Last Greek photos... I swear...

The beach was PINK!

Greece brings out Mike's alchie tendencies ;)

did I tell you we learned how to use the fun settings on the camera?

Acropolis. Nuff said.

I think jumping adds a little something extra to a photo...

us with a temple thingy, and the porch of the carytids (well the fake ones.. again, real ones indoors...)

Athens: Redux and beyond!

So it was that after a crazy overnight ferry (it was a lot like being at a hotel where you put a quarter in the bed to make it shake, but in chairs and for 8 hours). Also, people taking ferries are crazy. A) It takes eons for the boats to dock and unload, but people push up to the front of the line for like a half hour. B) People literally run to the boat. No joke, I had to push a girl, she pushed me first though, unsurprisingly, we both got on the ferry. Anywho, we were back in Athens. We had planned to take that day easy, and by easy, I mean, we went to the Acropolis. Ha. How silly are we. In any event, despite the sleepy delirium we had a nice time, minus the fact that we were expecting the Acropolis to be as well curated as the Acropolis museum. We were drastically mistaken. Whereas the Acropolis Museum is a gorgeous, informative and well thought out activity, the Acropolis itself is un-updated since G-d knows when crap. You’re right, I’m being too generous. It is cool to see though.


The next day we did a bunch of the other ancient bits (fun, although equally poorly curated, Joanna, I’d be happy to write a letter to Greece requesting that you fix it up for them), walked up that big hill (Litvonakas?), we were lazy and going to take the tram, but you know what? I’m not $6.50 euro lazy. It’s not even that big a hill. And we earned the treats that we had at the Kaufman-Potenzas fave bakery in Athens (Despina Cream Puff – to die for). We ended the day by going to a cute taverna with live music, gosh those singing Greeks are so adorable in a cranky old man way.

The following day we made an epic journey to go see Meteora. I’m fully willing to admit that 6 hours into travel, I was not thinking that it would be worth it for 24 hours there, but I was wrong. First, it was gorgeous. From the moment you got there it feels crisp mountain airy and you’re just happy about it. Oh, let me back up, what is Meteora? Out in the middle-o-nowhere Greece there are these giant stone hills? Small mountains? Who knows, they stick up out of the ground and vary in size but are mostly I would say, about a km from ground level. This would be independently cool, however when the Turks started invading a bunch of monks looking to go a little rogue/isolated started building monasteries on top of them, I think there are 6 still, and they used to be inaccessible unless they wanted you, I don’t know how they got there in the first place, but they used removable rope/wood ladders and if you were lazy/carrying something A NET WITH A GIANT WINCH. However, now there are stairs.

Back to our story, we got an amazing hotel in Kastraki, a little village right at the base. So we could sit on their back porch and just stair and the cool mountains, which we did all afternoon. The next morning we took the bus up and saw three of the monasteries, which is about what you can do in about a half day. We had a great time, they were beautiful (and for the most part we managed to stay ahead of the massive tour buses) and unique (one has a gorgeous fresco of Adam naming the animals, so cool, the best part being that it’s mostly run of the mill animals… and a dragon…. ‘you, I will call you sheep, and you DRAGON (perhaps Trogdor specifically…)’) and we met some lovely people. All told a pretty amazing day. Then we went in to town, had our last Pastitcio (greek version of lasagna) and began our EPIC journey to Italy.

More Cretan goodness

In case you were wondering, we're alive and well in Italy, internet just hasn't been copius. As we speak I'm being glared at to leave a cafe (because in Italy, they eat slllllow but they drink their coffee espresso!), but we're doing well, here's more Crete pics because, well, Crete was awesome and it's a little gloomy here at present. But more recent info to follow. 

Paleochora sunset. Had to share.



Start of the Samaria Gorge Hike... why did we take a picture here?

because we were actually HERE people just love to take pictures of feet.

Kri-Kri, in effect

That gorge was gorgeous!

Skinniest bit was 3.5 meters! Almost at the end.

Crete! A photo project in a few parts.

I just picked out a million pictures to show you from the last week and half... here are the first 5 to tide you over.

Mike in Rethymno

Rethymno harbor

Etz Hayim synagogue in Chania

Yeah, that horse is wearing a hat.

Chania harbor from the lighthouse

Crete: Land of Good Times

We had a tough time leaving Santorini, because it was fab, but we were looking forward to Crete, and boy did it pay off!

We started our Cretan adventure with a ferry to Heraklio and a bus on to Rethymno. Rethymno? Adorable. There is a little ruined fortress to climb around on, and a gorgeous Venetian harbor. An aside here to help clarify, Crete is an island that has been passed around a lot. It was under Venetian rule for about 400 years (hence cute harbors, etc.), then it was under Ottoman rule for a couple hundred (hence pretty mosques and hamams), then it was Egyptian for a little while in the 1800’s (they spiffed up everyone’s previous works), theeeen it was Greek. I mean, if you ask them they were always Greek, but you know what I mean. We had a lovely couple of days here, enjoying the Cretan specialties (tasty soft goat cheese, wild greens, yogurt & honey, lots of raki (firewater, yup, it tastes like burning)), hanging out and laughing about the fact that our hotel was run most of the time by a chubby 12 year old who spent most of his time on Facebook.

From Rethymno we headed to Chania, and gosh, if we thought it couldn’t get any cuter, we might have been wrong. Chania had a different, yet adorable harbor, with a pretty little lighthouse, little streets and back alleys . Just a really fun place to take a wander. We spent a whole morning hanging out down by the harbor, walking out to the lighthouse, enjoying the view. And the food was delicious. And if you are at a cool place and you order a reasonable amount of food, you get dessert (either fruit or a little grain pudding thingy) and sometimes… RAKI. Which is disgusting. But free. And a fun little boost after your 3 euro half liter of house wine 

From Chania we decided to head to Paleochora as our home base for some outdoorsy Rosh Hashanah time. For the uninitiated Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, and for Mike and I If we are not near a congregation we feel at home, nature will do just fine. Ironically, Chania does have a beautiful little historic synagogue, and apparently they now have a congregation of 5 (more with tourists and visitors), and we were invited, but honestly, I feel more religious in nature than I do with 10 Orthodox men…

So, into nature. Paleochora itself was little and nice. It is on a peninsula between the Mediterranean sea and the Libyan sea. We found a cute little pension on the Libyan side (which was a little less resort-y and more homey) run by a kajillion-year-old woman I like to call Mama. She sat in a chair at the bottom of the stairs and said, Kalimera (good morning) in the morning, Kalispera (good evening) in the evening, and Yasas (hello) if we were coming and going too often.

The next morning we started off crazy pants early (that’s bus at 6:30) to get to the Samaria Gorge around 8. The Samaria Gorge is the largest in Europe, and it’s super purdy. It was a 13 km hike (but when you finish… it’s another 3 km to where you get the boat back… we walked one and took a van 2, but I get ahead of myself). It’s not an easy hike (as the sign insinuated at the beginning which I thought said no old people… which I think did say, no old people with canes), a lot of it is a pretty extreme downhill, much of it down rocks, through rock creek beds or over slippery worn down stones. Not gonna lie, my knees and calves were sore for a while. It is funny when you hike on similar paces as other people you notice things; we came to know people as the “don’t ask them to take your picture it will come out bad” people, “the obnoxiously slow picture taker hikers”, “the angry lady and her non-angry friends” and “the crazy family with a lot of hiking poles”. In the gorge is a special kind of goat only found there called the Kri-Kri. I made a lot of jokes about trying to catch one to make a shofar, but honestly their horns were a smidge puny. They are apparently elusive… you know where we saw two? At the rest stop in the middle where everyone eats lunch. Ba dum bum (that’s the sound of a rim shot)! We finished the hike with time to spare (there is a boat back, but only one a day at 5:30, we finished the hike around 2:30) so we luxuriated over some beers at the port.

Note: one of our special skills that we have acquired while travelling is how to make 1 round of drinks (and occasionally a snack) justify our sitting at a café for somewhere between 1-3 hours. If your café has a spectacular view or free wi-fi, we’re up around the 3 hour mark. But I think we make lovely window dressing and attract more customers, so it’s not all bad.

Our last real day in Paleochora we headed to Elefonissi, the Pink Beach! It is a beach where (I’m sure you could look it up but I’d rather wildly guess..) there is a bit of pink sand right at the shore, I think it is….. crushed shells? Dunno, but there are a lot of shells there. Anyway, from where we were you could take a boat there (yes you can also drive but that is so much less fun). It was probably the most crowded beach we have been on (although I’m sure less bad than true high season), but it was still a gorgeous day and the water was fabulous, and crazy shallow, it’s the kind you can wade out forever, well, there were amusingly deep spots, but mostly shallow.

We spent our last day in Crete wasting time, it was great. Morning at a café with free wi-fi, then back to Chania where we got one more delicious Cretan dinner and it was on to the overnight ferry. Oh, overnight ferry. A) We have come to the decision that ferries in Greece are meh. Some are great, some are terrible, not really easy to tell what you’re gonna get. B) Some places (like Chania) there is nowhere to wait. We were literally dropped off on the jetty, an hour early, and I had to pee. C) People love to get ready to get on the boat like a half hour early and start lining up (on an unseated overnight ferry, good spots are key), but ferries take like 8 years to dock and unload. D) This ferry was insane, when they dropped the chain people ran and pushed. Thankfully, we are great runners and pushers, and ended up with some great seats. Unfortunately, the ferry proceeded to shake/rumble for the entire 8 hour journey, it’s like we sat on one of those beds where you pay a quarter to make it shake… and it got stuck. That’s ok, Mike watched a Demi Moore movie that we didn’t know existed, nothing like travelling to help you catch up on flops that you missed in the US of A.

We’re back in Athens, heading to Meteora for a quick jaunt tomorrow, then back the next evening for a very early flight to ITALY! Less than 30 days till US landfall. Crazy.

Greek Islands make you lazy.

Sorry about that, we figured that the photos would keep you from getting fiesty...  So, from Andros we headed to the ever-talked about Mykonos.  We were really skeptical about Mykonos as every cruise ship ever stops there and it has a distinct party reputation, but honestly it was nice.  It is a really pretty little town with cute TINY streets were they use these hilarilous little three wheeled mini-trucks to get stuff around. The windmills (although far sillier looking than dutch) lend more cuteness and there is an area called Little Venice where you can get lost wandering past peoples homes in tiny crooked allys. That said, it was UBER expensive (all the stores were either crap or unbelievable posh crap, definitely targeted towards the older crusing crowd), and we didn't even think about going to bars because non of them open until after 11 and our hotel was a 15 minute walk out of town.

The real reason that we went to Mykonos, other than that it was a convenient stopover was to go to Delos.  Delos is an uninhabited island about an hour off the coast of Mykonos that over centuries was alternately very holy or very commerce oriented (and don't we all know how close those two are). Anyway, it was fun. Again, a great time to play around in ruins that aren't so covered in tourists. We learned some things by hanging out close to english tours, and made friends with some lovely Canadians on their honeymoon. All in all, the ruins were a little too ruined for Mike to get the feeling, but I thought it was fun, and there was a big hill we climbed for amazing views (although it was more windy than I have ever experienced, definitely thought we were going over the edge!). On the way back our ferry also noticed the wind, and more than a few people looked a little green (I myself was just nervous about windows that were previously showing sky sometimes showing all water...) But we made it, so all good I suppose.

From Mykonos we headed to Paros, which was ADORABLE. We stayed in the port town of Parika instead of heading over to the resort-y one. It had lovely beachfront cafes, and a whole old town full of shops and allys and stuff. Very cute. It also had a pirate bar! We went, and they advertised live music starting at 10:30, so we got a drink and hung out. Then came the live music, there was a singer and a keyboard. OK. Then the singer had a terrible smoker's cough. I can hang. Then the keyboard kept switching modes to do SAXAPHONE SOLOS AND A LITTLE YAZZ FLUTE. Can't hang. We were gone after song two.

From Paros we headed to Santorini. Or as the cute chatty man from Louisiana that we met in Budapest called it, "the Sanna-tor-eeny eyes-land". Santorini is LOVELY. First, it has this whole crazy volcano thing. (There is a volcanic island in the middle, and the whole island is really just the ring of a biiig island volcano that exploded a while back, leaving a crescent moon shaped island with some outcroppings). So the ports and everything are down at the bottom of this huuuge caldera (you can drive from the main one, but the old one where the cruise ships and day trips go, is gondola or donkey! more on that later). From the main port we got picked up by a crazy man (who thankfully wasn't from our hotel), but we found him and then waited for 20 minutes while he looked for a mythical other 5 people. No joke, he was wearing a red hat, he had a sign, he circled, he asked everyone who looked lost.  Then we left. Then halfway up the effing mountain, his wife calls and makes him turn around, he starts screaming, "YOU WILL TELL THEM I WAITED FOR THE 1 HOUR IN THE 40 HEAT!" and we were like, chill dude, you're in air condidtioning now. So we go all the way down, where this angry eastern european man woman baby and two older people get in the van looking pissed off. They say something rude. He gets in the door, looks at us and starts screaming, "YOU TELL THEM!" I felt like a child of divorce. Anywho, we did eventually make it, making a 15 minute ride into a little over an hour.  Good thing our hotel was essentially like visiting the adorable relatives you never knew you had (no offence to our actual, nice relatives ;)  Run by a man named Babis, his father (crazy and deaf but so nice) and his wife Maria (cutest lady ever), there was nothing they would not do. Every morning at breakfast he asks everyone what they are doing that day to make their plans better (oh no, do not try to fit both in, you will not enjoy, one this morning, do this this afternoon, then the other tomorrow). I swear, if you told them you were having trouble sleeping, Maria would have come to tuck you in.

So, Santorini, fabulous. Fira, the main town is adorable, and filled with cute little terraced cafes to watch to ocean/sunset/pretty. Our first day we took a bus to Akrotiri (aka the red rock beach) which was a little anticlimactic (it's a bus, to a walk/hike, to a beach that isn't actually a beach, just two rows of chairs you have to pay for) however, there were pretty red rocks, and the water was nice.

Day two we went for the boat tour.  First we headed to the volcano island where we got to climb around on the craters, got a great view of the island and had a crazy guide explain volcanos to us including : "and when the pressure get's too much in the 'hot rock room' it explode! (he throws rocks/dust everywhere) and then water get in the 'hot rock room' and everything go crazy!"

Then we went to an area where a sulphur hot spring comes up from the volcano into a bit of ocean. Coolio. Now, we didn't think it was that warm at the time, but then when we had to swim back through the normal ocean to get back to the boat! It was.

Then we got lunch at the little island facing Santorini (Thrissa) and got to see what the caldera looks like a bit through the glass bottom (fun times). We finished up by crusing up to Oia (at the end of the island where you can see the sunset over the water) and got a great view of it from the boat.  

Day 3: ATV DAY!!  After aforementioned scooter fail (see Pai, Thailand), Mike was a little motor vehicle shy, but I decided it was time to help him get over it (also I really wanted to atv!). So, I'll admit it, I totally forced him to do it. But he loved it, and was great at it, so everyone's a winner really. We scooted on down to a pretty beach on the other side of the island, than to a lovely waterside restaurant, up through the hills and UUUUP hill to the Santo Winery (if you ever end up on Santorini, you must go there, the wine is good and cheap and the view is beyond). Then up to the end of the island to Oia for the suset.

Notes on an Oia sunset: it was really pretty. Buuuut even at the very end of tourist season, there were a kabillion people there.  And there is no where for them to go, so people are just everywhere, blocking up the allys, sitting on people's roofs. It's not peaceful. On top of that there were crazy people standing next to us, this woman was trying to take pictures and her husband was behind her micromanaging in a way that said 'my wife has a $25 a week allowance and I ask for receipts'. It was upsetting.  That aside, we decided that to actually see the cuteness of Oia, we would go back the next day, well before sunset and enjoy. And we did.

Oh, and when we left.... Babis goes, ok, I have to take someone to the airport the same time you must go to the boat, so my uncle is coming to get you.... you got it. Crazy dude. And get this, HE goes, "you again!?" Ha.

In honor of 9.02.10.... pictures of Greece... that relates right?

this belongs at the bottom, but it's rogue. it's us at the Santo Winery on top o' the world!

this is how we got there

The Lion (replicas) at Delos... the real ones are inside being wussy

You have no idea how windy it was up there. Delos

Our first night in Santorini

We made someone in a restaurant take this. Santorini

I swear, alcohol was not involved in this picture. Mike doesn't.

Can you see my excitement and fear? Rogue donkey.

Doorway to the ocean. Purdy.

Santorini is pretty.

Still pretty.