Santorini Honeymoon – Day 4

We woke up and realized we hadn’t eaten the baklava from the night before. So we made that happen. Breakfast Baklava in Bed. Triple B.

We loved the car so much, we asked Mike if we could keep it another day. He said, “No problem” (he says this all the time and he means it), made a simple adjustment to our contract, and we were on our way. We went back to Fira and did some shopping. We ended up buying a bottle of Tsikoudia, which is that moonshine stuff we had at lunch the other day. We planned to become close friends with this stuff. (Again, I have more to explain about this stuff, just be patient.)

We picked up more Lucky’s Souvlaki for lunch and came back to the hotel for a swim (the cleaning crew at the hotel was incredibly fast and were already cleaning rooms and the grounds from the storm the night before, by the time we had left). Unfortunately, they were cleaning our pool. So we went out to the common pool area and ate our lunch and sunned a bit. We were going to swim in the big pool (which they had already cleaned), but the owner told us not to just yet (I’m guessing they had shocked it with chemical and we would have peeled our skin off in an acid bath if we had jumped in), since he could see we had our suits on and were ready to cannonball.

We went to Kamari to find the open air movie theater there, but the entire town of Kamari looked like it hadn’t opened yet for the season.

We found the theater, but it had a sign on the entrance saying it opened at 9:30 (presumably when it got dark).

So we drove to Akrotiri to grab some dinner at a place we drove by the previous day. It looked like it would have a perfect view, so how bad could it be? We found out it was terrible. When we first pulled up, we thought, "cool, there are a few cars here, so it's edible, right?" When we actually parked, it looked like the cars had been there a while, due to flat tires and rusted out bodies. They were planted there to make it look good. We were actually the only ones in the restaurant (aside from the family that was both working and playing cards in the dining room the entire time we were eating). We had an awful meal, followed by an even more awful dessert that actually angered D.Rough. Pretty sunset, only partially obscured by the cliffs and rocks, ruined by dinner. Here's me giving the thumbs down on dinner.

We headed back to Kamari to catch the movie, but when we arrived, it was completely dark. Sadface. We had high hopes. So we zipped back to Fira and found some gelato. That makes everything better. We were getting to know Fira pretty well by this point, which is nice.

We had chartered a sailboat around the island for the next day, so we came back home so we would be well rested for the trip. And NOT hung over on a boat.

Santorini Honeymoon – Day 3

When we woke up, the wind had died down to a stiff breeze, but it was perfect outside. Amazingly clear air and not an ominous cloud in the sky.

After breakfast, we knew we were going to see more of the island, so Mike – one of the most amazing hotel staff on the planet – rented us a car to use for the day. He told us it would be a SmartCar, but then apologized for only having something much larger for us – a Nissan Micra. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I drove an SUV back home, so this was NOT a “larger” car. Hahaha.

We wanted to find a wine museum that Avi and Ben (our new friends from Lucky’s Souvlaki) told us about. Apparently, there are horrific and hilarious animatronic people acting out the wine-making process and you have to see it to really experience it. We headed off to find it. We drove past a red-roofed church – the same one our shuttle driver from the airport told us was a landmark for a great restaurant just behind it. We thought we’d check out the restaurant. And we are SOOOO glad we did. It was the best meal we had in Santorini.

It’s a small local sort of place outside the city – the restaurant is pronounced Metaxi Mas. The boss was eating with friends out on the patio when we arrived. D.Rough and I had an incredible meal and everything was covered in cheese. LOTS of cheese. We loved it. They also brought this clear liquid to every table with shot glasses. We decided this was moonshine and polished off the entire bottle of it. Delicious and firey! I'll explain what the moonshine is in a later post.

We got the wine museum only to find it was closed up for the day. So we had some free time. We headed to the Akritori beach and D.Rough, wearing her jacket, got her feet in the volcanic sand and the Aegean Sea. It really was beautiful there. There are small shops and restaurants on (I mean ON) the beach that were closed, likely due to the waves from the storm flooding their businesses.

After the beach, we headed to the lighthouse – the southernmost tip of the island. The lighthouse still functions every night and doesn’t appear to see much tourist traffic. But, it offers great views from the cliffs and rocks directly below the lighthouse itself.

We headed back toward the center of the island and passed a small Greek bakery. We had to pick up some snacks, certainly. A six-pack of bottled water and some baklava for the road.

Mike from the hotel told us the highest point on the island is Imerovigli and that’s where we should see the sunset from if we really want to be amazed. So we raced to Imerovigli to beat the sun. We parked the car and ran through the village to find the cliff face. A small shop was just closing, but when the owner saw us coming, he opened back up and got us some drinks. Then he turned on the music for us. As my tequila sunrise was coming to my table (to watch the sunset), Yanni’s “Santorini” started on the shop speaker system. Hilarious and apropos. We were noticing hilarious soundtracks popping up wherever we were. We didn’t pick it, but people would turn on music whenever they would see us coming. Very odd, but we started paying more attention. It got more weird, now that we were paying attention.

We watched another glorious sunset over the caldera (the volcano and bay), We didn’t have much on the agenda, so we headed to Oia (pronounced EE-ah) and walked around a bit. Oia is the northern point of the island and is also the touristy and expensive area with shops and restaurants and expensive hotels. We just wanted to see how long it took to get there, since we were realizing how small the island was. We drove from the southern tip of the island, saw a sunset and had some drinks, and then made it to the northern tip of the island in about two hours. Yup, Santorini is a small and quaint island. We walked around Oia for a while and headed back to Fira when the shops started closing.

We found a well-rated (on Tripadvisor.com) restaurant called Naoussa, so we grabbed a bite. D.Rough wasn’t feeling the best, since she’s lactose intolerant and we had gorged ourselves on the most cheese we’ve ever eaten in our lives (whoops). Then drove a tiny car around super swervy narrow roads at high speeds (like you do in Greece). So, her stomach wasn’t her friend at this point.

We kept dinner relatively small and still had an awesome meal. It seems every restaurant in Santorini comes with a character (either owner or staff). They love their jobs and love meeting new people. We had a fantastic dinner with dolmades (stuffed grape leaves), fava, beet dip, and this amazing meatball and rice dish. Naoussa really is as good as its reviewers say it is.

Wow, we really stay up late when we’re here. It was almost 2am when we got home and cashed out in a food coma.

Santorini Honeymoon - Day 2

In the middle of the night, we were woken up by an incredibly loud wind. It was rattling our front door and sand was blowing in underneath it. It was pretty serious. We looked out our back window and saw all of the outside furniture from the other suites had blown into our pool. It was apparently extremely serious. It made it difficult to sleep, but as exhausted as we were from travelling, we managed to grab a couple of z's.

When we eventually did wake up, it wasn’t even safe for us to leave our room because of the storm. We managed to make it across the hotel compound to breakfast, but were blinded by sand. REALLY dangerous winds. So, when we finished breakfast, we staggered back to our room with our eyes close and chilled out inside. We had an indoor hot tub, after all.

And BBC World on the TV.

And some books. And thankfully, we had picked up some snacks from the grocery store in Fira the night before.

Later this night (like 10pm), we decided the wind had calmed enough to venture out (probably still shouldn’t have, but we did). We walked up the street (wearing sunglasses in the dark to protect our eyes from the sand) to the Mexican restaurant, but it was closed. So we took a cab to downtown Fira and went to Lucky’s Souvlaki.

Lucky’s is a well-known spot for locals and tourists alike. Lucky is a character and really makes guests feel welcome. While eating, D.Rough and I met a super fun couple from Ethopia (originally from the Bronx), who were vacationing. Avi and Ben. Their flight had been canceled because of the wind and they were going to try to head out in the morning. We ended up drinking with these guys into the night. Lucky put on some gloves and went back into the kitchen to make tomorrow’s gyro meat pole. He takes pride in his work and after we saw the results (he took us back into the kitchen), we knew why. The guy is an artist. He had layered thousands of pieces of marinated meat onto a pole that would be used for tomorrow lunch and dinner. That’s a lot of work.

We saw a little advert for a Scottish bar in the area - the Highlander, and since we had gone to a Scottish bar in Florence after a delicious meal, we thought we’d do the same thing tonight. We headed to this Scottish bar/night club and had a great time drinking girly drinks and doing my impression of dancing.

We had some terrible girly drinks, but then we saw some college girls order drinks with sparklers in them. We knew we wanted those. They had to be good, right? Cha-ching! They were delicious.

The night club was a little slow this night because of the dangerous winds, but we had a blast. We took a cab back to the hotel in the wee hours and cashed out pretty quickly.

Santorini Honeymoon – Day 1

A lot of people have been asking about D.Rough and my honeymoon trip to Santorini in Greece. We aren’t going to do a lot of reviewing of things, but we’ll share some of what we did, since it was so amazing.

For those that don’t know about Santorini, it’s an island southeast of Greece in the Aegean Sea. It was created by a huge volcanic explosion that left a C-shaped circle of land around a still active volcano. The explosion that happened 3,600 years ago is rumored to have caused the sinking of Atlantis, the parting of the Red Sea, and a host of other things. It was a big deal. Now, it’s an incredible destination for vacationers.

It takes some time to get there, by plane, but we managed to make it without any problems. We had arranged a shuttle to pick us up at the very small airport and drive us to our hotel so we didn’t have to worry about that part. The guy (an awesome Greek guy from Winnipeg, Canada - and yes, hockey player who had played once or twice in St. Paul) drove us to our 5-star hotel called the Petit Palace in about 5 minutes.

The hotel is perfect and we can’t rave about it enough. We kind of went all-out on this trip, so we got a suite with a Jacuzzi inside and our very own private pool outside. It is the start of tourist season there, so the temperature was about 65-70 degrees, which they think of as cold. ...Which is why they were horrified that we immediately put down our bags, changed into our swimsuits and hopped into the pool. Sure, the water was 40 degrees, but we’re from Minnesota where we do the Polar Plunge for charity! A little cold water never hurt anyone, right?

We relaxed and got the lay of the hotel area for a bit and then watched our very first sunset in Santorini. Super romantic and we loved every minute of it. If you saw our large collection of photos we took, you would be FOR SURE sick of looking at sunset photos!  

We took a cab 5 minutes into Fira (the "capital" of Santorini) to grab some dinner. We’d heard about Mama’s House from a number of sources and thought we’d knock it out of the way early (Mama actually mistook me for a girl and was really embarrassed – it happens ALL the time). The food there was pretty darn good. It was our first meal in Santorini. We got the deep fried tomato balls, the fava bean dip, the Santorini salad, and the moussaka (eggplant lasagna). We did almost all of the Greek food on our list, right out of the gate.

After dinner, we walked around the city of Fira, since we knew we’d back there in the next few days. It was a long trip to get here, but we were already glad we chose Santorini for our honeymoon.

Mojo Monkey Donuts – St. Paul, MN

D.Rough and I have been trying to find a free morning to go to this new donut shop in St. Paul. She knows donuts are my kryptonite, so she knows how difficult it has been NOT going on a day she couldn’t go with me. But she surprised me by swinging by there while we were doing errands on the weekend. She rules!!!

The inside is bright and cheery blue and the donuts they have available are in a glass case on the top of the counter. They have sooo many different kinds of donuts. Some raised, some glazed, bismarcks, bars, and popovers. All of them look delicious and all of them are crazy combinations of flavors.

For example, I ended up with a cherry-almond glazed bismarck, as well as a huge strawberry glazed twist. D.Rough got a peanut butter and jelly donut. We also got a red velvet cake cake donut for her mother and a oreo and peanut butter cup donut with root beer glaze on it for D.Rough’s sister.

The donuts here are really good. It isn’t just the hype of unique flavor combinations. They actually taste good and are very fresh. Everyone we saw walk out of here had a huge smile on their faces… including us.

D. Rough was also quite happy with her coffee order, especially when she saw they had some unique add-ins available. Like this Blonde Coconut Organic Palm Sugar. I don’t have any idea what that even is, but she loved it.

Top 5 things about Mojo Monkey Donuts:

1. Delicious donuts

2. Variety of ingredients/toppings

3. Super friendly staff

4. Finally a donut place with RAISED donuts (aka REAL donuts)

5. They do have a bacon covered donut that I didn't even get!

Bottom 5 things

1. Mojo Monkey is dangerously close to our house

2. D.Rough refers to this place as Moho Monkey, invoking the Spanish pronunciation

3. Now that I've been there with D.Rough, it's perfectly acceptable to now sneak away and buy donuts whenever I want! (Oh wait, that's a GOOD thing!)

4. I've heard the best donuts are available right when they open (however, we had an awesome selection around 11am, so I wouldn't worry about this!)

5. They weren't baking anything back in the exposed kitchen when we were there. I like to watch the donuts being created. Maybe there's a mad donut wizard back there that I missed because we came in too late...

Week of Music 2012 - Midwest, USA

This week has been an incredible mix of live music for me, and of a ton of different styles. I listen to a lot of different genres of music, so this should give you a feel for how eclectic my iPod is. I won’t review each one in depth, but I wanted to let some people know what I’ve been listening to these days.

May 5th – Yanni in Moline, Illinois. I’ve been a Yanni fan for years (yeah, really. Long-haired guys stick together.) This is the fifth time I’ve seen him live, and while it wasn’t the best time, it was pretty darn good. He played with a smaller live orchestra than previous tours, but still put on a great show. Sure, he prances around the stage a lot, but he loves what he does and he’s actually good at it. Great show made even more awesome by sitting between my nephew and father, who were both cracking wise most of the show. Also hilarious, there was a 15 year old girl in front of me (who clearly had been forced to attend by her embarrassing mother) who hater her life because she sat less than a foot from my screaming loudly self. Hahahaha. Loved it.

May 5th – House party in Davenport, Iowa. Coach and I met up after the Yanni concert to see some friends of mine play a house party. Kings are a local band featuring members of a band I used to play in a few years back. Great guys and really good music. We also saw Haddonfield, A Casual Affair, and Words Like Daggers. Those were the loud groups. There were also two rappers from Chicago spittin’ rhymes – Errol Hemm and Milky Way. Great house party filled with every cliché known to the modern universe. Metal, rap, d-bags, hipsters, girl fights, homeless people, police, illegal substances, underage drinking, peeing in corners, loud break-ups, public hook-ups, computer wreckings, bottle smashings, etc. You name it, it was there and awesome.

May 7th – Mastodon and Ghost in Maplewood, Minnesota. Ghost is a terrible band that somehow became famous for their schtick of wearing monk robes while playing and the lead singer wears a skeleton mask and is dressed as the pope. Worst gimmick ever, especially when your music isn’t worth a crap. They sound like a watered-down King Diamond without actually having King Diamond on vocals. Opeth had to cancel due to the singer having some sort of head injury and being rushed to the emergency room in St. Paul. No matter – I don’t like them anyway, plus it meant Mastodon would play longer. They played a fantastic show, even playing some songs they hadn’t tried in a while to fill the time. The muppet guitarist had some voice problems, but was drinking hot tea and managed to pull off an excellent performance, despite being a little scratchy. Amazing band that I love to see live. Also, they have some of the best merch in music today.

May 11th – Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I’ve liked this somber rock band for a few years now, since my friend Babo recommended them to me. Live, they’re extremely somber and it always amuses me to watch people move and sway as their form of rocking out at a live show. Really amusing. D.Rough went with me and she was equally amused. They actually sound pretty good live, much better than I even expected. But it was sort of a downer. We missed the other bands that played with them, but it was for a good cause (delicious dinner that went longer than we expected).

May 12th – Saltee and Steve Kaul and the Brass Kings in Minneapolis, MN. M.Giant invited us to come see his old instructor play this show. I was very interested when he told me Saltee is a Cello, Guitar, and Beatbox trio. Really an interesting mix of sounds from this group. They played a few covers I recognized and few originals. They also hired some break dancers for a few songs which was pretty interesting to watch. Great dancers and the crowd loved it. I was impressed with this band, but I do have issues with “jam bands”, which these guys fell into the category of. The opening band, Steve Kaul and the Brass Kings was kind of a fun bluegrass band with a steel guitar, a washboard, a washtub bass, and a fiddle. I really liked these guys a lot.

May 13th – Meshuggah, Baroness, and Decapitated in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I ended up missing Decapitated for a list of reasons, but I did manage to catch Baroness. Which I’m regretful of. I loathe this band. I’m sorry. This band shouldn’t have been on this tour and they’re basically a singy indie rock band that happens to be playing with their amps on 8, rather than 6. That’s the only difference. Singy and boring. That’s Baroness. (This I'M SURE will incite a lot of people, but I’m sorry I have my own opinion about this band. Clearly, it isn’t because I’m not open to new styles of music – see above, morons.) I drank as many drinks as I could during their set just so I’d have something to do rather than get mad that I had to keep listening to them. Luckily, First Avenue in Minneapolis is GREAT for people-watching. However, Meshuggah is an incredible band. I have no idea how they do what they do. So technical and always incredibly tight. No slop at all. Just robot-like drumming, brutal vocals, and a wall of 7-string guitars crushing you down and then chopping you up with surgical-precision percussive rhythms. I continue to proclaim (and have for years) THIS band is one that makes me want to stop playing music all together. I’ll never be able to play this and it is so advanced it makes me not even want to try. I’ll be content to sit back and shake my head in amazement, grinning from ear to ear. LOVED this show.

Morty's Snack Shop - Bloomington, MN

I've waited all winter for this place to open and it has finally happened! I've raved about this place every year and have tried to get people to go here since my very first visit. It's a small snack shop in the ski lodge of the Hyland Snowboard and Ski Area and Golf Practice Center. The guy only operates it in the summer and it's a fantastic place to eat lunch with friends. You can eat outside on the patio and watch people at the driving range or disc golf course. There is a standard menu of delicious lunch items (sandwiches, wraps, and salads) and each week, the folks there put together a handful of interesting and tasty "special" items. (Get on the e-mail list and you'll get a weekly menu sent to you the friday before!)

Today, I invited DawgMan (since he's the one that got me hooked on Morty's ni the first place) and we got caught up since it had been a few months. We both had a difficult time deciding between the Brazilian sandwich they had and the Ragin' Cajun burger. We both ended up with the Ragin' Cajun. It's a burger covered in pulled pork, and then topped with cajun seasoned coleslaw. And of course, you have to get the cajun tots on the side.

Delicious burger. I really loved it!

I'll never quit raving about this place (although, today was the busiest I've seen Morty's - maybe my raving is paying off!).

Hyland Golf Practice Center (Morty's Snack Shop)
8800 Chalet Road
Bloomington, MN 55438