I think I cheated

Ok...I think that I may have cheated....or it felt that way anyway. I had gone to 3 stops trying to find all of the things on our grocery list on Saturday morning. I had been successful in most places but there were a few things that I could not find. So I was heading to Manch-Vegas to go to the natural food store when it dawned on me that I could stop at what used to be called Vista but is now Harvest Market in Bedford. I walked in and went to the service center and warned them that I had a random question. I then asked about whether or not they were a chain. I was met with a blank stare. I asked, "Are there other Harvest Markets?" They said yes. I asked where? They listed off a bunch of NH towns, so I said, "So you are a NH chain?" They said yes. Sweet I thought! But as a miandered through this store I felt as though I was cheating. Yes the money would stay in the local economy, which is our goal, but I was still able to find things like jello pudding and Kraft macaroni and cheese (not that I bought it but I could find it).

If I didn't cheat, it sure felt like I was. Really this was just a mini sized version of a big box store, almost like a big box store wanna be. Did I cheat?

When you gotta go...

Is it ok to use a chain store when you only leave something rather than buy/take something? So we are well into our month of Localvorism. We have not cheated thus far....although I do have a question. Last weekend we were headed to the natural food store and right next to that is a typical big box grocery store. I knew that the local store did not have a public bathroom....but I also know that the big box grocery store did. Since I only used their bathroom...I don't feel it cheating as no money left my local economy!

The numbers

This picture is of a sign at a business in Olympia, Washington. I have always found these numbers to be fascinating.

Local Stimulus Package

So as many of you know D and I are very conscious about being green and supporting our local economy. We have decided to make May 2009 the Month of Local shopping. Here are the basic rules.

1. No Major Chain stores...No Shaws, Stop and Shop, Hannaford, Target, etc.
2. No Chain restaurants.
3. No internet ordering.
4. Put as much money back into our local economy as possible.

Some things that we already know will be a problem....
1. Gas
2. Possibly Clothing (only if we need clothing)
3. Perscriptions- If we need them.(although there are local pharmacies, it is best to keep perscriptions in the same place so as to stay still for this)


We ran into our first speed bump today. We were driving around running errands and having some of the Adventures that we Batey's have. I was starving and needed to grab something healthy to eat. Knowing that there was a Hannaford coming up on the right, my first thought was to stop there. My next thought was ...damn....its May. No major Grocery Stores. Ok...now what? Well I thought about what else we would be driving by. The next local thing I knew about was a farm stand. As we pull up we read the sign indicating that the farm stand doesn't open for another 6 days. Do you know what this means? I stay hungry! Oh well!

It is amazing how much this will impact. For example, we had to make 2 grocery lists. One for the farm stand that we know is open and one for a small natural food store that we like to frequent. Also, we had been building a list of things that we wanted to buy for our bicycles...clothing and tools and accessories....we didn't place the order before April 30th so instead of ordering them and having them delivered, we had to go buy them in person.

Stay tuned to see the adventures we run into with our challenge this month!

Day 15 - Travel

Good morning Rome. We are so excited to be heading home and almost there. Today is the long day though as the first of our two flights is 9 hours long. We headed to breakfast, where we learned the night before the breakfast buffet is not included with our room and would cost 16 euros a person. The receptionist also told us we could just pick out a few things and pay for those. We got seated at breakfast and no one explained to us the rules so we just got our breakfast and ate. We waited a couple of minutes to see if anyone would come give us a bill or anything but no one did so we left. We even walked by the folks at the cash register but they didn't say anything either. I guess we could now be wanted in Rome for stealing breakfast, if anyone goes there and sees our wanted poster let us know.

We took the free shuttle to the airport. Since we are flying to the US the check in procedure is a little different. We had our own area of the check in counters where before you can get to the counter your passport gets checked and then you go find the appropriate airline counter. Once at United our passport get checked again while we waited in line. Further into the line we also get our boarding passes. When we receive our tickets we notice that we are not sitting together, we ask the woman if she can correct it and she said no we have to ask when we get to the counter. If there wasn't a problem the only purpose of the counter is to check your bags. We ask the woman if she can change our seats and she says she can for $99 USD, as we would need to upgrade to economy plus. That was not acceptable to Danielle as there was no reason we shouldn't be able to sit together let alone have to pay extra. The supervisor got involved and the outcome was that we would be placed on the stand by list with a note saying we were together. We were told that they would work on the seating with the stand by list. We went through security etc., stopped at a few shops and by the time we got to the gate Danielle went to ask them about moving our seats. We were greatful that we got our seats together. On the flight we learned that other families were not sitting together on the flight, our of the 3 others in the row 2 were not with their families.

We received the usual custom form on the plane and were told only one per a family needs to be filled out. This caused a little questioning for us. We are family even though federally it is not recognized. We asked one of the flight attendants what to do, we told her we live in the same house, and we have the same last name. She said just fill out one form, so we did.

Customs in DC is not always the funnest thing as the lines are normally long. However, this trip was a rare occasion, our flight was the only one in the customs hall. We got our luggage fairly quickly and made it through customs and security without a problem. Customs didn't question us about our one form.

While at the airport we met Phoenix a min pin and his owner Anthony. Anthony is a dancer and is moving to NYC from Kansas City. We have met some very kind and interesting people our trip. We are very glad to be home.

We would we do it again....

Rome - Yes, if we had new people to share it with. We did everything we wanted to do in Rome and the sites have been there a very long time and not going to change anytime soon. Highly recommend the view from the cupola atop of St. Peter's Basilica.

Malta - Possibly. We had fun there despite the hotel experience. However, if you are looking for the an island vacation with lots of beaches etc, then Malta is not the best choice. The country is building up and trying to be more appealing to the tourist so possibly in 5 - 10 years it will be a hot spot.

Santorini, Greece - Oh yea we would go back. Even though we have done pretty much everything you could on the island we had so much fun. We would actual like to tour the Greek Islands spending a few days on each.

Day 14 - Travel

This morning we spent just hanging around the hostel as we had to leave at noon for the airport. We finally were able to sleep in as we got smart and closed the shutters so the sun would not wake us up. We went swimming in the infinity pool that the hostel had and just hung out and read waiting for time to go by. After swimming we headed back into our room and got ready to travel to Rome. We packed up and headed downstairs to see Poppy and her husband. Poppy's husband acts as the driver for the hostel and we had to wait for him to get back from a pick up at the airport. So again we waited. Finally he was back and ready to head back to the airport for our journey. We arrived at the tiny airport and were so surprised by how full it was and how small it was. We walk in the door and they scan our luggage even before we can get 5 feet in the door. Then we took our luggage to the check in counter. We couldn't check in because all of the agents that worked for our airline, were at the gate sending off the 12:35 flight to Athens. Once we could check in it was amazing at how many people were squished in this little airport. There are 7 "gates". Each gate was a door to the outside, no jet ways. We headed upstairs to the open air "cafe". This would be a terrace next to a typical airport snack stand. It was fine though because it was away from all of the people in the airport. We watched as two large planes boarded and took off, and figured it was safe to head downstairs. We headed downstairs and even though many of the people had gone, we still didn't have a place to sit. We waited and waited until it was finally our turn. We finally boarded the bus and headed to the plane. We climbed on board and were off to Athens. The trip to Athens is only 30 minutes so you get a drink take a sip and they are about to take it away again. Anyway, the flight was uneventful. We got to Athens and got our luggage (we had flights on different airlines because many of the small airlines in Europe only have a few routes that they fly). We headed to the next airline to see if we could check in because we had 5 hours between planes and did not want to lug our luggage around for that long. Well it turns out we had to because we were not allowed to check in for an hour and a half. We headed to the shopping area and Danielle bought a book to keep her busy and we got a snack....and waited, while we watched 6 boys from the country of Georgia (they had shirts on that told us this) use the luggage trolley's as race cars with a set course and a switch point where people went from the pusher to the rider. Anyway, we also saw them get caught and stop. We went and sat a the check in area until they let us check in. Then we found our gate and decided to get some real food, knowing it would be too late when we got to Rome to try and find food. After dinner we headed to the gate and waited some more. We hopped on the plan and were off to Rome. We got our luggage and headed to the bus (which we had to call and ask him to wait for us since our luggage was a little slow getting to us). We got to the hotel and crashed. We were excited about the hotel as it had a few things we were missing like a big bed, wash clothes and a tub! It wasn't long before we were snoozing.

Tomorrow, we head home! YAY!

Day 13 - Santorini

Today was our island excursion, we got picked up at the hotel at 10:45 AM by a bus. After all the pickups we headed to the port, where the bus drove down to the ferry by following a series of switchbacks. The road was not very wide, and took about 5 switchbacks to get to the bottom. Once at the bottom it was chaos. We had no direction as to what to do next besides what we obviously knew and that was to get on the ferry. The question was which one. The boat captains are good about telling you that you are not allowed on their boat. We eventually found where we were supposed to be and headed to the volcano. This excursion again was a multi-language excursion, one tour guide, three languages: English, French and Spanish.

The actual volcano has not erupted since 1950, however it has created all of Santorini as well as its sister islands where the Volcano is as well as where the Old Burnt Island and Thiressia (the small island). It was pretty interesting and we got to see a vent up close. It was supposedly quite warm, but we were hot enough we figured we didn't need to be any hotter.

After the Volcano we headed to The Old Burnt island where there is a small port and you can swim to a hot spring. It was weird because the water around the hot spring is orange and actually gets on your skin. It was like a natural rub on tan! Anyway, you don't realize how warm it is until you head back into the regular water and see just how cold that is. There is only one human resident on the island, a fisherman. About 20 years back he asked, and they said yes, so he has lived there ever since. When they turned the island into a geological preserve about 5 years ago, he was grandfathered in. His neighbors are mountain goats. They are all over this tiny little island. It was very cool. Also in the bay where the hot spring is, there is pumice stone all over the place (being on a volcano, that makes sense) but pumice stone floats, so we looked for a few decent sized pieces and brought them home. There is also a church on the island, it is for Saint Nicholas, the saint for the sailors. Danielle asked if Saint Nicholas is the saint for the sailors then why does santa ride in a sleigh not a boat?

After the hot springs we stopped at Thirissa. This is known as the daughter of the big island. Only about 500 people live on this island. There is a small port at the bottom of the island with several restaurants on it for the tourists on the boats that come on the tours. To get to the top is only by donkey or walking. Since we hadn't eaten lunch yet, we ate and did not go up to the Village on the top of the island. After we ate, we walked a bit, got an ice cream and headed back toward the boat. We didn't get on right away because we had a awhile to wait so we laid in the shade where Jimmy's restaurant used to be, at this point it is more like a boat dock than a restaurant. While laying there we were checked out by other lesbians. They were topless we were not.

Once we got on the boat we headed back to the main island (referred to as Thira but the locals), to the village of Oia (not OY-A as we had thought but EE-A). Oia is the village where they filmed the Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants (which is why we thought that we might want to come to Greece in the first place). Also in Oia is the sunset. Ok, so the sunset is everywhere, but is Oia it sets over the sea and just behind another island with mountains. It looks as thought it has fallen off the end of the earth.

But long before the sunset was getting up the hill. Again two options, on foot or on donkey. We opted not to take the donkey, because we are not big fans of working animals just for the sake of saving humans and as it turns out the donkey does not go all the way to the top so you still end up climbing. The climb is about a million stairs that are long and STEEP. The difference between these stairs and the Cuppola at St. Peters is that they are not even and they are MUCH STEEPER. On our way up the donkeys were being trotted down by their human handlers. This is kind of like the running of the bulls but much smaller. Everyone who was walking had to get out of the way and quickly. We were fortunate and stood next to a big guy who used his backpack to push the donkeys away from us. We were afraid our toes were going to get crunched. Anyway, after our million steps we made it to Oia village.

It is the cutest little village. The whole village is built into the side of a mountain. Every house had to be dug into the hill. All of the spaces are small but beautiful. Also the village is paved in white marble tile in many places. Where it is not paved in marble it is cobble stone steps. The village of Oia gives new meaning to the term flatlander. This is because to go any where in Oia you need to climb steps, some places more than others, but there is no avoiding the steps. We had to stop to get another bottle of water because we had exhausted our supply. We wandered around Oia for a while looking at all of the shops, restaurants and such. While looking in one shop, we met a dalmatian named Beethoven. He was cute and very used to the sunset crowd. At the end of the day before it got too crowded, his owner chained him outside to keep people from sitting on the wall of his shop. After we wandered for a bit, we found a nice place to sit, that would be perfect to watch the sunset from. We sat for about an hour and a half and talked to each other as well as the girls next to us who were from Montreal. As the sunset got closer our perfect spot was perfect for so many others as well, we got crowded in, but it was ok because the place we were sitting was uphill from the place many were standing so we just stood up. We watched the sunset and then walked back to the buses to get back to the hotel. We got to be the first ones off the bus which was nice since the bus was very full. Riding home was pretty cool because we got to see the island from up high at night which was very pretty. The one thing we barely got to see were the stars, because the moon was so bright that the stars were hard to see.

Overall, this Excursion has restored our faith in tours at least for a bit anyway! Tomorrow we head to Athens and then Rome. We have a 5 hour lay over in Athens so we may take a taxi out to the Acropolis to at least say that we did that too! Then on to Rome and we leave on Tuesday from Rome to come home! YAY! We are ready to get home!
Ciao!