Dumping Them Out: Wednesday Honeymoon Edition
Welcome back to another episode of Dumping Them Out. I apologize deeply hollowly for the 2 weekend hiatus. I was on my honeymoon, and I promised my wife there would be ZERO blogging on our trip. Which in hindsight was kind of a stupid promise to make. We were in Europe (Italy & Greece) for 16 days. Which is an aggressive amount of time to take off for any vacation (it seemed like it to me at least). If I worked at a company other than Barstool, I simply would have saved up my vacation time and disappeared from reality without a care in the world. But at Barstool, we have "unlimited vacation time". Which is great. And realistically, considering my status at Barstool, I probably could take a whole month off at any point in time and nobody would really notice. I'm sure I couldn't count on two hands the number of past (and probably present) Barstool employees who have done that exact thing without feeling a hint of guilt about it. But after about 10 days of being MIA, even for a honeymoon, I couldn't help but feel like a piece of shit about it. In hindsight, I really should have fired off a few low-effort blogs on the nights I was up until 4am (Europe time) watching college football on my laptop. But I made a promise to not blog on my honeymoon, and I kept that promise. Credit to me for being Husband of The Year.
But if I am going to spend 16 days away from work on a European vacation, then I refuse to let it go to waste. I WILL get at least one (1) Dumping Them Out blog worth of content out of it.
Power Rankings of Cities I Went to on My Honeymoon
1. Athens, Greece - Wasn't expecting to love Athens as much as I did. Extremely nice people there. The whole damn city is paved in marble. Seeing things like the Parthenon that were built before the birth of Jesus is quite the trip. There's a ridiculous amount of stray cats (but they all seemed remarkably clean and well fed). And out hotel room had 2 balconies + the coolest cuck chair I've ever seen.
I'd be lying if I said it wasn't kind of embarrassing to spend that much time in foreign counties where EVERY PERSON you speak to knows your language (English) fluently, but you can't even begin to have a conversation in their language beyond "Hello", "Goodbye", "Thank You", and "Where's the bathroom?".
We should really start making our kids learn other languages. It's not even hard. Just start them in classes at like 3 years old and they'll be fluent by the time they're in 2nd grade. That being said, the Greeks have the best way of speaking English. Every country has their own accents. They all have their own way of translating their home language to English. But when speaking with Greek folks, I really loved the way they used the phrase "you will", when we asked for advice on what to do in a certain cities.
For example, when we asked Spyros (our Athens hotel concierge) what we should do in Kissamos, he said, "You will wake up in Kissamos. You will get on a boat. You will go to Balos Beach. You will see the most beautiful water."
As if he was giving us a set of demands, but in the politest way possible.
2. Kissamos (Crete), Greece - The least "touristy" city we visited. One day we stopped by some completely random (and honestly pretty shitty looking restaurant) for some coffee. After we ordered our coffee, the owner (shoutout Nikos) kept insisting on bringing us free food. This went on for hours. In the end, he told us our bill was $10 euros. I tipped him $20 euros because I would have felt like such an asshole giving him anything less. But he was truly one of the nicest people I've ever met. It was the best hospitality I've experienced in my life.
And thanks to the demands of Athens concierge Spyros, we did go to Balos on a boat. Where I took the best pictures of my adult life, in my brand new, long, white, kinda gay sweater.
3. Florence, Italy - Great food. Great gelato. Great art. Thank you Dante The Don for the reservation at La Giostra. The Pear Ravioli was phenomenal. But most importantly, while in Florence, we stumbled upon the best Italian leather shop window display in the history of window displays (signed Bob Stoops helmet + Bill Clinton head shot)
Also… of all the beautiful renaissance art around the city of Florence… in the middle of it all… there's just a statue of a black woman on a cell phone. I thought that was pretty fun.
4. Naxos (Cyclades), Greece - Beautiful island. Beautiful hotel. Beautiful town. Impossible amount of wind. I'm talking steady 40 mph gusts. But thanks to that, we got to watch windsurfers. I've never seen windsurfers before. It looks like the most fun activity ever.
Also, the resort we were staying at, we had 1 minute walk to the beach, but nobody told it was the most nude beach on the whole island. Half the people we're fully naked. Not the good kind either. It's all 60+ year old people with leather skin who fucking hate wearing clothes. It was a hell of a scene.
5. Rome, Italy - Really cool bobblehead collection outside of Vatican City. Found a rare Phoenix Suns LeBron James.
One more thing. We had a 25 hour trip home from Greece yesterday. Thankfully, we traveled back in time 7 hours, but it was a long day nonetheless. When we arrived in Columbus, my father-in-law picked us up from the airport. They were watching our dogs while we were gone, so he was taking us back to their place to pick them up before heading home. When he picked us up, I could tell something was off. He's one of the the most talkative guys I've ever met, and he was basically silent. About 10 minutes into our drive back (my in-laws live less than 10 minutes away from the airport), I notice we're just driving the wrong direction. So naturally, we were like, "Ummm, hey… what are we doing here?"
He got defensive and claimed he preferred to take this way home (even though we were SO FAR in the wrong direction).
But after we called him out, he took the next exit and got us back on track. He turned a 10 minute drive into 30 minutes. But I still didn't really think anything of it. I just assumed he forgot where he was going. Whatever. But when we finally to their house, he parks in the driveway, and as he's getting out of the car, he suddenly spurts out, "By the way, Molly (our dog), had an accident".
Then he shuts the car door and hustles runs inside. My wife chases after him yelling, "WAIT WTF?!? IS MOLLY OK?! IS OUR DOG ALIVE?!?"
Meanwhile I'm just sitting there in the backseat wondering if our dog had been raptured. I sit there for like 30 seconds as I contemplate just walking the 7 miles across town to our apartment so I don't have to deal with whatever comes next. But inevitably I decide I have to follow them follow them inside.
When I walk in, my wife is sobbing. I'm half convinced we don't have a dog anymore. But as it turns out, our dog simply jumped off the couch and tore her CCL (the dog version of an ACL). Which is truly not a big deal. I mean, it definitely sucks. But she already tore her other CCL last year. When we got her the surgery on that leg, the vet told us it was likely to happen to the other one within a year. But let me tell you… after a 25 hour day of traveling… when all you want to do is grab your dogs and get the fuck home… holy shit… that is the last thing you want to be surprised by…
So for the record. If you're ever watching a couple's dog (or children for that matter), while they're on a vacation… and something happens to them… DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES save that information until they get home. You're not going to ruin their vacation by simply texting them, "Hey, just so you know, your dog is limping now and you probably need to take her to the vet."
It's infinitely better to let them know ahead of time than to blindside them with a $5,000 problem after 25 hours of traveling. And whatever you do, DO NOT deliver the news in a way that makes them think their dog might be dead.