an update from Greece

Hello all!

Well, our trip to the island paradise of Aegina was anything but enjoyable. The hotel was really close to being a complete dive and the weather was not particularly great. We are so excited to be leaving Greece today--perhaps the islands are awesome in the summer, but Matt thought Athens was gross and Aegina would have been okay had the accommodations been better (we'll post pictures of the bathroom whenever we get a chance...). However, the history and museums were amazing!!!

If anything, our trials on the trip recently have brought the two of us closer together--on Aegina, we huddled under the threadbare, cigarette-burned sheets of our freezing cold room (in a twin bed!) together and told each other stories from our childhood and laughed at some of the commonalities and stories we had never before heard. We are having the time of our lives and don't regret anything we have done, but were just saying that knowing some of the things we now know, there would definitely be things that we would do differently if we did another trip of this nature in the future (or that we would advise friends wanting to do the same sort of trip).

Tonight we leave on the ferry for Italy and we sprung for a private cabin because we did not want to sit in bus-like seats for the next 14 or 15 hours. Call us pansies...

We head to Rome tomorrow, before staying in a beautiful little guesthouse in Certaldo, near Siena and Florence, out in Tuscany, for four nights. This will be our "taste of luxury" for the trip before heading to the Cinque Terre, Nice, Barcelona, San Sebastian, and Bordeaux. We are stoked for this next leg of the trip.

Miss you all and love you all muchly. Cheers...

P.S. Happy birthday to Caitlin's mom who turns 25 tomorrow! We love you, Mom!!!