June 21

I arrived in Frankfurt, dumped my backpack in left luggage, and hopped on a plane for the UK. Throw in there a quick call home (happy father's day Dad!!) and I'm settled into my hotel. When I came out of Heathrow there was a neat fountain with children running through it, which is what I tried to capture in the pictures.

June 23

So, I was supposed to meet with Tim and go on a business meeting on Monday and Tuesday, however his flight was been delayed until Tuesday morning, so that was cancelled! He finally arrived this morning. Since we didn't have time to go to our meeting, we decided to skip work and take 4.5 hours vacation and tour London instead! We just wandered around the city. Picture on the left is of Westminter Abbey and on the right is Big Ben.

We also went to St. James Park (see the picture below on the left) and Buckingham Palace. While we were there, a carriage entered the Palace, picked someone up (or dropped them off - honestly, I was paying more attention to the horses and so didn't notice!), and then left the Palace again. Beautiful horses! (See the middle photo.) We then kept walking and stumbled across Canada Gate, which is a gate that has the coat of arms for all of the provinces in gold on the gate. Well, except for Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia, which were added to the pillars. Oh, and Newfoundland, which is missing entirely. :( I guess that the gate was built before 1949!

June 26

Took the morning off to go tour the Acropolis. I started by just wandering through Plaka, exploring some of the shops. What surprised me was the amount of graffiti in the city - even in the obviously touristy parts. (See the picture to the right, for example.) What was kind of cool though is that you can turn a corner and suddenly stumble across some ruins or an excavation.

Below are some of the photos I took:

After leaving the Acropolis, I tried to get back to the hotel reasonably quickly, after spending that much time in the sun without sunscreen (or water!). I got back and napped! :)

Kirstie and I met up for supper that evening and browsed some of the shops. I bought necklace - leather strap with a piece of lava on it. Nothing fancy or expensive, but I kinda like it. Supper was traditional Greek food: moussaka (yum!) and eggplant salad and tzatziki and Greek wine. Then Kirstie and I stayed up until about 2am talking back at the bar at my hotel, and drinking my new addiction: nescafe frappes. (I like mine sweet and with a bit of milk. Basically it's iced coffee but with lots of crema.)

June 27

Off to Mykonos!! I caught the very early ferry (7:25am - ugh!) so that I was in Mykonos by 11am. I'm staying at the Navos hotel (see photos left and right), which is about a 5 minute walk from the downtown core, near the top of a hill.

After checking into my hotel room, I decided to try to find the beach. On my way, I found a nice little bar that was right on the water (see picture on the left), so I decided to camp out there for the afternoon, have a drink, watch the waves and read a book. I ended up chatting with my waiter - Yiannis - and, before I left, I had his phone number! I'm actually kind of proud of myself for that one! :) (Especially since I'd guess his age at about 25!)

Below are some photos of Mykonos:

June 28

Today I decided to try to find the beach, along with just wandering through all the little alleyways some more, window shopping (I've gotten very good at just sighing and moving on!). After getting lost in the maze for a bit, I came out on the water and followed it until I found the beach! Yay!

I camped out on the beach for a bit, aiming to get a bit of a tan, followed by a quick dip in the sea. My observations are that: (1) I am very self-conscious in a bikini, (2) I need to lose weight, and (3) the sea is actually kinda cold but feels really nice after laying in the hot sun. At the end of the day, however, I didn't get a tan. Rather, the top third of me got a sunburn and the bottom two thirds stayed depressingly white. :(

After all this, I grabbed a book and camped out in a cafe, munching on pita and various dips and olives and feta. The view from my seat in the cafe is the picture on the right.

As an aside, the next time I come to Mykonos, I'm going to bring lots of money and an empty suitcase, which I'm going to fill with sandals and jewelry!

Below are more photos of Mykonos, along with a picture of my "golden" toes. :)

June 29

I left Mykonos today and took the ferry to Santorini. Santorini is beautiful! If you ever take the ferry, make sure you get a window seat!! Arriving into the port is amazing! I wish I'd had a chance to get some photos of it.

I'm staying at Amenolinas Hotel. My driver was not there to pick me up, since the ferry was nearly an hour late arriving, but I managed to get there through the kindness of a stranger. :) The hotel room is simple, and about a 10 minute walk from downtown, but it's also only 30 euro a night! :)

After checking in, I went for a walk downtown, even though it was already getting late (7pm), mostly because I was hungry! At first I wasn't particularly impressed with Fira, however after getting off the road and into the walking paths through the downtown, it was quite nice (see photo above on the left). I found a cafe and had some fruit (finally!!) and coffee, and watched the start of the sunset (see photo above on the right). I didn't stick around actually for the rest of the sunset - still about an hour away - because the wind coming off the sea was *cold*!

June 30

After deciding that I wasn't going to buy gifts for people from Greece, I spent this morning shopping! I now have Christmas gifts for my immediate family. And, for myself, I have a really nice necklace (by a Greek artist - it's 925 silver brushed with platinum and enamel and with gold flecks - it's very cool!) and a statue made from lava stone from Santorini (or so it claims). The girl a bought both items from has met the woman who makes the statues, who is also a Greek artist. (The girl herself was Russian. She came to Santorini because she had seen pictures of Oia and then ended up staying, and has been there for the past eight years.) As an aside, you can see Oia as the white strip at the top of the cliffs in the first picture below. The pictures are all from in Fira, first looking right, and then left! And then just two random photos from within the town. Yes, there were occasional donkeys! :)

After shopping, I just puttered around, had a relaxing dinner, read a book, etc., and then took a flight back to Athens.

I think that, between the two islands, I much prefer Mykonos. Everyone I've talked to who is Greek looks at me like I have two heads for that, saying they like Santorini better, but not specifying why. I think that they don't like the liberalism (hedonism? :) ) of Mykonos, which is precisely what it was that I liked about it! I found that it was much more friendly and open than Santorini. And it also felt like there was more to do there. And it also felt much younger, with a lot of people there just to have fun.

July 1

I moved into my new apartment in Heidelberg today!!! The picture on the left is my living room / workspace. The picture on the right is my view. I am very central - if you lean out my window and look left, you can see Bismarkplatza, which is essentially the center of Heidelberg. If you walk there and cross the street, you come to the pedestrian walkway, which is maybe 1 km long. Oli took me there, where we found a little bar and sat in the open window and had supper and radler (half beer and half lemonade - it tastes better than it sounds!).

July 4

I met up with Brian in Freidburg today. It's a cute town, with lots of cobblestone streets (see photo to the left). Three was also an open market, and lots of open beer gardens (see photo to the right).

Of course, the first thing we did was head for a beer garden! :) There was a nice one on the side of a hill (see picture on the left) with a great view of the town (see the first two photos below).

After the beer garden, we wandered around through town for a bit, then found a cute cafe (picture to the left) where we had lunch. Then more wandering. At some point we passed a johnny-on-the-spot which had what I thought was the cutest cartoon indicating what it was!! (Photo on the right.)

July 24

There was a thunder storm tonight. I tried to get pics from my window.

July 26

So I'm back in Heidelberg now, having been bouncing all over the northeast coast of North America from July 5 - 23. On that trip I was in Islanda (Long Island), Manhattan, London (Ontario), Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax, and DC. The cool things about the trip: seeing SP play, seeing T&D, getting a "Hospitality" pass to the Ottawa Blues Fest (thanks S!), seeing M&C and D&B, seeing Shtee-phie!, and attending the National Academy of Sciences Workshop on Usable Security. Oh, and the other cool thing that happened while I was away - I've been invited to give a keynote at a usability conference in Bangalore! (And here's another pic of my view - no, I haven't gotten tired of it yet!)

However, I also discovered something awful today. It turns out that stores are *closed* on Sundays here!! It never occurred to me that this might be the case! I wasn't able to buy a bottle of wine!! So, instead in addition to wandering throughout the city during the day (and still trying to recover from jetlag), I wandered through the pedestrian walkway (see pics below - the moat on the hill in the second walkway shot is from Heidelberg castle) and grabbed supper in a cafe there (radler and schnitzel). During my wanderings, I came across classical musicians (see below), and also a band (three guys) outside BismarkPlatz playing Tom Petty's "Freefalling". There's also a theatre in the pedestrian walkway called Gloria, so I took a picture of that for my mom. And then I returned to the lovely screen shot also pictured below.

July 27

I went for a walk today, and got a few pics in the process. The fountain is about a five minute walk from my place, near where I buy groceries. I then hiked up some paths on the hill that you can see from my window. There are some pretty views of Heidelberg (as you can see), and the woods are very pretty.

July 28

I went for a quick hike up to Heidelberg Castle today, and was incredibly impressed with it! (And it's only 3 euro to enter!) To the left is the view of the castle as you approach it from the pedestrian walk. It's quite a hike up to get to get to the castle entrance. Fortunately, everyone else walking up to the castle was in worse shape than I am, so I didn't feel too bad about how hard I was breathing by the top! The first two pictures show the entrance and the wall of the moat from inside the castle. The next two pictures are of the castle itself (partially restored). The last two pictures show some of the detailing on the walls and one of the statues in the garden.

July 29

Quiet day today, sunny and hot. :) (36 degrees!) So, just some random observations:

1. Groceries are cheap. For 13.28 euro I got a cucumber, miracle whip, good bread, camembert, an avocado, and a bottle of 2005 Montepulciano. :) Milk products (and some wine) are particularly cheap, compared to Canada/US.
2. NYC is actually much happier and friendlier than Heidelberg. People here don't laugh nearly enough, and are polite but distant.
3. The "place of worship" in LHR is non-denominational (and largely used by Muslims, based on a sample size of one) while in FRA it's a synagogue.
4. There are a lot of people here who play musical instruments on the street for money - I've seen a classical band (once), a traditional German band with accordian (three times) and a rock band (seen once, and heard from my apartment once - of course, it could have been a different band and it just happened that both of them play "Freefalling" - seriously, it's a good song, but...!).
5. I'm going to have to import Bounce - they don't seem to use it here. :( And the water is really really hard, so you have to actually wash your clothes with something that you add to the water to keep it from leaving white spots on your, ahem, smalls.

July 30

I went for a walk just to the end of the pedestrian walk and back today, so didn't take my camera, although it turns out that I should have! Again, there was lots of music along the way. This time classical (violin, cello and keyboard - not the same group as before), a solo accordian player, and accordian player with a clarinet player, and just some guy outside the Irish Pub playing the guitar and singing Irish songs. I think that if he is there again tomorrow I'll sit and chat with him a bit. :)

I also lit a candle for someone I've never met while listening to Bach being played on a beautiful old pipe organ in the Church of the Holy Spirit.

There was also someone doing a sand carving of an angel in one spot and, near him, five people giving out free hugs (the signs were bilingual German and English :) ). I watched the huggers for about five minutes, while a lot of people passed. Two guys started talking to the cutest girl there, then got a hug from her, another girl, and a guy. Three other guys stopped by to talk to the cutest girl, and one of them got two hugs from her! One guy stopped and talked to the guy for a while, getting a hug first. Two police officers talked to the guy as well, but no hugs that I noticed. There was a guy and girl on the other side of the walkway, but almost no one stopped for them. Except for one couple, who stopped and talked about it first, until she convinced him to get a hug from the girl while she took a picture. The hugging girl then gave the coupled girl a hug too while the coupled guy tried to get a picture of it (unsuccessfully, I think). Meanwhile there was one poor guy (out of the five huggers) who didn't get any hugs at all! This while about 100 other people passed by. I'll let you figure out if I got any hugs or not! :)

July 31

No music tonight. Anywhere. :(

But I did sit at an outdoor cafe for dinner. I was reading a book and reflecting on something work related when someone asked to join me. Apparently I look really sad when I'm deeply thoughtful, and he wanted to cheer me up! All in all it was a pleasant evening with a pleasant discussion (he's an artist, and works at a gallery). His theory is that I do not currently have a boyfriend because I travel too much! :)

August 1

Only two guitar players tonight, neither of whom were particularly good. :(

I love all the outdoor bars, restaurants and cafes in Heidelberg - they really are wonderful. Now, if only people wouldn't smoke in them.... Also, they need to laugh more. From where I was sitting for dinner tonight I could see 14 tables with people at them. Only 1 table was happy and laughing. Even the huggy couples looked serious. And the non-huggy couples weren't even talking. I got depressed just watching everyone else!

August 3

This morning was interesting. My flight back to the US left at 11:20am. I walked to the train station to get the train to FRA, and realized when I arrived that I had forgotten my passport! So, taxi back to get my passport, then back to the train station (trying to explain "Wait here" in non-existent German). Made it to the terminal by 9:40 just to find that my section of the terminal was roped off, with angry looking guys in uniforms yelling instructions (maybe?) in German. Turns out some idiot had left a bag with not name tag or anything unattended, so they closed off the Delta section of the terminal. Of course, when it opened again, there was a mad rush from all these people now worried that they would miss their flight (I being one of them!). I did make my flight in the end, and the happy ending is that I got a complimentary upgrade! Gotta love those on the overseas flights!

I also had a fun time when I landed. I was going to my next gate and almost got run into by one of the gate agents with a wheelchair (my fault, I zigged in front of him). We were laughing and I asked for a ride, so he gave me one! Thanks Benny!!! :)

(Oh, and that flight was upgraded too! Woo hoo!)

August 4-22

Highlights from the trip: I was in DC, Halifax, Montreal, San Diego and New York. I met Secret Service agents, watched someone get escorted off a plane by security, saw some good friends (love Usenix for that!), got my hair straightened, heard the pre-recorded version of a new album, and got an apartment in San Diego.

August 23

I spent my birthday just wandering through the town, and found that my day was surrounded by music. I happened upon a street fair, where there was a jazz band playing (can you call Jethro Tull jazz?). I then followed a bagpiper down the street for a while, who finished playing with Scotland the Brave. That was kind of nice, actually, since it reminded me of when I lived in Edinburgh for a summer working at EPCC. (Jason Hunter, if you are out there and read this, you should get in touch with me!)

Later in the day I went to the Church of the Holy Ghost and listened to someone play the pipe organ there, which is just a beautiful instrument. After that, I sat outside and had a glass of wine while listening to some classical music.

Add into that different street performers: accordians, clarinets, and guitar, and it was quite a nice day!

August 30

I'm now at the airport, waiting for my flight back to the US. Checking in for my flight was amusing. The guy behind me was commenting to the people whom he was with that you could tell who was poor by what they were travelling with (indicating my backpack!), and that you could tell who was American because the way they dressed was so old (pointing to another guy further away). I was amused about being considered poor (with the luggage I've lived out of for the past four months, with one more month to go) as I received my complimentary upgrade to seat 1C. :)

I still need to update this blog with pictures, musings on being homeless, pizza recommendations, and the dining dead.