. Dinner seating was at 6 – at 6:30 we peeked in and there was no one at the table. We decided we weren’t going either and headed back to the room to change out of our ‘formal attire’.

The boat was celebrating Christmas by having $1 black jack for an hour so we rushed over to the casino to get a spot. It wasn’t quite 7 so I sat down at a table to save a seat and ended up losing $40 likethat. But I was up $8 when, an hour later, we were done playing $1 blackjack – Kyle was down about $10.

At 9 we headed over to the Theatre for a one man piano show. I was a little leery about it, even though I LOVE the piano bar, I was afraid he was going to sing his own stuff. The first song was a little raunchy and he kept screaming ‘CLAP YOUR EFFING HANDS’. Luckily, after that first song, he did all covers. Billy Joel, Elton John, Barry Manilow, Neil Sedaca…he was very entertaining. We’d also learned that if you put clear alcohol in a water bottle people just think you are watering down your soda and ask you no questions (like is that booze illegal? How did you get it on the ship?). It worked quite well so by the end of the show I had to go directly to sleep.

The Malta Experience (Valletta, Malta 12/24/08)

Another early morning; I woke up at 5AM and called my best-est friends. Every year at Christmas time we get together to eat homemade Quiche and play board games of every type. We’ve been doing this for about 4 years and I’ve never missed it. Of course, everyone there said they were jealous of my travels (and don’t get me wrong – Kyle and I had a GREAT time) but anyone that has been away from the family and friends over the holidays know that I was the one that was jealous. After a 10 minute conversation (I don’t even want to know how much it costs to call Kansas from the middle of the Mediterranean Sea on a cell phone) I headed back to sleep until 7 am.

We got on our buss and it took about 10 min to get to The Malta Experience an audiovisual experience (aka High School Slide show)… Kyle liked it. Crystal thought she should have been passing notes to boys or doing her math homework for next period…ah the good old days.

Then we went to Valletta then new capital city of Malta and the tour guide tried to lose everyone by almost running through the streets. We ended up only lost 6 people but 4 of them were found. We saw the St. John Cathedral that was the Cathedral for the Order of St. John who ruled and protected the island once. It is important and historic but we forgot why. You’ll have to look it up.
On the way back to the bus we went past this really cool one man band style cart playing Christmas Carols. Santa Clause was running it and he was giving away candy and scaring babies.


Valletta had tons of modern shops that you would recognize from KC, but no Target and no GAP… can’t live here. Plus it was Christmas Eve so EVERYONE was out shopping and getting their last minute presents.

Next, we went to Mdina which is a walled city that used to be the capital of Malta. The walls were fortifications built probably by someone. Now it’s home to tourists and about 300 locals. Bruce Willis stayed there once, isn’t that cool? The streets are setup so that they are straight only as far as an arrow can fly. I guess so that if you’re being chased by an angry archer you’re safe as long as you can outrun him. So, note to archers, better get on the treadmill. (It really is a neat idea and a way to keep the townspeople back in the day safe.)




Cars are not allowed in Mdina unless you are a resident. Well, you pretty much have to come from old money to be a resident of Mdina (it’s been a LOONG time since they let new residents move into the city) so the cars there are BEAUTIFUL – and expensive.
After our walk around the city we found a little shop where we picked up some snacks and our magnet and took some picture of the area.
After our tour was over we took the bus back to the ship and there at the port we found the Hard Rock Café and some other shops. At Hard Rock we got a Malta pin. We also looked in a toy store for some more 2 player games. (We’re also looking for a nice version of Settler’s of Catan. It’s a German 3 player game that we’ve decided we love.)

***Fun Side Note*** On the Maltese Cross: It was used by the Order of St. John. Their original mission was one of compassion and healing and they setup hospitals to care for the sick. Then they kind of became the militant wing of the Salvation Army. So, in Spain we kept seeing the Maltese cross outside of Pharmacies and were wondering why this biker symbol would be used like that? Now we know, it’s because it’s associated with healing. I guess the bikers probably use it because being a Knight in the Order of St. John was pretty bad-ass when they were in their prime :)

The Knights of St. John were originally Rome but they got kicked out for some reason and roamed (no pun intended) the Mediterranean looking for a new place to hide out and rebuild. They were given a place on Malta in exchange for a Falcon as rent, each year…a “Maltese Falcon”.

At 6pm we went to dinner and the only other people there were the odd Indian couple who rarely spoke English to us. They said they had been the only people to come to the formal dinners for the past two days. Hmm… That was the last night we had dinner in the formal dining room – plus we liked the buffet better.

While we waited for the Carols to start we played some Blackjack in the Casino. Kyle lost his $40 again. Crystal left up again. Kyle doesn’t like the pattern we were developing.

At 10:30pm we went to the Centrum and sang Christmas Carols with everyone on board the ship. The Centrum goes up 8 floors and was packed with people surrounding all the balconies. It was really loud and really fun.

Dealer Busts (Tunis, Tunisia (Africa) 12/23/08)

Today was an early morning. We woke up at 6:30 to get ready for Tunis, Tunisia (Africa). We needed special tickets to get to the city since we didn’t have a tour planned so Kyle went and got bus tickets. Getting off the boat there was absolutely NOTHING! So we wandered around and found some camels that people were changing money to have their pictures taken by. After we got through passport control we found our bus and sat on that for 45 minutes until it left (30 minutes late I might add).

The drive was 30 minutes to get into Tunis – to the entrance gate of the Mdina – the whole way there was tour guide telling us about the city and region. We arrived in the government district where all the big offices were. Prime minister, defense ministry, finance ministry...etc…we were met by someone in the ‘tourism’ office who was going to show us around. We went to the Souks (shopping area) and then up to the roof of one of these stores to get the best views of the day. We saw the olive tree mosque up close. On the way downstairs we were trapped in a room with a rug salesman who went on for 30 minutes about his beautiful rugs…cashmere, and camel hair, and blue camel hair etc…it was an absolute circus and we couldn’t help but laugh a little. He sounded like a used car salesman (“what’s it going to take for me to get you into this beautiful 1984 Buick LaSabre?”)





We wandered further into the Souks (bad idea). The Souks is an area of really narrow streets (think Wal-Mart aisles) with shops on both sides with their wares spilling out everywhere onto the street. It gets so SO hot there that all the roads of this shopping district are covered with archways. This really closes in the area and give it an eerie feel (in my opinion). The shop workers were also always thisclose to me. My blue eyes and like light skin SCREAMS ‘I’m not African, please molest me’. These guys were touching me in places I don’t even let Kyle touch me (my neck, my face, my shoulder…) I was told “You face good”, “You p(r)etty”, and of course lots of “You just look, I made you deal”

I thought the area was really creepy. The streets were small and dark and seems really seedy…and immediately decided it was time to leave…but we got our magnet!

We then walked around the open part of the city through the government district. The buildings were very pretty and we got some really cool pictures. After our photo op we headed back to the boat via bus (I’m sure I was perfectly fin but I felt like I stuck out and other people were in my personal bubble). But I was able to get probably my favorite photo of our vacation!

(this one is my favorite:)



Back on the boat it was only lunch time so we headed up to the buffet for lunch. After lunch we put on our swim suits and lay out in the sun and read for a while (this was the only day it was nice enough to do that – if I had known that I would have made Kyle burn a little more before we left). We decided we were tired from sunning ourselves so we took a nap back in the room. The rest of the day we played games, read our books, and, of course, ate and drank some more!