All of our gadgets and tech unpacked when we got home!

I know what you’re thinking… didn’t you venture out into the world to get away from it all? Didn’t you successfully cut the electronic cord, shedding all the distractions to engage in daily debates, conversation and non-electrified noble pursuits? The short answer is, no! The behind-the-scenes reality of our journey, and the ability to leave home for a year, given educational priorities, career aspirations, visions of blogging grandeur and an obsession with photography demanded tools of the trade… times seven!

No one has ever accused us of traveling light, and the Trip Around the World kept our reputation intact. There was probably over 300 pounds of equipment that we carried and divided between our seven suitcases – all referred to as Troop Gear. Each time we moved locations, troop gear was assembled and divided up between each of us. This gear represented at least 50% of the weight carried across the world by us, including all of the technology, gadgets and the 35 pounds of text books the three older kids required to stay in educationally good graces. Most of it turned out to be useful; some not as necessary. Did we really need an electronic scale? No, Wescott, we probably did not. Did each member of our team need a personal iPad Mini? A resounding absolutely from all of us. Can you rely just on iPads, and leave your laptop behind? No, not if school work, travel booking, blogging and business planning are part of your agenda. Did everyone need their own camera? Maybe not, but the 80K + images will be with us forever!

For those of you contemplating a similar journey, here are a few tips from us:

Only have one cell phone with a US contract. We figured out half way through the trip that it was a lot more economical to buy a cell phone that you could swap out the SIM card in each country for a local phone number and plan. Skype was going to be our main go-to communication system to talk to people back home. However we realized that in many places, the WIFI just isn’t strong enough to support consistent connections. Lisa and I were fairly regularly on conference calls to places across the globe, and eventually we realized that having people call us on our local cell number was a much more reliable communications technology than relying on the Internet. In those first few months of travel, when we still relied on our AT&T iPhones for reliable connections, we had some horrendous cell bills!

Tech Check is Your Friend. While there were many things we probably didn’t get right on the trip, we did a great job at Tech Check, which we credit to coming home with all of the devices we left with. Almost every day that we would venture out into the village, city or countryside of the resident country, Lisa or I would yell the familiar “Tech Check!” call. That meant all iPads, computers, cameras, lenses, hard drives and phones needed to be collected and deposited into a designated suitcase, which was locked up. After a couple of countries, we realized that since all of our suitcases were cloth, it would be pretty easy to cut into our technology booty. So we ditched one of the bags and bought a hard suit case with built in locks, upgrading our security. Really tech check was more about keeping track of items and not leaving them scattered about for an easy poach than a highly secure vault; and the results kept us theft free for the entire year.

Be wary of Cellular Internet Service. When we arrived in Seville, Spain, we settled into our awesome apartment and reveled in the speed and power of the most awesome Internet service. With 7 iPads humming, YouTube videos, Skype calls and iTunes downloads abounded in the first 24 hours. And then, the pipe ran dry! Like a cripple trying to climb Everest, downloading an email took 10 minutes. The video player and Skype laughed at the mere click of intention. It was like cement was poured into the digital river of ones and zeroes keeping us connected. It tuned out that the house had a cellular modem, which only had 3 GB of data allocated a month. And, there was pretty much no way to get more bandwidth allocated! So much for productivity at the apartment. Wescott needed connectivity for online high school, and I was trying to speak to YouTube Creators around the globe. We spent a lot of time at a cafe in our neighborhood that offered unlimited WIFI. Actually, that turned out to work in our favor, as we met a wonderful friend named Julian, who took us under his wing for the 2 weeks we spent in Seville. We also ended up renting a room at local hostel in order to do Skype calls from midnight to 3 am, since the cafe was closed!

Sleeper Device that was Awesome: LED projector. On a whim, I purchased a tiny LED projector that measured 6″ x 5″ x 2.5″ so we could watch movies as a family. This turned out to be such a fun addition to the trip. We watched Khan Academy videos about art history, movies from iTunes and documentaries about a given location on whatever wall  that worked in our current home. We didn’t use it every week, but it turned out to be a fun event we all enjoyed, and I would definitely take it again.

Bring a Couple of External Hard Drives. We live in a data-intensive world. Our phones shoot HD video. Our cameras create large files for each image. When you’re traveling, pictures and videos eat gigabytes like a legion of ants defoliating a jungle. That GoPro camera you think would be fun to use? It is fun, but just that one device required 300GB of storage per country! Luckily, external hard drives are tiny, light and packed with storage. We used 3 individual terabyte drives to support the 3 computer hard drives on our laptops. Luckily, we had no major crashes; but we needed almost every ounce of storage space.

Online High School is a Really Deceiving Name. The University of Nebraska offered a great solution for Wescott to complete his sophomore year of high school while traveling around the globe through their online course offering. While assignments, projects and tests were submitted online, all of the course materials took the form of workbooks… 35 pounds of workbooks! Given our spotty Internet connections, good old print and paper remained a relevant technology that allowed for theoretically consistent studying… if only there was a solution for procrastination…then we may have been able to shed pounds sooner in the trip as Wescott completed each class!

For you shoppers out there, here is a list of the technology and devices we took across the globe:

• (7) Apple iPad Minis
• (4) MacBooks – we started with one 11-inch MacAir thinking we could all share, which lasted about a month before we realized that wouldn’t work; then added a 13-inch MacBook Air that Mouni brought to Vietnam for Wescott as he needed a dedicated machine for school; then added a MacBook Pro for Cliff when he traveled back to North America for work; then added our other MacBook from home when we got to Carmel for Otto to code!
• (6) cameras including a Leica film camera, a Cannon 5D SLR, (3) waterproof Lumix point and shoots, and a GoPro Hero 3
• (1) mini tripod (never used it!)
• (5) SLR lenses
• (5) iPods
• (2) iPhones
• (2) Samsung phone with local SIM cards
• (2) wireless keyboards for the iPads
• (1) electronic weigh scale
• (15) Apple charging cords
• (7) Binoculars for safari
• (3) Headphone splitters
• (14) sets of headphones, thinking we’d lose some, which amazingly, we didn’t!
• (1) Jambox speaker for dance parties and movie watching
• (1) Optoma LED mini projector
• (7) headlamps / flashlights
• (1) solar charger (never used it!)
• (3) USB Memory sticks
• (3) 1 Terabyte external hard drives
• (2) sets of International electrical adaptors
• (300) Kodak T-Max 100 B&W film
• (14) Workbooks for University of Nebraska
• (4) Math textbooks
• (1) Literature textbook

After I had labeled bamboo as cool, to the lesser extent, I didn’t believe that it could climb its way out and stand among the higher ranking (if I even dare try ranking) of sights. Yet, when I stepped foot on the Green School campus located in central Bali, I definitely remember that sensation prominently known as AWE wrapping itself around me, tugging open my already wide eyelids nearly to the breaking point, stuffing my mouth with a sharp piercing breath that suddenly left me breathless, and covering my ears so the rest of the world was muffled and unimportant. Awe has countlessly taken hold of me before and although we already may be acquainted, I never get a notice to when we might meet again. Nothing. Just a silent presence until I’m mentally attacked. And afterwards it was only me… and bamboo.

You can search Green School Bali and see the images yourself. I was looking at them earlier and could almost feel the slight cold warmth of wonderment creeping up to lock hands with me. I had seen bamboo used in plenty of ways, but this surpassed anything I might’ve imagined. Shaping the center of the school is three-stories of thick bamboo crisscrossing in a dizzying pattern. The building is famously named The Heart of School. It is so outrageous and despite the sheer massiveness, it fit perfectly with ease into the background and coalesced with the nature surrounding the area. This stripped away all of my preconceived notions I had about bamboo and while I had never actually made an attempt to deepen my knowledge about it, now I was bursting with all sorts of questions (for starters, bamboo isn’t even a tree ­– it’s a grass?). To see giant buildings made entirely out of that single material was unbelievable and I became quietly infatuated with this whole other world of construction.

Three-story, Heart of School Building in the background.

Closer up, you can see the spiral roof of the Heart of School!

We would then go to three other buildings in Bali, all of which were completely bamboo from head to toe and all of which were unprecedentedly unique, beyond the limitations of our own, my own, perceivings of what’s possible. A chocolate factory, a shared workspace, a restaurant, a school, all reinventing what exactly the standard building should be like. And feel like for that matter.  I’m now looking with new eyes, seeing all it can be and knowing it to be more than what I can see, because bamboo architecture is simply awesome.

Mom inside Five Elements, an uber-hip raw restaurant outside Ubud.

We were lucky enough to get to do a tour of Big Tree Farms, a cocoa factory in Bali made entirely of Bamboo!

This is a gigantic bamboo bridge on the Green School campus.

At Hubud, all the kitchen cabinets are made of bamboo in addition to the entire workspace!

The first room I went into was room filled with only paintings of doors. You may be thinking that this must be the most boring paintings on planet earth, but they were actually quite stunning. For some bizarre reason these paintings of doors were extremely appealing to my eyes. Each door had a unique feel to it, and we all had our favorite one.

The next room was also all of the same variety, and it was paint buckets. Again, you might be thinking that this might not be the sharpest looking group of paintings, but these paintings had something special. Already stunned, the artist came in to give us the low-down on his paintings. And what he said was he actually painted them on metal canvases to give them a rusty-bucket look.

After exploring a little, Stephane, the artist, led us to his subterranean lair. This room was the most interesting one. It was all paintings of scenes under water. Pretty cool right, but wait there’s more. Stephane actually went scuba diving, deep down under, with a canvas and some oil paints, and painted under water! This was possible because of his oil paintings (oil doesn’t mix with water).

Basement gallery with all the underwater paintings.

Stephane then led us to a screening room were he played a video of him painting underwater. First he would sketch out the scene with the paint straight from the tube. Then he would do the actual painting with a metal trowel so it would give the painting a lot of texture. After that, he would go back to the studio to do some touch ups.

I learned some valuable lessons from Stephane: you can paint anywhere and on anything and even the most boring subjects can make a great masterpiece!

Me next to one of my favorite paintings!

Trying to describe the Sahara Desert is like trying to photograph the Grand Canyon. No matter how clever, my attempts will never be close to the actual experience! Everyone will need to just block out his/her calendar and head to Morocco sometime in the near future

Two days after arriving in Marrakech, we decided to embark on a 3-day excursion over the Atlas Mountains and into the Sahara. This involves 30+ hours of driving and some cool vista views along the way. It also includes some SUPER CURVY roads that could make most people puke. We were lucky enough to see kasbahs, some beautiful Berber villages and several spectacular rock formations. Morocco is a breathtaking country!!!!

Beautiful Berber village on the way to the Sahara

Kasbah Ait Ben Haddou is where they filmed Gladiator and Lawrence of Arabia

Some of the curvy roads through the Atlas Mountains!

But the pinnacle of the trip was most definitely camel trekking and camping in the Sahara! Armed with our headscarves, cameras, and little else, we saddled up on camels in the town of Merzouga and headed into the Sahara Desert to spend the night.

Us on our camels!

Yve and Tuck on their camel, Alena!

We arrived at our campsite just before nightfall and were able to climb the dunes to watch sunset in the Sahara…epic! Then, we climbed back down the dunes and found shelter in the Berber tents where we had dinner and played the drums with our hosts. It was quite windy as we fell asleep, but the tents, made of dozens of overlapping carpets, kept us very warm!

Jones sporting his cozy headscarf

Our accommodations! When we asked where the bathroom was, the answer was “everywhere!”

At 5 am, we awoke to climb the dunes and watch the sunrise. The winds had died down from the night before, and the dunes were back to perfect, with not a single footstep in sight. Wescott and Otto took advantage of the two snowboards available and used them to create a double sled for the dunes. We headed out of the desert after the sun was up and ate a hot breakfast back in town.

Otto with the snowboard at sunrise!

Wescott making cool shadows on the tents at sunrise!

It was an amazing 3 days but it was a whirlwind. I would have loved to stay longer and spend an extra 2-3 days in the Sahara area hiking around! The dunes are so beautiful and the colors are breathtaking! For those of you who know me well, you know that I am pretty hardcore about sticking with my Leica camera and black and white film. But the Sahara is no place for black and white…it is all about color!!!

Sunrise in the Sahara!

The trip left me yearning for more time in the desert!  Upon our return to Marrakech, I looked into round trip flights back to the Sahara to avoid another 30+ hours in the car.  Alas, it’s just not going to happen  I am adding “A Week In The Sahara Desert” to the itinerary for Around The World 2025 when we will go again

I didn’t want to leave!!!

There were supposed to be flamingo dancers and a group of Japanese tourists that say “Happy Birthday Michael.” But I spaced out and forgot to put them in the video. Just imagine it.

Find your rocks.

Tuck and a quoot stray dog collecting the rocks on the beach.

To start out, we need a few rocks (minimum weight of fifty pounds each). If you haven’t already completed this step then simply rent a crappy car and get going to the nearest beach in Santorini. However, I do recommend doing a little research before hand because you don’t want to wind up in a beach like Perivolos; no big rocks, tons of big sweaty nude people. Now if you’re reading this and thinking, “Huh. At first this whole thing sounded kind of fun, but spending money on cars, research, ludicrous lollygaggers struttin’ around in their birthday suit! I’m just not so sure anymore.” Then you always have the option of snagging a few volcanic boulders off the neighbors’ stone palisade. (Note that this is your decision to make and author, Wescott Sharples, does not condone any of your actions.) My parents decided to top out at twenty rocks, but let’s draw the line at eighteen because twenty seems a bit excessive.

Once you have your rocks make sure to rent the car one extra day. This way you can store the stones in the musty trunk while you plan your next course of action. By the way, your next move should be this: round up your three older kids. (If you don’t have any kids over the age of eight, you can always grab a few husky-looking kids off the Santorini streets.) Once you have successfully amassed assistants bring them to your rental car. (And if you got kids off the street, I suggest proceeding with step in a slightly less sketchy way then, “Hey kids! Come help me get these heavy rocks out of my car parked way down there!” Or you might possibly face criminal charges.)

Make everybody load up their bags, shirts, and arms with all the rocks they can carry. It’s funny how heavy eighty pounds feels on your back, and how much lighter it sounds when your dad describes the mission on the way to the car! In addition to struggling under the shear weight of the stones, I suggest you schedule something very important to take place twenty minutes from this exact moment; we went with a professional painter located in Fira because we like to keep things classy. Of course there was nothing classy about the way we were sprinting down the narrow stairways of Oia, sweating, stumbling, and bumping into complete strangers. But hey, even the guy riding on the donkeys got a good laugh as we half sprawled half sprinted by him. Once you finally make it back to the house with your kids, rocks, and remainder of self-esteem, start the second half of your relay race with the rest of your family to the bus stop–because there is no way your missing a meeting with the best artist in Santorini after all that!

Mom and Dad washing rocks and getting tipsy!

Now that you have returned home, your rocks probably look better than they did before–after all the work you have done!  So there you stand, nothing between these lava rocks and your featured home decor but shipping laws, TSA box checker people, and the deliveryman. It’s time to strategize! You could send them via the local Oia post office, but seeing how this option would put a sizable dent in your budget and has a high probability of failure, I advise against it. The second option is to pass the collection of rocks off as a sculpture. We considered this for a great deal of time and my dad even used his hidden sculpting talent to assemble the rocks in an extraordinarily artistic way. He made a brochure and we even had a receipt authenticating the purchase of the fictional sculpture.

Yet after all that, we also excluded this option, because although it was an intriguing art project, it really didn’t eliminate any of the major issues pertaining to option number one. This leaves you with option number three: find KiKi. Kiki was our exceptionally nice neighbor and caretaker in Oia. If you explain the situation enough times and establish that you do in fact want to send just the rocks and nothing else to Athens, she will be more than happy to help! She knows a guy who knows a guy who transports goods from Oia to Athens with his dinky motorboat. He was more than willing to throw our rocks onto his vessel for a mere thirty euro. Sounded somewhat unreliable, but unless you have a better idea, I would just go with it!

At this time you probably just arrived in Athens, sick of Greek food after two weeks of eating the same meals every day, and exhausted after waking up at five in the morning to catch your flight. But despite all these disparities, surprise and delight will flicker across your face when you receive the phone call from the front desk warily explaining that five heavy boxes just arrived at the hotel front door addressed to you. “I can’t believe they actually made it!” You’ll exclaim to your nonchalant children as you put down the phone and put on your shoes. Even though this feeling is rewarding your journey with the two hundred and fifty pounds of rock is far from over.

Your next mission is getting them from Athens, Greece to Mercer Island, Washington–a slightly more daunting task than the first. Since Athens is a little less laid back than the diminutive island of Santorini, you only have two choices as far as shipping goes. Send them by air or sea. We originally leaned towards sea because we assumed it would be the cheaper and slower option, and since we were not getting home any time soon, the speed of travel didn’t bother us. Well, we were right about one of thing: it was going to be slow, but in terms of pricing, we were not expecting three thousand euro! So again we were left with one option: air. From your Athenian hotel, hail a taxi and load it up with your heavyweight boxes, and word to the wise, ask your concierge if he can give directions to the cab driver, or else you are in for a long and convoluted discussion in Greeklish (Greek and English mixed together, but mostly Greek).

Once you finally arrive at the post office, your going to want to explain the situation and package contents without sounding like a deceptive terrorist. (Something about somebody willing to ship two hundred pounds of rock for three hundred euro sets off some red flags in the shipping department.) Yes, apparently transporting rocks by high-speed jumbo jet is 1/10 the amount of sending something via the slow ship freight. We were willing to take the deal, just as you should! However let’s be realistic, two hundred and fifty pounds of lava rock is a little bit too expensive, how about you dump fifty pounds and we call it good.

We decided on abandoning our surplus stones a block away from our hotel. We placed them artfully in front of a cruise agency, in hopes that they might adopt our newly found orphans.

Otto and I abandoning our beloved rocks.

This step feels wrong for a number of reasons. Mostly because it’s kind of like you just kidnapped some kids and are now abandoning them in some foreign sketchy neighborhood. In addition, it looks like your dropping off a bomb, so that doesn’t help.

Congratulations you too have officially mastered the art of irrationality! Now that you have unearthed, shipped, and deserted your boulders, there is only one thing left to do: wait. Although the Athenian economy doesn’t instill much confidence, have faith that they will eventually arrive at your front doorstep. Our first box of rocks just recently arrived and Mouni sent us this picture.

Safe and sound.

Through this experience I have learned that although venturing off of the beaten path may prove challenging and tedious, it does make for some killer memories!

A compelling and biodiverse ecosystem nestled into the exquisite Cretan coastline. Whether you are my Biology teacher, family member, or friend, feel free to have a click around and discover the interactive world that is Komos Beach.

Unfortunately, the rigid acropolis caretakers promptly ushered us out before I could realize and appreciate the miracle that lay before me. I left the Acropolis without looking back, without soaking it all in one last time, but like Leonardo in Florence, my Parthenon encounters were far from over. The astounding reality began to emerge at our post Parthenon visit to the New Acropolis museum.

Unlike the Parthenon, I instantly understood the beauty of this building. Glass floors skillfully exhibited ancient Athenian ruins beneath our feet, and a remarkable interface design led us from decrepit cookware to stunning sculptures to finally the prized Parthenon replica on the top floor. This progressive museum radiated elegance and displayed everything so well, it made us all stop and ponder: why Athens, a city in the middle of an economic crisis, wanted to or even could produce such a magnificent (and certainty expensive) museum?

Finally, we reached the awe-inspiring top gallery, where the whole thing was on a slant to hang in parallel with the Parthenon floating beyond the sheets of glass. Unlike the galleries below, this one had its curtains drawn, displaying the Parthenon, which stood triumphantly atop the Acropolis, perfectly visible here! The gallery was centered around a rectangular box which showcased authentic friezes and statues from the original Parthenon. It took us a while, but my dad finally pointed out that the rectangular box was actually a modernistic representation of the Parthenon itself… to scale.

Although the tiles that bore elaborate scenes of historical battles and festivals were displayed expertly, something seemed off. Some authentic marble tiles, with their unique creamy custard color hue, neighbored unattractive white plaster tiles. As you can see in the video, the difference is pretty noticeable, almost provocatively visible. This, of course, was intentional. We soon learned that in 1801, Elgin, a British ambassador, was given permission by Sultan Selim III to remove stones with inscriptions from the Acropolis. I guess he took this as code for, “take everything that looks valuable to you,” because he gutted the poor Parthenon and shipped back two thirds of precious friezes and statues. But what’s with the ugly white tiles? Don’t worry! I won’t leave you hanging! They are in fact replicas of the real tiles that currently reside in the British Museum. In the beginning, Lord Elgin took the marble masterpieces for “preservation purposes,” but later the British refused to fork it all over because there was “no adequate home for the treasure.” Now it all makes sense! Athens didn’t lose their marbles! They just wanted them back where they rightfully belonged, and that’s why they built the New Acropolis Museum. Nobody can deny that this building is an “adequate home.”

At the New Acropolis Museum my perspective on the Parthenon changed entirely! An educational video brought to light the truly revolutionary architecture of the Parthenon: curved columns, bowed ceilings, and a harmonious symmetry that made the building look like a living, tangible organism just nestled atop the Acropolis. But even more interesting than the architecture was the symbolization and meaning the building possessed. Pericles, a powerful and prominent Greek statesman, facilitated the Parthenon. The stupefying structure highlighted Athens’ immense wealth and power. Moreover, it was a symbol of Athenian political and cultural preeminence. Nothing even came close to the magnificence and beauty of the Parthenon.

In the middle of the structure once stood a larger-than-life-sized Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, made of solid gold and ivory (they clearly were flaunting something!) In Athena’s hand stood an offering of Nike, whom symbolized victory, confirming Athens’ military predominance over the rest of Greece. Sadly the pompous Athena was robbed during transportation and most likely cut up, melted down, and sold to the highest bidder! Although dubious, there are some curious conspiracies tied up with this lightning-fast disappearance. After the destruction of Athena Parthenos one replica in particular raised some eyebrows. The exact duplication in Rome was erected a suspiciously short amount of time after the original was stolen. As if that’s not apprehensive enough, they also requested the statue be removed from Athens’ prior to the robbery.

So there I stood. Staring at the Parthenon from our hotel room. I have to say that there was something different about the ruins this time. They radiated something else. From the skeleton surfaced a ghost; a ghost of intriguing history, awe-inspiring architecture, and shocking symbolism. That is the moment I joined them; everyone who has ever stared at the place and reveled in its breathtaking existence. The Pretentious Parthenon, indeed.

Scene of the cooking class

In our global quest for a few culinary skills learned from each country, we found ourselves in the home, kitchen and restaurant of Eleni, a local artist and chef who we met through our host and friend, Manos. Rather than attending a traditional cooking class, Manos understood our desire to connect on a more personal level, and asked his neighbor in Finikia, whose husband owns four restaurants in Santorini and Athens, if she’d like to meet us. We found Eleni at her yposkafa (house carved of volcanic rock or traditional cave house), tucked snuggly in the middle of the village of Finikia, next to the neighborhood winery where generations of townspeople and their families have crushed grapes and fermented wine since the early 1800s. She is one of those warm individuals who immediately makes you feel at ease. An eclectic aura permeates Eleni and her home, most likely tracing back to her Ethiopian and Greek roots, nurtured by a strong sense of family and friends. Lisa and Eleni struck an immediate connection, thus setting the stage for a 4 hour culinary adventure we would have a few days later.

Neighborhood wine cave in Finikia next to Eleni’s cave house…. Manos has a vintage he made in the last barrel on the left in honor of his son’s birth. The opening in the back is where they crush white grapes with their feet!

We decided to meet at Feredini, the family restaurant that clings to the side of the caldera in the center of Oia. Closed for lunch, the kitchen offered an ideal space for our cast of rambunctious, intrepid characters to ply our culinary skills. With the help of the head chef of the restaurant, Eleni laid out the ingredients for our self-made feast: Herbed Risotto Dolmades and Veal & White Eggplant Moussaka.

View from our kitchen at Feredini!

Herbed Risotto stuffed grape leaves with Greek yogurt

Veal with White Eggplant Moussaka

All of the kids, Lisa and I participated in the chopping, rolling, folding, simmering, sautéing, spicing and plating, creating what would easily be considered the best meal thus far on Project Equator. The Moussaka was merely a “cousin” of moussaka as Eleni told us, borrowing from decades of experimenting with Ethiopian spices, traditional Greek cuisine, and her own artistic intuition. To see and smell the enormous pan of spices and herbs, including anise, bay leaf, fresh garlic, whole peppercorns, cardamon, and a 9-spice concoction of spices blended personally in Ethiopia by Eleni herself, was like spying into the future lands we will travel to on this trip.

Wescott smelling Eleni’s secret 9-spice blend that she makes in Ethiopia

Just a touch of Anise provides a powerful spice to this amazing dish

The base of our Moussaka cousin is starting to simmer

Watching Tuck master the art of stuffing and wrapping grape leaves with intense concentration was priceless. Wescott mixing in the broth from simmering the veal, enveloping the meat in a potpourri of exotic flavors, left us hungrily anticipating the banquet to come. Spying Yve teaching Otto the finer points of keeping the grape leaf wrapping tight for steaming reminded me why we set out on this adventure. All in all, it was an experience I’ll remember as a highlight of the trip.

Otto draining and drying grape leaves. When they are in season, Eleni uses fresh leaves right from the vines

Tuck mastering the art of folding stuffed grape leaves

Yve tasting the broth

Dolmades production line!

Tuck working on the mixture that we’ll stuff the grape leaves with

Jones readying the dolmades for the pot to steam and cook them

The roots of the word epicurean is focused more on the people you sit down with to share a meal, and the friendship derived from the shared experience, rather than the actual food. While the sumptuous dishes spread before us, carefully constructed by each diner and arranged artfully on the crisp, white linen table were undoubtedly spectacular, it was the moments of conversation around the cutting board and the new friend we met in Eleni that ultimately made the entire experience quixotic.

Lisa and Eleni became buddies… come visit us in Seattle Eleni!

The cooking gang with Eleni