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wThe Whine Column |
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I'll try to keep the actual whining to a minimum, I promise. But this is where I'll rant about work, stupid people and the like, plus make mention of the random interesting things in my life. Email me at quizbabe at yahoo dot com if you want to whine back.
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wWednesday, October 23, 2002 |
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Vacation Thoughts
Things I forgot to mention in my previous installment:
~~~I don't normally drink a lot of Sprite, but the Sprite in Cyprus was so much better than the Sprite here. It's more citrusy and less sweet. Plus the Coke overseas is made with sugar, like the "Passover Coke" you can get here at that time of year, which made Matt happy. And the Snickers bar we had in Greece was better too -- the peanuts were saltier, making a better contrast to the chocolate, caramel and nougat. Yum!
~~~I was thinking about how many times as a kid we went on field trips to the Boston Children's Museum or Sturbridge Village or Plimoth Plantations, yet tourists flock to those sites every year. What must it be like if you are a kid near Athens? "Aw geez, do we have to go to the Acropolis again this year? We go there every year!" Then again, I suppose if it's loomed over you for your whole life you'd get pretty sick of it.
~~~I found someone who could sympathize with me about the museum in Athens being closed. The editor of a weekly paper my company publishes was at our office doing some pre-production work (as he does each week), and asked about my trip. I mentioned that the museum had been closed, and he said that when he and his wife were in Paris, the Louvre was closed due to a strike. That may actually suck more than the Athens museum being closed.
~~~Apparently being on vacation for two weeks agrees with me, because two people at work said I was glowing when I got back and other people noticed how happy and refreshed I seemed. (Please note that the glow is not the "pregnant woman glow," just the remnants of what little suntan I got through the SPF 30 sunscreen while overseas.) We'll see how long this lasts.
~~~Eight days ago I swam in the warm, clear, blue waters of the Mediterranean. Today it snowed. It's like fall kicked into high gear while we were gone and sped up by a month so that the weather we have now is what we should have just around Thanksgiving. I've heard this is supposed to be a cold winter, and so far I am inclined to believe that prediction. It shouldn't snow here until mid-November at least, if you ask me, and really preferably not until Thanksgiving. (OK, not so much of a vacation observation other than the swimming, but what the hell, it's my blog and I'll write what I want.)
Off to work in about 15 minutes. At least they missed me while I was gone, particularly on Wednesday nights as I am the coordinator of the Chinese food ordering. Good to know I have a purpose at my office.
posted by
Allyson at 1:49 PM
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wThursday, October 17, 2002 |
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Sleep is Good
Now that I've caught up on sleep and much of my TV watching, here's some random thoughts from my trip, in no particular order:
~~~As much as I'm not crazy about flying (not necessarily a fear of it, just a bit of freaking out in my head that something bad could happen), flying overseas is good. The good things about it are that you get actual food (several times per flight, in the case of the Boston-London legs of the trip) and there are plenty of in-flight viewing choices (movies, sitcoms, news, etc.). Plus the free booze doesn't hurt, though I only had the wine with lunch on the way home. If you're going overseas, I'll put in a plug for British Airways as a good airline to choose.
~~~That said, breakfast overseas sucks. Cyprus is a huge destination for the Brits, as is Greece apparently, and since just about every hotel includes breakfast in its cost, we ate a lot of "English" breakfast. Never have I eaten so much bread in a two-week span. I would have killed for a waffle or a blueberry muffin or even a bagel. Yes, I know it's still bread but it's not toast or just plain rolls. Some pancakes with syup, crispy bacon and hash browns would have made me blissful.
~~~Never in my life have I been so up-to-date on world affairs. The only channels in English we got were CNN World and BBC World, usually one or the other but sometimes both. On the Greek-language channels we would occasionally get American TV shows (ER, X Files, Sex and the City) or bad movies (like this one, which we'd never heard of but watched anyway because it was in English), though to be fair one night we did get Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Plus in Cyprus the only English-language radio station we got was British armed forces radio, which ran BBC news in the mornings.
We were telling my parents yesterday on the way home from the airport about how nice it will be to watch all 200 of our digital cable channels now that we're home, since they're all in English. My mom noted that there are those "other channels," meaning the ones in another language (Spanish and Portuguese, at the Rhode Island homestead). My husband quipped that while we were overseas, "we were the other channels." It was pretty funny.
Time to go get the laundry out of the dryer. More vacation thoughts later, I'm sure.
posted by
Allyson at 6:16 PM
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Miss Me?
So we've returned from our two-week journey to the Mediterranean in one piece. As an added bonus, we can still stand to be in the same room with each other and in fact were snuggled on the couch catching up on our TV viewing before the Wednesday night shows were on tonight. Our luggage also has returned, after having an extended holiday in London due to our flight from Athens to London being delayed in getting to the gate and our flight from London to Boston leaving about 30 minutes after we got to the gate.
Vacation was great. My friend's wedding was an interesting event to say the least. She got married in Nicosia, Cyprus, which is where she will now live. The church is, honest to god, not more than 500 feet from the "green line," the boundary between Cyprus and the Turkish-controlled North Cyprus (named, in case you are wondering, for the color of the ink used to draw the line on the map when the split was proposed). The ceremony was, literally, all Greek to us -- ancient Greek, to boot, so quite possibly the only people who understood what was going on were the cadre of ministers and chorus folk performing the ceremony. The bride and groom even didn't understand it.
The tradition in Cyprus is to invite everyone you've ever known to the wedding, so between the two families about 2,500 invitations were sent out. The expectation is that not everyone will come, but it is an insult to not invite people you used to work with or old friends from high school because that signifies that you don't think they are worthy of attending. The estimate is that 1,000 people did go to the wedding. Not to the church, because the church would never hold that many people, but to the reception in the church courtyard that followed. The guests streamed past the bridal couple and their parents for what must have been two hours, offering their congratulations and best wishes, as well as leaving envelopes with money for the couple. The money is to be used for the couple in setting up their new home -- buying one if need be, or purchasing home furnishings, etc. Of course there also was a variety of traditional food, plus a string quartet playing. A smaller dinner party for about 20 people was held after the reception.
Cyprus is a beautiful country, and I wish we had more time to explore it. We did get over to Pafos to see some great mosaics and the "birthplace of Aphrodite," both of which were really cool. We also toured a couple of castles and saw various ruins.
Our side trip to Egypt was certainly an experience. We took a cruise wherein we left Cyprus at 3 in the afternoon and cruised overnight to Port Said, Egypt, whereupon we got off the ship, boarded buses and traveled three hours to Cairo. We had a guide on the bus on the way there, who told us about the country and its history, its people, etc. We saw pyramids, the Sphinx, a papyrus shop and the national antiquities museum where all the King Tut stuff is. Mostly what we saw was the King Tut stuff in our one hour at the museum. Then we got back on the buses, traveled three hours back to the port and cruised overnight back to Cyprus.
Never in my life have I felt so wealthy -- and as you all know, wealthy is not generally a word I use to describe my financial situation. But seeing the living conditions in some of the parts of Egypt we drove through made me realize how lucky I am to live in a nice apartment and have my basic needs taken care of and then some. What passes for housing in some spots is really nothing more than some walls thrown together with some stuff thrown up as a roof. To call them shacks would be generous. Other parts weren't as bad, with apartments and the like, but the streets and the air were dirty. Of course, having camels and cars sharing space will do that.
We greatly enjoyed our time in Greece and wished we had more time to spend there. More ruins and the like, both in Athens and on the island of Aegina, where we stayed for three nights (it's a 40-minute hydrofoil trip to Athens from there). The Acropolis is amazing, even without the various statues and sculptures pilfered by Lord Elgin.
My only complaint about Greece was that the major museum in Athens was closed for renovation. From Oct. 1, 2002, to April 30, 2004. Yes, that's right. Closed completely for a year and a half to get it ready for the crowds coming for the Olympics. Absolutely unbelievable. Who in their right minds closes a city's major museum -- clearly a must-see on almost anyone's list as it holds a vast array of pottery, sculpture and statuary from the various periods in Greek history as well as some of the stuff removed from the Acropolis site -- for a year and a half when, say, keeping sections of it open while working on others would be much better for business? I was totally upset. It only occurred to me later as we were going back to the hotel that I should have pulled a Clark Griswold at WallyWorld and demanded to anyone who would open the door to let me in.
Anyway, this isn't meant to be a travelogue a la Cooch so much as it's an update of what the heck I've been up to for the past two weeks. Now it's time to finally head to bed some 27 hours after getting up to catch our 8:10 a.m. Athens time flight (seven hours ahead of Boston time). I have napped briefly, but wanted to try to get back on schedule here plus I had to stay up to wait for the luggage as I don't have to work again until Sunday. I have some random thoughts that I may expound upon next time, but this should hold you for now. :)
posted by
Allyson at 12:26 AM
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