Teresa and Eric

Teresa and Eric celebrated their wedding on August 22nd at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts in Milwaukee, WI. Everything went smoothly (not a cloud in the sky, even!) and everyone spent the day laughing and enjoying themselves. A highlight of the day was watching one of Eric's groomsmen get everyone (literally everyone) at the wedding onto the dance floor to sing along to Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline". There was clearly a lot of love in these two newly-joined families and Kate (my second shooter) and I were glad to be a part of it. Thanks for choosing Vantage to shoot your wedding! Enjoy the peek at the pictures, you two!

We're home (and we've banned Alitalia from our lives for good).

Ok, so we've been home since last Wednesday but life's been a little crazy since then and I haven't had a chance to sit and write. :)

We had a little snafu (is that how you spell that?) with our flight on the way back, which has led us to declare an official boycott on Alitalia. I highly recommend you do the same thing, to avoid the stuff we had to deal with! Now, this isn't to knock Italy--of course we LOVE it there, but we experienced a seemingly typical Italian travel scenario that hopefully you can avoid. So...we show up at the airport 2 hours before our scheduled flight but, hmmmm, our flight isn't on the departures board. That's odd. After flagging down an Alitalia person, and having that person then ask 2 or 3 more people what the heck was going on, we come to discover that our 2:10pm flight doesn't exist. Yes, there was a 10:10am flight but no 2:10pm flight. And, of course, even if it did exist, we apparently didn't have tickets for it. What?? Well, remember way back to one of our first blog posts when our flight got cancelled due to weather and we had that huge debacle between Alitalia, Delta and STA travel trying to schedule another flight? Eventually we got an Alitalia official to deal with it--by cancelling our entire trip and then rescheduling it. But, as we found out when we were in the airport on our way back, she never scheduled a return flight!! Luckily, they didn't put up a fight and paid for a hotel room and meals for the night as well as a ticket for the first flight out of Rome direct to Chicago the next morning. Well, at least we got another story out of it, right? :)

So that's it for our travel stories (for now). Hopefully you had a good read and enjoyed the images that came with it. Not sure when we'll be able to take a trip like this again (Japan and Southeast Asia are high on the list) but we certainly have enough memories to sustain us until the next trip... :) Ciao!!

Santorini, Pompeii and Rome

It's our last day today. I'm sitting in the kitchen of our Rome hostel, waiting for Michael to finish packing. Our bags are heavier (lots of sovieners!), our skin is tanner (hooray for laying out by the cruise ship pool!) and our portable harddrive is full of photos. We leave Rome and fly to Chicago in a few hours. It feels crazy to be going home after travelling for so long and I imagine it's going to feel crazy to be home for a while afterwards. But, before I get too introspective, I still have three cities to write about.

Santorini:

Unfortunately, Michael wasn't feeling well the day we were in port, so I stole out while he was sleeping and had my own adventure.Santorini is really beautiful and it makes sense why it would be such a huge tourist attraction. There were a TOOOOOOON of tourists--in fact, there were, at one point, seven cruise ships docked that day. This made it pretty hard to see the "real" Santorini, but I made a point of getting lost down little alleyways and trying to get away from the main tourist areas.

Santorini is the Greece we all see in the pictures: whitewashed houses, brightly colored doors and windows, bright blue domes on the churches. The city is located high on a cliff and people need to take either a cable car or a donkey up to the top. The line for the cable car was over 2 hours so I opted for a donkey. So I paid the guy my 5 euro, hopped up on a donkey and expected the donkey owner to walk with me to the top like in Petra (Jordan). But instead, he just gave it a big slap on the butt, yelled something in Greek and the donkey walked away without him. This only worked so well, however, since as soon as we turned a corner and were out of his line of sight, the donkey stopped. Just stopped. I slapped it on its butt, gave it a nudge with my heels, said "let's go" in all the languages I knew, but this donkey was not gonna budge. After 5 minutes of this, I got off and tried pulling him by his harness. As much as I pulled and yanked, this donkey was not going to move for me. Until I went to get back on him, of course, and he walked away from me. Oh, I see how it is, Mr. Donkey. This game of "donkey walks away when Jena tries to get back on" continued for another 5 minutes until the donkey gave up and let me on him. But he still just stood there. More heel nudges, more butt slapping, more yelling (does anyone know how to say "let's go" in Greek?), no moving. Until a pack of about 20 donkeys turned the corner on the way up the hill and Mr. Donkey decided to show his solidarity and walk up with the others. Geesh. I opted not to chance a donkey ride on the way down, needless to say.

Pompeii/Sorrento:

We were excited to visit Pompeii again since we had had so much fun the last time. We did a walking tour with Erin and Josh (our cruise dinner mates) and then wandered the eery streets. If you ever get a chance to visit Pompeii, do it. It's an amazingly preserved city and really gives you a sense of what it must have been like to live so long ago. We also got a chance to hang out in Sorrento, a town about 20 minutes from Pompeii, and the site of the cruise port. Sorrento is a cute Italian town and we were excited to happen upon a famous gelateria while we were there--the owner is in the Guiness Book of World Records for creating the largest ice cream cone ever (based on the pics we saw, it was huge) and the store has been visited by a ton of famous people including the Pope. And the ice cream was pretty good. :)

Rome:

Our last stop of our tour and we weren't disappointed. I enjoy Rome a little more every time I come back and this time was definitely not an exception. We did the normal touristy things (the Forum, Colloseum, Vatican, etc) but then also got to see some things we hadn't seen before such as the Jewish Ghetto and Campo dei Fiori, a colorful piazza where a lot of the young Italians hang out in the evening. We also stopped at a cafe that reportedly has the best espresso in Rome...and we concur. And, of course, we threw a coin into the Trevi fountain guaranteeing that we would return. :)

So now it's time to go. Michael has finished packing, we need to check out of the hostel and catch our train to the airport. Hopefully you've enjoyed reading about our adventures and seeing some of the images we created. Next time I write, I'll be back in the good ol' US of A eating peanut butter and watching reality tv. :) It's been an amazing adventure, an incredible journey. Ma adesso e' il tempo per ritornare alla realita'. Ciao ciao!!

Pictures as promised (Yalta, Odessa, Volos).

Today we said goodbye to our cruise ship. Sniff sniff. We had an absolutely wonderful time and would definitely do something like it again. We're now in Rome, just arrived about an hour ago. Before we left the shipe, I did have enough foresight to edit some images and put them on my flashdrive in case we stopped at an internet cafe along the way to the hostel.

This first image is from Yalta, a beach resort in the Ukraine.

The second and third are from Odessa, a city with a lot of charm and a lot of history. Unfortunately, much of the city is under construction in order to give the city a facelift but we were still able to get a good sense of the place. We were lucky enough to find a restaurant that served pelmeni (russian dumplings that were oh so yummy) and the Ukrainian specialty of vodka "spiked" with hot peppers. Michael said he could feel the vodka moving down his esophogus into his stomach. It definitely had a kick to it, that's for sure. We also happened to see a TON of weddings going on, being that it was Saturday. Outside of the Opera House, we saw four different bride and groom couples getting their pictures taken. A block away, we saw two more couples. Lots of weddings for a small city

This last image I took at the Archeological Museum in Volos, a small town on the eastern mainland of Greece. Attractions in Volos are few and far between (which makes me question why we stopped there as a part of the cruise, but that's not the point), so before going to the beach we opted to see the museum. Neither of us expected much, since we've been to at least five archeological museums already on this trip and have seen our fair share of old Roman and Greek ceramic pots, ancient jewelry and tombs. But we were in for a pleasant change in archeological museum scenery, as this museum was dedicated mainly to the old (and I mean old, as in ooooooold) settlements that had been discovered around Volos not too long ago. The figurine in this image is thought to have been created between 6500 and 5300 bc. That's between 8500 and 7300 years ago. I told you, oooooold. And there were dozens of these figurines in the museum, plus dozens of cooking items and weapons. Amazing.

We also stopped in Santorini, a famous Greek island, and Sorrento, on the west coast of Italy north of Naples. Unfortunately, Michael came down with the stomach flu the night before Santorini and was quarantined (seriously) to our room for the next 24 hours. I wasn't feeling sick, so I stole out to see the island while Michael was sleeping. Sorrento was cute, exactly what you'd expect from a touristy coastal Italian town. I'll add more narrative once I edit and upload images (hopefully tomorrow).

Michael and I will stay in Rome for three more days before heading back to the States on the 22nd. It's so hard to believe that it's coming to an end! But I won't think about that right now. I've got sightseeing to do. :)

This is the good life.

Michael and I boarded our cruise ship (named Pacific Princess) on the 7th of July after spending a day in Athens. Athens was somewhat disappointing: the city itself didn't have too much to offer and the Acropolis/ruins were teeming with tourists, covered by a lot of scaffolding and poorly labeled. The one really redeeming thing we experienced was the museum located in the Ancient Agora. It was small (only one long room) but we saw some of the coolest artifacts yet, like election ballots found in ballot boxes, stone tablets/markers used to determine who had to serve jury duty, a big tablet with their city laws written onto it and a collection of ceramic discs with names written on them to indicate an individual's vote for who should get ostracized from Athens (they did this once a month, apparently). Do you think anyone ever voted for themself?

And then it was cruise time. We got all checked in and we were led to our room where, lo and behold, they had hung "Just Married" balloons on our door and, WAY more exciting, we discovered that they had upgraded us from a room with a porthole window to a room with a full balcony! Omigosh, I was so excited and just kept giggling about how wonderful it all was. I still get gushy when I think about it. :)

This life is SO much different than the traveling we had been doing prior to this. Chocolates on our pillows before bed, fresh towels every morning (and afternoon, if we want), FABULOUS food and anytime access to the pool, casino, library, lounge, etc. Perhaps even better is that we get to wake up every morning in a different place, without having to unpack and repack every night (that was starting to get old). We've spent at least an hour every day lounging by the pool and every morning having breakfast on our balcony. It's hard to think that life can get much better or more relaxed than this.

We've also had the good fortune to have met some really good people. For dinner, if we choose to eat in the Club Room (and why wouldn't we? These dinners are wonderful.), we've been assigned to sit at a table with another young couple, Erin and Josh. Definitely a risky situation, if someone doesn't end up getting along, but we love our dinner mates. We spent last night laughing so hard we were practically crying at one of Josh's stories (if you ever meet him, ask him about the moose in the Grand Tetons) and have similar interests and senses of humor. It's been really fun.

So far we've stopped in Istanbul (second time for us) where we randomly ran into Hilary, one of our Intrepid groupmates, on the street (which called for grabbing a cup of tea and smoking a hookah together) as well as Yalta, Ukraine (which Michael aptly called Yawnta) and now Odessa, Ukraine. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures to share, not because I don't have any, but because I wasn't expecting to find an internet point today and don't have any prepared.

By the way, for those of you aware of the shooting that occurred in Istanbul at the American Embassy this week, it did happen on the day we were there. But the Embassy was located far away from where we were and, in fact, we found out about it from the television in the cafe as we were sitting down to tea with Hilary. Of course it was in Turkish, so we didn't have much of an idea of the situation until we got to an internet point to read the news online. But we're safe and sound, no worries.

Well, I'm off. We've got to be back at the ship in a couple hours and there's more touristing to do before then. до свидания! (That's "bubye" in Ukrainian)

"Istanbul was Constantinople, now it's Istanbul not Constantinople..."

We arrived in Istanbul (not Constantinople) on Friday morning and spent the next two days being the ultimate tourists. Ultimate, as in we rushed from sight to sight trying to see everything in the time we had: Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Cistern and Tokapki Palace. Ok, so it's not everything in Istanbul, but it's alot. Initially, we had even intended to see the Archeological Museum but decided that would just be plain crazy (we'll do it when we come back on our cruise).

Istanbul is a really beautiful city, but is definitely packed with tourists in comparison to the other places we've been--it seemed to have more tourists than the other cities combined. It's a double edged sword for us: on one hand, it's easier to navigate the city (maps are readily available) and you can be almost guaranteed that every restaurant you go into will have an english menu, but on the other hand, the city looses some of its "real" feel, as if it were set up just for the tourism industry.

On an upnote, I did find a super cute and super affordable spring dress there. :)

Last night we boarded our overnight train for Athens and said goodbye to our Intrepid group. It was sad to part with them--we had some good times with them and had developed a sense of familiarity and security with the group--but both Michael and I were also excited to be on our own again. The night train proved to be...an experience. It left at 8:30pm and both of us were in bed by about 10pm. However, we had to cross the border into Greece and therefore were awoken at about 1am to hand over our passports for exiting Turkey and entering Greece. From everything we had read, this would be a quick painless process. Everything we read was wrong. The 2 minutes it was supposed to take turned into 4 hours sitting in the no man's land between Turkey and Greece for who knows what reason. What made it twenty times worse is that there were clouds of mosquitoes outside and in order to keep them out of our train compartment, we had to close the window, which resulted in our compartment getting up to about, I'm not exaggerating, at least 100 degrees. For four hours. At one point, we succumbed to the mosquitoes because, really, it was better than the god-awful heat. Needless to say, we didn't sleep much between 1 and 5am. Gotta love train travel. :)

So now we're in Athens, having just come from a great meal of stuffed red peppers and pork kebab. Tomorrow we'll do the tourist thing again by visiting the Acropolis, and then we board our cruise tomorrow evening. I most likely won't be updating the blog as regularly, as I'm not sure of our internet access for the next two weeks, In any event, I'll do my best and will for sure send updates as I'm able...

Fresh trout, underground cities, fairy chimneys and whirling dervishes

We arrived in the region of Cappadocia on Tuesday and spent the morning exporing the Ilhara Gorge (like a very mini Grand Canyon). What a change from the deserts of Egypt, Syria and Jordan. It was wonderfully green, and we saw frogs and turtles lazing about at the water's edge. For lunch, we stopped at a restaurant located right on the river--in fact, they had piers that led out to covered platforms sitting in the middle of the river on which we sat to eat our lunch. We indulged in the local delicacy, trout caught directly from the river. The trout was cooked in its entirety and presented to us whole, aka with the head still on. Once I got over having my food staring back at me, it was delicious.

We spent the rest of the day with a local guide who took us through the underground cities of Cappadocia. The cities were built starting in 1500bc, directly in the ground down to six stories, and were used as a safe space for townspeople in case they were attacked. We spent an hour and a half exploring and apparently only saw about 10% of the city--our guide told us that the largest city could hold up to 10,000 people if needed. Whoa.

Yesterday, we hiked the areas around the city of Goreme, where we stayed for two nights, still in the Cappadocia region. The landscape was amazing, beautiful, like nothing I'd ever seen. They call the rock formations that exist there "fairy chimneys", for reasons which no one, not even the local guide, could give any definitive answer on. We also spent some time in a nearby village and took a tour of a turkish carpet co-op that sold carpets for over 400 weavers (all women) in the town.

Last night, we went to our first real tourist trap, a dinner and show of Turkish cultural dances. It actually ended up being way more fun than we had anticipated, which was probably influenced considerably by the all-you-can-eat-and-drink (emphasis on the drink part) meal we had, and the good company (about 7 of our group members made the trip). At some point, I'll upload some video of it, but internet is slow here and, in any case, You Tube is censored by the Turkish government. Who knew. The image here is of the famous "whirling dervishes", guys that spin around and around and around in long white gowns. At this dinner, they did a "dance" (aka spun around) for about 2 minutes or so under blacklights. Apparently, a couple group members went to a whirling dervishes show in Cairo and they spun around more or less non-stop for over an hour. That's a little too much spinning for me--I'll take the short version, thank you very much.

Today we lazed about before our trip to Ankara to board an overnight train to Istanbul. Our trip is technically over tomorrow at noon, although a few people will be staying on in Istanbul and we'll see the sights with them. Then we're off the following evening for Athens in order to board our CRUISE! Yay!!!

Palmyra, Crac des Chavliers and Aleppo

Palmyra:

Rome's got nothing on this place. While the modern town of Palmyra isn't much to write home about, the ruins of the ancient city of Palmyra are outstanding. We spent the (very hot) Thursday morning exploring the area, learning from our guide the history of the place. Afterwards, we had a few hours to kill before our bus arrived to take us to Crac des Chevaliers (more on that later). Michael wanted to write in his journal, so I set off on my own to do some shopping. I didn't get very far, though: at the second shop I went into, the shopkeeper, Mohammed, struck up a conversation with me and offered me tea ("Syrian hospitality"). It was quiet in the shop (tourism is low right now), Mohammed seemed to genuinely want to converse and I had time. Over the course of about 5 cups of tea (he just kept pouring it and even went back to make a second pot after I insisted he shouldn't), we talked about his family, life in America and Syria, why Americans are nervous to travel to Syria (he insisted they shouldn't be and I agreed wholeheartedly) and exchanged lessons in English and Arabic (I learned how to say "nice to meet you" and "cheers"). It was a really wonderful way to spend an hour.

We did make a fun little find, too. At a restaurant we ate at, the owner was selling old Iraqi money--we landed a Iraqi bill with Saddam's pictures on it for $6. Creepy and cool all at the same time.

Crac des Chavliers:

That afternoon, we departed for what Lawrence of Arabia has called the finest castle in all the world. I'm guessing he'd seen a lot of castles and being that this castle *was* pretty cool, he's probably right. We arrived in the evening and got treated to one of our better meals here--cooked eggplant and zucchini, french fries, grilled chicken, pita with hummus and other yummy dips, fresh fruit and tea. Yum.

The next morning, Michael and I rose early to catch the sunrise, then we met up with the group to do a tour of the castle. The castle wasn't the only amazing thing; equally amazing is how laxed they were about safety there. We could climb on top of the outer walls that stood about 100 feet from the ground without a guardrail or rope in sight and scamper down long dark, damp hallways without any lights to speak of. Just as well--it meant we really got to explore and imagine ourselves as knights and kings/queens for a day.

One interesting thing to note: the climate and landscape really changed from Palmyra to the castle. Palmyra was pure desert with a dry heat; the area surrounding the castle was actually green (albiet not like Wisconsin) and was still hot, but humid. It wasn't what I expected of Syria at all--I had expected it to be all desert like, since that's what we'd been experiencing up until that point. But, I stand corrected.

Aleppo:

We stayed in Aleppo, Syria for two days, left this morning. Aleppo competes with Damascus for the "oldest continously inhabited city in the world" title, apparently, but according to Lonely Planet, Damascus wins. Who knows. In any event, Aleppo is like a smaller version of Damascus--smaller population and smaller souqs (markets) to be sure. But it's nice to be in one place for more than a day. We did end up having the best shwarma yet, though, in Aleppo. Fresh pork, fresh veggies and some sort of yogurt sauce that made it lip smacking delicious. Not to mention that it cost us about two dollars each for a shwarma and a can of soda. Yummy.

We crossed the border into Turkey this afternoon where we've been promised the food gets even better and we'll see more and more carpet stores. :) Ciao!

You are now entering Syria...

We spent Sunday in Amman, Jordan visiting the Roman Ampitheater, getting lost in the city and trying to get into mosques. I say trying, because at the first one we were scolded and told "no women" and at the second, there was a sign at the entrance reading "tourists welcome from 11am to 3:30pm". It was 4:30pm. Oh well. The shining jewel of our day was spending 2 hours or so lounging about at The Blue Fig, a restaurant in what seemed to be the hoity-toity neighborhood of Amman. The food was delicious, the ambiance was spectacular and the prices were cheap. Can't get much better than that.

The next day we left for Syria and arrived in Damascus at about 4pm. We've been hearing all along that Damascus is awesome and we weren't disappointed. This city is amazing. It's bustling, but not chaotic like Cairo. When you get inside the old city walls, it's like getting lost in Venice (without the water and everyone is speaking Arabic). There is so much to see and experience here that has nothing to do with touristy stuff--it's all about walking around the Souqs (markets) to look at the countless shops of clothing, spices, gold jewelry and candy or sitting at a cafe sipping tea, smoking a nargila (hooka) and playing backgammon with friends (which we did both nights we were there). Michael and I kept remarking how cool it was to see how people here really lived, since clearly none of the stuff we were seeing was set up for our benefit, the tourists. I suppose that's what you get for visiting the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world.

The people here are beautiful and friendly. Also, suprisingly to us, there were a noticable number of women who didn't wear a headscarf, much more so than in Egypt or Jordan. And, consistent with what we've experienced before, we were greeted with countless people welcoming us to Damascus as we passed them on the street. We really enjoyed our time in Damascus and could definitely see coming back.

What do Lawrence of Arabia, Indiana Jones and the Dead Sea have in common?

Not sure? Read on to find the answer...

Lawrence:

Wednesday, we set out for Wadi Rum, a protected desert area in Jordan and about an hour and a half from Aquaba. We spent the afternoon driving around the desert in 4WD vehicles, stopping at points of interest, including a giant sand dune and the house at which Lawrence of Arabia spent a winter. By the end of the day, we were all covered in a fine red sand and all desperately wanted a shower.

There was no shower in sight, however, since we camped that night at a desert camp set up in the traditional Beduoin style. The Beduoins are nomadic tribes that, until recently, set up camps throughout the desert and stay for a couple months at a time wherever they are. Now they tend to stay in one place, relying on tourism to sustain them by running camps like the one we stayed at or working at tourist sites such as Petra. They still tend sheep and maintain traditional lifestyles as much as possible, though.

After a dinner of chicken and potatoes made "hangi" style (or something like that, which means the food was placed on a grill which was then placed in a hole in the ground with coals over it), we sat around and talked under the stars while the Beduoin men sang traditional songs for us. As they sang, Zaid, the head of the camp, periodically "sang" by grunting rhythmically to the music. I think it started off as a traditional part of the song, but he seemed to really ham it up for our benefit. He also (jokingly) started calling Nora, one of the feistier women in our group, his wife, and kept telling Michael not to worry, that I was safe and that he (Zaid) would make sure no one tried to take me as their own wife. He did, in fact, have two wives and eight children between them...

That evening, we watched the sunset over the mountains and then went for a night hike with only the full moon and gazillion (at least) stars as our light source. Michael got some absolutely beautiful shots from that time.

Indiana Jones:

The next morning, we drove to Petra, one of the new seven wonders of the world and, perhaps even more exciting, the location of several scenes in Indian Jones and the Last Crusade. Walking among the ruins is quite unbelievable--the site is the ancient capital city of the Nabateians and was carved from solid rock. They hand carved gigantic columns, tombs, etc out of the beautiful multicolored sandstone so the "buildings" are literally coming out of the mountains behind them. After a guided 4 hour tour throughout the site, we went to dinner and then to a nearby hotel to watch Indiana Jones in the hotel lobby. About an hour into the movie, and just as they were getting to the Petra scenes....the power went out in the entire neighborhood. Crap. We walked back to our hotel in the dark and got ready for bed by candlelight. Just as well, I suppose, since we had an early morning the next day...

We woke at 6:30am to beat the sun and took donkies up to the top of one particular mountain into which was carved a huge monastary. As we enjoyed the view from the shade of a small cave, a little Beduoin girl literally climbed up through a hole in the rock nearby, sat next to us and started chatting away. We found out her name was Tama, she was 8 years old, and she lived nearby in the Beduoin camp with her family. She became entranced with Nora's digital camera and even took some pictures on her own, saying to us "1,2,3, cheeeeeese!". Tama was incredibly bright and very sweet. After she left, one of the women wondered aloud what Tama could have been and done in her life, had she been born into a different situation. We marveled at our own lives, how lucky we all are to have the choices and abilities we do, to get an education, travel, lead extremely comfortable lives. It's just another reason I love traveling--it forces me to put things into perspective and remember not to take my privileges for granted...

Dead Sea:
Last night and tonight we're staying in Madaba, about 2 hours from the Syrian border. It's a great little town and, true to form, everyone keeps smiling at us and saying "Welcome to Jordan!" On the way there, we stopped at several sites, the highlight being the 2 hours we spent at a resort on the Dead Sea. All the stuff you've ever seen or heard about the Dead Sea is true: the water is so salty that you can float with absolutely no effort at all, which is quite a weird feeling. The salt also pours into whatever open wounds you might have and burns the heck out of your eyes if you happen to be unlucky enough to get some there. But, once you get over that, it sure is a cool feeling to be in "normal" water that clearly isn't normal at all. We also all treated ourselves to a mud soak, baked ourselves in the sun, and then rinsed off to leave us with, supposedly, skin that was as smooth as a newborn. None of us really felt that different though...just dirty and funny looking. But it made for good pictures, and in the end that's what matters most, right?

So in the end, what do Lawrence, Indy and the Dead Sea have in common? Not much, except they all got a mention in our blog... :)

Today we took a day trip to Amman, the capital of Jordan, to walk around, get to know the city and do street photography....more to come!