tony's bday weekend!

we just got back from a really awesome weekend -a vacation from our vacation i guess you could say. for tony's birthday weekend, we stayed at the vedema, which is one of the nicest places on the island, and probably the nicest place either of us have stayed at! we checked in on friday and were really excitd to stay in a place where we could walk aroudn and shower without flip flops on all of the time :)- AND flush toilet paper! (here in most places you have to dispose of it in a bin in the bathroom). although we've been having a lot of fun here, we really wanted to relax a bit, veg out by the pool, and soak in the temporary luxury :).

we were really impressed! when we checked in we were greeted with 2 glasses of champaigne and notice that we had been upgraded. we were taken on a brief tour of the hotel (more of a resort i guess), where all of the main walls are built out of volcanic rock. we got to our room and were blown away. for tony's bday they left us a complimentary bottle of wine and fruit basket. we walked around and had a living room with tv/dvd player/stereo (which was wired throughout the bathrooma nd bedroom too). the bathroom was also really nice... all covered in marble, with a jacuzzi tub, 2 sinks and a shower stall as well (with walls!!) we had a hallway with closets and then a bedroom. there was a private balcony connected to the bedroom and living room which had 2 sunbeds, a table and chairs, and a private jacuzzi!! not too shabby!!! everything was decorated in the traditional white and blue with some furnitures with accents.

we hung out by the pool on friday for a bit, and then went to fira for tony's bday dinner. we were really craving pizza so we found a restaurant with pizza and a great sunset view. it was probably one of the prettiest sunsets yet, though i think tony is gettting tired of watchign the sun set :). after that we went back to the hotel, watched a movie and relaxed. saturday we spend a good deal of time out at the pool - allowing me to catch up just a LITTLE to tony's 'i work in the sun all day every day' tan. i read a good deal of a book (the 3rd of my trip) - i already finished the te of piglet, memoirs of a geisha, and am now reading 'hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world'. i remembered how much i missed reading, but forgot just how much i missed it, and am so excited to have some time to read for fun (as opposed to decks, research, and school books!). after the pool, we got ready for a wine tasting we signed up for at the hotel. they have a 400 year old wine cellar there (the hotel was actually built around a winery) - turns out we were the only people to sign up, so we got a private wine tasting!! just wait till you see the pics! really cool, old candle- lit wine cellar. realllly nice evening. there was a really cool sommalier who told us all about the history of santorini wines, and we tried about 8 different local wines (mostly whites). after the 2 hour tasting, the sommalier had to leave to work in the restaurant, and he left every single bottle out and said 'have fun!'. we drank some more but had to leave for dinner. we had reservations at blues, which is where i work, and did their indian dinner. they bring a chef in from the uk who does really really really good indian food. unfortunately we were a bit full already from all the wine so didnn't eat as much as we would have liked, but ah well. after that we were pretty sleepy from the wine and went to bed pretty much right after dinner.
sunday we were really sad to have to leave. we had an AMAZING breakfast buffet, full with smoked salmon, figs, all kinds of fresh juices, greek traditional pies, prosscuto, cheeses, tarts, fruits, yogurts, etc. we then spent some time at the pool, on our private jacuzzi on the balcony (just to say we did), and walked around for a bit to explore and take pictures. we checked out at 4, and actually went off to meet the sommalier from the hotel at a bar on the beach, after we made good friends with him at the wine tasting.
the bar was INSANE. it's this place called jojo's, and it is crazier than all but MAYBE one bar here is at night. this place gets busy around noon, and actually closes at 11 pm - you go by around 3 or 4 pm and the place is slammed. there was a dj from the usa there, and people were just drinking, jumping in the pool, dancing in the bar, etc - fun way to end the weekend.

now we're back at the place we are staying (and they actually moved us to a worse room) and missing the vedema very much! i told the place i'm working at today that saturday will be my last day, and tony and i plan on putting the finishing touches on the tourist things we have to do on sunday. can't believe we're leaving so soon. we're sad to go but also very much missing home in many ways.. and excited for the adventures that await us in berkeley!!!

pictures!

above left: me and tony watching the sunset from akrotiri; above right - tony at work. this is the beach he works on: note the black sand literally melted his flip flop! it gets to be over 100 F in the days and as you can imagine the sand gets super hot! bottom left: our friends from belgium : roxanne and jens. this is them and tony cooking this awesome dinner in their kitchen. jens' family has a house there and we hung out there a few times. we made lamb chops, chicken, burgers, tzaziki, feta, beans, salad.. yum..... bottom right - sunset from oia.

...try "writes" again :)

hey guys,

sorry i haven't posted in a while.. we've been settling in to the swing of things and also doing some more stuff after work. my fave thing we've done so far, and i think tony will agree, is see the sunset in oia. oia (pronounced EE ah) is on the other tip of the island, from which you can see the volcano, other small islands, fira (major city) and also, a great view of the sunset. it is also a very cute town, with a bunch of homes built into the mountains. i mean, literally built into the rock. i'm going to try downloading some pics from my camera to post as well. we took our second trip out there last night, and it was awesome. we went to a very cute cafe afterwards, with a great view and great food (which is very rare here). i got a yogurt with honey and fruit and it was HUGE (and soooo yummy). tony and i eat about three yogurts per day each here - greek yogurt is the best! tony got this really good chicken wrap. most of the food here sucks - its pretty much all the same thing - tourist "greek" food, which apparently half the time isn't authentic greek food (i.e. mousaka). luckily the restaurant i work in is reallly good- i've heard several people say its the best food they've ever had (i actually had the best french fries i ever had) - so it's nice to get my free meal there every day :). anyway, we're also really looking forward to our weekend that's coming up for tony's bday. our resort is supposed to be very nice and we're looking forward to some time off of work and staying in a pimped out hotel!! :)

will post pics in a minute...

mel

TheZamm rides again..or should i say rights again

As Melissa wrote a lil bit ago, we are settled in. We are having a blast. I never knew I could drink so much. We became really good friends with this Belguim couple. Yanis and Roxanne. Jesus, the belguims are huge people. And guess what they love bacardi. As you all know that I do too. And you all also know that I have a big ego and I think I can take on the world. I decided to keep up with Yanis with bacardi's. ya that was the stupidest thing I did that week. The bars know him and have actually got buckets of bacardi and coke waiting for him. I fricking serious. It's crazy. I passed out the first night and got really wasted the second...he was barely buzzed. I have never been called a light weight before.

Anyway, I am a beach boy. I literally live the dream working in paradise. I serve cocktails to beautiful naked people all day and get paid for it. I work on the beach in Greece...and get paid for it! There are no laws or rules..this place was ment for me. Also, its been nice to settle in so now we can go back to working out and have some sort of normal life again. After looking at the pictures Mel had posted I was inspired to seriously work out again....lost a few pounds....hell yeah!

We have tons of pictures to show you all....over 500! So get ahold of us when we return. Friday is my Bday. We have a rocking hotel set up...I would tell you the cost but I dont want to make anyone jealous!JK. hah. But really we have this awesome place set up...the second nicest on the island for 2 days.

I am not as good at this stuff as Mel so I will have to team up with her to get a better entry to you all. anyway miss you all a ton and cant wait to toast a welcome home bacardi.

Settling in Santorini

Sorry it's been a while since we've written..
We are now getting settled here in Santorini and both of us have jobs. I ended up not taking that first one b/c the hours would have been 6 pm til 5 am, which is pretty crazy. Tony had a potential job at this place called Blues, and we ended up walking by there one day and the owner actually wanted a girl to work during the day and set me up with a trial shift. In the meantime, we went to a restaurant called Charlina for dinner one night and talked to the manager, who said he needed someone to serve drinks on the beach. I ended up getting the job at Blues and Tony at Charlina.
Tony works from 9-5 on the beach and is quite tan/red now :P. I work from 10-6 and luckily get an hour break for lunch, during which I take the 10 min walk to Tony's beach and we eat lunch together. Tony says that it is one of his favorite jobs - "I work on a mediterranean beach all day serving alcohol to various people from around the world - what is there not to like?" My job is cool - the mornings can be pretty busy with breakfast, but then from about 2-6 pm I have maybe 1 or 2 customers, so I pretty much walk around cleaning. We make pretty decent money for the island, just enough to cover our living expenses, which was the goal. We found an apartment that we were supposed to be in for the next month, but when we showed up the girl running it said she had forgotten that a tourist office had booked the rooms full starting the next week. So we will be there for the next 4 days or so and then need to find a new place for the remaining weeks. We have a couple of leads so hopefully all will go well.
The other day we rented an ATV to go see a sunset in Oia, which is the major place that everyone goes to see the famous sunset. At the rental place however, the owner convinced us to go to Akrotiri, which is a lot closer and more beautiful, according to him. So we drove the thing to Akrotiri, had a nice dinner and saw the sunset... which was gorgeous. From the point we were ( a lighthouse), you could see Fira, Oia, and the volcano along with some other islands... great view. However, on the way back we realized that we hadn't filled the thing up with gas (and here when you rent a vehicle the tank is nearly empty). The ATV slowly putt putted and stopped. We were on a road kind of in the middle of nowhere and luckily the next car to go by was an AMerican guy. he was just about to check in to his hotel, so told us he would drop off his bags and come back (but not too happy about it). We spent about 10-15 mins driving around looking for a gas station. We filled up a water bottle with gas and went back to the ATV, but it wouldn't start. By this time it is night. The man took us back to his hotel, where we were (barely) able to communicate to the Greek owners that we needed a taxi to take us to Perissa. The woman who owned the hotel made us some dessert and gave us water, and fnally we made it home in a taxi, afer a 2 hour ordeal... at least its a funny story

Santorini!!

well, we decided that ios is just a litttlllleee too party-ish for us... after talking to four friends we made in the hostel (jason, anthony, david and justin), we decided to come to santorini for the rest of our stay. we took a ferry here yesterday from ios, and decided to stay at a hostel recommended by our ios hostel neighbors, a couple from canada (allister and rachel). we showed up at the place, which is called tony's villas. we walked in to the room and oh my goodness... by far it was the dirtiest place i have ever stayed. the accomodations weren't half bad, particularly for a hostel, but it looked like they hadn't cleaned it in ages. the sink had hair and marks in it, the whole place smelled like mold, and the bathroom smelled like a septic tank. we spent the rest of the day outside of the room and were pretty creeped out going to sleep. i don't think either of us slept very well- we both kept waking up uncomfortable and worried (i was a bit afraid that the place could have bed bugs). we decided to check out this morning and found a place called anny's studios, which was recommended to us by four good friends we made in ios (jason, anthony, justin and david). the place is super clean, we have a pretty decent room, there is free laundry (which is a major plus compared to the 9 euro per load in ios!!), 2 nice looking pools, a bar and a common area where people gather to watch tv and hang out. we are soooo much happier with this place and plan on staying for 2-3 nights, until we find a more long term place. santorini is really beautiful, and definitely more of our scene. we are staying in an area called perissa beach, which feels very much like a bummy beach town. there is one main road a block back from the beach, which has some mini-marts, restaurants, car rental places and travel agencies, and then a main road with restaurants, bars, etc. all of the bars and restaurants on the strip on the beach are super cool - they are all open air and covered with a thatch roof type thing, so you are sort of indoors and outside at the same time. they all have a trendy/loungy feel, which with both prefer to the crazy party places in ios. the beach is a black sand beach, which is pretty neat. i've seen one black sand beach in hawaii before but this is pretty different. the sand is actually pretty fine, almost like a regular beach, and the beach is super long!! we haven't even walked end to end yet. there is apparently a red-sand beach here too, that we want to go to at some point. the other big beach is called oia, at the other end of the island, which is supposed to be famous for viewing the sunset. i think tomorrow we are going to rent an ATV again (if any of you didn't catch what it is, it is a four wheeler), and head to fira, which is the big city here. we were originally going to come to santorini over the weekend of tony's birthday... i booked this super super nice hotel for 2 nights (runs 600-1000 euros per night!!- thank you starwood points!!!), but are happy to be here for the rest of our time. on the way in, we passed the hotel, called the vedema, and the driver commented that its one of the nicest hotels on the island, and all of the celebrities stay there when they come - apparently angelina and brad stayed there not too long ago. this made us even more excited to stay there (especially after staying at tony's villas! :P)we already have a couple of leads on jobs (thanks to tony's networking skills), though will def keep looking. tony has a lead at one of the nicer restaurants here, on the main street, as a server. he has to go back on thurs b/c the owner already is "trying out" someone on a trial shift on thursday. i have a lead at a place called beach bar on the strip on the beach, and have to do a trial run tomorrow. will be interesting since i've never truly served before, but we'll see how it goes. not too excited about the hours, which would be 6 pm or 9 pm depending on the night, until 4 or 5 am (yuck). the upside is that i'd make half decent money probably, with the tips and all (although people do not tip much here like in the US), and that at least i'd have the days free to sight see, go to the beach, etc. tony is off chatting with some people now, but will see if he wants to post anything else. hope everyone is well and we love reading comments, so post some if you can!!!
best,mel and tony

hahah oops

umm sorry about the captions (above left, etc) - when i posted the pictures and the comments, they appeared completely differently than they look in the post... hope you can follow along!