Ios and Beyond

I promised myself I wouldn't play favorites with the Islands. I knew each one would be different, and wonderful in their own ways. Mykonos, the party animal; Paros, the beaches from heaven; Santorini, the beautiful one; and Ios, the one that I didn't know much about to begin with.

But, I picked a favorite: Ios. By far the most fun and most relaxing of the four, Ios intoxicated me from the moment I stepped off the Ferry From Hell.

On Ios, there were water sports. Parasailing, wind surfing, inner tubing. Due to weather, Sarina and I only managed to go inner tubing, an affair that left me with a raw rubber burn on my elbow and salt water in my eyes. Easily the most invigoriating 30 munutes of my life. I screamed like a little girl in delight, and did my best to hold onto my bikini bottoms when they flew off when I hit the water, flung from my rubber raft by a sharp left turn. I have pictures of my "Mach 2" ride, and they are hilarious. I'm nothing more than ridiculously long limbs being flung into salty waves and me grinning like an idiot, snot dripping down my face.

The nightlife in Ios is legendary. It's the silent party animal, the mild-mannered college student with a penchant for keggers and raves. People start at the bars at 11PM and stumble home somewhere north of 6 in the morning the next day. Each bar was a party, a dance, a relaxed and non-pressuring atmosphere of fun and only mild hedonism. Each pub also offers the "7-shot challenege": buy 7 shots, take them at the bar, and get a free T-shirt. Sarina ended up with 5, me, only a modest 4 over the course of two crazy nights.

We partied until the small hours, and slept until the late ones. We drank coffee at the sweetest little bakery you could imagine. The owners, Joanne and Wendy (and their adorable adopted cat, Kitty), came to know us, talking about their lives and ours, serving us cupcakes with jelly in the middle and coffee whipped with ice into a thick, tasty treat.

It was a difficult place to leave.

But, leave we did, and here we are back in Athens, me in a transitional state of mind, ready to go home, but already missing the view of the ocean from my hostel room.

Fucking Wind

While on Mykonos, Sarina and I went ATVing (is that really a verb?). We found a little dock with what looked like private fishing boats tied up, we stopped our vehicles, stripped down, and jumped in. The water was so clear and salty that we floated on the surface without much effort. It was truly one of the lovelier experiences of my life.

The next morning, our tour group was leaving for Paros. I was actually relieved; I don't think I could have slept another night on that camp bed without turning into a serial killer. I've just figured out why every murder in the world was committed: the perpetrator just needs a nicer bed.

When we got the port, it was so windy that I almost fell over on the spot and I'm not even exaggerating. The morning ferry was canceled, and because we were traveling with a tour group, we didn't have to deal with it. Sarina and I shrugged our shoulders and went a got a beer.

We finally got another ferry for later in the afternoon, but what was supposed to be a 45 minute trip turned into a full day adventure, complete with a 6-hour layover in Syros. Sarina and I were not in the slightest bothered, though I think that had more to do with the several bottles of wine we had bought than anything else.

Paros was lovely. We decided to take a tour of the Antiparos Islands on a party cruise set up by our tour group. 40 of us piled on to a rather small boat, and promptly began drinking. Every hour or so we would stop, jump off the boat and snorkel. We stopped on a sandbar around noon and the captain of the ship barbecued lunch. We swam more, and made sure to drink lots of Ouzo.

The next day we set off for Santorini, the island that I was most looking forward to seeing. However, there was a nation-wide ferry strike on the day that we were supposed to leave. Our morning ferry was once again canceled.

We were (thankfully) booked onto a second ferry, though at this point Sarina and I could not have started drinking if we had wanted to. There are only so many times you can day-drink without dying.

This ferry, as it were, was sent directly from hell. Unlike the other ferries, there was no outdoor section. Previously, Sarina and I would sit a nice cafe table on the ferry deck and drink and talk and catch more sun. This time, the boat was structured more like an airplane, with airplane seats and trays and even seat belts. That in and of itself would not have been so terrible, if there had been a window to open or air conditioning or something. Anything. But, several hundred people were corralled into the space, locked in, with no windows or air circulation.

But now, we are on Santorini. It is just as beautiful as I had imagined. Sarina and I are going ATVing again today, and the concluding with a picnic on the beach. This trip has been overall amazing, but I'm just past the halfway point, at night, just before I go to sleep, I realize that I want to go home. I'm in paradise, but not really. I'm having the time of my life, and I can't wait to get back, go to the gym, watching Criminal Minds with Alex, and look back on my pictures with a smile and a memory.

And now, we talk about food.

In my Real Life (TM), I am a health-conscious vegan who enjoys jogging and lifting weights and cooking meals made out of wheat grass, carrots, and tree bark.

Here, I don't think I gone one meal without some sort of meat, egg, or dairy product. No tree bark anywhere, and jogging? Only from my hostel room to the bar.

Suffice to say, I let the vegan thing go.

And I'm so glad that I did. Upon my return to my Real Life (TM) I will most likely resume my vegan, health consious, only slightly crazy eating patterns. But here, Souvlaki calls. Along with fish platters from hell, creamy yogurts, and chicken gyros. And sausage moussaki, spiced cottage cheese, and mad little coffee drinks made from condensed milk. I have been drinking coffee at night and white wine in the mornings. I eat what I want, when I want it, no exceptions. It has been glorious. The food tastes like heaven, though I'm not sure if that's because it's actually good, or because I'm here on vacation, half way around the world from what is normal to me.

Going out at night has been a crazy experience, too. It's so sensuous, and I mean that literally: my senses have been thrown into overdrive. The cold drink in my hand, the warm breeze in my hair, the smooth wood bar under my feet, and the absolute visual assault of 20-somethings wearing nothing but very small bathing suits. I'm trying to commit it all to memory, because it feel so good. So when I go back to my Real Life (TM) and back to eating vegetables and running for fun and stopping after one glass of wine - which are all things I look forward to going back to; a vacation is only fun if it ends - I can refer to this moment, and know that somewhere, under a cool Greek breeze, a little piece of my soul is eating meat and drinking and dancing until 6 AM.

Travel Lessons Learned

Today, I spent 4 hours on an ATV, driving around Mykonos, seeing breath-taking seascapes and battered, whitewashed old churches atop hills of golden dirt.

Look at me and my cliched travel writing. I'M SO AWESOME WHEN I WANT TO BE. But here's the thing: cliches hit me over the head while I'm viewing these landscapes. I try to avoid them, but phrases like "nestled town" and "breath-taking views" and "idyllic" slip out of my brain and right onto this blog. There are no other words, not that I can think of anyway.

So, in conclusion, this trip is meeting every single expectation I set for it. Which is impressive, because I've read Eat, Pray, Love. Middle aged female journalists with unlimited funds tend to set vacation bars high. And Greece is knocking them out of the water, every time.

Sarina and I woke up late from a night of extreme partying. Like, wow. I do not have the capactiy to party like I should in Mykonos. The whole beach that we are staying at is a loud, hot, pulsating rythem of drunk 20-somethings swaying under the influence of adventure, sun, sex, and alcohol. It is overwhelming, to say the least.

But I was with my girl, and Sarina and I are a party in and of ourselves, so we danced into the wee hours of the morning together, laughing and talking, and making a memory so strong that I get butterflies just thinking abou it. And that's all I wanted from this trip.

Since we got a late start, Sarina and I hopped on our ATVs, put on our big, sexy helmets and we to a seafood place in the main town for lunch. (Note: I was wearing my super sexy travel sandals, my geriatric shorts and a helmet. The other girls wore bikinis to show of their perfect flat stomachs the color of cocoa, with no helmets and perfectly wind tossed hair.) We ordered the special: the seafood platter.

When it came, Sarina and I officially began keeping track of our "Travel Lessons Learned The Fucking Hard Way" and the second one was: DON'T EVER ORDER THE SEAFOOD PLATTER. (The first? DON'T EVER ORDER VODKA AND REDBULL.) This platter came out with two whole fishes, two whole shrimps, a entire octopus, and entire squid, two mussles, and a few potatoes. My spine prickled with fear, and my arms went boneless. I stopped our waitress and desprately asked for a glass of wine. There was no way I was going to eat that crazy plate of food sober.

"They should really let you know the fish isn't going to come fried, like it does at Chevy's," Sarina said.

I laughed a mirthless laugh into my wine.

I really want to tell you about the Youth Hostel Sarina and I stayed at in Athens. It was so fun, and truly the only way to travel. However, the hostel in Mykonos is literally a wooden box with 2 camp beds that manage to make sleep a living hell. So, maybe not the only way to travel, but still a great one.

This Post Brought to You by the San Francisco 49ers.

I opted not to bring my computer with me, for a number of reasons. Mostly, I will be staying at hostels, and I don't know what the security/privacy is like, and I don't want my computer stole. I feel like a small white MacBook with a Snow White sticker on it just screams, "EASY TARGET." It may also scream easy target becuase I want the damn thing stolen. Good luck to the sucker who picks that piece of plastic up. On second thought, I definitely should have brought the computer. More life lessons, right there.

As such, getting pictures from my camera to the internet has presented a special challenge. As in, I can't really do it. So, for now, no pictures. You are all henceforth sentenced to read my rambling crap without a visual aid. I'm such a stinker.

Today, I move from the ultra luxurious Royal Olympic Hotel to the not-so-swanky-but-hopefully-equally-charming [Name redacted until I return to the States for Security Purposes because I am Paranoid-with-a-capital-P.] Hostel. A different experience, I'm sure, but I'm excited because now I have a travel buddy and the "real" part of my trip is about to begin. Seeing ruines that date back to the birth of civilized democracy? Pish posh. Seeing the Temple of Zeus where people would pray to the original God (henceforth known as O.G. ha! And, that is the second time I've used the word henceforth in this post, and possibly ever. Weird.) Whatever. The cite of the origianal Olympics? Eh, meh. Sitting on a beach with water so clear you can see the fishies shitting on each other while drinking wine and reading? NOW THAT'S A FUCKING VACATION.

Last night, I ate at the posh rooftop hotel restaurant, and it was glorious. Just me, a bottle of wine and breath taking views. Here's a picture from Instagram:



When I ordered a bottle of wine for myself and my imaginary friend sitting accross from me, the waiter got a little judgey and was like "A whole bottle?" in his adorable and also condescending Greek accent, and I was like, "Yes," in my best annoyed, tough-girl accent. It sounded suspiciously like I was from Jersey.

I struck up a conversation with the people sitting at the table next to mine, a nice Austrailian couple who was on the last 2 week leg of their 10 week European adventure. I shit you not. 10 weeks they took off of work and got everywhere from Paris to Rome to Germany to about 3000 other places, and were now here to finish the whole shebang with 2 weeks on the Greek Islands. When they told me all of this, I looked at them with a sort of reverence - they are inspirational. One day, I will take 10 weeks to see every part of a country like they did. Amazing. Also, the husband had lived in San Diego for 3 years when he was younger, and, unfortuantely, he was a Raider's fan. Damn you, Raider Nation. HOW DID YOU GET ALL THE WAY TO GREECE? Just a question, and hey! 49ers! let's figure out how to do that, too.

Up next: Okay, really I'll talk about food. I want to tell you about it SO BADLY, but I had to share with you the Austrialian couple and their crazy 10 week adventure. Oh! And I must tell you about the Sandal Poet of Greece. I went to his shop, and it was amazing. I bought the most beautiful sandals for myself and a pair for Alex that I will shame him into wearinging, even though he thinks sandals make him look like a Bro. Until next time.

So this morning, I freaked out.

I went to bed last night at around 9PM. I had been traveling all day, then I went walking around my hotel and got horribly lost. My sense of direction, as some of you may know, is non-existant. I get lost around my apartment if I'm not careful. At first, I was horribly lost in a clearly shady part of town, though I eventually found a set of swanky cafes and houses overlooking the water. I wasn't really confused by this fact. I mean, look at Los Angeles: there is literally an invisible line that separates extreme weath from extreme poverty, and this was exactly like that.

I spent an hour and a half just walking in the direction that I was about 75% sure was correct. When I finally got back to the hotel, I fell asleep right away. I woke up the next more at 4:30AM, and could not, for the life of me, get back to sleep. I stayed in bed for another two hours, until the hotel started serving breakfast. I went down to the breakfast lounge and lingered over the meal, despite the fact that the food had a distincly green hue to it.

After I finished, I went over to the computer in the lobby, to research what I should do with the day that lay ahead of me. I promised Sarina that I would wait to see the Acropolis with her, but I figured I would go see the area around that, and look for a nice museum or other such nerdy activites that gets my heart pounding in naughty ways. I searched for the Acropolis on google maps, and then plugged in the address of my hotel to see how far I would have to walk to get there. Google spit out that it would be a 2 hour and 10 minute walk, or, if I were so inclined, a leasurely 40 minute drive. I freaked. The. Hell. Out. I would like to think that there was some magic combination of lonliness, exhaustion, frustration of getting lost the day before, the general creepiness of the port city my hotel was in, and a green-tinged meal creeping slowly up my stomach and into my esophagus that pushed me to what I did next.

I cried. Bawled my damn eyes out like a 10 year old lost in a crowd. So, I called my dad. I calmly (HA!) told him the situation, and, like any parent watching his child in pain, my dad offered me a present. A shiny new hotel of my choosing, closer to the city center and within comfortable walking distance to those brainy museums I wanted to see so badly. I just contiuned to cry, absolutely unable to do anything else. Because, really, I'm just me: badass, controlled, list-making, triaging, smart(ass), lady-with-a-plan Devon, who sometimes looses her shit and cries in the middle of hotels*. I was so scared, and felt bad that I had lost it like I had.

After changing hotels, I was all of a sudden even more upset. I didn't want to be that person that couldn't roll with the punches. I bill myself as pretty relaxed, low maintenance, excited to try new things. I usually jump at new experiences and adventure and the thrill that comes with not knowing what comes next. In my day-to-day life, I try my hardest to be that way, and this, well, this disgusted me a little bit. Here I am, handed a huge adventure, a new puzzle to sort out and unlock, and I run and cry at the first sign of trouble.

This trip thus far has not been life changing; rather, it has been life-affirming in many ways. It has reminded me that I am just a person, trying this all out for the first time, and I'm not going to get it right every time, no matter how much I may wish otherwise. Sometimes crying in hotels and packing up, getting on the metro, dragging 40 pounds of luggage around Athens City Center, sweating like an old Russian man in a sauna, looking at three different maps to get a reference point, and landing at a new hotel with a pool and view of the Acropolis is totally, awesomely worth it. And somewhat of an adventure in and of itself. Not as sexy as hopping on a rented Vespa at the port city I was in and exploring Athens City Center for the day, only to ride back to the harbor after dinner. (My little fantasy of what would have happened if I had stayed at the hotel in the harbor.) But let's be real: about 80% of this trip has rested on 3 hour lunches, with an entire bottle of wine to myself. Drunk Vespa driving in Greece? Not the beeesssstttt idea. Life lessons, and all that.

Tomorrow: we talk about food. I have officially become one of those annoying foreign customers in little cafes that photographs every plate of food and every cup of coffee that is put in front of me. And soon, I will be that annoying travel blogger who puts said pictures on the Internet and assumes everyone cares. Pretend for me, please. The food has been awesome.

*I have a soft nougat center under this tough shell, guys. NOUGAT.

Sleeping Pills and Hotels and Euros, OH MY

I just got to my hotel here in Athens. My flight out of Los Angeles was uneventful, and my flight to Greece from Atlanta, while crowded, was tolerable. I took a sleeping pill about an hour into the flight, got my headphones and eyemask on, and fell the hell asleep. Wonderful, blissful, I DON'T REMEMBER SITTING IN COACH sleep. Until 3 hours into the flight, when the person sitting next to me jabbed me in the arm with his index finger.

"I really have to pee," he said.

Well, bully for you, asshat. I couldn't fall back asleep for the life of me, and I have a bruise on my arm. I did manage to squeeze in another few hours of sleep just before we landed, and I think the adrenaline is pumping pretty hard at this point. Suffice to say I'm gonna sleep WELL tonight.

Just before the wheels hit the ground, I started laughing like I have never laughed before. The abject terror that has plagued me for the last 48 hours (or much longer, if I'm not lying to you) let up and dissolved into joy, excitment, and madwoman giggles. Once I deplaned, I approached a woman near the ground transportation desk. She smelled wonderful, and had the most beautiful accent. I may only think that about the accent because I've never really heard a real Greek person speak English. She did, however, smell like heaven. I smelled like the inside of tennis shoe.

I showed her my confirmation paper for the hotel, and she didn't recognize the place, but did try to help me find a bus route that could take me there. She told me the bus would cost 3 euros, and a cab would be upwards to 20.

Let me take this moment to tell you all that I don't really trust myself with the bus system in Santa Monica, let alone a foreign country where the alphabet is totally different. It's all Greek to me! BA. DUM. CHAAAAAA. So I was like, "Yeah, thanks. Where's the cab line?"

I grabbed a cab and the guy told me that the ride would be around 40 euros, and I didn't even care. After 11 hours in a seat that is too small for a 5-year-old to comfortably relax in, the stress, cramped headache of a bus was NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. Also, my hotel was 22 km away from the airpot. DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG THAT WOULD TAKE ON A BUS??

Me either, because I paid for the damn cab.

So here I am at the hotel, waiting for the room to be cleaned, 40 *cough60cough I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT* euros out. Most of my anxiety around leaving was about getting from the airport to the hotel unharmed, so now that I'm here, I'm really, REALLY excited, and the terror is gone. WORTH IT.