TeamSD: Adventures of Lawyer Girl and Demian Man

Now that we’re back safe and sound from our trip abroad, I thought I’d give a few shout-outs to the products and services that made our vacation all the more enjoyable:

• EMU Australia Women’s Sheeve Flip Flops: I was looking for a pair of comfortable, yet hardy sandals to wear in Greece and bought these babies a few days before our trip (thank God for overnight shipping).  They were exactly what I was looking for–very soft, suede-like material, no need for breaking in, and provided excellent support walking all day long in the blistering heat on gravel, cobblestone, and pavement.

• Fantasy Travel: We were really happy with our travel agency, which helped us book hotels, ferries, and transfers in Greece, and even went above and beyond to help us research flights to the Seychelles.  Dina, who was our travel agent, was always very responsive and very sweet.  Highly recommended.

• Kindle App for the iPad: During our trip, I read 8 books, 6 of which I had downloaded to my iPad with the Kindle app.  Some were pretty terrible books, but some, like the following, were really terrific: Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster (really interesting book about the history of the luxury industry, recommended by our friend Howard), You’re Either In, Our You’re In the Way (inspiring story written by Bay Area twin brothers about their experience making their first movie . . . and how they got Ed Harris to star in it), and If You Follow Me (another Bay Area author’s book, fiction, about a couple’s year teaching English in Japan).

Thanks for following our blog on this trip!  Hopefully, we’ll keep it up during the year, but if not, there’s always next year’s trip to Japan!  And (sigh) our trip to San Diego Comic-Con this year.

Back in Athens now and will be leaving for the airport to go the Seychelles in about an hour. Look out for our Santorini post soon, featuring:

- Beautiful sunsets
- Harrowing adventures in a Smart Car
- An educational and delicious cooking class

Day 1

So the start of this leg of the trip kind of sucked. We had to wake up at 5:00am, and some of the pictures in the previous post with the sunrise are the ones we took at like 5:30 or 6:00am. We had to get up this early to take a ferry ride to Mykonos (about a 5 hour trip) which was overall kind of sucky. I think we each slept about 2 hours each and was pretty uneventful other than checking in our bags aka dropping them off at an unguarded area in a big pile of other junk, a really annoying Greek soap opera about a whiny grandmother, and an annoying guy who was going around the whole ship yelling things carrying a basket of food. I’m assuming he was selling stuff, but even the people who spoke Greek seemed to be laughing at him so *shrug*

After the trip, we arrived at the lovely Hotel Vencia and checked into our rooms.

We had lunch at the hotel consisting of a local salad and dessert and then just lounged by the pool afterward for a couple of hours for some R&R.

In the evening for dinner, we decided to get to “downtown Mykonos” where there are lots of winding streets. Our directions literally consisted of: Go in between the parking lot and a white house, walk down the road, take the stairs down the Phillips, pass a blue house, pass a white house, pass the LOL graffiti, then make a left and you arrive in downtown. Jaci was in love with all the buildings, she said they reminded her of Mamma Mia…

While walking around downtown we bought some stuff from this pretty epic honey shop. It was all decked out in bee junk and had like 10 different kinds of honeys and in different forms (cream/drops). Jaci got some of their special honey, I don’t really remember what it was though =P

For dinner we ate at Kounelas Fish Tavern. They don’t have a menu for the fish as they serve whatever they caught fresh that day. You pick your table, then you go downstairs and pick out the fish you like, and then eat it! I had a grilled tuna and Jaci ordered some shrimp which was pretty delicious. After dinner, they gave us these pretty epic cinnamon shots — to start the evening. It was literally like taking shots of the big red gum. Wonky.

For dessert, we went to the One and Only Gelato place in Mykonos.

Day 2

So now we’re going to have some pretty chill days ahead of us with not too many photos. Jaci woke up late (around 11:30am) although I was up at like 7:30 because of stupid jet lag. We once again grabbed a quick lunch and then head to downtown again.

Jaci picked up a small sculpture of a fancy olive branch. This is the same sculptor who designed all the bronze olive branches for the last Athens Olympics, which were given to all the heads of state. We don’t have any pictures but we’ll have it when we come back!

We then got massages at the Belvedere Hotel which was pretty schamncy and nice. I think if we were to come back to Mykonos we’d probably stay there next time; it was very hiptastic.

We then then had dinner at Matsuhisa (aka Nobu’s), the only open air restaurant that Nobu-San has. This place was way delicious. We went to Nobu’s in Hong Kong which we thought was okaaay and nothing that special, but this place pretty great. We had the 8 course omakase, Jaci had a lychee mojito, and I had a Japanese bloody mary (wasabi instead of horseradish). We also met a nice old couple who suggested a beach and a couple of places to eat at and another group of people who were obsessed with Jaci’s iPad. I’ll do my best to remember what we had for food below in the pictures:

Dinner fin

Day 3

Soo… tired… of… writing….must… keep… short.

So we woke up again… yay, had lunch in the hotel. We then went to the Psarou beach which was the recommendation of one of the old couples yesterday. We chose this beach because it was supposed to be the beach with the fewest naked people. I didn’t want to bring my camera to get sand stuck in it… and Jaci forgot hers… So all we have are cellphone photos and a couple of random flip videos. It was a pretty nice beach, very relaxing, seems kind of interesting but I think all the beaches are privately owned and you have to pay to sit and relax which was kind of wonky. Either way was a nice place to chill and relax for awhile.

After that, we went to grab dinner and hang out in “downtown” Mykonos again. We ate at Philippi Restaurant which was pretty durned delicious. We had a delicious fruit salad, had these Dolmades which were amazing and covered in a gravy time sauce (mmmmmm), and a “Mountain and Sea” spaghetti (misc seafood and cheese and vegetable type thingies)

After dinner we just walked around town, had some more gelato, and then went back to watch Wall Street (I’m pretty sure Jaci didn’t like it… thought it was very strange =P).

Day 4 – Sort of

Just finished eating our first breakfast (woke up in time for it finally), and are about to pack up and head to Santorini! See you guys there!

*** Due to my epic laziness, I don’t think I’ll go through and put all the images inline. Let’s see how this gallery thing works…***

I’d just like to take a quick moment to post that cooking broccoli is a good thing. Perhaps… over cooking even. This may be old news to some of you, but Jaci doesn’t like to cook the broccoli too long because she doesn’t want to “lose all the vitamins” (at least… that’s her excuse, she just likes it crunchy).

WELL LISTEN UP PEOPLE: SQUISHY BROCCOLI IS IN

Real post coming soon… Just needed to post this to defend my honor.