Believe it or not, part 2 of my honeymoon was even better than part 1. After visiting Puerto Rico, Germany, and Athens, we took a large boat to a famous Greek island called Mykonos. Yes you might know it as the best party island in the world and that is exactly why we went. Honeymoons aren't all about relaxing. You need to celebrate your new marriage and get a little drunk as well!
Most of the hotels on the island are boutique bed and breakfasts so we were excited to experience something we are not used to. Our choice was Hotel Vencia which is #3 on Trip Advisor's hotel list. The tiny hotel is located on the edge of a cliff over looking the old town of Mykonos.
We had a tiny little room booked bcause the other rooms were booked out months in advance but thankfully the couple who had booked the best room in the hotel had cancelled their reservation and we were able to book it at a super low rate.
Our balcony overlooked the hotel's infinity pool and Old Town. It was pretty interesting that while my husband was randomly checking Trip Advisor while laying at the pool one morning, there was an ad for the world's top 10 best pool views and a photo of our hotel's pool (and the exact view we were looking at) popped up on the screen!
I did some very careful posing on the edge of the pool and was very careful not to plummet 100 ft to my death. Nah, just kidding, there was a small pool edge behind me to catch me but if I was really drunk and managed to fall off the edge behind me then most likely I WOULD have plummeted to my death.
To get down to the old city we had to climb down some treacherous stairs which would never have passed the safety code in the states. I began to wonder how anyone over the age of 50 was able to walk around the city. And what the hell do you do if you are in a wheel chair?!? You would be confined to a 10ftx10ft space for your entire life. The whole city is one big dangerous staircase and probably the least wheel chair friendly place in the world!
The Greeks really do make the best of their stair situation though. They keep the city immaculately clean and decorated with many pots of brightly colored flowers.
And unlike Athens which is filled with thousands of stray dogs, Mykonos has thousands of stray cats running about. I came to the conclusion that these must be some of the smartest cats around since they chose to live on an island with an unlimited supply of fresh fish. All the stupid cats end up in NY where they have to survive on disease infested rats and such.
On a sunny day, we drove across the island to the famous Mykonos Topicana Beach Bar on Paradise Beach. It is known for some of the wildest beach dance parties in the world. Thankfully we were there during off season so the place was not packed with three thousand under age party goers. Instead it felt more like a luxurious beach front lounge with tons of sexy people.
And the drinks! Oh, where do I begin. The cocktail menu was about 10 pages long and each drink came with a mini fruit salad, sparkler, and Greek flag attached to the glass
There was a gogo dancer dancing, I kid you not, for the entire 2-3 hours that we were there. She did not get down or stop dancing at all. Not once! She was even dancing in the sun. I almost wanted to get video proof to show my dancer next time they complain about dancing too long.
After a week in Mykonos we headed to our next destination...Santorini! Santorini is known as one of the most luxurious and romantic islands in the world. We took a an hour long boat ride to the island and were greeted with enormous cliffs towering over us. Driving up the cliffs was not for the faint of heart. Driving a little too close to the edge of the road would mean plummeting 500 ft to your death...not just grazing the median like in the states. But Eddie did just fine and with a stick shift no less!
Getting to our hotel was no easy task either. After driving up a huge mountain, we learned that we had to carry all of our luggage (I am not a light packer. I had a separate suitcase just for my shoes) down the mountain to get to our room. Thankfully the hotel staff helped us.
Our room was unlike anything I have ever seen. All of the hotels on the island are boutique hotels with just 10-15 rooms each. And ALL of them have fantastic views. Our room had a balcony the size of a small apartment with a jacuzzi overlooking a still active volcano which originally created the island.
Those are enormous cruise ships down there. That's is how high up we were! Birds were flying under us! And my nose started to bleed! Ok, just kidding about that last part.
One of the cool parts of the hotel was they served you a free breakfast of whatever you wanted delivered right to your room. Every day you would hand them a piece of paper of what you wanted for breakfast the next morning and *poof* it appeared on our coffee table the very next day :)
Santorini is even worse for wheel chair people than Mykonos. Walking a just few blocks got me really winded! I would have buns of steel living there.
Since the majority of the streets are too small for cars and some too small for even mopeds, a highly used form of transportation are donkeys! Poor lil things.
Random shot from a restaurant that claimed to have the best views to photograph on the island. Clever advertising ploy if you ask me. All the views on the island are fantastic! It's a frickin island!
Eddie rubbing a stray dog's belly on a black sand beach. Dogs flock to him like he is a dog god or something. It's the weirdest thing ever. I think they can sense good people. One of my boyfriends from the past would make dogs pee themselves from fright!
We had to visit a winery while we in Santorini as the island is world known for their wines so we visited the Boutari Winery. I finally got to check off dance in a Santorini winery off of my bucket list :)
After touring the underground cave winery, we had a little wine and cheese tasting and of course Eddie had to get a shot of me stuffing my face. Those are his favorite.
After having much fun in the sun we flew over to Paris, France!!! I've been there once before but only for 24 hours so I had a very short lived experience of the city. It was supposed to rain every day we were there but the honeymoon gods held the rain back every single day!
The hotel staff was nice enough to upgrade us to a suite with its own living room. And if anyone knows how expensive a closet sized room is in Europe, you KNOW how expensive a room with a living room and two bathrooms is. So we were very thankful of the hotel's generosity.
One of our first stops in Paris was Musee Grevin, the wax museum. I know, I know you might think it's a little uncultured but we had already visited all of the major landmarks during our last trip.
Anyway, the line was about 2 hours and 200 people deep to get in the museum but Eddie, being the genius he is, had purchased us an all access Paris pass that let us skip the line at any museum in the city. Hell ye!!
Here is a photo of Obama and I just chilling :) Someone actually was stupid enough to comment on this photo on Facebook and say that I'm a no good liar, that I never met the president and that the guy in the photo MUST be a look-a-like. This is AFTER I had written a caption on the photo stating I was at the wax museum. Ugh, no hope for humanity.
And here is photo proof that Eddie is way better looking than George Clooney and Brad Pitt. If all three of them were complete strangers and were standing on the side of a street, I would totally make a move on Eddie in a first. Then if he rejected me I would go for George second. And if I was really desperate...nah I would never go for Brad.
Does anyone else think Eddie has an uncanny resemblance to Nicolas Cage? He doesn't agree.
Anyone up for a McBaguette?
Most of the hotels on the island are boutique bed and breakfasts so we were excited to experience something we are not used to. Our choice was Hotel Vencia which is #3 on Trip Advisor's hotel list. The tiny hotel is located on the edge of a cliff over looking the old town of Mykonos.
We had a tiny little room booked bcause the other rooms were booked out months in advance but thankfully the couple who had booked the best room in the hotel had cancelled their reservation and we were able to book it at a super low rate.
Our balcony overlooked the hotel's infinity pool and Old Town. It was pretty interesting that while my husband was randomly checking Trip Advisor while laying at the pool one morning, there was an ad for the world's top 10 best pool views and a photo of our hotel's pool (and the exact view we were looking at) popped up on the screen!
I did some very careful posing on the edge of the pool and was very careful not to plummet 100 ft to my death. Nah, just kidding, there was a small pool edge behind me to catch me but if I was really drunk and managed to fall off the edge behind me then most likely I WOULD have plummeted to my death.
To get down to the old city we had to climb down some treacherous stairs which would never have passed the safety code in the states. I began to wonder how anyone over the age of 50 was able to walk around the city. And what the hell do you do if you are in a wheel chair?!? You would be confined to a 10ftx10ft space for your entire life. The whole city is one big dangerous staircase and probably the least wheel chair friendly place in the world!
The Greeks really do make the best of their stair situation though. They keep the city immaculately clean and decorated with many pots of brightly colored flowers.
And unlike Athens which is filled with thousands of stray dogs, Mykonos has thousands of stray cats running about. I came to the conclusion that these must be some of the smartest cats around since they chose to live on an island with an unlimited supply of fresh fish. All the stupid cats end up in NY where they have to survive on disease infested rats and such.
Here is a cat I found basking in the sun and enjoying life.
I did some basking in the sun myself!!
The Island's mascots are three giant pelicans that stay year around to be fed by the locals and tourists. They are frickin HUGE. Like Jurassic looking. It's a wonder how they can even fly. I made the mistake of getting a little too close to Petro the Pelican and he almost snipped my leg off with his gigantic beak.
The beaches around Mykonos are very different from what I envisioned. I had originally thought they would be lush white sand beaches with palm trees all around. In actuality, the beaches are very small, very rocky and painful to walk on. Yet they still manage to be some of the most beautiful beaches I have seen. And I've seen a lot!
This is totally random but I had never witnessed pigeons fight to the death before so I had to take some pics. Eddie and I were innocently sitting at a restaurant sipping mojitos and munching on beer nuts. We had some nuts left over so I put the bowl near a couple pigeons. It began innocently enough with the pigeons racing over to peck at the free food.
Then, I don't know what the F happened (husband informed me he hates when I curse on my blog so therefore I am trying my best to censor it. The things we do for marriage!)....The one pigion became all enraged that the other one was sharing it's food and literally tried to elbow the other pigeon off the edge! Now obviously I couldn't intervene for risk of being pecked to death so I had to resort to sitting there and taking photos as proof of witnessing a pigeon fight to the death.
Then the pigeon that was almost pushed off the edge decided to get revenge by trying to peck the other's eye out!
After a good 5 minutes of this nonsense they both gave up and flew away leaving the beer nuts uneaten!! What was the point of the whole fight if you leave the beer nuts? At least take one for the flight home. Do pigeons get testosterone flare ups because that sure seems like what happened.
While walking around the city, I noticed many restaurants had octopus freely hanging in the air. I just learned to love octopus very recently. Two year ago, before ever having really good octopus, I would vomit just by looking at it. They were chewy, tasteless blobs to me. In fact, yogurt, squishy cheese and octopus were the only foods I refused to eat. But after having the most unbelievable grilled octopus tentacle during my first trip to Greece, I was hooked for life. There is nothing in this world that can match the taste of freshly caught, perfectly grilled octopus.
So fresh in fact, that while having drinks on the deck of a seaside restaurant one night, one of the kitchen staff ran out onto the deck and stared out to into the ocean. Before we knew it, he had thrown out a line with bait, caught an octopus, and gutted it alive right in front of us. I have no doubt in my mind that they threw it on the grill 1 minute later.
On a sunny day, we drove across the island to the famous Mykonos Topicana Beach Bar on Paradise Beach. It is known for some of the wildest beach dance parties in the world. Thankfully we were there during off season so the place was not packed with three thousand under age party goers. Instead it felt more like a luxurious beach front lounge with tons of sexy people.
And the drinks! Oh, where do I begin. The cocktail menu was about 10 pages long and each drink came with a mini fruit salad, sparkler, and Greek flag attached to the glass
There was a gogo dancer dancing, I kid you not, for the entire 2-3 hours that we were there. She did not get down or stop dancing at all. Not once! She was even dancing in the sun. I almost wanted to get video proof to show my dancer next time they complain about dancing too long.
Taking a good picture on the beach was pretty much impossible. It was so darn windy on the island.
Here is Take 1...
Take 2...
And finally a good shot taken within a split second of the next wind gust!
After a week in Mykonos we headed to our next destination...Santorini! Santorini is known as one of the most luxurious and romantic islands in the world. We took a an hour long boat ride to the island and were greeted with enormous cliffs towering over us. Driving up the cliffs was not for the faint of heart. Driving a little too close to the edge of the road would mean plummeting 500 ft to your death...not just grazing the median like in the states. But Eddie did just fine and with a stick shift no less!
Getting to our hotel was no easy task either. After driving up a huge mountain, we learned that we had to carry all of our luggage (I am not a light packer. I had a separate suitcase just for my shoes) down the mountain to get to our room. Thankfully the hotel staff helped us.
Our room was unlike anything I have ever seen. All of the hotels on the island are boutique hotels with just 10-15 rooms each. And ALL of them have fantastic views. Our room had a balcony the size of a small apartment with a jacuzzi overlooking a still active volcano which originally created the island.
Those are enormous cruise ships down there. That's is how high up we were! Birds were flying under us! And my nose started to bleed! Ok, just kidding about that last part.
At the time that this photo was taken, I remember sipping my wine and thinking how fortunate I was to be able to experience this very moment. It was one of the most tranquil experiences I have ever had. I need to remind myself the next time I whine about how much my husband works that he works to be able to create these experiences for me.
One of the cool parts of the hotel was they served you a free breakfast of whatever you wanted delivered right to your room. Every day you would hand them a piece of paper of what you wanted for breakfast the next morning and *poof* it appeared on our coffee table the very next day :)
Santorini is even worse for wheel chair people than Mykonos. Walking a just few blocks got me really winded! I would have buns of steel living there.
Since the majority of the streets are too small for cars and some too small for even mopeds, a highly used form of transportation are donkeys! Poor lil things.
Random shot from a restaurant that claimed to have the best views to photograph on the island. Clever advertising ploy if you ask me. All the views on the island are fantastic! It's a frickin island!
Eddie rubbing a stray dog's belly on a black sand beach. Dogs flock to him like he is a dog god or something. It's the weirdest thing ever. I think they can sense good people. One of my boyfriends from the past would make dogs pee themselves from fright!
We had to visit a winery while we in Santorini as the island is world known for their wines so we visited the Boutari Winery. I finally got to check off dance in a Santorini winery off of my bucket list :)
And I got to kiss a donkey! It wasn't really real... well kinda... I think it was stuffed :-/
After having much fun in the sun we flew over to Paris, France!!! I've been there once before but only for 24 hours so I had a very short lived experience of the city. It was supposed to rain every day we were there but the honeymoon gods held the rain back every single day!
The hotel staff was nice enough to upgrade us to a suite with its own living room. And if anyone knows how expensive a closet sized room is in Europe, you KNOW how expensive a room with a living room and two bathrooms is. So we were very thankful of the hotel's generosity.
One of our first stops in Paris was Musee Grevin, the wax museum. I know, I know you might think it's a little uncultured but we had already visited all of the major landmarks during our last trip.
Anyway, the line was about 2 hours and 200 people deep to get in the museum but Eddie, being the genius he is, had purchased us an all access Paris pass that let us skip the line at any museum in the city. Hell ye!!
Here is a photo of Obama and I just chilling :) Someone actually was stupid enough to comment on this photo on Facebook and say that I'm a no good liar, that I never met the president and that the guy in the photo MUST be a look-a-like. This is AFTER I had written a caption on the photo stating I was at the wax museum. Ugh, no hope for humanity.
And here is photo proof that Eddie is way better looking than George Clooney and Brad Pitt. If all three of them were complete strangers and were standing on the side of a street, I would totally make a move on Eddie in a first. Then if he rejected me I would go for George second. And if I was really desperate...nah I would never go for Brad.
I also learned for the first time that Jimi Hendrix is in fact black. Don't judge me.
Eddie had a nice little conversation with Ernest Hemingway...
While Eddie was chatting up Hemingway, I helped Da Vinci make some cool saucer looking thing.
Oh and I also made cute little poses with Einstein during his coffee break.
Does anyone else think Eddie has an uncanny resemblance to Nicolas Cage? He doesn't agree.
Many people were gathered near the Eiffel Tower for some kind of rally. I think it was either an Indian or Muslim thing.
And apparently it just happened to be Paris' busiest week of the year. All of the streets were flooded with tourists. Louis Vuitton's store had a line around the block to get in with two bouncers guarding the entrance. Craziness.
I felt really bad taking this photo but the whole scene felt sadly poetic to me. A man who obviously had a little too much of his fancy champagne, passed out on the street with his heading laying upon his neatly gathered shoes. It took me a few moments to notice the second stream of liquid coming NOT from his bottle. :(
Recently a new tradition has popped up all over Europe. I saw this in my recent trip to Prague as well. Lovers will sign their names on a lock, lock it on a bridge and throw the key into the river below. It has become so popular that bridges all over Paris are littered with these locks. Very cool if you ask me. Too bad Eddie and I didn't have a lock handy.
This was Eddie's artistic idea to take a photo of me on the steps of the Paris Opera theater and have only me as an object with color. I love how the family on the upper right is looking at Eddie like he is a freak. It's because he was yelling instructions at me while I was looking forward so it looked like he was yelling at an invisible person.
We also visited Jardin des Tuileries which is an enormous garden near The Louvre which I learned about during French class in High School. It was nice to finally see it in full bloom.
Goofing around with the camera....
And I would like to end this post with the man that made this whole entire month long journey happen. My gorgeously handsome, caring, loving, love of my life husband Eddie. LOVE YOU BABE.
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