It really wasn't chicken! (And other stories from a vegetarian perspective.)

Hey, it's Clare! The pescetarian! (Which, in case you don't know, is a veggo that eats fish... ironically I actually hate most fish except salmon and haddock) Here to give you the incredibly stupid stories that come with being the aforementioned eater. (These aren't in any particular order...)

1st: In Athens we ordered room service the first and second nights- first night I got some "vegetarian" pasta which, after I ate half of it, was pretty sure had chicken in it. I refused to eat the rest. The second night I got the same, clearly telling the room service people that I DID NOT WANT MEAT. When are food came up, chicken was in it. I refused to eat a bite, but Dad, not wanting me to faint, took all the pieces out, what an awesome Dad.

Turns out, now we are in Mykonos, it wasn't chicken! It was this Greek Island cheese that needs to be grilled so it has the same consistency and shape and look as chicken. I knew it tasted like cheese!

2nd: In Tewkesbury, I looked at the menu and there was nothing but meat and some fish, so I decided to be 'wild' and try Lemon Sole. When I told the waiter I was veggo, he made a crossing sign with his fingers and slowly backed away, saying "nt, nt, nt!" what a strange fellow.

3rd: I mistakenly thought proscuitto was a type of cheese, when Dad told me it wasn't, I was very upset.

And always there have been stuff like, WHAT WILL I EAT???? I AM GOING TO FAINT HERE!!!!!!!! And simply having to eat pasta every night. Also I am frequently saying,

Me: "I'll have the ceasar salad, without the chicken and bacon, please. Is that all right?"

Waiter: "Hmmm..."

Mom: "She's a vegetarian."

Waiter: "Ahhh. I'll see what I can do. And what would you like for a main course?"

Me: "The salmon, please."

Waiter: "I see..." (I attract dubious looks from the waiter.)

I am being labled as: "The vegetarian that eats fish" Sometimes I feel like yelling, "What's the matter? Haven't you ever seen a pescetarian before?"

Boardshorts or...?

Today we hired a small car, all crammed in & went for a tour around Santorini. Its not a big place, but with small roads, the occasional donkey train, buses stopping for pick-ups, it can take a while to drive even the 20km from one end to the other. But we did & one thing we wanted to check out was the "Red Beach" - a beach on the south side of the island with impossibly red sand - from the volcanic rocks of the cliffs above the beach. It did not disappoint - nice warm water, unusual "sand" and great people watching. Speaking of which, I've started to wonder (this is Philip, btw) - should I ditch the boardshorts & adopt a more euro-style of beachwear? I'll poll answers...


(Note the package here - David [of Florence fame] would be jealous)

Cave-Dwellers

More of the same here on Santorini--but today we tooled around the island to get a sense of its shape and culture. We checked out the "red" beach on the flat side, which is a mixture of red rocks and black lava--the water temperature and clarity were perfect, and the sea appears to be teeming with fish. The girls were able to catch them in their hands. This on top of the vines laden with grapes hanging down in restaurants makes Santorini a veritable Garden of Eden. The many honeymooners probably see it that way too until our kids go running by. I guess they thought they'd be safe from urchins in September. Think again. We did some laundry too (hopefully the last of it until we hit Whale Beach in Australia).

The Greek government just banned smoking in public places, but people are still lighting up in restaurants and on patios near ours at the hotel. You forget how obnoxious second-hand smoke is, especially when you expect to be inhaling deep breaths of good clean sea air.

Another idiosyncrasy we noticed in Greece is the number of stray animals--cats, kittens, dogs or all shapes and sizes. There's a sweet little pack of stray dogs that says hello to us near Thira. And when we were in Athens, Isabella counted something like 12 sleeping dogs between our hotel and the Acropolis; and some of them hang out in and around the Acropolis. They all seem nice and harmless. Of course, I want to take them home.

Lovely hot weather today--gearing up for Australia!

The Cauldron

As referred to on the prior post, we're sitting on the edge of the caldera, site of the 2nd largest volcanic eruption in the last 20million years or so. Must have been quite a bang. For us, of course, it means that we have some of the most sublime views you could ever ask for. The tourist industry of course takes full advantage of the setting - a tremendous concentration of hotels, restaurants, cafes are built into the cliffs, seemingly hanging on to the very edge of the precipice. I guess some have been here for dozens of years, so absent another eruption, they'll be here for a while longer. But you do wonder when you gaze over the railings...

Much needed R&R for the family. Our days consist of a late, lazy breakfast, some reading, playing, maybe a walk into town, 30 minutes contemplating where to have dinner - ie, island life. Not a bad place to relax.

Poseidon's Revenge--On Philip's Birthday

The god with the powerful trident got us back for worshipping Athena at the Acropolis. A very bouncy, wavy 5 hour ferry ride to Santorini gave Sid and Emmett serious mal de mer. Yuck--and on Philip's birthday, too. The birthday boy was stuck being nurse to the sickies for much of the day. As he says, though, how bad can it be when eventually you're on Santorini? Pretty bad, actually. We owe him a better birthday. Today he's sentenced to sleeping on a lounge chair in the sun with an umbrella drink.

So here we are in Paradise, studying geology now, having moved on from history. Santorini is an island formed by a volcano that erupted 3,600 years ago whose crater sank into the ocean. As Clare tells us, Plato thought that Santorini was Atlantis and that there's a city down in 400 meters of water in the Caldera of the island. The Caldera derives from the English word "cauldron," and you can see in our photos why it is aptly named.

We are on the edge of the Caldera, sleeping in a "cave" hotel that's built right into the side of the volcano--windows facing the water--but the deeper into the apartment you go, the darker and cave-ier it gets. The hotel Andromeda is clearly meant for honeymooners; we get the occasional curled lip when our children run around (hey, think of it as natural birth control you honeymooners), and the hotel's soundtrack is full of Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Bryan Adams love songs. It can get a little tiresome. Luckily we downloaded the premiere of Glee onto the laptop for a healthy dose of satire.

Clare informs us (who is home-schooling who?) that Santorini was the second biggest volcanic eruption in history. The first was Toba in Indonesia 75,000 years ago, an eruption that killed all but between 2,000 and 20,000 humans on earth. Sobering stuff. Someone said that they expect Santorini to rear up again, maybe in 150 years. Hope it's not while we're here.

Looks like I will never be one of those retirees who takes cruises through all the beautiful spots in the world. Thanks, Poseidon.

May all to Athens back again repair...

The seat of reason, knowledge, wisdom--it's Athens in spectacular fashion. We have perfect weather, no crowds (just funny looks and comments from people wondering why our children are not in school), but too little time! Even so, this post will be a little more detailed than the others because we know our friends the Bourotoglous are reading and wondering how we're finding this city they love and know very well.

First things first: last night, as I was sitting in our private jacuzzi, pondering the outlines of the Acropolis in the distance, I was remembering how Shakespeare uses Athens as a setting in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Oh, I'll spare you the lecture. I just wanted to write a sentence like that and for it to be true! And it is, gloriously so. We're staying in the Periscope, a very small boutique hotel, so small that we have the entire top floor, its roof-deck hot tub, and a full-on view of the Acropolis. It's a place for the poet, the lunatic, and the lover, as Theseus says in AMSND. Well, we all five of us are sleeping in the same room, so maybe more the poet and lunatic than the lover.

But I should focus on Ancient Greece, not Shakespeare. Because of large protests over the new austerity measures of the Greek government, we walked to the Acropolis this morning, through the National Gardens (past some Greek soldiers all geared up and high-stepping in fine style). When we got across the park, we realized that, due to the protests, only one gate was open (the one whereby we entered), so we did what seemed right--we squeezed the children through the fencing and climbed over the top ourselves. As one fellow fence-jumper said, "welcome to Greece."

From there we walked by the Temple of Zeus (see second photo) and then around the Acropolis mound to its entrance and into the hallowed grounds of the various temples and theaters. Wow. To see where the Ancient Greeks performed Oedipus and Lysistrata, to see where Athena and Poseidon supposedly battled it out for "patron god," and to see the Agora where Socrates and later, St. Paul spoke all within a few kilometers is an unparalleled experience. It's like seeing Stonehenge, Westminster Abbey, The Globe, and Buckingham Palace all in the same space. We soaked it in--noting the crevice where Poseidon drew salt water for the mortals but was beaten by Athena's more apt olive tree (the Erechtheion), the ingenius Doric columns of the Parthenon, and the seats of the Odeon. We took in the views of Athens framed by the columns all around--the masses of white houses, the sea, and the mountains. What a spot.

To top it off, we had lunch at the perfect Greek cafe outdoors in the shade in the area known as the Plaka--lots of cafes and shops and we could hear the vociferous protest in the background. Everything here is much cheaper than in the rest of Europe, and you can bargain. Philip negotiated a rate for us to get from the airport to the hotel--at one point the driver walked away, but he came running back when Philip called his bluff.

After the Acropolis and lunch, we took a tour of the new Acropolis Museum where the more precious original bits of the ruins are better protected. Here we saw 5 of the 6 Caryatids (gorgeous female figures that were sculpted 2400 years ago--no biggie) that hold up part of the Erechtheion. The missing one is in the British Museum with the infamous Elgin Marbles, other bits of the Acropolis that were taken out of Greece and rediscovered in the UK. Lord Elgin is responsible for the removal, some would say kidnapping, of the Caryatid as well as the Marbles. It's a very sore topic here in Athens since the British Government has refused to return anything. Clare, for one, is particularly outraged. I know that the original Winnie-the Pooh and Friends stuffed animals reside in the New York Public Library--and the British Government wants them back. But A.A. Milne gave them to his editor, who happened to be American, and the NYPL is keeping them. But old stuffed animals compared to a 6-foot ancient statue and parts of ancient government buildings and temples?

Anyway, the museum objets are ancient and priceless and very carefully and lovingly preserved and displayed. The museum itself is a marvel with its windowed facade looking directly up at the Acropolis, so you can imagine the friezes and statues in their intended context. Plus it's air-conditioned, which must be a relief for the tourists in June, July, and August.

We did some souvenir shopping; Emmett is very keen on Poseidon, so he got a little statue of the water god, and Isabella got some worry beads (no comment necessary), but we found that the shopkeepers did not like us touching the wares, even super cheap kitschy things. We got yelled at twice. We also suspect that Greeks do not think of chicken as meat. Clare the vegetarian twice ordered vegetarian pasta and got, both times, a concotion with bits of chicken. This after we urged them to double-check and noted the dish had to be vego. Conclusion: chicken is not meat in Greece. John B., is this true?

We ended up back at the hotel in the late afternoon and watched the sun set behind those huge and glorious Doric columns. Tomorrow is an early rise as we take the boat to Santorini and live for 4 days on a volcano!

Munching in Munchen

It's the first day of Oktoberfest here in Munich, not that we knew or planned for it. This explains the traditional dress on all the Austrians and Germans and now on tourists (not us). The Germans call the drunken Oktoberfest tourists beer-corpses, and we saw one last night at dinner, completely passed out at the table. Philip rode up on the elevator with some guy who smelled really funky and did not know where he was, and then later he saw 4 men in kilts and rugby shirts headed for the beer tents. Fun times.

You have to give the Germans credit, though, for their environmentalism. Solar panels are everywhere--on barns, on houses, in cities, in the country. Americans tend to think it's too cold in the Northeast for panels, but not so--it's already pretty chilly here, and those panels are obviously worth it. The top photo here shows you the typical house in the countryside of Germany--house with barn attached and those awesome photo-voltaics.

Clare and Philip left at the crack of dawn for the world's largest science museum (the Louvre of science museums)! Isabella, Emmett, and I are hanging out in the hotel using the high speed internet (yay!) and packing. We're down to 3 suitcases, having sent several more boxes on to Australia. Shouldn't need much in Greece. Second photo is of Clare in the museum of her dreams...