Our Vacation

And Re-Writing History! Okay our Vacation wasn't history changing, but what we saw will change the way history books are written. I can't believe it has been 3 weeks since we went on our very small trip of 2 nights away to the northern part of Greece.

The Heart is our Home and the Box is where we went.

  What I love about traveling is:

• Seeing Historical Sights
• Seeing Natural Sights
• And Eating!

We had plenty of food to eat, first stopping for lunch at the mall in Thessaloniki for our bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken (we eat this any time we are there).  Then we ate dinner in Asprovalta, calamari and tzatiziki (if you need a tzatziki recipe you can get it here).

 Enjoying Calamari

Yes, I get 2 Ice-Creams!

The shop owners offered the kids ice-cream and they of course said Yes, but it was a Mastika ( μαστίχα) flavored, which is pretty good in ice-cream form, not sure how to describe the taste, but this is something they only make in Greece, specifically Chios Island. The next night we enjoyed Gyros in Nea Peramos

I don't have many pictures of the beaches, since I am always in the water.

This is near Nea Peramos, the beach is called Sand Dunes (but in Greek)

The 2 places we stayed at are starred and the little teardrop is where the find of the century has been discovered.

The signage at Amfipoli

The top sign says Macedonian Tomb, we wanted to see it, but when we crossed the road, there was nothing there, the nicely paved road turned into a dirt road.  We thought the Greeks must have gotten the signage wrong, but what it is is something that they didn't announce till this week.  They have discovered a new tomb to rival that of Vergina.  Here is an article in Greek(pictures are nice) and here is a smaller article in English(my husband and I have been arguing all week about who is buried there). Amfipoli (amphipolis-Αμφίπολη)  is an Ancient City, if you have watched the Movie 300 with the Persian King Xerxes, this is where he was defeated.  And where Alexander the Great's wife and son were executed. (I believe they are the ones in the tomb)  My husband thinks that Alexander the Great is in it.  We can't wait to find out WHO is inside, I also believe that Alexander the Great's mother could possibly be inside.

Ancient Aqueduct.

Rolling Hills and the river meeting the Sea.

The most popular sight of Amfipoli right now is the Lion, it is right off of the old road from Asprovalta to Kavala.

The Lion Monument, was found in 1912 and rebuilt in the 30's.  I am using this as my color palette and the story behind it and the region Amfipoli to Design my Surface Pattern for my class that I took with Bonnie Christine at Creativelive.

I made this on Adobe Illustrator, aren't you proud.

It only took me an hour to figure out how to do the color swatch, lol, not very computer literate!

The class was great, you can take it too, I watched it live, from 7pm to 2am for 3 days to see it for free.  But you can pay just $79 to watch it anytime.  I was a little scared when on Friday we didn't have any electricity all afternoon and then boom at exactly 7:05 the electricity was back on, phew. Now I didn't know anything about Adobe Illustrator and it is a definite learning curve, but the I would have been really lost with out Bonnie's lessons.  The other cool thing is that you can use the Illustrator for FREE for 30 days.  Sign me up right, I have always wanted to make my own fabric line. (you will need to sign up for Adobe first and then the Creative Cloud and then you can download Illustrator for free) You can find more info on the Design Surface Challenge from Bonnie's web site, Going Home to Roost. Of course no trip is complete with out some fun!

St. George Beach, Corfu

Continuing from Sidhari Beach Corfu we travel along the narrow roads to St. George Beach a beautiful circular cove with soft golden sand that goes all the way from the road to the water.  It gets deep fairly quickly so it is perfect for adults but young children will need to be watched.  Our kids enjoyed making sand castles and jumping the waves with daddy.

the southern part has more waves.

 Tavernas and Hotels line the main road at one point in the road you have to go around a small part of the town, but otherwise the main road follows the beach. 

The northern part of the beach has fewer waves but when we were there it had more sea grasses on the sand, causes a few more sand "flies".
My husband loved this beach so much that we tried to find land nearby, you can find some plots for fairly cheap but in Greece you have to be careful because in some areas you can't build or there are some very strict rules to building.

Greece 101

Some facts about Greece.

Greece has a mainland, it is not all Islands, to the north we are bordered by Albania, Macedonia (in Greece you need to call it FYROM) and Bulgaria, to the East is Turkey.

We have a lot of mountains, in fact 80% of the land mass is mountainous.

On the West we have the Ionian Sea (Corfu is here), to the South the Mediterranean Sea and to the East the Aegean Sea.

There are approximately 1,400 Islands (yep, 1,400 - the CIA says 2000) of that 227 are inhabited.

Greece has the 11th longest Coastline (13,676 km, or 8,498 mi) we are after China and before Britain.  That's a lot of beaches to visit, lol.

Population of Greece is close to 11 million, compared to the United States of 315 million.

This year 150,000 people turned in their car registration, it is too expensive to drive in Greece,  that would be equivalent to 4,095,000 million people giving up there car in the States.  HOLY COW WOW!

Unemployment rate is 23%, but this is with people who are registered through the unemployment office, the time limit for some people to claim unemployment has ended and the government does not count them.  For example we have a friend who has never held a job even though she is looking, she does not count, same for all of the young people straight out of school who are looking for jobs but can not get them, they do not count either.  So it is safe to say that our unemployment rate is more in the 40 percentile, than in the 20's.