I've never been more scared in a cave...

Today was no different than any other day on this vacation other than the locations. We spent a lot of time in the car. It was worth it though as we first went off to Epidvaros, home to one of the best preserved theaters in Greece. The acoustics were so good. I even tested it out, singing my 8 bar cut and then a whole song for all the other tourists sitting in the theater. It was nerve wracking! I was shaking!

After the theater and its museum (boring and only 2 rooms big) we drove to Mycenae, the oldest civilization found in Greece (1200 BC). I read the Rick Steves tour book out loud to Aaron and we were able to point out where the royalty had been buried, the royal palace, and the lion's gate. Look, no heads!

Towards the end of the adventure at Mycenae, we found the cistern, where all the citizens' water came from. It literally was a black hole down 99 steps. We went down to the bend in the tunnel and I couldn't see my own hand right in front of my face. Thank god for iPhones with flash otherwise I wouldn't have been able to see anything. I was not happy to be there.

Aaron was pretty psyched to be that far underground but I was scared. After the cistern of death, we drove down the hill to the Tomb of Agammemnon. Pretty standard tomb with nice acoustics. Not that a dead person would need good acoustics!

After Mycenae, we drove off to the airport. Yep, the trip is coming to an end. We fly out tomorrow. With the rest of the evening free, we drove to the mall and saw The Avengers for 7 euros a piece which comes out to $5.63 as of right now. That'e the price of a small popcorn in Manhattan.

 We woke up to this sight in Pylos. (Notice the private pools to the left...what do you do with a private pool?! Kids? Have sex? We can see everything in those pools. What's the point?!)

 We packed up and drove to Pyrgos where the famed Dirou caves are. Good thing neither of us are claustrophobic because it was a teeny tiny tunnel. Our boat captain didn't speak any English so we didn't get a guided tour, but it seemed pretty self explanatory; stalagmites, stalactites, water, dripping, limestone.

 I was freaking out about the depths in this cave. Most of the time, the water was very shallow, but there were a few caverns here and there that were up to 100 feet deep. I get very frightened of deep open water, or worse, water with rocks in it.

 No pictures that I took do justice to this cave. Granted, I turned the flash off for the boat portion because I didn't want to ruin the tour for the other 4 people on the tour. This was my first real cave (Injun Joe's cave at Disneyland and Eberle winery doesn't count)

When we emerged from the cave, this is what we saw. How can water even be this clear?! We drove off to Nafplio, another small sea town. It's not a destination for Americans I think. It felt more like a place that rich Europeans go to go on vacation rather than America. Fine by me as I was tired of hanging around annoying americans!

Ask the Oracle

 We woke up in Itea. It's a beautiful small sea side city that no one visits anymore. Why? We asked the local baker and he said that there once was a ferry from a larger city and business was booming, but they cut off the ferry service and now no one comes. Lucky for us, since restaurants were cheap and our hotel was only 40 euros. Can't beat that! This was the view from our room. Look at that water!!!

 Itea is only about 10 minutes from Delphi, a city of ruins. It was the city of the Oracle, a woman who knew all and saw all. (She also blabbed about it) These pillars are what's left of the temple of Apollo, where the Oracle sat. I find it interesting that they didn't make a temple just for her.

 Here's another theater. As an actor, there's nothing cooler than seeing a spacious theater like this. I wish I could perform for a venue this large.

 This chariot driver bronze statue was on a huge pillar in the middle of Delphi and this is all that's left of it. The pic in the back is what was supposed to be attached, but as you can see, they could only find a few pieces of the horses and an arm from the stable boy. I think the horses might have eaten the boy.

 After Delphi, we drove off the Olympia. We had to cross a large bridge to the Pelopponesian area of Greece. On the way to the other ruins, we saw a large herd of sheep being herded by a man in a car with a very loud horn. The babies were so white and fluffy looking. I don't have a picture, but Aaron took video. Unfortunately, you can hear me going "aaaw, look at the baby!" throughout out the whole thing.

When we arrived in Olympia, we realized we were too late. Gasp, they locked the gates. Being ruins though, they're outdoor and only separated from us by a gate, so at least we were able to see them. Behind Aaron is the starting line for the stadium. The first couple hundred Olympics took place right there! The torch for todays' Olympics are all lit at the temple of Hera about 500 yards from this spot. After sneaking a peek, we drove off for a couple more hours to Pylos and sprung for a very expensive hotel, the Westin. It was like a cruise ship on land. The front desk had a map for all the stores and restaurants.

Let's play the Monk game....

 AKA the vow of silence game. Today we drove from our hotel for 4 hours to get to Meteora, a set of 6 monasteries in the mountains. They were breathtaking, the views that is. Aaron's favorite part of the sight were the mountains themselves. I was a little tired from driving so much. The hikes to each of the actual monasteries were all tough. It started to rain between our second and third one, so we knew it was time to say goodbye.

 While at the monasteries, I was required to wear a wrap skirt (they provided) over my pants. Women were not permitted to wear pants of any kind. I was a little jealous that kids and teenage girls were still walking around in their jeans and shorts. Oh well, I'm an adult and have to obey adult rules.

The monks had their own ossuary. I felt like it gets looked over a lot since ossuary isn't a word you hear everyday and it was off to the side. Since I recognized it, we were able to enjoy looking through the door without crowds of people pushing us.

Aaron made me stop the car a couple of times so he could snap some more shots of the mountains. I spy a monastery!

After Meteora, we drove 4 more hours BACK in the original direction towards Itea, a small ocean city near Delphi. We spotted a hotel near the water and it was basically just us staying there. It cost 45 euros for our room....pretty nice seeing as it was right on the water and we got free internet in our room. I feel like we're really adventuring at this point. No real plans, no reservations....just a car and a tour book.

Black, Red, Blue, and White

Today the weather held up for us! YEAH! We hopped on the scooter and drove to Perissa, a black sand beach. It really was black. Aaron was so proud of himself for coming up with this picture. He kept trying to convince me that he had a hole in his hand. 

 After the black sand beach, we drove to Red Beach, named for its red cliffs. Yep, pretty red. Funny thing was that we almost missed seeing it. You had to hike around the cliffs to get here and we were like "this is a boring gray beach." Good thing we had our tour book.

 Then we did a LONG ride. We went from Red Beach all the way to Oia again. Since it was sunny, I knew I could get my dome shots! We had a nice lunch overlooking the caldera and I was even adventurous and ordered my first ever stuffed grape leaves. Honestly, it tasted like rice-a-roni. We did a big no-no though. We ordered too much food and when the waitress came to take the plates away, she scolded us a little for not cleaning our plates. Greece is not weight watcher friendly.

The sun truly makes Greece really beautiful. When it's gray, the colors don't really shine. I was so happy that we got to come back to Oia. I don't think I would stay there since it's so far away from everything else though.

After Oia, we went back to Fira and searched for a Donkey Station. Since we were at the top, we decided to give the donkeys  a break and go down. The man in charge took us down for 5 euros a piece (cheap) and had to then send his entire herd of donkeys down with us. We were tethered together so we wouldn't get lost. It was a LONG ways down, being 587 stone steps. Poor donkeys! They did a great job though.

We then walked back up by ourselves. As we walked we made donkey jokes the whole way. Aaron named his donkey "Donkey" while I named mine "Dr. Donkey." At least my donkey had a PhD!

We then left Santorini by plane and landed in Athens around 9 PM. Hungry, we went to McDonalds like bad American tourists, but fear not....Aaron was adventurous and ordered things not found in the USA; a shrimp wrap (he said it was definitely strange) and a shrimp burger which was an actual patty made with shrimp. After chowing down, we got our stick shift rental car, and I drove us 2 hours to our hotel in Kamena Vourla. Cute little town that was on the way to our next place.

A first for everything...

 We finally had a sleep in day on this trip. After breakfast and packing our bags, we took the scooter out for one last scoot. We drove all the way to the north where there was an abandoned lighthouse,  Armenistis. Super creepy. The wind was blowing the windows and the ply boards back and forth so it literally sounded like someone was spying on us. We were a little sad to see the scooter go....

Fun fact; there are a MILLION stray cats in Mykonos. In the winter, there's a program that feeds them. They also catch the kitties and "sterilize" them. Afterwards, they clip one of their ears. Not many of the kitties we encountered had clipped ears.

We then went back to town for lunch one last time. I had a slice of my first baklava. Tasty honey pastry! Will I order it again? Who knows.

We then took the Super Jet to Santorini, which I should mention was the rockiest boats I've ever been on. I nearly threw up. Thank god for my "Zero to Hero" husband (he keeps asking me if he's a hero now...) who had some medicine. It was a 3 hour boat ride to the island and the weather was complete crap. The snack bar guy was handing out barf bags to EVERYONE. I definitely heard some throwing up. Definitely not something for faint of stomach!

And of course, once we get to Santorini, the weather follows us. It was a disgusting looking place. We went to Oia by scooter which was probably the scariest scooter ride either of us have ever taken due to the 35 mph winds while driving at 35 mph. We did make it back  to the hotel in one piece though.

A city of ruins

Today we woke up and headed to Delos, a completely abandoned ancient city! Literally a pile of rocks on a bigger rock in the middle of the ocean. Ok, it was much nicer than that, but Delos hasn't had anyone living on it since about the 2nd century AD. It was the birth place of Apollo and Artemis and was created by Poseidon. It's the largest excavation site in all of Europe. Pretty cool statistic, I thought. The tour we took was expensive and not very informative. I got more from my two tour books than the woman and her hour and a half schpeil, but whatever....

 We saw a lot of doric and ionic columns. Lots of temples and even more shops than I thought was possible for an ancient city. What were these people buying?! How many pots can you possibly need in 167 AD?! One for water, one for piss, one for soup....

 We saw the famous lion statues that the Greeks put in place to guard their sacred lake....the lake is no longer there because modern day Greeks were worried about Malaria and had it drained. Hope no one is thirsty!

 Of course, every Greek city new and old, has a theater. So what do I do? I tap dance....or sing a song....or both. After being on the island for over 3 hours, we were making jokes about not missing the boat out. The last boat would be 1.5 hours later and we were in no mood to see MORE ruins.

 After Delos, we set out to find Little Venice....which we did. Yeah for us. It really does look like Venice except for the fact that there are no canals, it's one street, and there were no gondolas! I love the ocean water color there though. Much prettier than the canals of Venice.

Aha, the windmills. Since Mykonos is the island of wind, it makes sense that there are so many of them. It was pretty windy today too. These are no longer working though so we didn't see them move. After the windmills and lunch, we went to two more beaches; Kalafatis, known for water sports, and Elia, known for being a family beach. Neither struck us as OMG BEST BEACH EVER but they were relaxing.

By the Sea...

We arrived in Mykonos at noon and immediately set out to do EVERYTHING, totally Aaron and Stina style. Okay, just kidding. We did take it a little easier. We saw only 3 beaches and had dinner in town! Our first stop was to the scooter rental store so that we could see the whole island Greek style. Good thing Aaron used to own a scooter. I ended up being a great navigator (surprise!) as I was able to hold onto the map whilst hugging the man. 

 We had lunch at Aigos Sostis and had every intention of snorkeling but the Aegean is FREEZING right now! No joke, ice water. We then drove off to Paradise Beach known for legendary partying. Since it's off season, it was pretty much our speed of partying; a drink in hand, a kindle, and some slightly loud bass beats in the distance. Yeah, we're wild, I know.

 The water looked wonderful though. If it had only been 5 degrees warmer, we could've jumped in.

 After spending an hour at Paradise sipping on peach nectar, we decided that Paradise just wasn't serene enough and rode off to Super Paradise....Mykonos, where one Paradise isn't enough. Super Paradise was even more closed off from the town. We only stayed for about 30 minutes since we just wanted to see it.

After adventures in multiple Paradises, we returned to our hotel and had some wine at the infinity pool. I jumped in and froze my butt off just so I could say that I swam SOMEWHERE on Mykonos. After viewing the sunset from the room, we explored the narrow alleys for dinner in town. Since we didn't see it during the day, we got extremely lost and had no real way to know where we were. Oh well, better luck tomorrow!

Greece is the Word!

We're off to Athens, Greece. We decided only a few weeks prior to our flight "hey let's go somewhere." This trip is going to be fun mostly because after the first 4 days, we're "wingin" it. No hotel reservations, no plans, just a rental car. That's right, we'll be driving. To get onto Greek time, Aaron said it would be a good idea to sleep on our red eye. Did I listen?! Of course not. I had the BEST idea. Stay up and watch a movie! Oh and it was a gem; Tower Heist. 

Insert sarcasm. It was NOT worth it. I hit the "I'm tired" wall so quick. 

We stayed in the Plaka, the oldest neighborhood in Athens. It had a great charm about it. Lots of cute restaurants as well as souvenir shops, and occasionally a sprinkling of ruins. We listened to an audio tour which took us all around the center of town. At lunch, I tried my first gyro. I'm not sure if the tzaziki sauce is going to be my friend. After lunch, it was off to the Acropolis. We were too late to see the Agora, but I guess that's why you revisit certain cities later in life. When we approached the Theater of Dionysis, I nearly cried. It was so breathtaking not just to see a huge amphitheater of this size and age, but it was one of the birth places of theater. I would've loved to have done a tap dance there.

 Just a couple hundred feet away was the Parthenon. HUGE columns! There used to be a roof. Yep, that's gone. The marble at all the sites we went to today was SO slippery.

I'd always wanted to see these ladies. I imagined them to be giant like the pillars at the Temple of Zeus or the Parthenon, but no, I think they're around 9 feet tall. They were really far away too. I couldn't get any closer. After all the ruins, we went to the Archaeological Museum and saw some pottery and sculptures.

After being here for a day, I can see why so many have said that Athens is an "interesting" city. It's not the most beautiful, though it's full of culture and history. I'm sure if pollution hadn't ruined some of the ruins, it'd be a lot prettier.

Dinner was pretty standard; eggplant and fish. For dessert, we had Greek frozen yogurt with nutella! Aaron also got some sour cherries. How very Greek of him!

Something funny: The way you saw Thank you in Greek sounds like you're saying eff Christ. Literally it's pronounced "Eff Kah ree stow!"