Nick and Jess

Last month Nick turned the BIG 3.0.!! I love birthdays and wouldn’t let this milestone pass without a decent celebration.

Nick’s last hurrah in his 20′s was a neighborhood bar crawl. It’s theme “Party While You’re Young” started at Mezcal tequila bar and restaurant then progressed to a few surrounding bars.

Nick, Andrew, Kelly, Mark, and Diana hanging out at Goosetown Pub

It's not a fiesta without tacos and margaritas from Mezcal. The same restaurant we had our first date!

The boys...keeping the juke box under control

I “surprised” Nick with a trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico for the weekend. My loose lips gave the surprise away but the trip was still lots of fun. We loved walking around the historic downtown (it is such a different type of city than other places we have visited), exploring the many galleries on Canyon Rd, enjoying the classic adobe architecture with blues doors, and visiting some great museums including the Georgia O’Keefe Museum.  Here are some pics from google…

Santa Fe is an artist's town. We spent hours walking Canyon Rd, a mile long strip lined with galleries filled with sculptures and paintings. Some of the pieces cost more than our house!

Santa Fe's down town plaza was the end of the Santa Fe Trail and hold a lot of history

I loved the Georgia O'Keefe museum. I remember learning about her in elementary school. She uses natural elements in an abstract manner. Her pictures are crisp and colorful.

We learned a lot about adobe buildings and the striking blue doors and windows

Finally Nick’s birthday DAY arrived. I planned to cook a nice meal for him but we ordered Thai food instead. I worked the night before and was so tired I bought the groceries but couldn’t manage to cook.  He opened presents, we looked through his scrap books and he blew out candles on a yummy fruit tart.

The next night I made Nick a special birthday dinner from the Vegetarian Times Magazine. We enjoyed a yummy bottle of Malbec with Roasted Pear Salad and Wild Mushroom & Caramelized Onion Shepherds Pie with Parmesan Mashed Potatoes

Roasted Pear Salad with Chevre and Fig Vinaigrette

Nick's favorite food (mushrooms) made into a really good shepherds pie!

The birthday finale was a potluck dinner party with the theme “Cuz that’s what grown-ups do.” We converted our living room into an dinning room for 18 people, made LOTS of food, and enjoyed a great evening with friends celebrating Nick’s birthday!

A Thanksigiving-themed dinner including lots of good food made by all our friends

Our living room made a perfect place for 18 people to eat all together.

We even used our sectional couch for seating

props to Ali who was our photographer for the night!! THANKS!

It took Nick 3 tries to blow out all 30 of his birthday candles!! Not so much of a "young buck" anymore.

Another Nick-favorite...carrot cake! This one was citrus-ginger flavored and was more frosting than cake. It had 30 candles...which Nick didn't realize til days later.

Matt, Colin, Chris, John, Mike, and Nick enjoying a great night together!

As a b-day LOVER I think this was a pretty fabulous celebration! Happy Birthday Nick, I love you!! xoxoxo

As we’ve mentioned before it was really HOT in Egypt. We knew it was going to be hot but maybe not this hot. We sat around a lot of the day because it was so difficult to do anything from about 11am until 5pm. The hottest day we experienced was 118 degrees F (47 C). It was painful and easily made me feel sick. The wind would blow which made it worse because the air was so thick and…hot.  As July approached we realized the heat was only going to get more intense and my tolerance of the heat was getting less and less.

We finally made up our minds that we should go somewhere else that wasn’t as hot as Egypt. We aborted our plans to travel to Jordan, Isreal, and the Nile Valley and started looking for cheap flights away from the heat! We searched every city possible….London, Madrid, Frankfurt, Prauge, Vienna, Bangkok (not so north), even Moscow! We finally found a very reasonable flight to Athens, Greece. While still hot (as my sister reminded us!) it wasn’t 47 degrees.

Athens is a clean and modern city with a lot of history.  It is recorded as one of the oldest cities in the world and historically the center of development for art, philosophy, and sceince. The history is obvious as large monuments are in the city center. A few days in Athens was enough to see the Parthenon, the Acropolis, the Temple of Zeus, the amazing Archeological Museum (the best museum I have visited), and explore the vegetarian world of greek food. Please pass the Feta cheese!

Downtown Athens

The Acropolis of Athens

The parthenon (built in 447 BC0 at the acropolis is a temple dedicated the the goddess Athena whom the people considered their protector

The temple Erechteum built around 420 BC

In the pics you will notice the clouds in the sky. It actually rained the first day we were in Greece which we both LOVED after being in HOT Egypt. Nick’s comment was ”Trees, clouds, and tap water! I love this country.” It was a nice change from Egypt even though we both missed traveling in a developing country.

We then headed to the Greek Islands for a few days. Two Americans we met in the Cairo airport were going to the same island as we were. We ended up traveling with Liz and Ryan in the Greek Islands, hanging out on beches, telling stories, sharing an apartment, renting a car, and cooking food together. It was so much fun to make new friends and share stories and have new experiences.

We took ferries between the islands. I don't really like boats but it was a nice way to get around the area.

We visited picturesque Santorini, white sugar cubes built on the edge of a steep cliff. We rented mo-peds and cruised around the islands for the day, stopping in towns along the way and visiting a few black sand beaches.  We made it the the special spot where everyone on the island comes to watch the sunset. It was beautiful!

It was really fun to drive the mo peds!

Liz and Ryan crusing around the isalnd of santorini

the cliff side town Fira on the island of Santorini.

The main religion in Greece in Greek Orthodox. Little churches are scattered throughout the islands. They all have light blue domes on top.

the black sand beaches

watching the sunsunt in Oia

The next stop was Milos. A more quiet and quiant island with a few sleepy fishing villages and the island with the best beaches. This day we rented a car and drove around to enjoy the different beaches, have a picnic,  cliff jump, and swim in the Agean Sea.  We enjoyed making some good meals with Liz and Ryan and drinking cheap Greecean wine.

I really liked the mellow and quaint feeling of Milos

A beach on Milos, we swam in the crystal clear and very salty Agean sea

Nick and Ryan cliff jumping

Cooking yummy food with Liz and Ryan in our shared apartment

While in the islands we started brainstorming where we would go next. I started dreaming about Denmark which is on the same continent as Greece.  It didn’t seem realistic that we  fly to far north when we could visit Italy, Croatia or Slovenia.  Over a few days of searching, we found a really cheap ticket that took us to Copenhagen. A few rushed emails to contact family and friends were sent and then…..we had the next leg of our journey planned.

Nick sleeping in the Athens airport. Our flight to DK left at 3am