Top 10 Things you need to know about packing for overseas
Top Ten Things for traveling:
Pack light
That's it. You have a brain. You can figure out what to pack without me telling you.
We took about 3 weeks and went to Poland and Greece.
I had to give someone CPR in Greece, that is towards the end of this post.
First, we went to Poland to see Anna's family. We first flew to Paris then took a connecting flight to Warsaw, Poland.
Warsaw is clean and beautiful like always (minus WWII time period. , not so good then ).
Poland is very strict about jaywalking / not crossing the street unless you have the light.
There are also separate bike lanes.
Being from NYC, it is very difficult to not run across the street whenever you feel like it. NYC considers traffic rules optional, like paying taxes in Greece.
At first , this really confused me. A kept crossing the street where ever and whenever I felt like it and when I got to the other side everyone else had still not crossed. I thought everyone was paralyzed. Then they would get cured and start walking again. I realized green lights cured paralysis!!
This same fountain was in Poland 2 years ago.
Each time we are in Poland we clean the graves of Anna's grandfathers. It is a tradition for family and friends to clean the graves.
'Fifi' is cleaning the wrong grave.
'Fifi' again not doing this correctly.
Anna and her Aunt were delayed getting back to our flat after dinner so I went with the kids on a walk at night and then I got lost like an Alzheimer's patient.
My GPS was not working because I didn't go into SETTINGS and select "TURN ON DATA ROAMING".
WTF, if the map says "not online" why doesn't the stupid phone ask me if I want data roaming turned on and just turn it on?!! I'm not an iPhone genius bar.
I had the key to get into the flat and Anna was waiting at the flat but I kept missing the correct street.
I knew we were staying by a statue of Pope John Paul.
I repeatedly stopping people and saying in Polish "Do you speak English" or "Where is Pope John Paul". Everyone was friendly but none of the people I asked lived in Warsaw so they didn't know where anything was.
Also, there is more than one Pope John Paul statue because when Pope John Paul died and asked people not to build memorials for him, so that the money can be used for the poor, everyone built memorials to him and said, "here you go poors, have some statues"
We finally got a cab but the driver didn't speak English.
We saw a castle.
This is a castle.
The kids are like, "We have a better way to do this at home"
Once we were done with Poland we took a one hour flight on RyanAir to the island of Crete with Anna's cousin. This airline is cheap and fast. There are no baskets behind the seats and the seats don't recline. Everyone peddles a stationary bike and if we generate enough energy the plane flies.
I don't think I have any family left in Crete. I should have put some effort into figuring this out but I didn't.
What would I do if I found them? They would probably make me look at an old photo album where people glued the pictures on and no one is smiling, "This is your Aunt Julia. She was the sister of the wife of your Uncle Dimitri who was the father of your 4th cousin from the other village who was married to John and they lived in the house next to the house with blue shutters on the street with the fruit store". Ok, yeah her. I can't. I just can't.
We stayed in a small flat in Chania (the English spelling looks so dumb)...Χανιά ....much better.
The beds had sheets on the top AND bottom.
"Look, a dead baby"
We rented a car and drove to Μπόλος beach about 1.5 hours away. We had to park at the top of a cliff and then walk down rock steps that were falling apart. There was a lot of complaining coming out of the kid's mouth holes.
Steps to beach
The people in this picture are people walking up steps
The beach was quite difficult to reach and therefore there were no old people, obese people or handicapped people. It made the beach so much more beautiful.
They'd wear different hats, they'd lay on their stomach, they'd get in the water and let their boobs float. they'd pretend to stroll casually....they'd face their back to the camera and look over their shoulder.
IT DID NOT END.
I swear to Jesus God.
I even saw someone holding out their phone on a selfie stick while running down the beach taking pictures of herself. This women did the same run over and over until she got the picture she wanted. Then she had sex with her selfie stick.
This is why I prefer people posting crimes they have committed online.
This is why I prefer people posting crimes they have committed online. It's so real. Like, I saw how this guy filmed himself mugging someone. I felt like I was right there getting mugged! I even saw this video of a police officer filming himself shooting a black person.
Every beach looked like this.
We went to some ruins and saw the first electric chair before electricity was discovered.
The chair was an utter failure.
After Crete, we flew to Athens for a few days where we met Anna's Aunt and her other cousin. We stayed at a nice hotel... The Divani Caravel.
It was really the only nice/luxury hotel we stayed at. We weren't close to the beach so we decided to stay someplace with a pool.
We landed in Athens, checked-in and got a quick lunch. The kids wanted to go to the pool so Anna went walking with her cousin while I took the kids to the pool.
We walked onto the roof standing at the pool's shallow end facing the bar that is about 30 meters away. I see a man waiving to the bar tender from the deep end of the pool.
Then I hear him saying, "I need help. I need help".
He was an Asian man,,, I'm assuming as part of the Chinese tourists that arrived on a large bus earlier in the day. They were all wearing Crocs. The women dressed very well and then men did not.
I told the kids to wait and I went over to where is was . He's says "I need help ....my friend!". Then the bar tender throws him a life safer ring but he ignores it.
I'm thinking, "ok, I'm not going to be like these other people staring and not doing anything."
Then, I and someone else notices a person at the bottom of the pool. I'm fully dressed and the other guy is in a swim suit. I'm like, "help pull him to the service" So he jumps in to help the man get the guy off the bottom.
They get his head above water but he in unconscious. One guy is like, "ok he's fine".
I'm like, "um, no, we need to get him out he is not fine".
Another guy and I pull him out of the pool and while this is going on I ask the bar tender if they have an AED machine. He says, "it's coming" but it never does. I didn't know if the drowning guy was having a heart attack or what.
Everyone was from a different country but everyone spoke English just fine. Except for the man drowning because he wasn't breathing. But, later I did find out that he only spoke Chinese.
I gave him chest compression and mouth to mouth.
He started moving.
We put him on his side and he coughed. An ambulance comes like 15 minutes later. He raises an arm and stuff and they wheel him away.
It was terrifying, Before leaving, the drowning man's friend said he couldn't swim and accidently walked into the deep end. There were no markings separating the shallow from the deep end.
I was really shocked at home incompetent the staff working at the pool were. They were like, "um, what do we do?" The hotel was great but the pool staff needs accident training.
I had not taken a CPR class in 5 years but I did remember reading that the compressions were doubled and that now they are the most important so at least I did that correctly.
The kids were not shocked at all.
The first thing they said was, "Did he die?"
I'm like, "no."
"Ok, can we go in the pool?"
We had a brief talk about "this is why I don't let you swim without an adult" which was promptly eye-rolled.
After he was talking I went back to the kids. I'm taking this picture and the man is on the ground.
I can not believe no one from the hotel came around asking who was involved to try and put together what happened......because someone can sue!!!....bitches.
Anyway, drowning behind us, we got up early the next day to see the Acropolis. We got room service because nothing was open for breakfast.
That's another thing. In NYC everything is always open, ...because of all the cocaine.....like it should be.
I would like a table I could wheel into the kitchen, load the food and then wheel it back.
It was over 100 Fahrenheit in Athens.The kids complained a lot. I told them that some kids have to walk through the desert for days because their house was bombed.
The Parthenon in the city of Acropolis. This thing has been under reconstruction since 1973 or whatever. It is on Greek time...like no one is working more than an hour a day.
Plaka neighborhood of Athens.
This is a good picture of me.
My uncle had to ride a train in NYC in this outfit to a Greek festival. We have never heard from him since.
For every nice building in Athens there are five covered in graffiti
It's like a 1990s crack epidemic. At least the opioid epidemic doesn't have graffiti since no one can move their arms.
I'm so happy to have been able to share our families adventure with you. Not really. This blog is my stepping stone to another stepping stone and so on and so forth.
I haven't logged onto Facebook in a while because I AM SO TIRED of people posting BORING facts about their lives. I've read enough posts about people "headed to the gym".
I look so good in this picture. XOXO self.
Here is the sign for a strip club by our hotel. Just no. Just. No.
Obviously these women are not Orientals. They are clearly wearing Lawrence of Arabia pants.
"NO" to bangs on the middle one.
"NO" to bangs on the middle one.
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