Noi6 means "the 6 of us" in Romanian.

We are five, you are the sixth one.

We thank you for joining us in our trip around the world...

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Europe Since Then

So the last post I put up was "Europe So Far" and now we're just continuing since then.

We left off with Kutna Hora. After going around town and seeing the sights, Daddy and I caught a bus back home to Prague, and the next day we took another one for Berlin.

The first night we stayed at a very nice hotel, and Mom and Daddy went to dinner with some friends, who, starting with the next day, would lend us their apartment as they went off on vacation. The parents came home at an absurdly late hour and we were torn between worry and that "WOOHOO THE PARENTS ARE OUT AND I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT YAAAAAY" feeling that most people get when the parents shut the door. And, like most people, we didn't really use our fleeting freedom and just hung out doing whatever. And then, you know, scolded our parents when they came home at 11.


The next day, we packed up our things and moved into the friends' apartment, which was full of awesome books in various languages, and had breakfast with them before they left. Then, for the rest of our [internetless] stay in Berlin, we alternated between going through the city with one of Dad's friends and our German guide Ina, and reading the awesome books. Ioan read comics about "Mooman" (or something like that), Maria read a French grammar back, and I, after giving up on Lolita (probably if I hadn't spent read Love in the Time of Cholera I would've been able to read another book about dudes having sex with girls) I decided to read Harry Potter instead. I got through Chamber of Secrets (Lockhart is much less annoying the seventh time around*), Prisoner of Azkaban (my poor Severus), and to Chapter 28 of Goblet of Fire.

*I am on a mission to destroy our Harry Potter box set. Unfortunately, reading other people's copies does not contribute to the slow death of ours, so rereading them in Berlin was actually a waste of time. In case you were wondering, the fourth, fifth, and six books have already fallen apart several times, so I'm succeeding with them. The problem is with the first three, shorter ones.

We saw the Wall, Sans Souci Palace, a few museums, and might've gone into a church. Really, the churches are all blurring into each other at this point.

Then we flew off to Barcelona, drove to Estartit, a little town not too far away, where we stayed a few days. We ate at Xabi's, Isma's restaurant (who we met in Thailand), and the food was delicious (but there was too much and not enough space in our stomachs!!!) and then drove back to Barcelona, where we met up with our family, who were also visiting from Romania.

We had two different programs in Spain: waking up early, then most of us (us five, my aunt, grandmother, and two cousins) would go out and see something (like La Rambla), then go back to one of the apartments and having lunch, and then just hanging out for a few hours. Then afterwards, we five would go see something else (like that church by Gaudi) that we (and by "we", the parents) wanted to see.

The second program was us five waking up early, seeing something we wanted to see (like Park Guell), then meeting up with the family somewhere else, then lunch and hanging out. It is, so far, my favorite part of the vacation, though Greece is pretty determined to take that spot for itself.

After Barcelona, we flew to Milan, where we spent the night before flying to Mykonos the next day. We couldn't find the hotel, so that was fun ^^;

Then we flew to Mykonos, where the owner/manager of Evangelia's Place (where we were staying) picked us up (so we couldn't get lost), and we spent the whole time hanging out either there or at St John's, where our grandparents were staying in celebration of my grandma's 70th birthday. Well, except for that one time we walked around town. And that other time we went to that evil island. But mostly we hung out at St John's. It has a scary-huge pool. And by scary, I mean terrifying. It is too big.

(That's what she said.)

After going to the pool the first time, we discovered that my old swimsuit had stretched since camp (how this is possible, I do not know), and between mooning the world every time I put it on and buying a skimpy bikini, we decided we preferred the bikini.

On the day that we purchased said bikini, we were going to the aforementioned evil island. It was really quite lovely, we saw an excellent jaguar mosaic, the museum was pretty okay, and everything was all-in-all fine (except the burning temperature) until everyone decided, "Oh! Let's go to the Temple of Zeus up at the top of the gigantic hill!" Maria, feeling ill (and why not? They were the stairs of doom), was allowed to stay down at the museum, while the remaining six of us had to go. About a quarter of the way through Daddy asked me if I wanted to continue. I did not, so he gave me a backpack of mostly empty water bottles and sent me on my way.

"Are you sure you won't get lost?" He asked me.
"Daddy, please, there's only one road."

There were two. The right way, and some beat-up old path that led to the top of a hill from which the only way off of was either backtracking or charging through a field of sharp scratchy plants of clinginess toward a building that looks exactly like the museum but turns out to be some sort of cafeteria/kitchen thing on the other side of the island so you have to walk around people's houses until you see the real museum where you collapse just in time to see your mom coming back from the Temple of Zeus.

Not that that's the way I took.

After Mykonos, we went island-hopping, and I would like to say that these ferries are awesome. The first one was like a cross between a supermall and a casino, with escalators and fastfood restaurants, but after that the ferries were normal. You know, couches in the lounge, plastic seats on the deck, snack bar...

We went to Santorini, and missed the bus to Oia, so we had to take a cab with a driver that looked scary-alike with Jake Gyllenhaal:

At Oia, at least a bajillion tourists go to see the sunset. We did too, and I missed it. Then we went back to Santorini on an incredibly crowded bus, which was fun.

We went to Crete (where we are now) and drove around, walked 18 km through a gorge that we didn't really that much like, and spent the past couple days on the verge of tears with every movement we'd make. Then yesterday we stopped early at a hotel (where we could quite obsessively download the new Taylor Swift singles, because she is amazing dammit) and had a picnic on the beach <3 Then last night we watched a thing on the TV about the Romanian king Mihai (who is actually not king anymore) and his cars that he has and personally restored and the museum for them that's going to open, and then after that we watched a Romanian movie called Grăbește-te încet, or in English, "Hurry up slowly", or something like that. It's about a guy that, driving home, hits a guy walking down the highway. Then after that is the guilt he feels for not stopping to make sure that the guy was okay, his wife's suspicions that he's having an affair, his coworker's affair that he gets tangled up in, and his attempts to turn himself in. It was pretty funny and I'd definitely watch it again.

Now we're going to the pool before we leave. Bye-bye :)

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