well, here i am at the athens airport,, midnight thinking our flight is at 7am when its at 8am. oh well, we saved on accomodation for the night. and there is this nifty free internet terminal. how cool is that?

right santorini-- so freaking cool. we got in at midnight from the ferrry. yet another floating cruise ship palace type thing. we followed our new friends to thier place, in the town of fira, all theway up the hillside. amazing view. the first day we went to akotiri to the red beach, which required some hiking. wee grabbed some homemade wine on the way and pretty muchhad the whole beach to ourselves, other than an old man and his helper who lived in the cave in the hill (literally a cave) who sold more wine and frruit to beach ppl. we also met 2 guys from new jersey there. we swam and sunbathed. that night we all wennt for dinner and then out to several clubs and bars in fira. the next day the weather was a lot worse but despite that, christian and i made it to the other side (top really) of the island to Oia. Which was amazing. but beingg cloudy and overcast we didn't know what to do....so we rented a car! yes thats right i amm allowed to rent cars here. orig. we were supposed to get a smart car, but the battery was dead so they upgraded us for free to a BRAND new peugueot 307, 4 door with a cd player. we drove around the rest of the day and saw literally everything there is to see there *its liike 45 min from one end to another*. had a nice mexican dinner with our frriendsand now we're back, trip pretty mcuh over.


greece was amazing i will miss it. i will not miss the airport tho.

Right, so back in travelland....

We're in Crete. Or rather we have been for days. We first got in and in a sleepy state headed for the town of Rethymno, on the northern coast of the island. It was soooo beautiful. And talk about cheap. We found a little old lady who rented out rooms and stayed there. Rethymno has the worlds largest Venetian castle, and lots of other cool stuff, which isn't open on monday. d'oh. We spent a day at the beach and managed to get quite quite burned. We also saw rams and ostriches at the gardens there. Everything there is soooooooooooooo cheap. It was great.

After 2 days we decided to head all the way west to the town of Hania. We found a great little pension and had our own room, bathroom and BALCONY that looked right into the archeaological museum right across the street. Literally. Did the museum and wandered around the town. It finally started raining but it didn't matter and we sat on our covered balcony playing scrabble. We stayed in Hania for 2 nights and decided to return to Heraklion, the capital of Crete to catch our ferrry a day later.

So here we are. Did the arch. museum, which is Greece's 2nd largest second only to the closed one in Athens at the moment. Also did the palace of Knossos, which was neat. Heraklion is very blah tho (the guidebook calls it a "damp squib") and is overpriced with little to do. We've managed to make some new friends who were on the bus from Hania and are on our ferry to Santorini (which did i mention we got to see Goats climbing down the mountain). So cool. We leave in several hours to take the ferry to the island of Thira (aka Santorini).

Greece is wonderful. Especially the food. Ooh soo good. Miss you all.

So greece.

Let me back up again. Last i left you i was about to do dinner with this irishman. We he went all out for me and christian. He got us beers, salad and dips and everything for me, he had a huge lobster pasta half of which he gave to christian, who also had calamari. We had apples, walnuts and honey for dessert and coffee and sop-something-or-other-in greek alcohol. We talked and it was great. He later commented, "You mentioned it was your birthday on friday and i was thinking, if my daughter (he has a 20 year old daughter in italy) was out traveling on her birthday, i'd want someone to take her out". I was really so touched. SO yea! Remember that when your out traveling on the road.

Then we get back to our hostel, and we start talking to the guy behind the desk at the hotel and he and his friend hook us up with free beer and we sit at the reception 'til 3am telling dirty jokes. Steve, the guy who works there and Kevin (the other one whose another american traveling have been awesome). They even got me a birthday card and had people around the hostel sign it and gave it to me at midnight last night. We then walked up (at like 3 am) to the giant hills around Athens. One of them is where Socrates former prision was and got a great view of Athens. Today, Kevin, Christian and i are going up another hill to have a picnic and then to Steves friend Nick's place to night to have fun.

So everything you read in the papers about Greece not being ready for the Olympics, is true. We tried to go to where the Olympic stadium is. THERE IS MOSTLY NOTHING THERE! Just construction and lazy greeks sitting around smoking. Its not ready, at all. Sadly, everything, esp. the Acropolis, is covered in scaffolding right now. The national museum is closed for renovation. Yea, it kinda sucks. Even more suprising, steve was telling us that there literally are only 16,000 beds in Athens and over 20,000 people will be here for the olympics. The rates at where we are staying are going to jump up over 100$!

Well, we're off to Crete tomorrow night so i'll probablynot be posting for awhile as Internet is 6 euros in Athens i can't imagine what it will cost there.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes. I love you guys.

Greece- so we arrived into athens at about 4am. We sat at the airport playing scrabble (travel pocket scrabble has been a great investment) 'til about 7:15 and then headed to the hostel. We're staying at a tiny little hostel not far from Victoria station. We slept most of yesterday after staying up all night. So Greece. Wow. First off, everything that they say about the food is true. ITS ALL GREAT! Yesterday i had a cheese pie and spinach pie. We walked around the acropolis (didn't go in) and then had dinner at this great little place, gods restaurant, where we saw the sunset over the acropolis. We went and then climbed a hill and were just about as high as the acropolis and could see all of athens at night. It was incredible.

Today we actually did stuff. Turns out eu students get into all the monuments and places for free. So we tacked on english accents and whiped out our goldsmiths id's therefore saving 12 euro. It rocked. We saw the Arcopolis, The roman agora, the greek agora, the temple of zeus and of course, the theatres of Dioynsis and someone else. It was just amazing. Great weather. Pure blue skies and just great. We went back to have a beer at the restaurant and met ourselves a cool irishman who we're going to meet for dinner soon. Heading to Crete on Saturday via a 10pm ferry. Flying from Santorini back to Athens the 26th on Aegean Air. Not sure if we'll get online again, its INSANELY expensive here (worse than england).

We also have seen lots of cute stray dogs. I named one hermes. Can i bring him home? Please?

Well off from London. Go figure its a bank holiday today so i will not get any of my birthday cards until i get back from Greece. Scary. Glad everyones been enjoying the pics from Morocco, Spain and the like. Booking our flights from Crete and Santorini. Wee! Off to Greece, t-minus 7 hours 30 minutes. T-minus 4 days 'til my birthday!

As Francis the Canadian i met on the boat to Tangier says, "A Penny Saved is a memory Lost."

PHOTOS!!!!

BARCELONA--sagrada familia and a view








MADRID-- museo del prado, parque de retiro, and more














MOROCCO!--views of africa, tangier, the atlantic, moroccan tea and most importantly, camels....CAMELS!
























MORE BARCELONA-- el mercado, and our new Aussie friend, teresa

wow, so much to say, so much to say.

First off, let me back up. So, right. Morocco. Yea. Unlike anything i could have imagined in my wildest dreams. I have NEVER been so aware of my sex in my entire life. To begin with the ferry ride was great and we met a wonderful pair of canadians who even gave me a new deck of italian playing cards for a game called brisk. We got in and finally got to our hotel. Definetly was nice for a change. Definetly, although i decided earlier to stay nice here because well, its morocco, who knows what a hostel, is like. So we headed towards the medina and were immediately hit up by a man trying to be our guide who had previously told us how to get to our hotel. After a LONG time of going in circles and explaining we didn´t want one, he finally left us alone. We wandered through the old town and the medina. There was a burber market going on so there were women with giant hats selling lots of food. EVERYWHERE i went guys looked at me. And comments were made. And women were nowhere to be seen (other than occasionally in the market). We had someone try to get us to go into his store and when we didn´t he became quite angry and began calling us "lazy american jews" and other nasty things.
We finally found our selves a cafe and had some moroccan tea, which is the BEST TEA i have EVER HAD! Its made with CHinese gun powder and fresh mint leaves (lots of them) and lots of sugar. SO tasty. We also had some tasty pizza (the cuisine there doesn´t quite lend itself to veggie friendly ppl) and got a hookah with apple tobacco, which they call shisha. We made it an early night after sitting in a cafe haveing more tea and watching the sunset over the port.
The next day we tried to go to the Kasbah and started in the new town, but caught ourselves another guide once we hit the old town who would just NOT let go. He even tried to get the police to convince us he was okay. Finally got rid of him and saw some more AMAZING views from around the Kasbah. We shopped around the medina some more and then headed back to the cafe we´d gone to the night before. Had more tea, and shisha and an amazing fruit salad and headed back to the main drag that our hotel was on. As the sun was starting to set we decided to go down to the beach as we saw maybe 5 women there we decided that was more than before. And we went down there following some other older american tourists pretending to be with them. And sure enough what do we see on the beach...(aside from LOTS of trash)............................ CAMELS! There were 3 camels walking (with thier owners) on the beach. It really made our trip. Camels.

Got back into spain, however, to some logic unbenknownst to me, spain is 2 hours ahead of morocco and one ahead of england (even tho Algeciras is EAST of london...). And discovered we missed the last train to granada. So with some improvising we opted to take a 17 hour bus back up to Barcelona. It gave us some nice views of the costa del sol.

Got in this morning and made friends with an aussie who accidently slept through her stop on the bus at Valencia. We´ve checked into a hostel and head back to london tom. Then greece on the 12th. Thats all for now folks.

Ibiza was just amazing and now we´re in madrid. Finally a spanish city where it hasn´t rained. I¨m almost out of time. Did the prado, and other awesome stuff today, although we accidently deleted all of our photos from ibiza. Cést la via. On to Algeciras tomorrow.

miss you all

love
Lindz

Ibiza is amazing. Seriously. We got in early this morning around 8. The ferry was uneventful and we slept like babies in the lounge in the bar. Today we´ve been exploring. Its so much more classy and beautiful than i expected. Our hotel is in the middle of the Vara Rey Plaza in the port city of Ibiza Town. Its beautiful. We had great weather all day. We walked along the walled part of the old city and then accidently got ourselves locked into the old Phonetian necropolis. Yea. Then we walked the entire port and finally ended up at the Playa Telemanca. We beach combed and i waded through the water. Now we´re going to relax and hopefully try and catch some of the sun set however we´re on the eastern part of the island. It realy is amazing. Mom and Pat i think you might actually like, rumors aside. Haven´t booked Greece yet (dont´worry the number is safe and sound mom) but are hoping to tonight or tomorrow when we find a cheaper internet cafe.