Life As We Live It

We arrived in Greece on a sunny but cool day (shock #1), had no problem (shock #2) finding a bus to downtown Athens…that only cost about $1000 each (shock #3). We made out way down the streets unapproached and unhassled (shock #4)…even when we were looking at our maps, and found a quaint hostel for about $100000/night (shock #5) in the dorm room. Ahhh…the continent where dorms and frugality would necessarily become our daily struggle! We had 3 days to wander the streets of Athens before a 3-day cruise that my parents had VERY generously secured for us. They must have sensed that what we REALLY needed right about then was a few days of pampering, food and relaxation with nowhere to go…and nothing to plan. It was so perfect. Anyway…I quickly discovered an AMAZING gyros place where for 1.5 euros you could have a nearly perfect and complete meal (fresh pita filled with COPIOUS amounts of greasy roasted pork, some lettuce, tomato and tzaziki…GOD they were good!)…it was my first large amounts of meat in weeks and I loved every cruel minute of meat eating I did. Long live the pig! Julia was equally quick to discover Gelatto…and suffice to say that we were quite happy with our culinary discoveries (and the prices) and ate those things 3 meals a day for the next 3 days. We casually wandered the streets with little purpose, taking in the copious number of ancient ruin sites, museums and street life. We were pleasantly amused by the funky guards they had marching around some of the more important buildings including the tomb of the unknown soldier. We came across these guards quite by accident while doing one of our walking tours…when we were approached by two LARGE gentlemen carrying bayoneted guns. It might have been intimidating except for the fact that the poor lads had to wear plaid miniskirts, white wolly tights, funny tasseled hats and Scottish-like jackets all brought to a ridiculous finale with shinny tap shoes decorated with soccer-ball sized pom-poms. To top it off…they had the most energy inefficient high legged walk that, if they had been real Scotsmen, would have stopped traffic and overwhelmed even the toughest ladies. I’d love to have been at the meeting of drunken fools when they decided to make this one of their national symbols and most photographed sights. Ahhh…OOZO…OPA!! We toured the typical things like the acropolis, and were sufficiently impressed with them. Greece…at least Athens is a pretty city with some nice streets and atmosphere around…but as the theme will emerge in our last entries, Europe is definitely a place to travel when you’re rich! The cruise was a real adventure and a pleasant retreat from our ‘daily grind’ as tourists. We made our way to the pier by subway and a long hike brought us to the cruise ship. We didn’t really know what to expect as either of us had been on a cruise before so we were pleasantly surprised to find out that all of our food was included, the ship was huge!, our room was cute and clean, there was a little workout room including a sauna and also a hot tub that was slightly luke warm but nice. It was pretty cold out for the first couple of days on the cruise. We took advantage of the hot tub and sauna and even gave the workout room a test drive one night while everyone else was off visiting Rhodes. We were only docked there for a couple of hours and there was no way to walk to the town and the shuttle bus to get there was an extrordianary charge that we didn’t feel like forking out so we stayed on board and took advantage of the empty ship! The next day we docked at another tiny greek island for much of the morning. We got off the boat and toured the tiny town. We stocked up on cheap wine and ouzo for the boat (drinks were an extra charge) and after a fill of greek culture and architecture, headed back to the boat for an all you can eat lunch. Whatever weight we had lost in Nepal and SouthEast Asia, we put back on in these three days! The food was great. Dinner was especially fun when we were seated with another couple each night to encourage socializing and to fit everyone into the one dining room. Both nights we were seated with elderly couples who were excited to hear all about our travel adventures. They told all their friends about us and we were soon well known on board as the young travelers. Too cute. Tyler dressed up in his only pair of dirty hiking pants and only button up shirt each night and I in my only nice skirt and clean white top to take in the evening entertainment. We watched a VERY uncoordinated Chinese lady dance about on stage during a “learn to dance” show that was put on. We hadn’t laughed that hard in a long time. At least she was up there giving it her all. I think we even got a bit of it on video. We also watched a tacky but funny traditional greek dance. We were very impressed overall with the entertainment and food on board. SUCH a nice break to not have to worry about money or paying for food. The cruise ended and we spend a couple more days in Athens checking out the Acropolis and a few more ancient ruins we had missed. Overall, we loved Athens and would recommend it to everyone.