detroit

pistons lost. dangnabbit. fooey. grr.

still here

ate a good dinner tonite. there are positive things about this hostel. you can buy dinner every nite for 6.50 if you want. i was positive it wouldnt be worth but deemed it worth a try, plus, that means we dont have to go to the store and buy food and then come back and cook it. and its better than a sandwich. well, tonite was roasted turkey, veggies, and rice (last nite was lamb but we arrived very late). it was super tasty! i was very impressed. the cook it all in the kitchen its quite fresh. i expected something on par with cafeteria food. so im very happy about that. id definitely shell out the extra cash for it again.

today we went into town in the afternoon and strolled about a bit. went to the modern and contemporary art museum. ...i dont think im impressed much with "art..." anyway, we got an awesome view from the roof and that was worth it. again, be sure to check haiks blog for pictures, theyre already up!

the dog poop got the best of haik today.

(a guy in our room has an ipod and speakers in our room right now and is playing wonderful music. ahh, it feels good)

nice

i am uncomfortable yet again. i dont know if it is because it is a new place or because it really is an uncomfortable place. our last hostel was extremely clean and nice. the kitchen felt like someones home and the whole feel of it was just very homey and comfortable. where we are now feels dirty and a lot rougher. there is one bathroom on this floor of many many people. i tried upstairs and there wasnt even one bathroom. there is also a bar downstairs with tons of people drinking in the big room. very loud. i guess it just wasnt a great welcome after traveling for 13 or 14 hours yesterday. sigh. it is also supposed to rain the next few days. everywhere we go it rains. its discouraging. i mean, we still have a good time, but id surely welcome the sun, apparently after 10pm you can guy pizza they make here. they arent too great but we ate two last bc i was so hungry. im sure itll start looking up soon and ill get used to the place... soon, hopefully soon. not to complain, but i just want to be comfortable! and with sunshine!

*edit* : i think i am just irritated from traveling so long yesterday. ive just showered and feel a little better. it is also a bit of a trek in and out of town, we are in a suburban sort of area again. hopefully the back-and-forth in and out of town isnt too bad. i have a headache, but im sure itll get better. just exhausted lately is all.

after we leave here we are stopping in geneva for two nights on the way to zurich so that should be fun.

barcelona went well, though i feel we could have done a lot more. no more eating in tapas bars though... we ate in one in san sebastian and it was not tasty. for those who dont know, its where there are different platters on the bartop, each platter has one kind of food on it (sooorta like a buffet now that i think about it,,, but everything room temp). you can stand at the bar and just pick stuff up and eat whatever kind of food you like. the one we went to, we picked what we wanted (well, we guessed what may be good... sorta picked at random) and put it on a plate and then the guy took it and heated it up... weird. apparently the more garbage on the floor (mostly napkins), the better the bar is. i just find all the garbage on the floor uninviting. ...we also went the contemporary art museum and that wasnt too bad.

yesterday we were on trains for too long... we had a ten minute delay on our second train and then we got stopped for an hour part of the way into the journey. then there was lots of commotion in french - apparently someone tried to smoke on the train and was getting kicked off. long day. thought we were going to miss our first train out of barcelona too... didnt know we had to take a bus to get there and went to the subway instead. the guy at our hostel was not too good at directing us. ended up taking a cab because we thought we were going to miss it. saw a lot of nice countryside on the journey though. the train goes right by the water sometimes and you get a nice view. lots of mountains and hills. many farms. it is always interesting to see the side of these countries that is opposite the cities - where we are spending most of our time.

pistons lost :-( must win next two to get to finals.

sriracha

hello again. i feel like i ought to update a bit. the last night in our last hostel we had a great time (again, you can see pictures on haiks blog: www.haikavanian.com/42days). we met some cool people and chatted for along time. then we headed out at midnight to the park down the street. we were staying ina residential area so it was nice and quiet. the park took us up a hill. from the top we could see out and all the buildings and lights and everything looked so beautiful. even though light pollution i found the big dipper. we stayed up there in a while - the park itself was pitch dark. we headed back a couple hours later - hoping to not step on any snails. there were many around but we could not even see where we were stepping. it was a great night all in all. we took lots of funny pictures and got some contact information so we can share pictures and chat again sometime. the guy we hung out with had just gotten out of four years in the airforce and the girl was russian but lived in albuquerque since she was nine.

yesterday we arrived at our new hostel in a more central location. the guy who owns the place is an old persian man who is very kind and caring. the funny thing is that the cleaning lady is armenian and haik has befriended her. she told us to let her know if we needed towels (suppose to charge 3 euros to use em). we asked for towels today and got em and it was wonderful. for those of you who dont know, our towels we bring are microfiber and superthin. they dry fast and take up no room in our bags but are not too great to use everyday. it was wonderful to use a real towel. it reminded me of prison (not that i would know, hah.). but just getting these towels for free when we should have to pay and the lady sneaking them to us, haha. we just wandered a lot yesterday toward nothing in particular. actually we went to the contemporary culture museum. whats funny is we didnt even end up going in the museum, just up to the video archive and watching some little films and we actually went back today (its free). today we also stumbled upon a graphic design show thing which was good to see and i know haik enjoyed.

i ate cereal this morning with warm milk. yuck. its great how much they recycle here. just next to me (im in the kitchen) is a can for "tetrapak and cans," a can for "paper," and can for "organic," and then a trash can. you can always find ones for plastic and such on the streets too. man, i need to write down these little cultural differences throughout the day. they always cross my mind and i think they would be interesting to share but i always forget. ...because people all have dogs and no rule about picking up the poo i almost step in poo daily. i feel like at home people usually bring the little baggie when they go out. who knows.

pistons 2 - boston 2
go pistons! :-)

cold milk

i wish i had a good glass of cold milk! in spain the milk is so packed with preservatives that they sell it warm. no refrigeration needed! ugh. plus, it doesnt taste that great anyway. its not bad, but since i love milk, it really doesnt do it for me. grr. last nite while walking around barcelona i found myself wishing we could just walk into a good restaurant where i knew the food would be good and the bathrooms would have toilet seats and you would actually get "service" when sitting down in a restaurant. its silly to want something "american" while here, i know, but here the "servers" dont care because they dont really get tips, and there are so many places to eat but its hard to know where is good, and, well, toilet seats are often hard to come by in public bathrooms. anyway, we ended up at an asian place by the water. and, andrea, you were right, the asian food in barcelona is fantastic, hahah. horrible to say, but true. we ate great food there and i felt better instantly, and quite full. im not sure how i feel about barcelona though. its only been a day but im not too into it yet. there were a million people in the city last nite and it was just uncomfortable. it was like a festival where you are constantly jostling your way through people and just want out of the crowd. we hung our towels on the balcony last nite. then it stormed all nite and they are soaked so i didnt shower today. we slept a lot though so that was good. okay... i better get off here. been spending too much time at the computer.

love,
adri

night train

well, we made it to barcelona. our night train was from 11p-9a. the couchettes are so small! six beds in a "room," three beds on top of one another and only enough room for two people to stand between each stack of beds. it was crazy. haik slept a lot but i only slept maybe 5 hours. once it got to be morning i really wanted to just keep sleeping but obviously had to get off the train...

i am loving being in the mountains all the time. at the end of the train ride the tracks were right along the ocean. its quite the scenery. it is supposed to rain every day that we are in barcelona, however, the sun is out right now. i am sitting on my bunk bed with the window open to our balcony. all i hear is people clapping and cheering and whistles and horns blowing. i think there is a soccer game nearby. we are 20 minutes from the city center in a residential feeling area. perhaps it is a childrens soccer game, im not sure. though that is all nice, i am not comfortable here yet. i am extremely tired today and havent even ventured into the city yet. (five minute walk to station, almost 20 on the metro...). we actually cut our nights at this hostel to only two and booked one in the city for the next three. made some pasta and read some rick steves travel book we found downstairs that was from 1994 and had a good laugh. i dont know how we managed to not cook food last year. we just ate lots of sandwiches, but this year i am really enjoying making food every day (as long as people dont steal the food you are keeping in the fridge, as that happened more than once in paris...). anyway, it always feels weird when we arrive at a new city. it feels uncomfortable at first. also, the people working at the last hostel were so extremely friendly that it just felt good to be there.

anyway, its time for me to lie down a few before haik gets out of the shower. those backpacks are heavy and my body is tired today!

differences

hello again! (woo, im on the laptop and have exclamation points, haha).

just wanted to mention a few random bits.

first, in san sebastian ive noticed lots of people have dogs. but nobody uses leashes! the dogs must just be trained not to get excited about other dogs since they are little. lots of small dogs but big ones too. there is one named elvis that the girls that live in our hostel (they work there and maintain the floor) have. hes a cute little white dog and loves to fetch his ball. but he has to run down the wooden floor hall outside our room and he slides all the way down it. i cant imagine how marley would cope with all that sliding, hahaha. the picture in my head is hilarious.

the whole "siesta" thing is also weird here. it gets to be 1pm and everything just shuts down completely and doesnt open again til usually 4pm. id always hear about how spain has a siesta but it is weird to experience it.

while in france we also saw people who did a lot of kissing on both cheeks when they greeted each other, another thing you know about but it still weird to see all the time.

the scooters are still everywhere. it seems to be a nice alternative to cars. everyone just rides them to work and everywhere. well, they are scooters, they are more like motorcycles. im not sure what they are called.

anyway... yesterday we wandered a bit and ended up going in the coldddd water. the waves would come and we would jump into them and they would carry us up towards shore. a couple waves got huge and folded over right before they got to us. it was crazy, haha. the tides change like crazy. the night before they were super low and then the next afternoon there was hardly a beach.

okay, well, have to go do laundry and then head out tonite. the weather is crazy. we will wake up and its crappy as hell lookin outside - gloomy and rainy... then an hour later the sun is out and it is warm and beautiful.

love you all,
adri

enjoying spain

i really like spain so far... granted weve only been to this little town of san sebastian. either way, it is beautiful and quite nice. the first full day we had here started with rain and ended with a run into the ocean. it was cold but lovely. we laid out on the beach for a bit. which, by the way, no women wear tops on and old men wear absolutely nothing on. we went to bed a little early that day and the next day, yesterday, was beautiful. it was sunny and warm. we walked all the way up this little mountain with a jesus statue at the top... ill have to link to it on here. it was a great walk and so awesome to see all the coast as we were heading up and then look out from the top at the ocean that seemed neverending and thinking about how far it stretches out. i really wanted to rent a boat - a kayak or something - but today it is raining again and not so beautiful. i am glad at least we had yesterday because it was my favorite day yet. last nite we came back and made dinner - weve been sauteeing lots of asparagus and mushrooms and making pasta and salad and eating little pudding deserts and such - then we headed out again at about eleven. we played on a childrens playground right by the beach and ended up meeting some other americans. we chatted for a while and then went and put our toes in the ocean again. headed back, went to bed, and woke up late today. we have been so spoiled at this hostel - hot showers every day and basically an apartment to ourselves. its a little slow here, i mean business is, and so we are often the only people in the hostel. there arent even workers there most of the time because checkin is down the street where i am now. they own three or four different parts of buildings so the travelers who stay here are spread out. its so nice though - its like we have our own kitchen and bathroom and everything. we havent even had roommates since the first nite. when we get to barcelone - we bought night train tickets so hopefully we get good sleep on the couchettes on the train - we will be in an eight bed dorm and back to roommates. same in nice. we met a couple girls in our hostel last nite that had just come from the same hostel we are staying in there and they said it was really nice so thats good to know.

i hope barcelona is as nice as this little corner of spain because i really like it a lot. it feels good to be in a small place with no metro... or subway... or tube... whatever you want to call it. we just walk everywhere and through the "old town" that is a lot of independent little shops and small bars and restaurants. its a nice pace - not busy like the city. i really enjoy not taking the metro everywhere.

i keep checking up on the nba playoffs and am not too happy to see my pistons lost game one... but its only the first game. :-) (silly samantha... i like chauncey... and damnit i have no exclaimation mark again).

thanks to david for suggesting san sebastian, otherwise we would have never ended up here.

ahh, it feels good

we arrived in san sebastian yesterday evening. it feels so good here. i took a long hot shower (normally wouldnt be long, but it was nite time so no one else needed to shower and i hadnt had even a warm shower since home... for some reason i cant get the shift key to work on here... no exclaimation marks for me...). anyway, it felt good to get a shower. this place is super clean and the people who work here are extremely friendly. the last nite in paris was aweful. i think i slept two hours. people kept coming in and out of the room (there were twelve beds), people were really loud inside and outside in the courtyard. i wanted to kill the spanish guys in our room - they were laughing hysterically and taking pictures in our room at some obscene hour. i just needed one good nights sleep... and i got that last nite. it felt so warm and cozy in the bed here. it wasand is super nice. anyway... it is raining here, which sucks but it is realy beautiful and we are right on the ocean. there is a small mountain that we will probably go up tomoro, weather permitting. there are also a couple beaches but it is pretty cold out now. i just wish the sun would come out (again, trying to use an exclaimation mark). back to paris though... we went to the eiffel tower one day and it started pouring rain. we ended up under this little peace monument or something with these brazilian guys playing music, along with a handful of other tourists. the brazilian guys offered us beers and they kept playing music and we stayed until the rain died down. it was right in front of the eiffel tower and was pretty fun. the next day we headed back towards the tower and just laid in the grass for a little while. we also went by the latin quarters that night and stopped in a canadian bar to check up on the celtics-cavs game, hahaha. we suck to do such a thing while in paris but we did. watched the second quarter and then wandered down the river. eventually found a metro station and headed to the hostel for our last night in the hellhole. definitely the worst place weve stayed from all the places we stayed last summer. oh well, its done now. loving this place. again, if only we could get some sun.

may stop in the alsace-lorraine area towards the end of the trip on our way back to paris. we can travel six days on our pass and are onyl using five of them. we also dont want to spend a whole five days in paris at the end again.

oh yea, and as haik said, we ordered some royals with cheese (matt, i think you will appreciate this). pulp fiction wins. also, my watch battery died and we didnt know the time for a few days. met some cool people in the crappy hostel and got them to set an alarm so we would make our train yesterday. couldnt find a watch battery in all of paris but got one right when we got here. woo.

okay, gotta get off here. :-)

san sebastian

we are leaving this hostel and spending the day traveling to san sebastian today. weve done a lot since the last post but dont have time to write now. ill try and write soon.

smelly guy, flies, cold showers, and clock towers

well, we are here and we are well.

... there are lots of flies in our room, an extremely smelly guy in the bed next to us (have to hide my nose under the sheet to sleep), my first shower since i was home was very cold, and at 10:20am this clock on the church next to us rang for five minutes straight. seriously, five minutes. aside the fact it rings every hour and it is right out our window. hahaha.

but really, everything is well. we made some pasta with basil tomato sauce and sauteed some mushrooms for dinner. ate it with bread and dinner cost the both of us 6 euros total... it was super delicious and budget-friendly! heh. anyway... if you are checking up on haiks blog (www.haikavanian.com/42days) you will see some confusing pictures. the first is some random meat truck but the second is from our visit to the catacombs. it was crazy. there were so many femurs and skulls and bones carefully piled up, some in the shape of a cross or a heart. look it up online to learn more. it was crazy though. you could touch them and they went on forever. the whole walk-through took 45 minutes. it felt weird at first to walk into a hallway-esqe think with all these bones. started thinking about how many people were there and how much time youd have to take to stack them up like that, and why would you, and where were the rest of the bones?

were not too jet-lagged and slept well last nite. however, after traveling all day and nite on the planes we arrived at the hostel at noon. the hostel has a lock out noon-4pm. therefore, we werent allowed in our room and had to kill four hours before we could even go lie down. that sucked, but we are rested now. we are thinking of adding one more stop in our trip, just not sure where!

okay, gotta go. take care, love you all. :-)

adri

paris

this is just to let you know that we are here. got here just fine. :-)

rough itin

Paris May 15 - May 19
San Sebastian May 19 - May 23
Barcelona May 23 - May 29
Nice May 29 - June 3
Zurich June 3 - June 9
Athens June 9 - June 11
Santorini June 12 - June 18
Paris June 19 - June 25

greece itin

monday june 9, 2008
depart at 1:00 PM from Zurich (ZRH)
arrive at 4:40 PM at Athens (ATH)

wednesday june 11, 2008 (ferry)
depart at 10:30 PM from Athens (Piraeus)
arrive at 8:15 AM (thursday june 12) at Santorini (Thira)

wednesday june 18, 2008 (plane)
depart at 10:35 PM from Santorini (Thira, JHR)
arrive at 11:25 PM at Athens (ATH)

thursday june 19, 2008
depart at 2:10 PM from Athens (ATH)
arrive at 4:00 PM at Zurich (ZRH)

flight itinerary

wednesday may 14, 2008

depart at 3:45 PM EDT from Detroit Wayne County (DTW)
arrive at 4:04 PM EDT at O'Hare (ORD)
depart at 5:50 PM EDT from O'Hare (ORD)
arrive at 9:20 AM BST (thursday may 15) at Charles de Gaulle (CDG)

wednesday june 25, 2008

depart at 6:45 AM BST from Charles de Gaulle (CDG)
arrive at 8:00 AM BST at Frankfurt (FRA)
depart at 10:15 AM BST from Frankfurt (FRA)
arrive at 1:10 PM EDT at Detroit Wayne County (DTW)