Day Eleven - Santorini, Greece

What can I say...

I'm in Santo-fucking-rini.

This has to be THE most beautiful place I've ever seen.

If ever I am to have a honeymoon or romantic vacation, it will be here.



Basically it's a Greek Island that was formed when a volcano (seen below in the center of the body of water) erupted several times about 3600 years ago. The whole place reminds me of Waterworld.




It's pretty ridiculous. All the houses sit perched so high up at the top of these massive cliffs made of lava rock that they actually look like snow-capped mountains. It's not until you get up there that you realize there are actually thousands and thousands of awesome little villas and stuff lining the edges of the cliffs, all overlooking the ocean.






Someday I will live here. With Sean Faris. And my life will be complete.

Day Ten - FIRE!!!!/Katakolon, Greece

Apparently last night there was a fire down on the C-Deck.

It was apparently threatening enough for the Captain to make a ship-wide announcement at 3am warning us that we may have to evacuate the ship.

An hour later, all was ok and they somehow managed to contain the fire.

Of course, somehow my grandma and I both managed to sleep through the announcement and all 12 members of our party failed to alert us of the situation.

We could have died a horrible screaming death and noone would have ever known.

Very reassuring.

...........................

In other news, today we visited arrived in Katakolon, Greece. And journeyed to Olympia, the site of the original Olympic Games.





It's basically a whole bunch of ruins and is semi-interesting if you use your imagination and picture the thousands of people (and really hot Greek athletes) competing there thousands of years ago.

Day Nine - Corfu, Greece

We were having a delicious lunch today at a streetside eatery in the beautiful seaside town of Corfu when a giant white squirming spider descended from the ceiling and came to a stop right next to my head.

Needless to say, I jumped up screaming like a terrified little schoolgirl.

My boat crush.

Imagine WalterDriver.

Now shave his head.

And cast him in a poorly-conceived, horrendously-executed cruise ship song-and-dance showcase entitled "That's Vegas!".

Day Eight - ...Croatia?

Day Seven - At Sea

Internet costs $1 a minute.

We've been at sea all day.

I was having afternoon drinks at one of the bars yesterday and a little man with a tray of meatballs came by!!!



MEGHAN!!!!!!!

MEATBALLS!!!!!

AT A BAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This must be heaven.

Day Six - Setting Sail

We board our ship in a few minutes.

Not sure if I'll have internet access.

Yippeeee!!!



I love you.

Day Five - Aunties On the Loose!!!

The aunties have arrived!!!!



There are about 9 or 10 of them in all. All high school friends of my Gooma (my dad's older sister).

A harem of semi-senile 60-something-year-old women at my photographic disposal??? Ohhhh these next 14 days are going to be AMAZING.

THE AUNTIES ARE HERE!!!!

Some are perfectly nice and normal.



While others are total wackjobs.



It's going to be funnnn...

................

In other news, Rome is full of allergies and I just seriously snotted all over the keyboard at this here internet cafe and I think that's my cue to leave.

Day Four - Hotel Swap!

Woke up at 6am this morning and ventured over to the awesomely amazing Trevi Fountain.

Normally during the day it's full of people. But at 6 in the morning there was noone. I had it all to myself and got to play around and take some neato time-lapse shots.



Interesting story: So it's apparently good luck to throw a euro or two into the fountain. And all who visit (thousands per day) tend to do this. And there's this crazy bum, according to legend, who spent 30 years ripping off the fountain DAILY, making about 500 euros a day. Obviously he is crazy because you'd think after a year of doing this you wouldn't really have to be a bum anymore... I think his treasure is supposed to be hidden somewhere.

.........................

Around noon, I checked out of my hotel. The bill came out to almost $300. $100 a day for my crapfest of a room. Oh wait until you see it. Kristy would cry.

All the hardship paid off though because I have now moved across town to the Vatican where we're staying in a place called the Visconti Palace. Needless to say, it is sweet.

Also, I body-checked a dirty-looking woman and her two young daughters today who were harrassing and I'm pretty sure about to pickpocket me while I was wheeling all my luggage to the bus stop. The woman was waving a piece of dirty cardboard in my face and the two teenage girls started grabbing onto my D&G hoodie and roller-bag with their grimy hands and mumbling in Italian.

WRONG MOVE BITCHES.

I elbowed the obese sister and shoved the woman against the smaller younger daughter into the wall and yelled, "FUCK OFF!!!"

It was pretty epic.

Day Three - Vatican City

Nap yesterday was a bad idea. I ended up sleeping 2 hours at a time and then being unable to sleep by 3am. So I started some very exciting reading, The 5 Rules for Successful Stock Investing.

It's actually quite good. And semi-entertaining.

Around 7am I fell back asleep.

Woke up at 10 and hopped on the 62 bus to Vatican City. I have the whole public transportation system all figured out. I would rock The Amazing Race.

Got to St. Peter's Basilica, which is absolutely enormous. Like Vegas, I don't think pictures can accurately convey its size.



Waited a good 3 or 4 hours in line to get into the friggin' place. But I guess it was worth it.




Also hiked up 900 billion steps to get to the top of the Dome.

Later waited in line for another good couple of hours to get into the Sistine Chapel.

It was smaller than I imagined, but still quite stunning.

Gooma and Mama arrive tomorrow! Only one more night in my hellhole of a hotel room.

Rome - Day Two

Woke up around 4 am in my pitch-black closet of a room, terrified, not really sure where I was. (I haven't seen the movie Hostel, but I have an idea of what it's about.)

Got oriented. Went across the hall to my public bathroom. Washed myself.

Returned to my room and watched my Dawson's Creek DVDs until I fell back asleep.

Woke back up around 11.

Went sightseeing. Saw the Pantheon, Piazza Venezia, Colosseum, Forum, etc etc. all very cool. It's pretty amazing that the Romans were so powerful and had all this crazy shit built without cranes and electricity and stuff.



Met up with Tom for delicious local hole-in-the-wall pasta. Amazing.

Walked around some more. Went back to my closet for a nappy.

And now I am here at the internet cafe. Yay!

I miss you my friends!!!

Rome - Day One

The flight.

Oh the flight.

It was terrible. Awful. Worst flight I have EVER been on.

Not only was the exit row unavailable, there were no AISLE seats available either. I got stuck sitting next to a fat woman with a broken arm. It would have been fine if she were just fat and broken. But no, of course she was wearing a rock hard cast and kept elbowing me. Hard.



Also, my legs did not fit under the seat in front of me since my knees ram into the seat so I have to either sit bow-legged, with my legs spread wide open and my knees shoved into my seatmates' personal space or I have to tuck my legs and cross them under me. Neither of these positions are comfortable (or circulation-friendly), and so I opted to switch between the positions every 5 minutes for the duration of the 11 hour flight.

Quick stopover and London and a short flight to Rome.

I took the train to the main terminal where my buddy Tom met me to take me to my hotel.



Got to my hotel, only to find that my reservation had somehow been CANCELLED. Was not pleased. But somehow "lucked out" and got the remaining "room" in the "hotel" which turned out to be a closet with a single bed.





The Hotel Pensione Erdarelli. "Pensione" makes me think of "pension" which, in turn, immediately brings to mind "pension and welfare" which then leads us to...poor people. And that's exactly what this is, a poor people hotel. Communal bathrooms and all. A step DOWN from a hostel, if that's at all possible. Although at 80 euros a day, I'm not really sure how a poor person could really afford to stay here...

On the bright side...I have a patio!



Tom and I dropped off my stuff and headed to a delicious pizzeria where we had deliciously overpriced pizza as US Dollars are just slightly more valuable than pieces of tree bark here.



We then headed to a little area with a row of gay bars and ugly Italians overlooking the Colosseum, drank several forties and called it a night.

Goodbye Little Buddies!!!!

I'm off to Italy!!! For a MONTH!!!!

Perhaps because of this, Blackout Thursday was very well-attended last night.




The Brownies were out in full force...



As were the non-Brownies...




And Doug got some action. Yeahyah!





Up Next: Blogging from Italy! Greece! Turkey!!!!

Morningwood!!!

Dian got me and Smershio some tickets to see Max's friend's band Morningwood perform at the Roxy.

Smersh, in turn, brought everyone's favorite 6'3" glamazon, Aly P.






There were boobies...



Conversation of the evening:

Aly: "Soooo...who do think is hot?"
DK: "Uh...um...uhhhhh...there's only like one hot guy here." (points) "That guy over there kind of looks like Matt..."
Aly: "Would you be embarassed if I went over and talked to him?"
DK: "For you or for me...?"

Aly shrugs and walks over to the Matt-clone, who is in the middle of an intense conversation with a shorter slightly-attractive-by-association dude. She literally walks into the conversation, pushing the clone's buddy out of the way.

Aly: "EXCUSE me... Hi! Oh my god. You are so pretty! You are sooooo pretty. Are you a model?"
Matt-clone: (startled, but immediately interested) "No..." (checks her out) "...are you?"
Aly: (totally disregarding his question) "SO...do you like boys or do you like girls...?"
Matt-clone: (slight smirk) "Girls..."
Aly: "NICE..." (Strange pause. Aly's smile and interest quickly fades.) "I have to go..."

She turns on her heel and struts back toward us as the boys look on, stunned.

I think I have found the Perfect Wingwoman.

(Although nobody could ever really replace you, Yeebee.)

Celebrity Sighting

Today I saw Mr. Britney Spears himself, Kevin Federline.

He looked about as you would expect... dirty, scruffy, trucker hat, big blingy earring...

....I've also done a little bit of updating on www.dennykwan.com...

Jack Bauer is god.

I finally finished watching the first four seasons of 24.

I don't know how they did it. But it was amazing.

Consistently ridiculously awesome.

Except for the Dennis Hopper episodes.

The big 2-5...or something...

Take 7 parts alcohol.
Add 2 parts laughter.
3 parts song.
A game of Kings.
And just a sprinkle of storming out of the bar and yelling.

And what do you have...?

Kristy's 25ish-th Birthday Party!










Congrats to Chris for finally managing to not look retarded in a picture.