So on September 17th, Greece held their goverment elections. I am still unclear as to what was actually being voted on...I think it may have been the presidential election as well as the election of the new governing board, but I there were no subtitles to be had so I can't be sure. All I know is that I wanted the cute little older man from the party with the green banners to win, but the man who plastered glamour shots of himself and looks like Paul Sorvino won the election with his party.
Anyhoot, because of the elections, lots of places are closed. They take their elections very seriously here. People were getting dressed up in their Sunday best and getting their vote on. Unfortunately for us though, it meant that we wouldnt get to go see the island of Delos and check out the ancient lions. So instead we....that's right people, we went to the beach. To the same one with the same loungers and we just chilled out.
That day we noticed an influx of the Chinese Masseusses working some kinks out on the beach. We first noticed this phenomenon in Santorini in Kamari where multiple Chinese people would be offering massage services on the beach. Now I am not one to assume that all Asians are Chinese, but they are all holding signs that say "Chinese Massage".... Anyway, I thought it was random, but didnt see anyone actually getting a massage in Santorini. Even our first beach day was relatively calm massage wise, but today was a flurry of massages. Mostly overweight british people were getting their feet and legs rubbed down. Yeah it's about as attractive as it sounds. But I can't hate, if it wasnt so random to be getting a massage on the beach in front of everyone, I may have actually partook in it. but seeing as they are using the same towel to wipe down the tiger balm off everyone and not having a clean sterile towel available for each fresh massage was a real turn off for me. No gracias. I am not trying to get rubbed down with dirty towels and tiger balm. I am actually gagging as I type this thinking about it. Today's beach animal du jour was a dog. He was pretty cute...unlike the straggly strays that have made their way into the greek landscape...this one was actually a pet. His owner was quite the opposite. He LOOKED as if he should have had a scraggly animal. He was the Greek Justin Bobby (It's a reference from The Hills ....google it)
After we left the beach, the day ended much like the one the day before. I think Rachel and I were both tired of island life and were excited to go back to the city. Who knew that Athens would be a welcome location from the idyllic island life. However, I am a city girl, and I need things to do. As much as the beach is cool, I just can't stay out there that long. I have delicate sensibilities. I was practically bathing in WaterBabies by the time I got out of mykonos. My skin felt and started to look like crap. All in all, I just felt generally greasy all the time.
I forgot to mention that we found the Greek equivelent to MTV--it was called MAD. They generally had really bad covers of current American Songs, or they would play one of the following or a combination of the three: Justin, Nelly Furtado, and Timberland. Any of them, and any combination of any of them would play about 2 out of 5 times. Also they played some hokey emo band called Sunshine Avenue. Super weak.
We also discovered early on that Mykonos was the island that catered most to the gays. Because of my love of the gay man, I was of course delighted. There were these two German boys who were next door to us that were very pretty and so very mo. Fabulous!! However, although we'd been told that Mykonos had a large gay tourist party crowd, I found that I have a hard time with my gaydar in Europe...because well the fashions are kinda mo, so you can just never tell. Regardless, it was a good time had by all. It would have been interesting to go clubbing, but I think by the time we got to Mykonos, we were already pretty exhausted and weren't trying to sound the big ting and party until the windmills stopped spinning. That was just fine with me. I needed to reserve my strength for power shopping in Athens.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Family Beaches and Day 2 in Mykonos
On our second day in Mykonos we decided to go to the beach. Mainly because there wasn't much else to do. Now I don't really tan, and my delicate skin doesnt really like the sun, so although i have been in warm climates for about 3 weeks, I still look as pale as I did before I left. However, we wanted to check out the beach since they told us it was sand, and not rock. We headed down the hill...where I proceeded to FALL. Yep. It wasn't cute, but I made it look pretty graceful. The beach we went to was called Ornos--it was the one that was pegged for families mainly with a couple of beach bars and tavernas, but not blaring club music and super crowded like some of the more famous ones. Those were called Paradise and Super Paradise. LOL. (we were at this mini market buying more Mythos when this one girl was trying to buy bus tickets, and she's all, Can I have 2 tickets to Paradise? Of course I busted out laughing and then started to sing two tickets to paradise in my head)
The beach turned out to only be about 10 or 15 minutes away from town by bus, and it was really nice. It wasnt very crowded (it wasnt super hot in Mykonos--the winds actually started to kick up, so it was probably only about 80 with a breeze) and we were able to find this one beach bar called Ammos that had these super cushy lounge chairs, so for 5 euro you could chill out for as long as you'd like. We ended up getting coffees and hanging out with our umbrella and chaise lounges for a couple of hours. The water was really pretty and clear. There were some Geese swimming around and people were taking photos of them like they were Jesus Christ, however I forgot to photograph the geese. Oops.
After a few hours we jumped on the bus and headed back to the hotel. We picked up some food and walked up the treacherous hill. I also vowed not to wear the flip flops I fell in for the rest of my stay.
The beach turned out to only be about 10 or 15 minutes away from town by bus, and it was really nice. It wasnt very crowded (it wasnt super hot in Mykonos--the winds actually started to kick up, so it was probably only about 80 with a breeze) and we were able to find this one beach bar called Ammos that had these super cushy lounge chairs, so for 5 euro you could chill out for as long as you'd like. We ended up getting coffees and hanging out with our umbrella and chaise lounges for a couple of hours. The water was really pretty and clear. There were some Geese swimming around and people were taking photos of them like they were Jesus Christ, however I forgot to photograph the geese. Oops.
After a few hours we jumped on the bus and headed back to the hotel. We picked up some food and walked up the treacherous hill. I also vowed not to wear the flip flops I fell in for the rest of my stay.
An abrupt departure from Santorini
So our first meeting with our Gate One tour did not start off well. Rachel and I packed our stuff the night before and knew we had to meet our group at about 10:40 in the lobby. So we had our breakfast and then went to our office to check our mail. Once Rachel finished checking hers, I logged in for a second, then Rachel came running in saying, "the bus is here, we gotta go, they are waiting for us!!" What? can someone give us some warning?? anyone? So we hightail it to our room, lug our suitcases down our flight of stairs and haul ass to the lobby. We had to rush our goodbyes to our breakfast friend Kostos. He looked bewildered, but then he kind of always looked like that. I think it was because we only spoke English, and his English was very limited to a few key words and phrases. Mainly: "good sleep?" "hello" and my personal favorite, we discovered that he liked to call an end to the breakfast service by playing that Yanni Cash song. So on one of our last days, he comes over to us and he's all, "this is very good. good song" and so we were like, "yeah, we know. What is it called?" he then started saying something that sounded like "blah blah blah, turkish franco, do you know?" Sadly, neither of us had any clue what he was talking about and so that put our quest to find out the real name of Yanni Cash to a bitter end.
Another favorite Greek friend from the Hermes was Nikos--he could only really say, "Hi", "hi guys", and "beer?"
Our last two friends from the Hermes was the lady that worked in the morning, (I think her name was like Irakli or something like that) and then our friend Vassilias, who we liked to call V. His grasp of English was really good, so we had a long chat with him about politics of all things. He was very up on the US presidential race...moreso than either me or rachel.
Anyway, that concluded a stay at the Hermes which started off sketchy, but ended up to be quite pleasant.
On to the tour...so we get to the lobby and this woman is waiting there, her name was Sandi, and she was a booch. She was all irritated and saying the bus is waiting, please hurry. well hoochie, maybe you should have tried to let us know that you were picking us up. Thanks for nothing ho bag. Then on the bus ride to the ferry, we find out that that she's not going to be on the boat with us. Because "she is afraid of boats" then she shows us where the ship the Sea Diamond sank earlier this year. Lady, seriously? Not the way to win any awards for making sure your tour clients are kept at ease. they drop us off at the port to basically fend for ourselves, and then it turns out that Rachel and I arent even sitting together. The ferry terminal was a hot hot mess. It was just heinous. There were people everywhere and there was no order--pure chaos. So finally when we need to get on to the boat, I didnt feel so bad about Big Red (my gigantic suitcase) because there were a ton of people that had like 2 rolling luggage AND a carry-on bag. These were peeps from our tour--we added a week, but the tour is only 11 days. Even I don't pack that heavy for an eleven day trip. Luckily there was no one in the seat next to Rachel so I talked the guy into letting me sit there. I befriended the guy in the seat next to me (his name is Chad--he's part of the lovely family we keep meeting up with in Athens...our only friends we made from our godforsaken tour group) Anyway, the ferry ride which was supposed to be only 2.5 hours turned out to be 3.5 hours of rocky sea voyage. The boat we were on was called the Flying Cat, and seriously that thing was hauling ass in the water. Rachel and I were both on Greek dramamine (it's called epostep or something like that) so we didnt get sick, but it could have easily turned for the worst. When we finally got to Mykonos, we got into a mini van and were taken to our next hotel. The hotel was.....um....well i guess it was kinda nice. However the hotel was converted from an old mansion, and so it was random because you had to use the key to lock the door from the inside. But it was all ghetto because as with most of the hotels we've encountered in Europe, you need to leave the key in this slot in order for the power to work, so this hotel had a contraption that you have a plastic part to insert into the power switch, and then the key was on a key ring, so if you went out at night you had to detatch the key from the plastic card to unlock the door. SUPER GHETTO. Anyway, the room itself was fine, at least it had a full tub and a shower head. However not a full shower door. Well beggars can't be choosers I suppose. Since most of the day was shot being on the ferry we rested in the room for a bit and then walked down the hill to go into "town" the town was about 3 blocks from the hotel down this hill that had lots of speeding traffic, but not a lot of sidewalk to walk on, so it was sort of renegade walking to get down the hill. We got to the bottom of the hill and walked the town of Chora in like 10 minutes. Everything once again looked the same. I think that Mykonos and me just weren't meant to be good friends. We stopped at a gyros place and had an alright gyro and then took the trek back up to the hotel. Party girls being super hardcore on a friday night alright. We ended up buying beer from the mini market and just sitting around with it in the courtyard. yep. ghetto. But at least we had eachother. It was fine, I didn't really want to walk that hill in the dark, pay 14 euro a drink at a random bar getting suffocated by eurotrash (music and peeps) so a Mythos in the courtyard was just fine by me.
Another favorite Greek friend from the Hermes was Nikos--he could only really say, "Hi", "hi guys", and "beer?"
Our last two friends from the Hermes was the lady that worked in the morning, (I think her name was like Irakli or something like that) and then our friend Vassilias, who we liked to call V. His grasp of English was really good, so we had a long chat with him about politics of all things. He was very up on the US presidential race...moreso than either me or rachel.
Anyway, that concluded a stay at the Hermes which started off sketchy, but ended up to be quite pleasant.
On to the tour...so we get to the lobby and this woman is waiting there, her name was Sandi, and she was a booch. She was all irritated and saying the bus is waiting, please hurry. well hoochie, maybe you should have tried to let us know that you were picking us up. Thanks for nothing ho bag. Then on the bus ride to the ferry, we find out that that she's not going to be on the boat with us. Because "she is afraid of boats" then she shows us where the ship the Sea Diamond sank earlier this year. Lady, seriously? Not the way to win any awards for making sure your tour clients are kept at ease. they drop us off at the port to basically fend for ourselves, and then it turns out that Rachel and I arent even sitting together. The ferry terminal was a hot hot mess. It was just heinous. There were people everywhere and there was no order--pure chaos. So finally when we need to get on to the boat, I didnt feel so bad about Big Red (my gigantic suitcase) because there were a ton of people that had like 2 rolling luggage AND a carry-on bag. These were peeps from our tour--we added a week, but the tour is only 11 days. Even I don't pack that heavy for an eleven day trip. Luckily there was no one in the seat next to Rachel so I talked the guy into letting me sit there. I befriended the guy in the seat next to me (his name is Chad--he's part of the lovely family we keep meeting up with in Athens...our only friends we made from our godforsaken tour group) Anyway, the ferry ride which was supposed to be only 2.5 hours turned out to be 3.5 hours of rocky sea voyage. The boat we were on was called the Flying Cat, and seriously that thing was hauling ass in the water. Rachel and I were both on Greek dramamine (it's called epostep or something like that) so we didnt get sick, but it could have easily turned for the worst. When we finally got to Mykonos, we got into a mini van and were taken to our next hotel. The hotel was.....um....well i guess it was kinda nice. However the hotel was converted from an old mansion, and so it was random because you had to use the key to lock the door from the inside. But it was all ghetto because as with most of the hotels we've encountered in Europe, you need to leave the key in this slot in order for the power to work, so this hotel had a contraption that you have a plastic part to insert into the power switch, and then the key was on a key ring, so if you went out at night you had to detatch the key from the plastic card to unlock the door. SUPER GHETTO. Anyway, the room itself was fine, at least it had a full tub and a shower head. However not a full shower door. Well beggars can't be choosers I suppose. Since most of the day was shot being on the ferry we rested in the room for a bit and then walked down the hill to go into "town" the town was about 3 blocks from the hotel down this hill that had lots of speeding traffic, but not a lot of sidewalk to walk on, so it was sort of renegade walking to get down the hill. We got to the bottom of the hill and walked the town of Chora in like 10 minutes. Everything once again looked the same. I think that Mykonos and me just weren't meant to be good friends. We stopped at a gyros place and had an alright gyro and then took the trek back up to the hotel. Party girls being super hardcore on a friday night alright. We ended up buying beer from the mini market and just sitting around with it in the courtyard. yep. ghetto. But at least we had eachother. It was fine, I didn't really want to walk that hill in the dark, pay 14 euro a drink at a random bar getting suffocated by eurotrash (music and peeps) so a Mythos in the courtyard was just fine by me.
Back in the Mother Country
Hello Friends.
I am back home now. It feels like I have been awake for a million hours. We just flew in from New York this morning, and although it's only about 1pm I have been awake since about 2 AM our time, not to mention being on a flight for about 15 hours on Saturday. So I am a little dazed to say the least. However, in a feeble attempt to get my body clock back on Pacific time, I am trying to stay awake as long as I possibly can. Truthfully, it probably won't be much longer until I need to take a little nap (that will probably last until tomorrow morning).
I have so much to tell you all about our trip. Since we were in Santorini, our internet access was sporadic at best so I wasn't able to post properly. I got online once in Turkey, but the keyboard was a big old mess and the internet at the hotel kept shutting down, so I thought it best to just wait until I got home to do all my posting.
Let's see....where did I last leave off. Pls hold--need to go read the last blog entry. OK so I didnt really get to post about our departure from Santorini....so I will start from there.
I will break these up into separate posts so you can read them at your leisure.
I am back home now. It feels like I have been awake for a million hours. We just flew in from New York this morning, and although it's only about 1pm I have been awake since about 2 AM our time, not to mention being on a flight for about 15 hours on Saturday. So I am a little dazed to say the least. However, in a feeble attempt to get my body clock back on Pacific time, I am trying to stay awake as long as I possibly can. Truthfully, it probably won't be much longer until I need to take a little nap (that will probably last until tomorrow morning).
I have so much to tell you all about our trip. Since we were in Santorini, our internet access was sporadic at best so I wasn't able to post properly. I got online once in Turkey, but the keyboard was a big old mess and the internet at the hotel kept shutting down, so I thought it best to just wait until I got home to do all my posting.
Let's see....where did I last leave off. Pls hold--need to go read the last blog entry. OK so I didnt really get to post about our departure from Santorini....so I will start from there.
I will break these up into separate posts so you can read them at your leisure.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Our Last day in Greece
Hello Peeps--
I have a very limited time on my internet card and to avoid any snafus like the Italian fiasco, I am going to keep this short and quick.
Our time in Greece is quickly coming to a close. I will be able to do a comprehensive post about Mykonos and the rest of our Greek adventures when I return home in a few days. Tomorrow we are getting picked up at 5AM to go to the airport to head to Turkey. Insane I tell you. Why is our flight so godforsaken early?!!?!
Anyway, It's been fun. I'll try and write again from Istanbul, but if not, wait for my complete report when I return home.
Until next time...
I have a very limited time on my internet card and to avoid any snafus like the Italian fiasco, I am going to keep this short and quick.
Our time in Greece is quickly coming to a close. I will be able to do a comprehensive post about Mykonos and the rest of our Greek adventures when I return home in a few days. Tomorrow we are getting picked up at 5AM to go to the airport to head to Turkey. Insane I tell you. Why is our flight so godforsaken early?!!?!
Anyway, It's been fun. I'll try and write again from Istanbul, but if not, wait for my complete report when I return home.
Until next time...
Monday, September 17, 2007
Back in Athens Y'all
Hey Peeps...
Sorry for the disappearing act. Our hotel in Mykonos didnt have internet access and we didn't do much of anything there anyway. We're back in Athens for a couple of nights and then off to Istanbul.
I have a bunch to write but not too much time right now, so I will just keep this one brief. Today we found out that we are on a tour with idiots. Straight up idiots. I nearly clocked some girl...ok maybe it's hot and I can be irritable after so much travel but she was dumb. From Michigan. Nice. Also met some other chick from Michigan. Wth--i guess it's a popular destination for the mid-west peeps.
However the highlight thus far, Rachel and I have made frıends wıth some peeps on the trıp. we kept seeıng them everywhere. It was awesome. Totally nıce.
Anyway, i will write more tonight when we come back from dinner. I just wanted you to know that we are still alive and well.
I did however fall down in the streets of mykonos. Yep...slid gracefully down a hill on the way to the bus stop. of course i was in a skirt. However I didnt pull a britney and i only broke a toenail, so i am no worse for the wear. It was pretty damn funny though. I just started yelling, "i'm Ok, I'm OK!!" and then looked down and my toenail was bleeding. sweet. But i just dusted myself off and went to the beach after that. No harm no foul.
Alright, that's it for now. More detailed reports later.
Until next time...
Sorry for the disappearing act. Our hotel in Mykonos didnt have internet access and we didn't do much of anything there anyway. We're back in Athens for a couple of nights and then off to Istanbul.
I have a bunch to write but not too much time right now, so I will just keep this one brief. Today we found out that we are on a tour with idiots. Straight up idiots. I nearly clocked some girl...ok maybe it's hot and I can be irritable after so much travel but she was dumb. From Michigan. Nice. Also met some other chick from Michigan. Wth--i guess it's a popular destination for the mid-west peeps.
However the highlight thus far, Rachel and I have made frıends wıth some peeps on the trıp. we kept seeıng them everywhere. It was awesome. Totally nıce.
Anyway, i will write more tonight when we come back from dinner. I just wanted you to know that we are still alive and well.
I did however fall down in the streets of mykonos. Yep...slid gracefully down a hill on the way to the bus stop. of course i was in a skirt. However I didnt pull a britney and i only broke a toenail, so i am no worse for the wear. It was pretty damn funny though. I just started yelling, "i'm Ok, I'm OK!!" and then looked down and my toenail was bleeding. sweet. But i just dusted myself off and went to the beach after that. No harm no foul.
Alright, that's it for now. More detailed reports later.
Until next time...
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Santorini, it's been real, but we gotta go.
Our trip to Santorini comes to an end tomorrow. We're heading off to Mykonos now. Hopefully we'll still be able to score some free internet access. If not, I might be a bit more sporadic with my posts. I know you guys live for this. Just kidding! Anyway, I like to document our days because I would be forgetting small details.
Alright gotta keep this one short so we can pack and have our last bevs with our Hotel Hermes family. Besides all we did today was sleep and go to Fira for souvenirs...oh and gyros...oh and ice cream....oh! and i finally found my greek custard dessert. I will eat that soon.
See you in a few days (or tomorrow if i am lucky)
Until next time.
Alright gotta keep this one short so we can pack and have our last bevs with our Hotel Hermes family. Besides all we did today was sleep and go to Fira for souvenirs...oh and gyros...oh and ice cream....oh! and i finally found my greek custard dessert. I will eat that soon.
See you in a few days (or tomorrow if i am lucky)
Until next time.
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