The Islands of Greece

Sorry that this has to be on the quick side. Athens was fun and sticky I meet some new friends from Guelph. I ended up teaming up with two scotch drinking indians from Winnipeg on the trip to Santroini (nice clubs excellent sunsets, good beaches) as well as Ios (even better clubs, lots of beech activities, and fermone loaded nightlife). I am now with about two weeks to go. I know the greek alphabet now and hope to get a tad bit stronger until I meet up with family in the village of Metamorphiesis tomorrow. I have sticked with not drinking on Sundays (even God and my Liver needs a day of rest). I am excited that I can post photos soon.

Athens and Recall from the Vatican.

Athens is pretty darn hot and they all the buildings and Marble at the monuments are white so it feels like you are underneath a maginfying glass. Anyways, yesturday I did the 5 hour walking tour of athens and saw the Acropolis, the Temple of Zeus, the changing of the Tights... I mean Greek Guards, as well as the original olympic stadium among other sites. Lots of photos to come. I also drank 4 liters of liquid and burned some skin cells.

I also got my cell phone working in Greece which is a story onto it self. I payed some shaddy estabilishment 25 euro to reprogram so I can say FU to FIDO because they lock all of their phones and where going to charge me 250 dollars to unlock it. My phone number is 6939734463. Rememeber that the country code to Greece is 040 and that would have to go first.

I am going to take care of laundry, some banking, reservations, and family contacts, and see the super National archological Muesum today. The weather looks a little rosy.

Recallying my Rome trip, I didn't have much fondness for Rome, but I loved the Vatican City. They have an excellent muesuem with many wonderful statues and a gigantic Map room (which I am a huge fan of). I thought the Sistine Chapel would be larger but it does feel more like the popes personal chapel this way. M. Angilo did a celestial job painting the house; not bad for a part time painter. St. Peter's Basicalla was also fantastic yet humongous! The Post office was neat too. One observation on M. Angilo was that he was the first artist to really incompase the exact muscles of the body and did some disection work. I felt some connection to him in this way.

ad dios

The road to greece...

There are some really great benefits by going with Contiki. You sure see a lot and you make excellent friends that make future trips to scottland, guadalehara, chicago, or down under duty free in the housing sense. You are also protected or sheilded in a nucelus. There are some aspects that grew a little old. Like waking up everymorning at 6.45, like paying 35 euros for an excellent group meal but not getting excellent food, the hotel being a little out of the action so you only have the down stairs pub as the option. Finally the point click and move felling wore thin. But I will remember the friends (Steve Dawna, Blanca and Frenando, the teachers and the Renees among others) as well as the tour guide Hans. He was a pretty good chap that told me where to get a nice hair cut in Florence as well as did not freak out when I decided to do my laundry in Venice. He also has a traditional dutch humour that was fun to mess with.

Stacy, the oldest guy on the tour) was a true american in the sense that he was vocal, outgoing, and a bit brash. I know all three of the adjectives mean almost the same thing but when triangulated you get the Heafty Stacy. He was an ASU alumni and works in Los Angeles now. He had a great time bantering about americans and canadians and italians over cards. (he took hearts I took gin rummy).

More about the Italians...
I really wanted to get out of rome. It just felt hot sticky dangerous from pickpocketers and metro workers on strike. So I took the high speed train to Bari. Bari is my kinda a city in that there were so many familes eating on the boardwalk on friday night around 22.00 You could even see the grandmothers in their special chairs while everyone was on the bench or playing cards around a table. As well italian kids do not sleep until really late. Anyway I liked that free spirit.

I am off to Greece by ferry today. I will be in patras tomorrow.

Greg's European Adventure

Just a quick hello,
I have have purchased my prada shoes, my life is complete. We went to flournce and I touched the boars mouth so I will likely come back (it happens to be the most anglophone italian city, where they teach italian to anglophones). Lake como and Bellagio was wonderful and scenic. My contiki friends are great and the aussies do rock. I was in Verona yesturday and touched the breast of Juilet, so I should be lucky in love... Finally I am in Venice today and will be in a Gondalla by afternoon.
averiderci

Contiki Italy in Flourence

The Contiki trip is going smoothly,
I have met lots of friends.  Flourence is maginficent and has the most amount of english speakers in Italy (they train them here to speak italian).  Flourence is also so beautfiul and artisitic, it is driving me a little crazy that we have to move on to the next place without soaking in a mueseum (like the one where Galio has all of his experiments).  I might make a quick trip back to flourence after the tour is over and before my flight on the 19th.  I also received a professional italian haircut which was a silent treat.
Cheers,
G

I am in Italy

I made it to Italy safely, even though delayed. I will miss prague dearly. My first batch of postcards went out to friends and family. The Contiki tour starts tonight in a real Italian bus, hopefully with real italian airconditioning.

Prague Update

Hello all,
I am having a delightful time. I went on a bicycle trip today after
it got a little sunny. I also meet Peter from the UK, he is a lawyer,
really nice, innocent, and enquistive chap. We had lunch together and
we talked about why he isn't famous about america. After partying at a
5 story nightclub yesturday I am doing a pub crawl with the troups. It
is in progress.... I leave for Italy on the 4th.
Cheers
-G

Prague Update

So the first two days of sunny weather in prague has passed and now God is crying. Because it is raining dogs (there are no cats in Czech and everyone has a dog; they are allowed on the subways). The rule is rain = museum, so I went with a new friend named Robin from scottland and we saw the muesum of modern art which is in a huge national gallery downtown. I was amazed that for a friday it was underattended.
Yesturday I hung out with new friends from Manchester and checked out some of the nite life downtown.
The day before that I was in Kuta Hori where they have a cathedral made of bone. It was an amazing small town with a big and erriely unoccupied square.