Oh, and BTW – HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

I traveled to St. Louis for Sam and Laura’s wedding. It’s still a little weird to think that my little brother is married. All in all, the weekend turned out to be quite nice.

I met my parents at the St. Louis airport Thursday night. They had flown in just a couple of hours ahead of me. Well, they were supposed to be ahead by a couple of hours. Turns out that their flight arrived early and my flight was delayed by at least an hour. So, I arrived several hours after them. Luckily, I had given them the information for the car rental and they were able to secure the car before the desk closed. I saw dad right where I was expecting to grab my checked-in bag. Actually, mom, dad and Sam were all waiting for me. Sam had taken the metro to the airport to help us navigate to our hotel. That turned out to be a relief.

Once at the hotel, we were introduced to Laura and her parents, Andy and Sandy. My goodness Laura is tall. Looks like I will continue to be the midget of the family. Hey, I’m really average height!

After being away for over 24 hours, I was finally able to go to bed. And miraculously, I had no jet lag related sleep problems. I won’t go into detail about our weekend. We had some bonding time with the bridesmaids (Erica & Cara) and I had the pleasure of meeting the groomsmen (Mike & Brian). Ray (best-man) came in from Texas late Friday night. It was nice to see a familiar face and have someone else participate in the making fun of Sam activity we had engaged in. I think my parents might adopt him (inside joke – sorry).

Sometime during the weekend, I had to break away to check on my flight home. Dad, Sam, Ray, and the rest of the boys went paintballing. Mom volunteered to accompany me back to the airport. We took the metro (Metrolink) and received a brief introduction to St. Louis life. En route, I noticed an interesting billboard posted on a bus stop. Actually, it is quite disturbing.

The Wedding

The wedding itself was very simple and elegant. Honestly, it was awesome! The weather held out for us. It was extremely cold while we were standing at the “alter”. The wedding was outside and the temperature must have been in the 50s. Toward the end of the ceremony the wind kicked up and my knees started knocking. I tried to remain focused, but I think that my entire body was shaking. The ceremony ended soon afterward and we were whisked off to the barn (aka: Malmaison building). After the ceremony we had appetizers and drinks. Let me tell you, Ray and I didn’t wait to dig in! He had his James Bond thing going and turns out that I couldn’t decided on what to drink. I ordered several wines and when one didn’t work for me, I passed it along to mom. She didn’t mind. The four of us huddled in the corner, which turned out to be the furthest point from heat! Anyway, we had an interesting conversation about the funny tasting “scallops” that we were eating. Quite honestly, we did not believe that those beef tasting strips of meat were scallops. I mean, maybe they’re called scallops in Texas. The waiter assured us that they were indeed scallops (fishy kind), but . . . turns out that they weren’t. No kidding.  Another server gave us some “scallops” and guess what – they were scallops formerly swimming in the sea, not grazing in the pasture! The four of us were having a blast. The wine didn’t hurt either.

After drinks and appetizers, we moved into the nice, warm tent to eat dinner. The four of us rogue, groom’s side people were seated together and near a heater. We sat with the brides parents, her aunt and uncle from Seattle, and her aunt from Oregon/Arizona. We watched the bride and groom cut the cake and then we ate a nice dinner. The mother of the bride and mother of the groom were served some cake with a beautiful rose. Then the fathers were served with flowers matching the sunflower theme of the wedding. The cake, which was Sam’s pride and joy, was delicious. Way to go Sam! I hope Sam and Laura were able to enjoy their own cake. I know Sam wanted to take the rest home and eat it.

At one point Laura got up and sang Devil Went Down to Georgia. Apparently, Sam is the devil and Laura is from Georgia I had recorded her daring entertainment debut, but my camera decided not to keep it. I guess it was too much for the little gadget to handle. I am totally bummed about not being able to share that.

In the end, I made it back to Crete – Souda Bay. I was able to fly first class both ways. All thanks to Kristie and Harry Hansen. I love you guys! I was even able to change my flight from Athens to Crete to make it home earlier. Yippie!

I enjoyed my trip and I met some very nice people, including my nephew and niece (Bob and Moose; both cats). I missed my hubby, my boys, and my pretty, pretty princess Annie Bo Jangles.

I also shot a little bit of video:

In total, we spent about 4 1/2 hours in the water and really had a blast. As for snorkeling off the kayaks, it was fantastic. Getting in was so much easier than we thought it was going to be. Hopefully we’ll get to do a whole bunch more of this over the summer! Here’s to life in Crete!

Okay, so maybe not really…

We hopped off the metro, walked about a few hundred meters or so, and there we were… standing at the bottom of this hill looking up at something we had only read about in history class and seen in pictures. Pretty darn cool! Of course, we still had the hike up, but that’s what we were there for, right? So we paid our entrance fee and off we went. It wasn’t too big of a climb, but fortunately it was still Spring. If I had to do this in the middle of summer, I don’t think I would have been so thrilled!

From the top of the hill you get a 360 degree panoramic view of Athens – it was GORGEOUS! You also look down on Areopagus, or Mars Hill as most of us know it as. This was the site where most people believe that the Apostle Paul preached to the Athenians in Acts 17. After being up at the Parthenon, we walked down to Mars Hill. It was pretty awesome just to be standing in that place.

After about 8 stops, I just knew that the next stop was going to be the one we needed to get off at and transfer trains. So, the stop comes up and… we keep on going. The train doesn’t stop because the stop I wanted to get off at was currently being built. Oh well – off to the next stop! We get off at the next stop and waited for about 30 minutes for the next train to come in on the other side and hoping that was the train we needed to get on, we hopped aboard. We knew we needed to get to the “Larissa Station”, but that was about it. The train went deeper and deeper into Athens and we really had no idea if we were on the right train or not, but since none of us was interested in hopping off a moving train, we stayed on and enjoyed the ride. When the train finally stopped, we looked out at the train station and didn’t see any signs other than “Athens”. We decided it was a good time to get off and get our bearings.

We crossed the tracks and went into the train station. After looking around a little bit, I finally found a sign for Information and quickly headed in that direction. I asked the guy how to get to the Larissa Station and he gave me a strange look and said I was standing in it. Okay, so I definitely felt like the dumb tourist, but we were where we wanted to be so I got over that quickly.

Outside, we found a kiosk where I purchased a local map so we could find the hotel. Fortunately it was just a short walk away, so we were off – into the heart of Athens on foot. We found the hotel easily enough and checked in – about 2 hours after we arrived.

Since Harry wasn’t scheduled to arrive until later in the afternoon, we decided to find something close by to do in the meantime. Looking at the map the hotel gave us (too bad I just purchased one!), the closest thing of interest was the Athens National Archaelogical Museum. It was about 5 blocks away from the hotel, so off we headed, on foot again! By this time, Ginger’s feet were starting to blister already because she had worn hiking boots and they weren’t fitting so good this time. Fortunately, we found her some nice, new, bright white and shiny Puma knock-offs from a Chinese store in Athens. They were only 12 euro, so you can’t ask for too much, right? She was sure proud to wear those things for our trip, though I don’t think I’ve seen them since. Hmmm…

Oh well, back to the story. As I was saying, our first stop was a museum. It had some very cool relics – it should, though – it is Athens, right? I spent most of the time chasing Gavin around, trying to make sure he didn’t break anything (did you check out his “bored” video?), while Ginger and Tristan took the slow route and enjoyed the displays. Click the photo below to see all the photos:

For those interested in checking it out, here’s the link: www.thebarkersworld.com/photoblog. You can also get there by clicking the link titled “Matt’s Photoblog” at the top of this page.

I’ve already posted my first photo so go check it out! I’m hoping to add at least one a week (hopefully more), but we’ll see how it goes.