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St. Petersburg, FL

Came to celebrate the 250th Fourth of July. As it was my first time in the States, there was no healthy or high-end eating. Fast food chains only. Before America I didn't know what a food coma was, so this wasn't gluttony. It was education. Going to the beach was amazing - because Florida has so many, there aren't any crowds. The water was 31.5°C (85°F), like getting in a hot bath. You could stay in and warm yourself up as the sun went below the horizon. Unfortunately, it was almost impossible to explore. Stepping outside was the equivelant of getting hit by a grenade, and mosquitos were able to triangulate my position and call in reinforcements.

Erg Chebbi (Sahara desert, Morocco)

Books describe how difficult it is to judge dune heights in the dark - they're right. I had a lot of fun running up and jumping off dunes in the early morning before the Sun came up, but what looks like a fairly small dune can take minutes to climb. I rode a camel for half an hour, which hurt. Also rode over the sand in the open trunk of an SUV.

We also visited Aït Benhaddou (filming location) and other landmarks.

MOUNT TOUBKAL (MOROCCO)

4167m high, the tallest mountain in North Africa. Two day hike. On the second day, we left the refuge at 4am to make it to the summit in time for sunrise. Then we walked all the way down and arrived back at the minibus at around 5pm. Going down was actually harder than coming up, because of loose rocks. Everyone was slipping and sliding around.

Mount Zas/Zeus (Naxos, Greece)

1003m high. Rhea hid her child, Zeus, in a cave on this mountain to protect him from Cronus, his father. I visited the cave on the way up. When Zeus became an adult he climbed to the top of the mountain, where an eagle gave him his powers. There were eagles when I went up but they didn't give me anything.

Paros (Greece)

Naxos, Paros, and Anti-Paros (Anti meaning opposite Paros, geographically) are 3 islands situated right next to each other. I took a ferry trip to Paros and walked quite a bit out from the main port to watch the sunset. The redness of my skin is not from adding saturation to the photo, but from sunburn 🔥

Demeter's temple (naxos, Greece)

Demeter is the goddess of agriculture and fertility of the Earth. Every year, her daughter Persephone spends 6 months in the Underworld with Hades. During this time Demeter mourns and nothing grows on Earth (Winter). When she is reunited with her daughter for the remaining 6 months of the year, the Earth blossoms (Summer). She is also the goddess of sacred law (god-given laws) and presides over the cycle of life and death.

She is my favourite Greek deity because my name comes from her.

"Dmitrijs" is the Latvian form of "Dimitri" which is the Russian form of "Demetrius" which in Greek means "Follower of Demeter".

So this is me standing in front of my temple.

Karlštejn Castle (Czechia)

On a hike around Karlštejn, I visited three quarries - named "Little America", "Mexico", and "Big America". The second picture is Big America. I then looped back around through a village and took a tour of the castle itself. I didn't have any gloves because they were wet from ice skating the previous night - by the time I arrived at the castle my knuckles were bleeding from the cold.

Mount Vesuvius (NAPLES, Italy)

You should know what this volcano is famous for. I took a bus up, but decided to walk down - all the way to the coast, where the train station was. 40,000 steps. The Sun went down halfway through the journey (see ITALY) and there were no streetlights until the bottom 25%, but there was only one road so it was impossible to get lost.

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