This spring, Alaina has had her first "job". She has been working as an umpire for the Marin Girls Softball league for 10u and 12u games.
This is great experience for her--she learns the rules and gets to practice her assertiveness. Sometimes the coaches are even a little mean when they contest the calls--but she is learning to stand her ground. And she gets paid! $40/ game!
This past week in California, we have had a record breaking heat wave. It topped 90 degrees at our house on multiple days, and at Jason's parent's in La Quinta it hit 107! Too hot for mid march!!
The warm weather is waking up our dormant plants--in the past week, everything seems to be in bloom, including our Dogwood tree and our Azaleas, which usually don't bloom for another month! Weird.
We had originally planned to ski this weekend--but the warm temps mean that there is very little snow left in Tahoe--and what is left is basically a slushy mess, so we elected to cancel.
Instead had a quiet weekend at home, which was quite nice. On Saturday, Ethan had a track meet in Oakland, and we all went to cheer him on. After, we had a picnic and took a hike in the nearby Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park--a beautiful hiking area in the East Bay, that I have never heard of. There are so many hidden gems in the Bay Area!
This spring, Ethan decided to do Track and Field instead of Baseball. The Track and Field coach is the same coach that does cross country (and is awesome!), and he had very little playing time on baseball last year--so definitely time for something different!
He is competing in the 400m dash--which is one loop around the track. Much shorter than cross country!
I am proud of him for doing this this spring!
So, we finally made it to Greece on Monday night (instead of Saturday), having missed 2 of our 3 planned days in Athens as well as our tour of the Acropolis. We had pre-arranged a ride from the airport to our air bnb, and thank goodness that we did, because as it turns out there was a 3 day taxi strike.
We got into our Airbnb, grabbed a quick dinner, and went to bed exhausted. The next morning we got a slow start. By the time we were really ready to get going it was raining. So we decided to first check out the Acropolis museum. Seemed like just about everyone else in Athens had the same plan. Anyway, the museum was very beautifully laid out, and we enjoyed it as much as possible given our fatigue.
After the museum, we took the metro to a cool lunch spot called Stani serving delicious greek yogurt. By then the rain had subsided, so we took a walking tour of Old Athens. Our dinner plans were thwarted as our planned restaurant was closed, and our back up choice was full of cats--and then the metro line closed so we had a long walk home. Overall not the best day.
We decided to rebook our Acropolis tour and tickets for Tuesday. Luckily our planned guide was available and she did a great job teaching us all the history as we walked along. The skies were blue and though it was a bit windy the weather was mild. A new day! It was fascinating to learn about life in ancient Greece as well as the very modern way the Greeks thought about government.
After our tour we grabbed a quick lunch and then got our rental car.
Our plan for the the night was Arachova--a small mountain town (near a ski resort!) outside of Delphi. The town was very cute and quite scenic. We even found a cowbell for the cabin!
The following day we had a tour of Delphi--Delphi was really beautiful and something about it being an the site of an oracle made it feel a bit mystical.
We left Delphi around lunch time and then started the drive for Meteora. Meteora is an area in the Northern part of Greece where orthodox monasteries were built in the 13-15th centuries when Greece was occupied by the Ottoman Empire. The structures are fascinating--they look like they were pasted on top of cliffs--truly an engineering feat, especially for the time. We arrived just in time for sunset.
In the morning, it was raining, so we took it easy and once the rain cleared we headed up to visit the monasteries themselves. Somehow you can drive pretty close to each of them, and then walk up to the entrances with stairs that seems to cling to the side of the cliffs. We stopped at 3, though with visiting restrictions we only got into one.
The following day, we visited one last monastery (Varlaam) before heading back to Athens to catch an evening flight to Copenhagen.
We spent our (planned) final night before returning home.
So, overall our trip was busy--busier than expected--and we didn't exactly return well-rested. But we did see a lot!
Well, our ski week was an adventure to say the least. Now, of course I am always game for an adventure--but this one was more of a surprise adventure.
Last summer, I decided we were not going to travel abroad this year, because we needed to take Ethan to visit different colleges. Then I found deeply discounted airfare to Athens, Greece for ski week and booked the tickets. I mean, how many colleges can we visit anyway??
Our tickets routed us via Copenhagen, with a couple hour layover on the way out and an overnight on the way back, so as a bonus we planned to check out a bit of Copenhagen too.
We left Friday afternoon and landed in Copenhagen around 1pm on Saturday after an uneventful (though slightly delayed) flight. Funny enough, Ethan's history teacher from last year was also on the flight with his wife, and was also heading to Greece. As we were standing in customs, I noted we had received "meal vouchers" from the airline for $15 per person. Seemed odd. Shortly thereafter I got an email alerting us that our flight to Athens had been cancelled. Hmmm. Ethan's teacher, who was a bit ahead of us in line, soon got a similar message, but he also got an email that he was rebooked on a flight the next day through London. We got no such email however. So upon clearing customs, we headed to the "help desk", which was mobbed with angry passengers who were on other cancelled flights. While we waited, I got another email that reserved us tickets on a Monday night flight to Athens. As we anticipated a Saturday night Athens arrival, and only had a week long trip. The new itinerary seemed less than satisfactory, so we continued to wait. Finally we were helped and after much negotitation, they found us a flight on Sunday morning through Venice.
We were put up in a hotel in Copenhagen, and took a walk through town. We were extremely impressed by the city-it was clean, orgnaized and quiet. Seemed like a stunning place to revisit, perhaps in the summer.
The next morning we headed back to the airport early and boarded our flight to Venice. Unfortunately for us, the plane had to be de-iced, which resulted in a delay. Our connection was already tight, but when we landed we could see our Aegean airplane. Unfortunately for us, Venice is one of those airports where you have to bus to the gates--and they absolutely would not let us walk to the plane despite the fact that it was right nearby. Somewhat unsurprisingly, when we got into the terminal, they told us the gate had closed and we could not board the plane.
So back to the help desk we went.
In Venice they told us that we had two options: wait for a direct flight to Athens the next evening, or take a flight later in the afternoon to Sarajevo. Considering our luck, we opted to stay in Venice--as we have never been and it certainly seemed like a better place to be stuck than Sarajevo. Due to the fact that it was Carnival, and the Olympics were ongoing, Venice was very busy--so they took some time finding accomodations for us--and when they did, it was not a hotel in Venice, but a hotel in the countryside that was a 60+ euro cab ride to Venice. Hmmm.
We checked into the hotel and sat down for lunch to weigh our options. We had the rest of the day as well as most of the next day to be in Venice--but did we really want to take two round trip cab rides to the city? Then I had an idea.....what if we rented a car and went to the Olympics? I looked it up and there were several evening events within a 2-3 hour radius. Option 1: Curling--I was in but the kids were uninterested. Option 2: Ski jumping--that peaked more interest. Jason looked into a car rental whicle I worked on buying the tickets--within an hour we were headed back to the airport for a rental car, Olympic tickets in our possession!
The drive to the ski jump was almost 2.5 hours--but beautiful, through the Dolomites. We actually we not too far from where we hiked 2 summers ago--and even recognized one of the roads we were on.
The next obstacle was to figure out parking--I tried to do this online, but of couse the website did not work, and so this took some conversations with Italian parking attendants, and another difficult to navigate website--but finally--we figured it out. Ons shuttle ride later and we were there!
The energy at the stadium was electric, and we were amazed that our tickets let us walk right up front to watch. And although we were underdressed for the weather despite wearing every layer we brought (we were planning on a trip to Greece, after all), we had a ball. It was so incredible to watch the athletes--and join in with the fans! We were at the Women's final--and in the crowd were some of the US Men's team--so we even got to meet Olympians--below is a picture of Ethan with Jason Colby from Team USA!
It was defineitly an experience we will never forget. Norway won the gold and silver medals, and the bronze went to an athlete from Slovenia.
Following the event we grabbed a quick dinner in a nearby town--and chatted with more olympic fans (everyone was so amazed we just booked our tickets today--most had planned their trips for months, ha ha). Then we made the difficult and long drive back to our hotel. But it was totally worth it!
The next morning we packed up and headed to explore Venice. I have always heard that Venice is beautiful but completley overrun with tourists and a fairly unauthentic experience.
I would say that it live up to this hype. We took a boat ride down the Grand Canal and learned out the city--and then explored a bit on foot. On thing that really surporsed me is that the main plaza, Plaza San Marco, was acually sumberged in about a foot of water when we were there.
Apparently, this is tidal, but happening more frequenslty due to global warming. They even sell these plastic boots to tourists so they can still get through the plaza and into the main church. We decided to forgo the boots and skipped the church, but enjoyed exploring the back alleyways. We grabbed a quick pasta lunch and then headed back to the airport for a 5:30pm flight to Athens, which thankfully took off on time.
By this point of our trip we had spent time in 3 places, none of which were planned, and we were contending with jet lag ...quite honestly we felt absolutely exhausted. But also, we really enjoyed our unexpected visit to Italy!
