The Chance of a Lifetime...

Our first boat and car rides and first octopi!!

Erin and I woke up wayyyy early this morning, 5.30am!! Sick!! Pam- our room mate at the new hostel- did I ell you about her?? I dunno, she's pretty cool, quit her job on corporate banking to travel...pretty sweet!! Anyways, we all got up early as we were all taking the same ferry. We got dressed and walked to the train station, took it to Pireaus where we boarded our ferry- our first boat ride of the trip!!! And now that I think about it, there prolly won't be very many boats involved in this trip. Anyways, the ferry departed at 7.30am, it stopped at a couple of the other Greek Islands on the way to the last stop, Santorini, which is where Dave and I were heading. Pam disembarked at around noon, when we stopped at Paros...dave and I continued sitting in the same seat for another 3 hours after those 5...yes, an 8 hour ferry ride! There were several families with young kids on the ferry, one of which was just not at all cute- do all parents think there kids are cute? Even if they are ugly? Just wondering...
If you think the smoking is bad in America you should come to Europe and sit inside a ferry full of Greeks chain smoking for 8 hours. As you can imagine, it was quite the experience!! It was a choice between sitting inside and getting lung cancer or sitting outside in the Mediteranean sun for 8 hours and get skin cancer. We decided inside today and outside tomorrow on the beach...figured we'd balance it out a little.
Dave taught me 2 new card games today and I beat her at both of them :)
We arrived safely, Dave pointed out this island type thing which I told her looked like a pile of poop..we later found out that its a volcano hahaha. The dude from our hotel- yes, hotel, not hostel, no typo here- picked us up at the port in a van- hooray!! First car ride!! And he pointed some stuff out to us on the drive to the hotel- such as the volcanic pile of poop. The hotel is quaint, cute, and it has a pool and free internet!! Air conditioning, a TV, mini closet and mini fridge all in the room!!! We have only stayed in 2 hostels so far and I know that we will have a lot of hostelling to deal with, but I appreciate this hotel fully!! And its the same prioce as the hostel we were in last night but 100 times better!! We are staying her 2 nights so we will make the most of it for sure!!
Once we had settled in, we wandered around to see where things are...everything is super cute and the views are amazing, there a crazy houses and restaraunts perched on the edge of the cliffs, its really pretty. We saw our first octopi being hung out to dry on clothes lines!
I think I've yet to mention that the Greeks prefer to use their car horns than their brakes...they don't slow down for anything- not cars, people, donkeys, nothing! They just honk! I wonder if Greeks go deaf earlier, on average than other populations because of the excessive honking? Someone should do a study on that. And they drive like psychos, there are millions of mopeds and motorcyles all over the road! And they just honk, honk, hoooonkkkkk!
Anyways, dave and I grabbed a gyro for dinner- yummy! Then bought some stuff at the supermarket where I used a 50 euro note to pay for a 5euro charge...the chick handed me 25euro change and I was standing there checking it when she said "what's your problem?!" In some glorious form of English, to which I replied, "you owe me 20 more Euro" yeah she wasn't too happy about that and I wish I had been able to say it in Greek damn it!!
Oh, we also got another coffee with Baileys..Starbucks should start serving this, its soooo good!! Yes I realize that would not only be drinking and driving, but also drinking at work...but I'm sure that already happens, as does drunk driving.
Well speaking drinking, dave and I are going to have a couple of drinks and go to the bars.
Will report about that tomorrow, have a goodnight everyone!
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posted by Kirby @ 1:07 PM