August 20th-23rd Ios
Michael and I had opted to fly down to the greek islands to avoid the hassle of a bus and ferry as well as the time involved (40 hours) and ultimately it wasn't that much more expensive. So we flew into Santorini and took a ferry over to Ios and arrived around 2 in the afternoon. Ios is the biggest party island so we opted to spend a few days there. Aside from private rooms, there are basically 2 places to stay: Francesco's hostel right downtown by the bars or Far Out Beach club/camping on the beach. Either way you spend all day all Far Out and all night downtown....the difference is just where you end up sleeping. I am not much of one for camping in August as I like to sleep in with a/c after partying all night, and had read some horrible reviews about the heat and bugs at the beach camping place so we opted to pay the extra and stay at Francescos (still only 22euro per person vs the 11 to sleep in a canvas sweat tent with communal bathrooms).
So, we turned the a/c down to 19celcius and closed all the shutters to block out the light and slept for about 8 hours before waking up at 10:30 for the nightly pub crawl from the hostel. They give everyone a free shot ("shot" rather as it was basically juice with a dash of vodka) and continue to socialize there for the next couple of hours before walking as a group down to the other bar that they own (the bar tenders come with and start working at the other place). Loads of Australians, Brits, and the occassional American and Canadian sprinkled in. Quickly went from being empty to packed like sardines. Keep in mind the bars don't even start getting busy until 12:30am. Me and Michael met a few people and followed them around to some bars before eventually ended up at the Sweet Irish Dream which doesn't even open until like 2:30am. They do have one of the best drinks I've ever had which has the same name as the bar (I guess their signature drink). Kind of a minty, creamy, baileys sort of thing. After that it become a bit of a blur and it takes going over the photos the next morning to refresh our memories. The thing is there are a lot of people so drunk they are just passed out on the sidewalk completely fucked up with their pants down or something. We took pictures with some of them. I'll say though, Ios reminded me of Ibiza a bit in that the place is a bit overloaded drunk, pushy, beefy guys and its quite annoying to even be around them.
We went to Porky's for the best Gyro Pita ever. We had 4 or 5 over the course of 3 days. Shredded pork, Tzaki (sp?) sauce, tomato, french fries, and lettuce plus the special yellow sauce that reminded me of Icelandic mustard. We eventually went home and passed out.
I woke up and it was dark. I looked at the clock and it was about 1pm...thank goodness we sprung for the dark, a/c filled room. We walked the mile down to the Far Out beach club and started drinking frozen Daquaris and the like. I had this one called a Jelly Bean which was half southern comfort half rum with a splash of Grenadine. Basically pure liquor. this was served in a pint glass which was about 2/3rd full. So pretty damn strong really. We spent the day by the pool and beach and eventually met some German girls to hang out with that night. Michael speaks German so this was a good thing. We met up with them later and hung out for a few hours but eventually ended up at a dance club where they were immediately swarmmed by no less than 6 guys at a time that would shoulder me out of the way, step in between us while we were dancing, etc. This was possibly the worst bar I had ever been to in my entire life. I told the girls we were heading to another bar but they wanted to stay so that was that. Not too worried about it as they were fun to hang out with for a few hours but this is what i didn't like about Ibiza and what I don't like about Ios...its a big retarded competition with a bunch of drunk fucks jumping around singing that god damn Americano song that played litrally every 20 minutes while we were there. You can't talk to anyone, you end up spending $5/beer, drinking watered down shots, and at the end of the night question what is actually fun about going out at all. I knew this is what that scene was like and it really just served to remind me that its not my scene. So, in summary the party islands of Ios or Ibiza or whatever all suck unless you are on drugs or are a very slutty girl who like lots of attention. Unfortunately I was neither on this trip. With that said at least all the girls were pretty hot.
The next day we chilled at the beach and I passed out in the shade. We had planned on taking a speed boat tour around the island and doing some snorkling, but yet again the water was took choppy so it was cancelled. We met a guy from California or something who followed us over to Francescos for the nightly free "shot" and after that I went to bed early (1am) and Michael continued out bar hopping for a few hours. We had to catch the ferry the next morning and I was feeling a bit run down at this point.
