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We woke up Monday morning psyched and ready to head to Ios—our little Greek paradise! After a 4 hour ferry ride, we arrived in Ios a little before noon. A man who looked about 35-40 wearing a Brazil jacket met us as we came got off the ferry, holding a sign for “Far Out” the name of our resort. We found out about this resort because last year’s BEF group had come here and had told us that it fabulous and cheap. So, without really researching other places, we booked it.
The five of us piled into Brazil man’s van (his jacket had given him this name for the duration of our trip) and drove through the island’s largest town (which was tiny) on the way to Far Out. It was beautiful—right on the beach, a beautiful pool, and a restaurant/bar right there (little did we know that it closed at 7 so we always had to plan to have dinner earlier…)
We dropped off our stuff in our five-person suite and headed to eat some lunch at the restaurant. We had our first encounter with Demitri, our waiter for the week, who as far as we could tell
was the only employ who actually did anything. While he didn’t speak English all that well (describing a hamburger as having ham on it) and he didn’t always offer the best service (one night he forgot to bring Mackenzie’s dinner and then the kitchen had closed so she didn’t get to eat), he still did more than the three bartenders who just stood behind the bar all day everyday, serving themselves as many drinks as the 5 other guests who were at the resort. We also met a girl named Sylvia who was also studying in France for the semester and on her spring break in Ios. She had come alone and felt perfectly comfortable inviting herself to our first meal together at Far Out. She was interesting to say the least and probably had been expecting more than about 10 guests at this resort, five of them (us) who were mainly interested in laying on the beach reading and relaxing.
And that’s exactly what we did: lounged on the beach drinking strawberry dacaris and reading our books for the next day and a half. Wednesday, Mackenzie, Michael, and I went to rent mopeds to explore the island of
Ios a bit. Sadly, the guy at the rental place didn’t want to let us rent mopeds since we’d never had any experience, so we rented 4 wheelers instead—the other preferred method of transportation on the island. We drove them on the one or two roads that existed on Ios (we didn’t actually go off roading, a lot of people just drove four wheelers around the island to get around, to go to work, etc.) We rode around the island for the afternoon and it was absolutely beautiful. Homer, the writer of the Iliad is actally rumored to be buried on Ios because that’s where his mom lived, so we drove to his tomb to check it out! It was pretty cool!
That night, we went to dinner at The Nest—the restaurant in the main town that the locals had recommended to us. I had lamb souvlaki with tzatziki which was delicious, but Allison and Mackenzie had both ordered pizzas which looked less than appetizing. There wasn’t really a pizza crust; it was more like toasted bread, and then an inch of some kind of Greek melted cheese on top with some slices of tomatoes spread around. Needless to
say, neither of them ate very much. When the waiter came to take our plates away, he was disappointed to see they hadn’t eaten much, and while they reassured him it was fine, the next time he returned to our table he came bearing free dessert. Which sounds like a nice gesture, it does. However, this free dessert was some sort of coconut cake marinating in lemon corn syrup. Or at least that’s what it tasted like. He had brought us two huge plates for the five of us to share. We all tried it and began looking around at each other with horrified expressions. What could we do?!!? We couldn’t insult him again by not eating our free dessert! We tried to figure out how we might be able to put it in our purses and walk out with it, but the cake was too soggy with the lemon sauce. Instead, Michael and I took turns running to the bathroom with the coconut surprise cake wrapped in our napkins, then quickly left our money on the table and ran outside where we promptly called the taxi service to take us home.
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beth
non-member comment
ios
hey it looks really quiet.. what date did u go over there??? im going on wednesday for the summer.. hoping itl be busier than it looks here! when you say the guy wouldnt let u rent a moped because u didnt have enough experience..how did he know u didnt have any experience? would we get away with it if we said we had driven one before? looks gorgeous there, hope u had fun! get back to me if you can x