29 November 2010

Second day of four day trip

We woke up on our second day in Thessoloniki and drove immediately to Domaine Gerovassiliou Winery just 15 minutes away from the hotel. They have this awesome museum with all of the tools used throughout history to make wine and then they have one of the biggest corkscrew collections in the world. We had a guided tour through the museum and then we got to taste two of the wines that they make there. I would suggest to anyone visiting Thessaloniki to go there, they can even take a bus from the IKEA and it will drop you off at the closest village and the people at the winery will come and pick you up.

We then drove back through part of Thessoliniki to get to our second part of our day trip, we wanted to visit the birthplace of Aristotle (Arthur's favorite historical person). They have a wonderful park dedicated to him in New Stagira, but as we drove through it was too foggy to even stop and take pictures. The wonderful thing about our hour and half drive across Chalkidiki was the how many times the land changed. We first drove through a farmers paradise with green fields in every direction, then it became barren and rocky with scrub bushes like Arizona (minus the cactus), then again another change to a wonderful forested land (this was the foggy part) that you could just imagine little fairies flying about, and last but not least the coast line with beaches everywhere.
This was at the end of the forest part and at the top of a hill with a rest stop looking down on Stratoni village. We had our pic-nic of leftover chicken from KFC.
The picture above is of Ancient Stagira the birthplace of Aristotle it has a stone wall around it and still looks in magnificent shape, we were the only one's visiting it.





Classical Stoa in Stagira.


The below picture is of Olymbiada, a small coastal town that was pretty much closed down for the winter months but you could tell that they are pretty busy during the summer.
And here's Arthur getting a ticket on our way back from our day trip. In Greece the cops stand in the middle of the road and randomly pull over cars. So as luck would have it the cop motioned for us and the car in front of us to pull over. Arthur got booked for the hook (for towing) that he has on the back of his car.

27 November 2010

First day of a 4 day trip

We went on a small vacation up north around Thessaloniki area. We left around 9 am of course it was the one day that Nik wanted to sleep in, otherwise we would have left around 7. We drove straight to the Archaeological museum, baby Kat slept the whole way since she did wake up at 7.
This is us in front of the museum, I specifically wanted to go here since they were doing a special exhibit on glass objects made before Christ. I also wanted to go on a Sunday since then it was free, saving us 12 euros.
This is a torso of an emperor wearing a cuirass, also A.D.
Some of glass vases on display, so delicate and yet so artistically done. I wouldn't be able to replicate this kind of work even with all of the fancy tools they have available today.
A sarcophagus displayed in front of the museum, Arthur took a lot of pictures of this since I was feeding baby girl on the front steps and Nik was running around on the grass. You go through museums pretty fast when you have a 2 year old, Nik kept saying "go" and "dark", the museum was pretty dark in some areas and he wasn't into that. Arthur also took the picture below of part of the Byzantine wall that used to surround Thessaloniki.
We of course had to eat at McDonalds, I was bummed that their ice cream machine was broken, you can get a Strawberry milkshake for 1 euro.
Nik was knocked out and fell asleep with out any problem.
That night we had KFC, a Bucket, 22 euros and we got 15 pieces of chicken, 3 french fries, 2 coleslaws and a big bottle of Coke.
We purchased the KFC at the mall in Thessaloniki just a short drive from our hotel, we also ate a chocolate cake at TGI Friday's before getting our bucket. We had planned to eat there, but baby kat was getting hungry to we rushed back to the hotel.

This is the first day of our 4 day trip, for food we are pretending to be in the U.S. but enjoying the history and variety of things to do in Greece.

15 November 2010

What a Deal

If you need to stock up on all of the photos you have taken and start doing some scrapbooking this is the deal for you.

Go to Internet Explorer and sign up with Snapfish an on-line photo printing company, not only do you get 50 prints for signing up, but if you spend $10 you get 365 prints for free (okay there is the shipping cost). The dead line is November 20th so act quick, I just made a huge purchase of photos, so I don't need any more.

Teething on a Lamb bone

Here is our adorable 5 month old daughter chowing down on a lamb bone with her brother. She's teething so I think it felt pretty good on her gums and tasted pretty good too, as you can see from her expression.

10 November 2010

Baby Kat is 5 months old






Arthur thought to get out Nik's old walker, I didn't think baby Kat was ready for it, but she took to it like a duck to water.

She doesn't like to lay down anymore, even in your arms she wants to be standing and for you to also stand, so as you can see this gets very tiring.

Of course Nik got a little jealous of the "new" thing in our house and wants to walk in it too. I think we will have to buy him one of those Flinstone foot car things. I asked him to smile and this is what I got.

Looking back at Nik at this age.

Added Note to Greek Elections

The other thing I don't like about the elections is that the schools close 2 days before the election and we are having a re-election this weekend since the vote was very close, so again the schools will be closed on Thursday and Friday. This is great if you are a kid or a teacher, but once again the government is paying the teacher's a very well paid salary. Plus the schools already had a holiday on Oct. 28 and 29th and they had only been open for one and half months.

08 November 2010

Greek Elections

We just had Greek elections on Sunday for town hall positions, like the mayor and governor positions. Both Arthur and his mother voted, I can vote after living here for 10 years, although I don't think i will get involved in it. But I would like to say one thing, the Greek government would save a lot of money if they didn't do the advertising that they do. Every person on the ballot hands out an envelope with 4 pieces of paper in it and on each page is the list of people running. The person who gives you the envelope has their named checked so you see who brought. The crazy thing is that every person on the ballot hands out these envelopes to every household. The government is probably spending millions in printing up these papers and for what? Arthur didn't even open them because they were all the same, no extra info about the person you are voting for, just a list of names with a check mark next to the one who dropped them off. We will use them for scrap paper, so I guess that's a plus.

05 November 2010

Recent weeks

So sorry for not writing in a while, it has been rainy and cold here so it is very hard to make it down to KokaRoka with the kids, since baby Kat has to be wrapped up like a mummy and Nik runs around inside yelling his head off, so not very conducive to writing a blog. Right now Nik is outside because it is sunny and he is blowing a whistle, inside Kat is sleeping and ΓιαΓια Katerina is making bean soup (every Friday), Arthur is cleaning the two rooms that left this morning. A couple of weeks ago we had a sunny Sunday and we went on a ride up to the Lake. On the way we stopped at the village that Katerina grew up in and picked up some chestnut's.Baby and I watched from a safe distance as Arthur and Nik picked up chestnuts.
This is my attempt at a Lemon Meringue Pie, I thought I did a pretty good job. It tasted good but maybe a little too lemony, the custard was a little runny so I might try a different recipe next time. ( now nik is crawling on me the baby has waked up and I am running out of time to type)
We have also (Nik just stuck his finger in the babies mouth) introduced the baby to solids. Here she is having her first egg, it didn't go over well because she was already hungry and wanted to drink milk now. That same day she had some ice cream and seemed to like that better, uhoh another sweet tooth in the family (Nik just ripped his shirt).

I'm off to go check on Nik he is outside somewhere and they are fixing the road with tractors and stuff so not so safe, bye chat later.