Ancient Ruins and Cats

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Emily and I have returned from our 12 day honeymoon to Italy and Greece. We got to see so much history—maybe even more than Emily wanted! I spent a lot of time admiring the ancient ruins while Emily was busy admiring the stray cats. It was an awesome time overall filled with lots of food (including desserts), lots of walking, lots of old stuff, and avoiding earthquakes (I’ll explain). God is good!

Rome

We just so happened to land in Rome on Emily’s 30th birthday! At midnight (ish—depending on what timezone you use) on the airplane I gave Emily her birthday card. Other than that it wasn’t the most comfortable birthday. I logged two hours of sleep on the redeye flight over the Atlantic and according to Emily she logged zero hours. She’s a trooper though and we still got after it on our first day. We landed and checked into our hotel and walked to the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain. We had lunch while out and about and had a fancier birthday dinner followed by dessert pastries and gelato. Emily was loving the desserts! We made it back to the hotel and were in bed by 7pm ready to recover as much as we could for the adventures tomorrow.

The next day, after 12 hours of sleep, we headed to the Vatican City first. We wandered through the Vatican and through the overwhelming amount of art and sculptures before heading into the Sistine Chapel. Then we entered St. Peter’s Basilica and wandered there before heading over to the Colosseum. We ate lunch near the Colosseum and then entered as one of the last groups of the day. It is pretty incredible standing where so many ancient Romans had gathered for massive events centuries before. After that we went out for another nice dinner and we both came to the agreement that Italian food isn’t really anything all that special. The portion sizes are smaller than American portions and it seems all the meals lack enough protein. At one point in Italy I ordered a burger only to get a sad little beef patty hiding between this massive bun. The cannolis and gelato were top notch though so at least they have that going for them. Emily and I both really enjoyed pistachio gelato and pistachio cream filled cannolis.

The next day Emily and I headed back to the Colosseum area and then walked through the Forum. Personally, I really love the Forum because it was essentially the center for Roman daily life. As we wandered through the ancient ruins my mind was painting pictures of all the ancient philosophers debating, the business transactions happening, and all the other daily events that could have taken place there. The three pillars in the picture are from 6 AD! After exploring the Forum we ate lunch and headed to the train station to get to Naples!

Naples

We took a high speed train from Rome to Naples and traveled at speeds of up to 186mph making the trip in a little over an hour! We had a nice hotel right in a downtown area of Naples and we spent the rest of the day without any real plans. We wandered around and Emily took us down to the water where we could see Mt. Vesuvius across the bay. We walked along the water at sunset and heard some beautiful street performers playing romantic music. It was a true honeymoon moment! For dinner we had the Naples specialty of pizza and it was still underwhelming (its no Detroit, Chicago, or New York style) and then we had some good desserts as well. We headed to bed early for our Amalfi Coast tour the next day.

Amalfi Coast

The next morning we hopped in a van and met our tour guide with a big personality, Gabriel. Emily and I, along with maybe 10 other people, rode in a van along the beautiful coastal roads. Our first stop was in Sorrento and we got some decent lunch there and enjoyed the start of our day of beautiful views. We continued to Positano and Amalfi and had stops at both places. In Positano, Emily and I enjoyed climbing up and down the stairs of their terraced village built into the cliff side. Emily also had a fun encounter with an eccentric street cat that might have been her highlight of that village.

The entire day we were blessed with really great weather despite it being the down season and usually more dreary winter months. In Amalfi, because of the good weather we were able to take a boat tour along the coast which was really beautiful. The tour guide pointed out fancy hotels where famous couples honeymooned. After that we took the less scenic road back after a long day of sightseeing. Emily and I got back to our hotel in Naples and had one more disappointing Italian meal to get us excited for Greek food tomorrow!

Athens

From Naples we had a 6am flight to Athens and got there later in the morning and were able to check into our hotel early. We were already impressed by the Greek airline food so that’s a promising start. After checking into the hotel we walked toward the acropolis area and then went into the Parthenon area. For context, I have been to Italy before and had walked through the Roman Forum before, but this was my first trip to Greece. The fact that the Parthenon was built around 400 BC flabbergasted me. It’s really hard to describe the feeling of standing somewhere so ancient with such massive historical significance. Athens has been continually inhabited for at least 5,000 years by conservative estimates. In the 5th century BC, Athens laid the foundations of Western civilization. Even in Biblical times it’s likely the Apostle Paul was preaching in the Acropolis spreading Christianity. Truly incredible!

While we were up on the Parthenon it was really cold and windy, but Emily graciously let me bask in it much longer than she would have on her own. Afterwards she was rewarded with Greek Gyros! Immediately we were both in total agreement that Greek food was significantly better than Italian food after only one meal. Emily really enjoyed her Greek salad as well. Greece, including their food, was also cheaper in general than Italy so we were off to a good start! Later that night the feelings were only reinforced by delicious Greek donuts covered in honey.

The next morning we to the Panathenaic Stadium where they hosted the first modern Olympics in 1896. This spot was probably my favorite hidden gem of the whole trip. We just added it to the itinerary because we had time. Emily and I both really appreciate physical fitness and sports and while the stadium itself was cool the little museum was inspiring to me. The museum talked about the importance of physical readiness closely relating it to military readiness as the museum plaques talked about the Battle of Marathon and other famous battles. There was a heavy emphasis on citizenship which was inspiring. The classical Greek education and the philosophies and values it taught formed the basis of Western civilization including the founding of democracy. I didn’t expect to be so motivated by visiting the relatively small stadium. In another part of the museum they had olympic torches from all the previous olympics which was cool to see.

Greece is where we really started seeing cats everywhere!

After that we had lunch and again ate some delicious Gyros. We walked around the acropolis area some more and checked out some areas we didn’t see the day before. We watched through some flea market areas too and I started searching for an ancient coin because I thought it’d be cool to own as a reminder of all the values I mentioned above. Later I would find out my search was in vain since owning and exporting ancient artifacts is illegal in Greece! I still enjoyed the hunt. We had another great meal and I got a spicy beef gyro which I enjoyed. Then we grabbed our bags from the hotel and headed to the airport so we could make our way to Crete!

Crete

We got to Crete that night and I noticed a lot of American Navy military personnel. I talked to some of them and found out there is a small US Naval base in Crete. Tomorrow we would find out there was actually a whole carrier group on leave in Crete after serving for some extended time in the Red Sea. We got to our hotel no problem and it even had a laundry machine so I did a load and put it out to dry on our balcony before we headed to bed.

Well, it rained all night and the laundry we put out to dry was completely soaked… Luckily, Emily had the bright idea to use the oven to dry out some clothes. So between a low broil and the air conditioner fan turned up we were able to make enough progress on the wet clothes to pack them up and continue our journey. We had an interesting taxi ride with a guy who tried to scam us as I suspect he had been doing to the rest of the US military members. I was, fortunately, able to haggle him back down and save us from his 20 euro tourist up-charge. We checked into our new hotel in Chania and then got some crepes for lunch. At the crepe spot I was chatting with a bunch of the sailors and found out they just finished 50 days in the Red Sea with the primary duty of fighting the Iranian backed Houthi rebels to keep the shipping routes open.

It was a rainy, cold, and windy day, but Chania was really charming. We wandered along a break wall to a neat lighthouse and then we sat down at a nice seaside restaurant and got a pretty tasty seafood platter. We had plenty of sardine leftovers so we took those to-go with the idea that Emily could enhance her cat watching experience with them later. We walked through the old town area and Emily decided to break out her sardine leftovers and cats started coming out of the wood works! It was pretty hilarious to watch. At one point she had over 10 cats surrounding her!! At the end of the day we had some tough decisions to make since our next planned stop, Santorini, was in a state of emergency with 100s of earthquakes a day. A couple were over 5.0 on the Richter scale. We decided to cancel and Thessaloniki was the best fit with the rest of our itinerary. The rest of the night was a last minute planning frenzy as well as the beginning of some arduous cancellation processes.

The next morning we took a bus from Chania to Heraklion, which is the largest city on the island of Crete. On the way we saw the USS Truman in the bay. In Heraklion we checked into our hotel and then got back on the road, taking a bus, to Knossos the ancient Palace of the Minoans. The Minoans were an advanced Bronze Age civilization that lived on the island of Crete from around 3000–1100 BC. The palace ruins were mostly rock rubble excavated to show the walls and different rooms of the palace. To make things more interesting, historians reconstructed portions of the palace to give a better visual representation. The rest of the day in Heraklion was pretty chill. We got some dinner and walked around a bit and of course also had dessert.

Thessaloniki

The next morning we were up early and got to the Heraklion airport to take our flight to Thessaloniki. Everything went smoothly and our hotel in Thessaloniki was even located only three minutes from a direct bus from the airport. Thessaloniki in general was a lot less touristy than other places we had been so far and the prices reflected that. We had probably some of the best food of the trip here and our hotel was only 33 euros a night. Since we were further north Thessaloniki had a pretty significant Byzantine influence. Since the city has been continuously inhabited since its founding there was the historic layers of Ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine influence. We went to a famous attraction there called the White Tower which was a Byzantine structure right near the water. Unfortunately for us, everything in the tower and museum portion of it was only in Greek with no English to provide us context. It was a neat spot nonetheless. We also walked along the water and found a massive statue of Alexander the Great who was born in northern Greece. Relatedly, we saw a statue of Aristotle who was Alexander the Great’s boyhood tutor.

One of my favorite experiences in the city was our visit to a local coin shop. As I continued my quest for an Ancient Greek coin and met a numismatic dealer named Ioannis and we had some really great conversations. He was the one who explained to me that buying an Ancient Greek coin in Greece would actually be illegal. He was a Greek soldier for a time and we bonded over that. He gave us a lot of history of the Greeks and the Macedonians of which he was obviously very passionate. I also ended up buying a replica Athenian tetradrachm from him. It was 20€ and the coin is actually 925 silver which is cool! Super awesome dude.

For the very last day of our honeymoon, since there wasn’t much to do in Thessaloniki itself and we were a bit worn out of so much self-directed exploring, we went to Meteora. Meteora is famous for its secluded monasteries up on cliffs in some really beautiful and interesting mountain terrain. The bus ride to Meteora from Thessaloniki was about 4 hours and half way we stopped within view of Mt. Olympus which is famous for its roots to Greek Mythology. It’s the allegedly home of the Geek gods.

Mt. Olympus

We eventually got to Meteora and the terrain and location of the monasteries was really neat! However, the monasteries themselves, which each cost five euros a person to enter, were underwhelming. It was definitely more interesting to look at the terrain and think about how they built the monasteries than to actually go in. Inside the monasteries Emily and I were both a little bummed by the interesting Orthodox theology and the highlights of the monks which included transcribing numerous copies of important liturgies. There was no mention of how many copies of the actual Biblical books they made. After the monastery stops we took the bus to a nice restaurant and then headed back.

Heading Home Conclusions

On Valentine’s Day we woke up at 6am in Thessaloniki and took a bus to the airport. We then flew 2 hours from Thessaloniki to Rome where we had to exit the airport and switch terminals ourself for our next flight. From Rome we flew 10.5 hours to Atlanta. We had a small layover there and then flew another 3.5 hours to Phoenix. By the time we got our baggage and vehicle and drove home it was a little past 11pm. Needless to say, that will likely be the longest Valentine’s day of our lives!

Overall, it was an incredible trip. I really enjoyed the history of Greece and took away a renewed passion for civic responsibility by seeing their historic examples. I developed an admiration for classical Greek education and their values which led to western civilization as we know it. I also learned a lot about traveling with a spouse. Emily was an absolute trooper the whole time, but I think in the future she would prefer less moving parts and more consistent stays at the same hotel. The packing and unpacking of our bags was definitely a lot. Though the trip was only about 12 days I feel like we packed a couple years worth of communication and conflict resolution experience coming out with an even stronger marriage on the other side. I am sure we will be joking for years to come about the “missed opportunity” of having the island of Santorini to ourselves because of the earthquakes. Then again I guess we’ll just have to go back. Overall, it was a once in a lifetime experience to be able to do that with my wonderful wife and I’m excited to see what God has in store for our lifetime of adventures together. God is good!

Ancient Ruins and Cats

Mango Habanero Donuts

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How does one propose? That’s a great question and like many other young men looking to propose, I asked the internet. A lot of articles gave good advice like it depends on the girl and what she likes while other articles or forum responses were oddly specific like, “try to do it on a dock.” As much as I liked the dock idea there was another specific suggestion that caught my eye —”incorporate baked goods.” If you know anything about Emily you would know she loves to cook, bake, and mostly eat it seems. She is a real donut fiend so that’s the angle I took.

Like a true romantic the day before I planned to propose I was on the phone with a famous donut shop in her local area coordinating some special “Will you marry me?” donuts. That night I flew into California and hung out with Emily in her hometown. We had talked about marriage before and she even asked me if she should redo her contract at her school to teach next school year. I told her no. She showed me rings she liked. We both kind of knew what was coming, but I like a good surprise. The night I got there I didn’t propose. The next day we are playing pickleball at a park and she subtly asks if I’m going to propose. I kind of beat around the bush and drag it along giving no definite answer because I don’t want to ruin the surprise.

We are driving back to her house and she asks me what my opinion on hot dessert is (as in do I prefer my cobbler cold or warm). We talk about desserts for a while and I take a relevant transition to spicy desserts and I tell her that I bet The Donut Man (her famous local shop) would probably make a really good mango habanero donut. This seems like an inconsequential detail but it’s important later. Anyway, Emily has her high school class’s graduation that night and I figure (correctly) that she probably wants me to propose before the graduation so she has some closure before saying goodbye to all her fellow teachers and staff. I knew it would be a bummer for her not to be able to share it with her coworkers, but I wanted when and how I do it to be for the right reasons and not because of outside pressure. I saw it as being between Emily and myself. I also thought about how beautiful of a circumstance it would be for one chapter to end for her right before another starts.

We got ready for the graduation and I had my nice pants on and put the engagement ring in my pocket. Then we headed to the graduation which ended up talking almost two and a half hours, but it was such a nice ceremony. It was exciting to see so many young men and women with bright futures excited for what lies ahead. They were also a great group of kids from what Emily had told me. So after a long graduation and an obviously emotional time for Emily, considering the graduating class were all freshmen and her first class when she started teaching at the high school four years ago, I offered donuts as a fun celebration. Emily was definitely on board for the donuts, but she was also pretty drained. So instead of grabbing the donuts in our nice clothes and heading to a romantic park like I envisioned, we instead went home so Emily could change into her comfy clothes. I definitely respected the move. I decided it was just best to roll with the punches to keep everything as much of a surprise as I could. Donuts and then to a romantic park it is! Except… on the way Emily in her more emotional state directly confronts me about why I haven’t proposed yet. If she were me she would have proposed already she declares. She was very “perplexed” by what I could be waiting for. I found the conversation a little amusing mostly because I knew what I already had planned, but also because Emily is generally so sweet and laid back. She undoubtedly had a lot on her mind. I essentially tell her I don’t want to talk about it anymore and she’s upset. Perfect! The surprise factor will certainly be there now.

As we walk up to the donut shop Emily tenderly apologizes for asking because she recognizes it is my decision and she knows I must have a good reason. I told her it had been an emotional day for me too though I didn’t even know the high school students. Donuts should do us some good! Emily really thinks so because she wants to buy four donuts for the two of us to share, but I already have some special donuts planned so I need to make sure there is some room in the box. I whittle her down to three donuts to split and then I cooly ask the kid at the register, “Have you guys ever thought of making a mango habanero donut?” He emphatically responds, “No, but that’s a REALLY GREAT idea!” This was the most nerve-wracking part for me, relying on teenage fast food workers to pick up on a code word, but based on his reaction I think he understood. The best part is Emily doesn’t think anything of it because I already casually planted the code word earlier in the day. I keep an eye on the kid from the register and it appears he took the donut box into the back and loaded it with the special donuts before loading the donuts we ordered at the window. I make sure to grab the box as soon as he hands it to us and the box feels a little extra heavy. I’m pretty sure the special donuts are in there! On to the romantic park.

It’s been a long day and we decided to skip the park and go back home to eat the donuts. If I tried to force the park plan Emily would probably have thought something was up. It was already late out and the sun had gone down when we got home. We pulled into her driveway and got out of the car. I make sure to get out quickly to walk around the front of the hood to block her from going straight inside. I set the box of donuts on the hood. Coincidentally her driveway is also where we had our first kiss so I channel some of that romantic energy. I start telling her all the things I love about her and she just assumes I’m apologizing for telling her I didn’t want to talk about proposals anymore. After a couple of minutes of sweet talking, I told her she should open the donut box. Her response is, “Why? Can’t we just eat them inside??” “JUST OPEN THE BOX,” I not-so-cooly respond. Now she’s confused but she goes to open the box as I fish the ring out of my pocket. As soon as she sees the donuts saying “Will you marry me?” I am already down on one knee with the ring. She immediately bursts into tears and the only thing she can manage to utter through the tears of joy is “HOW??”. She is dumbfounded by how these magical donuts got in the box. The surprise worked! On one knee I told Emily how I’ve never met another woman like her and I couldn’t imagine a better teammate to spend the rest of my life with. I told her I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her and she said yes!!

Emily could not stop crying for a long while after that. She was just so happy! It was the cutest thing. We ended up standing around in the driveway for probably 20 minutes just hugging and talking about it all. Emily kept saying, “It doesn’t feel real” with the biggest smile on her face! I truly can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with her! One chapter ends for Emily and a new one starts for us both. God is good!

Mango Habanero Donuts

Grand Canyon: Rim to Rim

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Over Memorial Day weekend, six buddies and I embarked on a 24-mile trek from the Grand Canyon’s North Rim to the South Rim via North Kaibab Trail to Bright Angel Trail. The trek took us deep down into the Canyon to the famous Phantom Ranch before we hit the lowest point and crossed over the Colorado River at the bottom of the Canyon. The photo above is of the group at the start of the journey. We started our journey from the North Rim at roughly 5:15am with the sun already up. Luckily the canyon walls kept us in the shade for the first couple hours of the journey.

The trek had its literal ups and downs, but unlike most hikes, the Rim to Rim journey starts with the easy downhill portion. That leaves the toughest most grueling stretch of the journey, the uphill, for the end of the day when you are at your most tired. I’m happy to say all seven of us made it, but it wasn’t always pretty. Blisters, sore muscles, and sunburns were plentiful and a couple out of the group suffered even worse with some cramps and dizziness towards the end. At a snail’s pace compared with our downhill rate of speed, we crawled up the steep canyon walls of the South Rim, mostly in direct sunlight, to finish the journey just an hour or so before sunset.

All in all, it was a heck of an adventure and no matter how terrible some of us felt at the bottom of the canyon we were all happy and proud to have conquered the task we had set before ourselves! I am thankful for the good weather on the journey, the good friends, and even for the good and bad times. Memories were made! God is good!
Grand Canyon: Rim to Rim