Hanging Out in Kos

In the end, the most memorable thing in Kos wasn't necessarily the kite surfing, the city, the food, or the sites.. it was spending time with all of the many great new friends that we met there.  

Beyond their constant attentiveness in helping us out with kitesurfing, they also all made us feel so welcome... we were invited to numerous BBQs at the school and went out partying at the local bars a couple of times.  Stevie taught us how to play poker at their weekly poker nights (while Krisztina emptied our pockets ;)).  We played with Peter& Krisztina's 5-year-old daughter, Bogi, who also tried to teach us a bit of Hungarian.  And we really enjoyed everyone's company when we were just hanging out at the school with all of the Kitesurf and Windsurf instructors and students.. everyone we met were just so friendly and kind!

Hanging Out at the school

BBQs

Playing with Bogi

Poker Night

Going to Pub Street

We would have loved to stay longer, but our Shengen visa was running out so we had to leave the EU.  We were sad to go and already miss everyone... but we really look forward to meeting up with them again in Vietnam!

Spear Fishing

For our farewell BBQ, Dom went with Giannis to fish a few sea monsters to enjoy at the BBQ.  Armed with a harpoon, mask, and a pair of fins, he followed Giannis into the deep sea.  With an ocean as clear and beautiful as it is here, you imagine that as soon as you go into the water you'd see millions of fish all lined up before you, that you can just start shooting at... not exactly so... turns out that spear fishing involves a lot of swimming, diving, and searching under rocks.

After a couple hours, they finally returned with 3 fish tied to Dom's shorts and 3 octopuses.  Dom caught the smallest Octopus... with his hands! ...and we later released it since it was still a baby.  Luckily, Giannis was there to catch the rest of the fish and octopuses for us to try out on the BBQ!

The next part, was the actual hard part.  Giannis showed Dom how to prepare the octopus... 

Here's a summary:
  1. Find a big rock
  2. Clean the octopus by removing the organs from its head
  3. Take the octopus and smash it 50 times on the big rock
  4. Remove the octopus' mouth
  5. Take the octopus and rub it into the rock in a "wax on - wax off" karate-kid style.
  6. When the octopus stops making foam and turned white, you are ready to cook it.  

By the end, you pretty much smell like fish... but once cooked, it was worth it.. so tasty! :)

Kitesurfing in Kos

Our main reason for going to Greece was to join Peter and Krisztina, whom we met in Mui Ne (Vietnam) while learning to kitesurf.  Peter is one of the owners of our kitesurfing school, Surfpoint Vietnam.  One day he emailed us that he was planning to open a new school in Kos for the summer...since we were looking for another opportunity to continue learning Kitesurfing, we were sold.

We took a few refresher lessons again to get started... 

It took us a few tries to get the hang of it again....check this video of Jen :)  

After a couple of weeks, we enjoyed it so much that we decided to buy our first kite!

... and by the end of our stay, we now own 2 kites, a board and a harness :)

Here are a few more fun pictures of Peter and Steve riding and jumping

Let's not forget Krisztina :)

And finally, some random pictures

When Life Gives You Lemons ...

Actually, it was our landlord (Giannis) who gave us lemons ... so we made Lemonade!! 


This may seem like a ridiculous post, but... after being gone for so long, our appreciation for visiting tourist sites has gone down and we've really started to just appreciate the day-to-day of living and working abroad.   Not many of us city-folk (especially in Canada) can say that during our coffee break, we strolled into the backyard, picked some fresh lemons from the lemon tree, and made our own fresh lemonade!

It was cool. :)

Working in Kos

Our next destination was Kos, Greece:  A small island just 20km South of Turkey.

We decided to come here because our friends Peter and Krisztina, whom we met in Vietnam, decided to start another Surfpoint Kitesurfing school here for the summer!  Before we arrived, Peter helped us find a nice and affordable apartment that was only a 20 minute walk from the Kos City Center. 

The place has a huge backyard where our landlord, Giannis, grows all sorts of stuff like oranges, lemons, figs, olives and a variety of other vegetables... He even has chickens and bees! 

On one day, Giannis's mom asked if we would like to try some of their home-made olive oil.... for sure!! 

...she came back 15 minutes later with 1.5 litres of it!!  Wow...!  we'll be cooking with lots of olive oil for the rest of our trip :)

La Loire

We ended our visit with Jen's parents with a quick tour of the Loire valley, where we spent 2 full days visiting renaissance chateaus.

Chenonceau
Chenonceau is the most famous castle in La Loire and the second most visited castle in France.  The nice thing here is that you can even visit the kitchens... it's not just about Madame "rich-person" who lived here, slept here, and read here.. you also get a sense of where the workers worked and lived.


Villandry
Our B&B host recommended just visiting the gardens of this Chateau, so.. that's what we did!

Chateau d'Ussé
To get to this Chateau, we drove along a very scenic one-way road that wound along the river.  Jen's dad had so much fun driving!


Langeais


Chambord

The best part of this entire weekend wasn't the castle...  it was managing to get Jen's parents to jump for the picture! :)


Mont Saint-Michel

For another day-trip, we decided to visit Mont Saint-Michel.  Everyone had been there before except Jen, but it was cool enough that it was worth the long trip even to see it a second time.  

What makes Mont Saint-Michel spectacular is the view you get of the abbey as you approach it from the road.  From far away, all you see is a giant church on top of a little mountain in the middle of nowhere... breathtaking.

As we arrived, we were surprised to find out that a lot had changed since Dom's (2000) and Jen's parent (2011) last visit!
You now have to park a few kilometres from the entrance and take a shuttle bus.  Apparently it's part of a project to make Mont Saint-Michel an island again.  Sadly, the change really impacts the experience and makes it feel more like a Walt Disney attraction :(. 
Hopefully when the bridge is finally finished and the Abbey is surrounded by water and silt, the experience will improve... guess we'll have to come back again to find out!

Lucky for us, the workers at the Abbey seemed to be on strike while we were there, so we got to visit the Abbey for free!

Here's a pic of the bridge construction:


Honfleur

One of our our day trips was to a pretty costal town called Honfleur.  We took a nice stroll around the cute town, window shopped and bought some yummy (and rather expensive!!) local-made dried fruits, and ate lunch at a nice restaurant... what more can you ask for? .. it was a great day!  :)

Connelles

We managed to meet up with Jen's parent at the Paris train station and proceeded to Roen where we rented a car.  We then drove to a timeshare that they rented in Connelles, a really small village South of Roen.  We enjoyed a week of relaxing in the really nice, spacious timeshare while working and doing a few day trips from here.  

We were happy to indulge in some home cooked meals.. especially Jen's parents who had been living off of ham sandwiches and Kit-Kat during the previous week after experiencing some major price shock in Switzerland :)  We decided to treat them to their first-ever "make your own pizza" night ;)

Here's a tip.. if you don't have a dough roller... try a wine bottle! ;)