Goodbye Naxos! Perhaps we’ll be back someday!
Goodbye Naxos! Perhaps we’ll be back someday!
Last year on our cruise with TCSE we spent a port day in Athens, and we weren't too sold on it truth be told. So when Chris and Michi invited us to meet up with them in Greece as part of their grand Euro-tour we knew we didn't want to spend an entire week in the city.
Besides, everyone's primary reason for wanting to go to Greece was BEACHES, which are few and far between in land-locked Athens. So after meeting up with Chris and Michi in the capital, we hopped a ferry and skipped off to the Cyclades Islands!
Ha-ha. Skipped. We actually RAN our butts off to the islands because we all forgot to set our clocks an hour ahead and woke up with JUST enough time to run like crazy people (with the baby stroller flying and the baby's cheeks jiggling like Jell-O) through the streets of Piraeus. But by some incredible blessing from on high we made it, catching the ferry as it was practically leaving the port!
At the risk of sounding horribly cheesey, despite our absolutely crazy day with all the things that seemed to go wrong, it was actually a really good day! I don't remember feeling upset or frustrated once. It was all one grand adventure.
And besides, picking spines out of my husband's foot as we sat on our private balony with great friends and a cute baby while listening to the ocean waves was definitely not a bad way to end our first day in Greece :)
The Nitty Gritty Stuff, in case anybody wants to know:
Lastly, for want of recording this memory and not being able to find anywhere else to place it, I'm writing it down here:
Within an hour of stepping off the plane in Athens, Chris gave accurate directions to another tourist who couldn't figure out the metro system. He is a man of many talents :)
Holy cow! Is it REALLY 2014 already?
Yet again, I find myself desperately catching up on the blog from last year in order to start the new year fresh and ready to keep up with the new things happening. I realized recently that last January I was blogging about our big “summer” trip we took in September and strangely enough, this year is no different. We also took our big trip of the year in September this year and here I am writing about it in January again. At least I’m consistent :)
I have seriously had the worst case of writer’s block lately. I’ve literally been staring at a blank blog page for almost 2 months now with a completely empty brain. As soon as I open the blog to begin a post, all known language drains out of my head and I’m left slowly drooling on the keyboard until Chris comes along and snaps me out it so we can eat dinner.
I think part of it stems from the fact I had really high hopes for this series of posts on Greece. While we were there I filled pages and pages of notes and observations in the hopes that I could turn them into flowing posts of beautiful, yet hilarious prose perfectly preserving the memories of that trip forever. Now, after spending too many hours disinfecting drooled-on keyboards, I think it’s finally time to admit defeat and just write the darn things.
Writer’s block: 1 Chelsea: 0
So here we go:
This one time back in September we met up with Chris&Michi&Baby in Greece after their 2-week sojourn in Germany. Islands were hopped, beaches were relaxed upon, ruins were explored, and tzatziki was consumed in large quanities. And hey! Look! So far no drool. Opa!
One day after the temple, we tagged along with some of the ward families for a quick evening at the beach. Somehow they convinced us “wimpy Americans” to jump into the nippy Baltic water. I'm still not quite sure how that happened….