Art School: Ben Nicholson

These lines and shapes have been showing up a lot in my work. One day I was like, hey this totally reminds me of this guy I learned about once.....Oh yeah! Ben Nicholson! I really love these swooping shapes, arches, bubbles and stacking shapes.

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Rome and Greece baby!

Home sweet home! Oshy and I just came home from a wonderful two weeks-ish trip to Italy and Greece to hang out with friends and go to our dear friend's wedding in Santorini. It was like one long Sutter Home commercial from the 90's but with expletives, dirty jokes, ouzo shots, boat rides and swimming. I always wanted to have a cool group of friends when I was a kid, like I wanted to live in a Friend's episode. If my kid self could have seen myself yacking it up with my beloved pals on the Agean sea I would have cried with joy.

We flew into Rome from Atlanta. Its a nice direct red-eye flight. 

Honestly the best part of the trip was seeing my sweet friends get married, but hanging with friends in the mountains of Crete was....beyond anything I could have hoped for in a vacay. So we flew into Rome, O had never been there and I knew he was going to fit right in. He totally looks Italian, according to every Italian and Greek we met on this trip. His honorary new name is Mario. Anyway. Our first night in Rome we are sitting at this cafe and O says "when do we fly out tomorrow morning to Athens?" I say I can't remember, check the phone. Well it turns out that I booked flights for 10pm the next day, not 10am as I was supposed to b/c we were meeting friends in Athens. This is one of the many things I love about O, he just called Amex (I always use them to book trips now b/c when the shit hits the fan you have a professional shit scooper on the other end of the phone just for you). He changed our flights and didn't get upset at all, even though my mistake cost us...wait for it...600 effing bucks. OUCH.

Our only night in Rome before we moved on to Athens we took a walking food tour of the Trastevere hood. We ate so much food and had yummy wine and before it was even over I had to peace out and go to sleep. The next day we hopped over to Athens and then the next day we took a flight, that we almost missed (running through the airport like at full speed with our bags) and landed in Crete. My favorite place on this whole trip. CRETE!!

In crete we decided to hop on a huge boat and go see the beaches of (honestly I can't remember but we dubbed it the "SS Tetanus Beach" on account of the rusted out shipwreck right there. See it? Its way bigger in real life. Like right this second. O and I had a scary hour of swimming in this sea after the wind picked up and it got very rough and currenty and we almost got major tetanus but then we got back on the boat where nice music was playing and cold beer was in my mouth!

The view of Chania harbor in the distance from the balcony of our Airbnb. It was so ridiculously wonderful. I highly suggest every single one of you go there. We had breakfast on this breezy balcony and night time sunset ouzo and laughed and took a redic amount of pics of the stunning ocean and buildings around us.

Delish coffee every morning by the rocks and the sea. Hearing and seeing the water from the house and balcony was so soothing and amazing. I can't believe that house is on this earth right now and that I am not there!!

Balos beach. It was chilly and it smelled like Sulfur. But with this eye candy its not tooo bad.

The water is so beautifully blue, and there are these crazy goats called KriKri that live on these nothing but rocks islands. They are amazing with these huge horns and have like supernatural powers of climbing.

Charming Chania (pronounced Hania). Cute shops and strolling around and lots of white wine and swimming.

View from dinner on the Chania harbor. Mostly the places are very touristy and not great but we had a reco from a local and it was gooooood.

Delish Squid in its ink. I haven't had this dish in years and the last time I remember eating it was in my grandmother's kitchen in Texas when I was a small kid. It was so good, and my grandpa let me have a tiny bit of red wine with sprite, and I felt so cool. I looooved eating this and having cold white wine and laughing with friends, tired from the sun and sea. It was amazing. 

getting thirsty just looking at this! yummy!

Next time I will show you the most beautiful beach in the world, and the mountains of Crete, my favorite. I kinda wanna start planning our next trip asap.