Greece, It's Okay, If You Like That Kind of Thing (Part 1)

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As promised, the Greek Adventure! Part 1. (Jetlagged)

After super Jono (that's pronounced Yono in some countries, ie: whatever country I'm in), made the train and comfortably ate our victory sandwiches, we rolled into Frankfurt's main train station around 9pm. We found a reasonable hostel where we could get a decent night's sleep, and get a private room. Considering we had only about a total of 6 hours in the room, we thought we should "splurge" and try and get a little sleep.

When reading reviews of our hostel on hostel world (every backpackers favorite website, www.hostelworld.com) people said it was in a bit of a sketchy area, but they didn't mind the hostel itself, because it was really close to the train station. Because we needed to take the train to the airport early the next morning, we thought it would be okay. The first street we walked down was totally fine, there was a few porn shops but nothing out of the ordinary (as porn shops are far more standard in Europe than in North America this is something I am more than used to seeing in almost any type of neighborhood). Then we turned the corner. Suddenly we were in the middle of Frankfurt's red light district. Unlike Amsterdam where their red light district is basically a tourist attraction and thus monitored by police, Frankfurt's is more like a really gritty area. The first thing we see is two women talking to a man. When one of them sees Jono she spreads her legs and flashes him her bright red underwear. I find this hilarious, he is mostly uncomfortable....

We find our hostel rather easily after that. Again--Jono and I are really great traveling together. We think perhaps that we should enter the Amazing Race. Except I won't eat meat, I can't really run too much because of my knee (but i should be good to go after the surgery), and I don't do things where I have to jump off of high places or go upside down--so basically Jono could do all those things and I could just do all the "thinking" things. Although he's better at numbers, so he would have to do that too. I have this feeling that Jono has a travel blog and is saying the exact opposite of what I'm saying right now.. like about how useless I am.. haha. Either way we should totally be on the Amazing Race, because if there's a competition about making a train/bus/plane on time, we'd totally win!

Later we decide to go back to the train station to find some dinner, and the second we head out our door we walk right into the middle of a drug deal. We quickly do a 180 and go the other way. The red light district in Frankfurt isn't quite like Kansas.
By midnight we're in bed in our comfy little private room. It's almost like we have our own rooms actually, because the room is divided in two by a wall, with a bed and sink on each side. It's the most privacy I've had in months. When my alarm goes of at 3:30am, I don't think either of us felt like we slept much. Considering it's the red light district our room was very quiet though. I will say that that was the hostel I was most grateful to have my hostel sheet in. (A hostel sheet is sort of like a sleeping bag, it's basically a sleeping bag liner, and travelers use it in case there is no sheets, and as protection from unclean beds). I'm fairly sure that Jono also slept in his as well. Getting an STD from a person is one thing, but getting an STD from a bed is another! A bed can't even buy you dinner first!

We left our room around 4am and headed to the train station where we caught a subway that took us out to the Frankfurt International Airport. Eventually, Jessi met us there. No, she wasn't drunk---but I know you were wondering. She has commented that my blog makes her sound like all she does is drink. To be fair, that is entirely untrue. She also jogs and speaks german, and she can only really drink while doing one of those activities.

Our plane ride was on an airline called Condor. My dream to go to Greece really came true thanks to (drunk) Jessi, so I am grateful to her for that. She went to a travel agent that told us about them, so we got a round trip flight to the island of Crete for just 170 euros. We arrived in Crete in the afternoon, and caught a bus from the airport to the center of the city. We got a little lost finding our hotel, but when we did we found a cute clean little place. We also discovered the strangness of Greek showers. At this place, and every other place we visited the showers were basically the same. They had removable shower heads, but no where to hook them up high so you constantly had to be holding them in your hand. There was never a shower curtain, and only a very small raised part of the floor. Bathrooms are also very small. This always meant a very wet floor and some times a wet toilet too. Sometimes keeping your things dry was hard. Jessi was especially bad at getting water on the floor, I'm not really sure if this was in relation to how much she had to drink that day or what.

The city in Crete we were in was called Heraklion and is the largest city and the capital of Crete. According to Jessi it is much like Athenes. It's quite dirty, and there's actually not too much to do there. There were some cool things though, my favorite was a strip that had a lot of really cool open air bars/cafes. There was also a really great walk way along the ocean, which was really funny on our first day there because it was so windy that you could put all your weight and lean right into the wind and still be standing almost perfectly straight. I made a pretty hilarious video about it, and there were a lot of self portraits taken by each of us.
Our first Greek dinner was also amazing, and it was really our first of many. We went to a small place that was full of locals. My first taste of real Greek Feta Cheese was like bliss. We drank our first liter of Greek White Wine. Ate domaldes, calamari... it was an amazing meal, and I'm happy to say cheap!!

The thing with Greece is that it's expensive to get there, but once you're there, it's cheap. For example, much of our time was spent in a private villa. It had two floors, four beds, our own bathroom/kitchen and two balconies. It was only three blocks from the beach. It only cost us 10 euros each a night. In comparison, in Paris, I stayed in a 10 bed dorm mixed (co-ed) room (the cheapest there was at my favorite hostel), where the only thing I was really paying for was my bed and it cost me 25 euros a night.
Most of our dinners in Greece cost us about 12 euros a piece, and this was for an ABUNDANCE of food and usually a liter of wine AND a bottle of water. Plus they usually give you either free alcohol (like a shot of ouzo) or desert at the end of your meal.

We only spent the one night in Crete and then were off to Santorini. I have been looking forward to Santorini ever since I started to plan this trip. I have wanted to go there for as long as I can remember. I was super excited, and it certainly didnt' let me down. There were days/nights on that island where I truly had to pinch myself, because it seemed too beautiful to be real. Getting there was a bit of an ordeal though.

There are two kinds of ferries in Greece, slow ones and fast ones. Normally, you would think I would be all for the fast one. Not true. To get from Crete to Santorini there is no slow ferry, so we were forced to pay for the MUCH more expensive fast ferry.(To put this into perspective the fast ferry to Santorini from Crete, one way, cost us 40 euros. While the slow ferry to Ios from Santorini only cost us 7 euros). The fast ferry is called the Flyingcat 4. I think it's called the flyingcat because it is unnatural for cats to fly, and most people feel unnatural on that boat. Basically, it goes super fast and on the day we left the water was really very rough. There were points where I just looked at Jono and said, "Disneyland!" because it felt more like a ride than a ferry. We were FLYING off waves, and probably screamed a little like cats. It was so bouncy. I was okayish, but I certainly felt a little gross. Poor Jessi though was not doing so well. She was a little green, we also didn't have any alcohol with us to help her along. She was really close to having to lay on the floor. I don't blame her though, it really was rocky. I know Jono wasn't feeling so well either. When we finally got there we celebrated, and did a dance on solid ground. And bough a spinach pie. As you can see my trip suddenly shifted from not really eating, to eating--which is funny as I was shortly preparing to put on my new Parisian bikini!

The wonderful cheap villa I mentioned earlier is the one we stayed at in Santorini. We were booked there for three nights. One of the great things about going to the Greek islands is that most places will pick you up at the port and then drive you back when you're ready to leave. So we had a ride waiting for us. For some reason we never caught the guy's name for the longest time (it's his family that owns the place) so we started to call him George. We loved George. Even though we later learned his name was Mike (although this wasn't until almost the end of our trip nearly 9 days after this). George was great though, and so was his villa. By about two 2pm we had unpacked, and were already sitting at the beach. We made a rule about no taking photos in our bathing suits (that wasn't even my idea, it was Jessi's!).

I was a little disappointed when we pulled up to the port at Santorini. I was expecting it to be the port you always see on tv/movies, where all the beautiful white buildings with blue roof tops are right in front of you. Although that port does exist, it is not the main port.. so I actually didn't really see any white buildings on the side of a mountain for a while. We were staying in an area called Perrissa. Now that I know the island much better, I have to say I wouldn't really chose to stay anywhere else as it is pretty much the beach town. It's located on the black sand beach, so all the sand is actually just crushed black volcanic rock. It's a pretty cool beach that you really won't find in too many places. Like most beaches in Europe, you have to rent your chairs and your umbrella, but we found a bar that let you use them for free if you bought a drink... Not a problem. There was also a cute guy who bought us our drinks.... He was young though, I felt like a cougar wearing a bikini. All I needed was bright red nails and a cigarette holder.

That night we had our next amazing Greek meal, and began our tradition of not really eating during the day, but then having a big (and still cheap) meal at night. We really only had one meal our whole time in Greece that wasn't amazing--every other one was great. And they were almost always accompanied but a very cheap liter of wine, often only costing us a few Euros. Greece was so great that it was hard not to be a little dreamy eyed when wandering around. But because I'm a sarcastic jerk I would say the following:
"Ya I guess this food is okay, if you like that sort of thing."
Or "Ya that clear blue ocean is okay, if you like that sort of thing."
Or "God Greece, you're letting me down. I asked for a simple sun set! Not a sunset with magical mist in the back ground, geez!"
Or "Greece letting me down again!"
It became our running joke, hence the title of this entry.

The next day we rented a car. Renting a car in santorini is also cheap. We were a little nervous to ask how much is was, but when we found out it was 15 euros a day, we were more than relieved. When we asked if it was more to rent an automatic the woman got a serious look on her face and said, "Yes, I'm sorry. It is more expensive."
"How much," we asked.
"20 euros!"
God, greece letting me down again!
Deal! So we rented ourselves a cute little red number, that Jono was in charge of driving.

Our first stop was the red sand beach. It's a bit of a hike to get up there (really you are hiking on a cliff on the side of a mountain), but once all the hard work is done it is completely worth it. Im going to have to try and do a photo montage (now that's harder said than done), so I can show you... The water is a MAGICAL blue color, and the sand is made of red volcanic rock. It's along side a huge cliff that is also bright red. It's really surreal. Getting there felt a little like Fred Penner, when he crawls through the tree trunk and comes out in his own little magical world. I felt like we hiked over that cliff, and came out in our little magical beach world.

You're probably wondering how I felt in my bikini through all this? Well mostly I was actually okay. No one really cares what you look like. Everyone wears them, it's just what you do. It was only annoying when we came across team Rib Cage, otherwise known as the girls who are 5'8 or taller and weigh about 100 pounds. These girls also tend to be tanned and have perfect hair. Good thing the beach wasn't on top of the cliff because I may have "accidentally" pushed a few girls off. They're really light though, so they probably just would have floated down like a feather and landed gracefully in the water, barely making a splash. Their Channel sunglasses staying firmly in place.

On most beaches that we were on there are men that go around selling CD's. I think their illegal copies, but they're pretty good knock offs. When the man came to us the first time we said no, but then we remembered that we did have a car now and would be doing quite a bit of driving. So I said that if he had any Britney Spears (as this would be possibly the funniest thing of all time) we had to buy it! So we got him to come back and ended buying three CD's which would be a constant source of entertainment for us for the rest of our time on the islands. The first one we bought was a mix that had things like Britney, Rhianna and other trashy dance music that we would basically never be caught dead listening to on any other day. It also had this song called Mercy by someone named Duffy which is THE song in Greece right now. Every bar there played it about once an hour, it's grown on me I have to say... probably because it will always make me think of Greece now. The second CD was another mix with more Britney and, my most hated of all North America bands, Nickelback. I, at first, refused to buy the CD because it had their song called Rockstar on it, but because it had Britney we just went with it. Then we bought another one that was supposed to sound like the "Paris Fashion District". As far as I could tell it didn't.. but it was fun anyway.

So we spent hours (really) cruising around Santorini (and later the smaller island of Ios) BLASTING, as only gross North Americans would, Britney Spears' songs Gimme More and Piece of me, Rockstar by Nickelback, Please Don't Stop the Music by Rhianna, Mercy by Duffy, and a Mary J. Blige song I don't remember the name of. Needless to say we all know the words to every song. Rockstar is the most disgusting and awful song ever written, but please listen to it again and listen carefully for the "backround vocals" (aka: Creepy voice man saying things like "tell me what you want"). It's so awful that it's funny. And it's more funny to listen to as you're zipping past some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. Even the country side goats liked Britney!

Santorini, and most of the islands, are famous for their sunsets. So one night, one of my favorites of my vacation as the whole, we drove to the town of Oia. This is the town where all the pictures are taken, of the white buildings and the blue roof tops. We blasted Britney and Jono masterfully manipulated the windy mountain roads of the island and in about 20 minutes we were there. We splurged and had dinner on a rooftop restaurant, where the food wasn't the best we had (although it was no where near bad) but was the most expensive so far, but mostly we were paying for the view/location. Who can beat dinner on a roof top restaurant over looking the ocean and a bunch of far off islands? I mean, it was okay, if you like that sort of thing. Greece though, as it usually does, let me down again by have mist in the way. All I asked for was a clear sunset! Is that too much to ask?? The sunset was completely amazing and beautiful. It's weird to see how fast the world actually turns, because the last bit of it goes by so quickly... the bright orange ball of light fades away in mere seconds. The whole island seems to sit still and watch during that time. It's a pretty magical thing, needless to say after that every night after that we watched all the sunsets quietly and in awe, with extreme gratitude. I mean, if you like that sort of thing.
I took a hilarious photo where for some reason I am making an angry face and in the back ground jessi is all smiley. It sort of looked like I was saying "I HATE SUNSETS!" with my face. This also became one of my mottos.

After dinner we decided to take a walk through the magical little town. Honestly, it felt like I was in a movie. No cars can drive through this area at all (we parked a good 15 minute walk away), but donkeys can, as the streets are literally tiny narrow walking lanes. While you're walking on them, you also happen to be walking on someone's roof, or the roof of a shop. Everything is very compact and tight knit. It's probably some of the most interesting/amazing buildings I've ever seen. I was completely smitten. I remain so.. even now as I write this. I don't think it would ever grow old for me. What I wanted though, ever since we got there, was the view I'd seen in paintings. These buildings seen from below. Which is why i was sad we didn't pull into the port of Oia. As we walked through the town we were slowly descending, although I don't think any of us were conscious of it as we were a little awestruck (although Jessi had been to santorini before, so perhaps this was less of a thrill for her than it was for Jono and I). At one point we came around the corner, and there to our left was the view I'd more or less been waiting for. As the sun was pretty much set (but it was still light, and the sky was that sort of cobalt blue with tiny streaks of liquid light still getting caught in the clouds), there were lights coming from the houses, and it was probably one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Being the crier that I am, it took all of 2 seconds for me to get teary eyed. It was absolutely stunning, and remains one of my favorite moments of my trip so far. I don't think I'll ever forget it. We stood there for a long time, until all the light from the sky was gone. Eventually we moved from that spot and ended up at what seemed to be the remnants of an old look out tower, almost right in the middle of the town. Every night many many tourists flock there to watch the sunset, so we sat there forever and looked at the ocean, the town and the sky. From that angle, you could see the port that I was hoping we would arrive at, and also the Santorini windmill that you might know from paintings or pictures. We stayed there for a long time. I couldn't really move to be honest. It was too pretty. I don't really know how to translate what I saw into words. I suggest you go to the island now for yourself! I mean, it was okay, if you like that kind of thing. I mean, obviously I don't, but, as my mom would say, to each his own!

Eventually we did in fact break our eyes away, and headed home. Which was a wee bit of an adventure as we didnt' have enough gas to make it and we were unsure if we'd find a gas station that was open! We did though...

We spent most/all of our time in Santorini relaxing on the beach, so as you can imagine I got an awesome tan! And by that I mean I got half a shade darker and burned a little and mostly just got a whole bunch of freckles. I can't tan to save my life I don't think. We ended up finding another beach bar in Perrissa that also let you sit for free. The music was better, and they had delicious smoothies, so it became our new favorite. There was also a girl who worked there who had the best tan I've ever seen, and she was just sort of so nice and beautiful that we all sort of fell in love with her and wanted to become BFF's. Mostly, I wanted to steal her tan. She tried to give me tanning tips, none of them worked, so mostly she just tormented me by coming up to me after a few hours and holding up her arm to mine to see if I'd gotten any darker.. I hadn't.

I have to say there is nothing really like floating in the ocean (as we did a lot) with two of your best friends. Looking up at the clear blue sky, with really nothing to worry about. No deadlines, no theatre things to worry about, no job to run to. It was one of the best feelings ever. I think the three of us were so happy we may have even surprised ourselves a bit. Then to have someone bring you some sort of massive and delicious drink to your beach chair... well ya, that's okay, if you like that sort of thing.

To add to this, right near our villa there was a house. In the yard of this house there was a cage. In the cage in this yard was... A BUNNY! That's right, a big white cute bunny. I named him Dennis, in honour of Michael. Actually I wanted to name him George, but that got confusing because we all know that George ran the Villa. So it was Dennis the bunny. We had little chats he and I. I really wanted to break into the yard and try and pet him but i never did!

Most nights we would have dinner and then either go for drinks, or go and buy a couple of bottles of wine. One night we bought two really cheap bottles of white wine and they were the grossest things I have ever tasted. The first one made me gag when I tried to drink it. To me, it tasted like mushrooms and dirt. I had to chug each glass just to get it down. The next bottle though, was (and we didn't think it was possible) even worse! We didn't drink more than a quarter of the bottle before throwing it away. From then on, after we tasted a new wine, I compared it to the mushroom dirt wine.. and if it did taste like an awkward combination of those two things then we were good to go.

Okay, so we may have drank a little in greece. Just a bit. But can you blame us? A liter of wine was often only 4 euros!

We spent our last night in Santorini at a beach bar, and Jessi and Jono tried to sneak into pools of neighboring hotels. We requested Britney at one bar, and they played it for us and we danced in the street (for real) to Toxic. It was pretty much one of the best moments ever. We drank Tequila Sunrises and Sex on the Beach (it's a cocktail there, not a shot) that were the size of our heads and had fruit on them. I mean, they were okay, if you like that sort of thing.

Eventually we had to say goodbye to Santorini for a bit as we were moving on to the smaller island of Ios. We had booked a slow ferry, and we were all a little calmer knowing we wouldn't be on a boat named after an animal that hates water (aka the flying cat 4). Greece.. letting me down again with their inappropriately named boats!

I'll end part 1 here as this is already very long. Obviously, I'm back on Canadian soil now, so I have no excuse and plan on re-reading the following entries over. I apologize again for all the typos of the other entries. I read one over the other day and it was bad! I actually wanted to edit them all, so if you've got an office job and you're bored check in and see because I'll probably add to them too. I have really bad jetlag that is materializing in a complete inability to sleep at any time of day, and resulting in me being like a zombie. Although I guess I've only been home for about 36 hours (for realz) so I can't really complain too much.
Anyway since I can't sleep.. I'll edit.. maybe!

Greece part two, and London part 2 to come. Then I have a wrap up in mind.. because I like wrap ups. Plus I'm self absorbed enough to think that you would like to read a wrap up because we all know this is all about me!

See you soon friends!
xoxo
Lanalu

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