Conclusion

We have wrapped up our trip around the world (after a short 24 hour journey home to Chicago). I reposted some of our favorite pictures in conclusion. Stay tuned for our next adventures.

We're "Putin" it to Moscow

We have been exploring Moscow the last few days. We've found very fashionable women, random portraits all over the city (yea...we wonder about how snow effects that too), beautiful metro stops, and the red square. We headed to a market to buy some matroyska dolls (sp?) the first day and today we headed to St. Basil Cathedral. We included a picture of us in front of Lenin's tomb. We have one day left in Russia and then we head home!


FYI-Mike thought of the title of this blog.

New Fact of the Day

New fact of the day: In Bulgaria the y and z are switched on the keyboard. Weird.

Last day in Greece

Last day in Greece. We got reamed our for taking that first picture. Totally worth it. Off to Moscow tomorrow!

Athens

Made it to Athens, saw there was a strike on ALL public transportation, took a $70 dollar taxi instead of a $5 metra ride, found out we are pretty much staying in a dorm room (an interesting throw back), ate some delicious gyros, saw the Acropolis (AWESOME), went and saw some Greek statues at a museum, and hung out at an outdoor cafe. A good day.

Tonight... big Greek dinner.

Greece.... Ahhhh

Big news came last night... Mike got a job offer in the Chicago-area! In the end he will be able to start his job exactly when he wanted to (would have been nice to know this info in November and skip all this run-around... but it all worked out). For those of you that don't know, we officially move into Oak Park, IL on July 24th.

We strongly recommend Santorini for anyone who is looking for a place to honeymoon. It's so nice to be able to shoot around the island on your ATV, go to wineries, head to beaches, or find amazing cafes to eat at. We recommend it highly. Today we did all of the things mentioned above. Lovely. This island seems to be asking us to take pictures. Tonight we meet our friends from Ann Arbor,Bryana and Bryant, for dinner and then tomorrow morning we are off to Athens. Just a week left of adventuring.

View from our wine tasting

Santorini, Greece

Santorini is a dream. So gorgeous. You can see that we rented an ATV and cruised around the island for the day. We stopped at a few beaches, stopped to taste some wine, and paused to take some pictures of the interesting white/blue/pink flower houses. The weather is fabulous and all in all we are having a relaxing enjoyable time.

We have to come clean about one picture. Tom, you are correct. The picture of the pyramid/sphix by itself was indeed taken from a Pizza Hut. Ironic. We know. Good eye to catch that and call us out on it, I must say. The pizza was delicious.

Greece

Made it to Greece. Gorgeous. I think we are going to have a great time here. More to come.

Overall, Egypt has treated us very well. We were lucky enough to have a friend of a friend pick us up from the airport and drive us to the pyramids/museum (see Sammy pictured to the left). Thanks for helping us set that up Heather! The pyramids and sphinx were more than awesome. We stopped at Saqqara (step pyramid) and the Giza pyramids.We took a stroll home along the Nile after visiting the museum to our fancy hotel. Tonight we will take a dinner cruise on the Nile. Overall we are a fan of Cairo.

Note about food thus far (upon request):
Thailand- Pretty great Thai food. Easy to find places to eat. Very similar to what you'd experience at a Thai restaurant in the states. Picture 15 page menu. Not overly spicy. Lots of Italian also available (who knows why).

India- VERY hard to find places to eat other than your hotel. I think the best Indian food we had was on the plane (business class) and at a restaurant recommended by the hotel. Again, very similar to what you might experience at an Indian place in the states. Big difference = they leave the bones in their meat (Shannon ordered vegetarian). We were forced to eat chips for meals because of our inability to find places to eat (maybe the restaurants are disguised????)

Egypt- We have eaten at the hotel mostly, but will see what this cruise will serve us. Haven't really found "authentic" Egyptian food yet, but haven't really been seeking it out yet.

The final days in India- Jaipur

Jaipur started out with excitement (body slamming to get onto a moving train). I think those moments will be etched in our memories forever. After taking the 5 hour train (see picture), we took it easy in Jaipur and slept a good 12 hours and relaxed in our nice cool hotel room. We saw some palaces, a HUGE sun dial, and even got our picture taken next to the largest items made of silver in the world. We had a wild ride on a rickshaw upon returning for our flight where our 14 year old rickshaw driver got lost and drove us around with all our luggage for a good hour+. Absolutely insane. It all worked out though.

We are in Amman, Jordan right now awaiting our flight to Cairo, Egypt. We are looking forward to seeing those pyramids. It's kind of crazy to be in the middle east.

All in all, India was a bit mind blowing. An awesome experience, but Shannon is very glad to not ever take any rickshaw rides through polluted congested streets again!

More when we get to Egypt.

PS- We love when people leave comments! =)