The Three Gay Spaniards that weren´t

We had the best Saturday night.

My roommate and I told our señora that we were going out for dinner, and we bought some bread and cheese along with some cheap wine to enjoy by the river. We were meeting three other girls from our group, and so we staked out a spot, dangling our legs over the edge.

So here's the deal on drinking in public in Sevilla. A law was passed about a year ago mandating that drinking in the streets is no longer allowed. As was explained to me, kids as young as 12 were drinking in the streets, making lots of noise all night, and leaving poor impressions on tourists. So the law was passed. But it only applies to places where people live, or in front of open doors and business, etc. So there are certain areas where you can still drink legally. And, I was told, one of those places is by the river.

So we're doing just that, and then a party arrived. About 20 Spanish kids - they looked like they were in high school - show up and start drinking and hanging out by the river. One of them tried to talk to us, but he was too intoxicated to even speak Spanish well. Ooooh geez.

Well, those guys left after finishing their pre-gaming, and two other Spanish guys came along and said hola. I started making small talk with them (in spanish, of course) and they asked if they could sit down. Sure, I said. We chatted for awhile, they were from Granada but are working as mechanics in Sevilla now. One of them, Jorge, started to explain to me the differences in flamenco dancing between Sevilla and Granada. It was really interesting.
Then one of the girls from our group called Jorge "Jorge Curioso el mono" or Curious George the monkey. I don't really know why, but it was hilarious. And she called his friend "El hombre en el sombrero amarillo" or the man in the yellow hat. And they thought that was great, the two of them laughed so hard. And then the man in the yellow hat wanted to know if this guy from the Curious George books was handsome.
"Of course he is!" I told him.

We moved on, saying goodbye to our new friends..."¿Besos?" (Kisses?) Jorge asked me. (In Spain, friends, even new friends, great each other with a kiss on each cheek)
"¿Besos de amigos, verdad?" (Friendly kisses, right?) I responded and took on the Spanish tradition.

Then we went to an Irish pub that we like on Calle Betiz, which is a street with bunch of clubs and bars where Spaniards hang out.
There, we met up with three Spanish guys we had met through our university. One of them, David, had been our tour guide, and he and I had exchanged numbers during orientation. (He is leaving to study in England this year).
Well, at orientation, he introduced his friend Samuel as his partner. So it gets around our study abroad group that he's gay, he's got a partner, right?
We just weren't sure about his third friend, but he said something about hitting on guys or something, so we just figured.
They took us to another area where there are several discotecas (not clubs, because in Spain that means brothel) and we split up into two groups to get in (for some reason big groups have to pay to get into discotecas).
And it was PACKED. It was great, but so many people! At about 2am!
But we danced and danced - we were having a blast. Slowly the group splits up into the crowd of people, and I find myself dancing with David's partner.
And then he tried to kiss me.
Oh geez, THEY'RE NOT GAY!!!!
I back away and say to him in Spanish, hey, I haven't had enough to drink for that nonsense, buddy.
Poor guy. Gave him the shut down.
Then I spot one of the other girls I was with, Kate, dancing with David's other friend, and I make my way over to her. We look at each other and say, almost in unison, "They're not gay!"
Apparently the guy that Kate was dancing with also wanted to plant a big one on her, even after she told him that she has a boyfriend in the States. Then she told him that, all along, we had thought they were gay.
And so it all unravels...
"You thought we were GAY?!" the two friends exclaim with shocked expressions.
One of them told us it was the first time that anyone had ever called him gay. Probably not the best time to use the phrase "there's a first time for everything"!
"You think I was gay?!" David asks with wide eyes after walking up to us.
Well, yes kind of - that's what "partner" means in the US...we just didn't know.
By "partner" David had actually meant "classmate." The Spanish word can be translated either way.
They were embarrassed, and we were embarrassed, but everyone was laughing. Not long after that, we decided to call it a night...or a morning, being that it was about 5 am.
The guys were good sports about it though, and at the end of the night they hugged each other and said in English, "Goodnight pard-ner."
And altogether, I have to say, it was a very good night.

La vida española

So, what´s an average day like in Spain?

Wake up in the morning, no shower, because our señora preferes us to shower ¨por la tarde¨ or in the afternoon. And we only get one a day, so we better make it special.
For breakfast we get two slices of cold bread with butter and strawberry jam, a cup of decaf coffee with milk, cookies to dip in the coffee, and fruit. Not bad.

We have class Monday through Thursday, and so I leave an hour before class starts and walk about 10 minutes to the bus stop. From there, it´s about a 15 minute ride to the university bus stop, and then I walk the rest of the way to campus.
Interesting bit of info - while riding the bus to campus, we pass a place called ¨Tres mil viviendas¨ or 3,000 livings. It´s basically the projects of Sevilla. So our program coordinator told us never to walk to school - not that we could, because our bus takes the freeway.
Another interesting bit of info - our university used to be a jail. It reminds me of Pinnacle High School, one road in, one road out, surrounded by desert.

Depending on what day it is, I either eat bocadillas (sandwhiches) made by my señora on campus, or I return home for lunch.
Every Tuesday and Thursday, I finish by noon, so I ride the bus back home and wait until 2:15 when the family usually eats. Sometimes we´re joined by our señora´s daughter, who lives with us, and her oldest son and brother have even stopped by during lunchtime.
Lunch is huge. And delicious. Usually we have some kind of soup, a salad, and a big plate of fish. The other day our señora made fried calamari, fresh clams, and fresh tuna - all for one meal. My roommate and I were so full.

The city literally shuts down starting at 2 pm until around 5 pm. It´s incredible to see the difference walking around in the morning, and then again in the afternoon. The only places that stay open are restaurants, some grocery stores, and a big department store in Spain called El Corte Inglès. But, then restaurants shut down until dinner time, which - at the earliest - begins at 8.

At my house, we eat dinner at 9 pm - and our señora says that she eats early. But after having a big lunch, we are hardly ever hungry again for dinner.

Our ¨house¨ is what Americans would call an apartment. It has four small bedrooms and two bathrooms, and then a small kitchen and a living room. But here, it´s considered a house.

Our showers have to be quick - 5 minutes or less. Before we shower, we have to turn on the gas to get warm water. And once our señora turns on the gas, we better be running and jumping into that shower.
To save water, we rinse, water off. Shampoo. Water on, rinse, water off. Conditioner. Water on, rinse, water off. Shave, if necessary. And that´s our shower. In the afternoon, of course.

If we want to go out, it´s better to be ready before 11 so we can catch the last bus into town. Otherwise we have to pay for a taxi. But a taxi ride isn´t very expensive - only about 5 euro.
It doesn´t sound that difficult, but when dinner is at 9, and we use our one shower to shower after dinner, things can get a little tight. And, Spaniards usually don´t go out until midnight or so. The discotecas don´t get crowded until 2 or 3 in the morning on the weekends. It´s great.

Sevilla doesn´t have a metro, so you either have to walk, take a taxi, or take the bus. No problems yet with transportation - it´s refreshing not to be so dependent on cars.

My roommate is great, she´s from California and is super nice. We get along really well and have enjoyed exploring the city together and getting to know Spanish cultures. And listening to little lectures from our señora - I know she means well. =)

I am loving Sevilla, the city is beautiful, and we haven´t even scratched the surface!

Make your luggage disappear!

I took a train from Paris to Irun, in Spain, and had no problems. Granted I almost broke my back hauling my luggage everywhere, but I definitely got them on and off the train safely, leaving them on the luggage racks.
Well, intercity trains in Spain don´t have luggage racks. Only overhead compartments that are smaller than the in-flight airplane storage.
I had no idea what to do with my two, very large, suitcases. Not to mention my backpack. I ask the woman manning our compartment what I should do with them.
She yells at me, in Spanish of course, that finding a place for my luggage is not her problem, but that I can´t leave them in the area where people board the train.
Okay.
So, with the help of a nice guy sitting in front of me, I pile them onto the empty chair next to me.
When the woman comes back, she yells again, telling me that each passenger is allowed 2 bags no more than 20 kilos each. She says something about eating them - I´m guessing she was telling me to eat my clothes to get rid of them - and then she says I need to make them disappear.
Shoot. I forgot my magic set at home. Can I take a rain check?
Unfortunately at the time, I hadn´t slept much, so I actually felt more like crying than joking around.
Well, a nice man in the middle says ¨Aquì, amiga,¨ and points to a table surrounded by empty seats. So we hide one of my suitcases under there, and then I put the other one in front of my seat and prop my feet up on it.
So then a family boards and wants to know whose enormous suitcase is blocking their feet. So we move it back out of the compartment to where the passengers board again.
Well the woman working for the line comes by again and yells at me...again. She can´t open the door to let people on, so I can´t leave my suitcase there.
I apologize, defeated and tired of being yelled at and put the suitcase in the seat next to me. She says that´s fine for now, but if anyone needs to sit there, I have to stand.
Okay, that´s fine with me. I wish she would have said that the first time.
Luckily, the seat stayed empty and I made it to Madrid with all of my luggage and shared a taxi ride to the hotel with a boy named Wil that I had met before boarding the train, who was also studying abroad.

And on the 30th day, we rested.

Lesson learned from our return to Paris: remember which train station you leave your luggage at.
We went to the wrong station, and had to turn around and get back on the metro to go to the right one - which we weren´t sure about anymore. Ha. Oh geez.
But we pick up our mounds of luggage and hail a cab to get to our hotel. We had booked a nicer hotel in the middle of the city and planned to just relax for a day or two.
And that´s exactly what we did.
There was a cafè just across the street from our hotel, and on our second day their I ate duck for the first time from their menu. We savored freshly baked pain eu chocolat (chocolate-filled croissants) and enjoyed our hotel´s breakfast buffet. We dressed up our first night and went to an Italian restaurant for a late dinner and just sat and talked for hours.
Paris was cold - like Phoenix winters - but it was nice to have to bundle up for a change.

And we were done, our trip was over, there was no more.
I don´t think that really hit me until I got into a cab to go to the train station, and I was alone. I was alone for the first time since we had left the US.
I was leaving my partner in crime behind, the girl with whom I had shared my August. With whom I had done everything, seen everything, and traveled everywhere. And I was sad to have to say goodbye to our long discussions - about politics, life, religion, love - and our times together in silence, reading, journaling, drawing, and observing.

But Spain and other adventures awaited me ahead.

Like Paulo Coehlo quotes in his book, ¨We´ll always have Paris.¨
We´ll always have Paris, Leslie!

Ciao, Venezia!

Gondola rides cost about 80 euro, so we walked up and down the waterside looking for two people to share a ride with. We found two girls from South Korea who were also looking for two more passengers to make the ride cheaper.
The ride was beautiful. We went under the Ponte dei Sospiri and wove through smaller canals, admiring the colorful architecture of the tall, Venecian buildings.
And the girls were really nice. They were traveling for a couple of weeks, on their way to southern Italy, and - having already been there - we gave them some good pointers.
It was a short ride, only half an hour, but it was something we just had to do while in Venice.

To finish our day, we sat down at a an alleyway restaurant that offered a ¨tourist special¨- which is a flat price for a 3 course meal and includes service charges. The meal begins with an appetizer, then a delicious pasta dish, and ends with a meat dish. It was great.

And then we just wandered around a bit more, admiring the city at night. We got gelato by the Rialto Bridge and then sat down with our feet danging over the canal to enjoy our dessert. While we sat there, it actually started to rain, and we watched as various types of motorboats pulled over one by one to the side of the canal and docked while the drivers put up their rooftops. And then we strolled home through the empty streets in the rain, soaked by the time we finally got to our hotel, but loving our leisurely pace.

When it rains like that in Venice, the shops close down and outdoor restaurants bring in their chairs and tables from outside. The city gets quiet except for the soft patter of the rain. It´s beautiful.

Our Japanese roommate had moved on, so when we returned, we were sharing a room with a guy from Finland who spoke very broken English. We didn´t talk a lot, he was on his way back out to smoke and get a drink, but the next morning we sat in the hostel kitchen with him and chatted.
He had come for the art festival that goes on in Venice every four years, which we knew nothing about. He told us a little about his previous travels...how he had gone to Spain, but no one spoke English, something we never noticed as Spanish speakers. He too was traveling alone and just enjoying his vacation.

So, our last day in Venice, we left our luggage at the hostel and had a relaxing day in the city. We got an early lunch and just wandered for awhile, until we found a good place to sit down and have cafè lattes. I read and Leslie drew, and after a few hours we got up and continued on until it was time to collect our monster backpacks and head to the train station.

Our train ride to Paris was basically just horrible, but an experience nonetheless. The car was FREEZING, and we only had a sheet for covers. Leslie and I ended up with the lowest two beds, crammed in between the seat armrests (the train has chairs during the day that convert to beds at night) and the flat cushion we were sleeping on. What was worse is that I was sick before we boarded, but after that ride, I felt horrible. Just awful.
I think we slept about a total of 2 or 3 hours the entire night. Ugh.
But, we did meet a guy from Barcelona, and it was nice to chat with him for awhile, though I could barely understand. He was speaking so softly that I kept leaning forward and trying to understand a language that I´m not quite yet fluent in. Good times.

I LOVE THIS WOMAN!

We woke up our second day in Venice and decided to start the day with a jog through the city to the port.
Not as easy as we thought. We had to weave through people and around stands, and we couldn´t find the port. But we got to see the city wake up - it physically comes alive every morning.
Vendors pull out their carts and uncover their valuable items. Fruit stands fill up with vibrantly ripe fruit. And slowly, more and more people crowd into the street. When we left, there were people walking along here and there, but when we returned just over an hour later, intermixed masses of tourists and Italians crowded the streets.
It´s amazing.

We grab a quick lunch on our way out again, and just start wandering. Venice isn´t very big, and we had three days there, so we figured we might as well take a more leisurely approach to our touring. Reading different histories from our guide book as we went, we strolled by shops, stopping in now and again to take a closer look.

And eventually we stumbled across the Piazza San Marco.

I knew exactly where we were the minute we caught a glimpse. I had a poster of the piazza hanging in my dorm all last year, and I could not wait to get there. (Though, after my Versailles experience, I was a bit apprehensive about all of those pigeons. Hence the extra cleaning wipes).
And it was exactly as I had imagined...better in fact. Pigeons cover the ground everywhere. Saint Mark´s Basilica is absolutely amazing - the color and grandeur of the building forces you to stop and take a moment just to look. We admired the bell tower high in the sky, and watched people feed the pigeons.

¨This is the commercial,¨ I said to Leslie. ¨The diamond commercial where that guy stands in the middle of the plaza and yells at the top of his lungs, I LOVE THIS WOMAN!¨

I wanted to yell, ¨I LOVE THIS PLACE!¨

We walked with the crowds along the water, past the government building, Doge´s Palace, and the famous Bridge of Sighs (Ponte dei Sospiri) where prisoners were marched to jail from the interrogation rooms in Doge´s Palace.

We sat down by the water, docked gondolas swaying in front of us, and wrote. We had made it to the end of our trip, and I could not believe it.

Cafè lattes and fruit and postcard writing. It was great.

Our next goal: a gondola ride.

Venezia, di dov´e lei?

After our arrival in Venice, we took a water bus to our little hostel in the middle of the city. We picked a perfect location. The room had three beds, a small, round table surrounded by three chairs and two fans, which I was thankful for.
The bedspreads were brown, and each bed had a night stand draped with pink fabric and a stylish lamp sitting atop. It was quaint.
We got settled, showered after our long, dirty ferry ride and set out to find food.
We ended up walking into this little pizza joint with the hugest slices of pizza I´ve ever seen. It reminded me of New York for some reason. I ordered a slice of cheese, and they took an already-cooked slice and threw it in the oven for a few minutes.
It tasted like heaven. And I was so hungry.
We walked around for a bit, to the train station to make reservations, through the shops lining the streets, which where packed with tourists.
And then we decided to nap.

We awoke again in time for dinner and walked in the opposite direction we had gone earlier that day. Spotting a cute restaurant with an even more attractive waiter, we sat down for some pasta and salad.
It´s funny ordering Italian food, because the Spanish language is so similar to Italian, so it´s relatively easy to pronounce the names of the dishes correctly.
Well, this got the waiters speculating where we were from. We thought we´d have a little fun with them.
So we started speaking in Spanish instead of English. Now they were really intrigued. We sparked their interest so much that one of them actually came over and asked where we were from. He asked Leslie, and she answered Mexico, and I watched as his inquiring expression quickly changed into pleasant surprise. ¨Oh, Mexico!¨ I didn´t bother pointing out that I was American. Sometimes it´s just better to be silent.

We strolled into the street again, admiring the amazing nooks and crannies of the city.
As we walked, we saw some necklaces we liked and I drove a hard bargain with the vendor. ¨Twenty-five¨ he told me in Italian. No thanks, I told him in Spanish, ¨I saw a similar necklace in the same box marked at 10, and I´m not paying more than that.¨
So he gave us two necklaces for 20.
Honestly, I wasn´t that sold on the necklace anyways, that´s why I wouldn´t take it for 25, or even 20 or 15. But I´m glad I got it for 10.

We walked to the Rialto bridge, over the Grand Canal and were awestruck. It´s just so beautiful.
We sat down at one of the high-end restaurants right next to the water for some wine and cheese.
We ordered two glasses of Sauvignon and two plates of cheese. I have never tasted wine that good. Our eyes widened as we took our first sip. It was delicious. The perfect complement to the array of assorted cheeses that our waiter brought out.
One of my favorite memories in Venice.

Deciding to call it an early night, we returned to our hostel and were about to go to bed when our roommate came in.
Earlier that day, when we had come back to nap, we had seen our roommate´s clothing drying and tried to speculate how old she would be.
The clothes were pretty plain, the small shirt hanging up was a light pink, and we concluded that she must be a little older to be traveling alone.

We were so wrong.

Our roommate was a guy from Japan, traveling after his studies in Europe. He was nice, on his way to Greece, and so we gave him some tips on where he should go and what he should see. He really appreciated that.

What a day.

Two nights and 37 hours on a ferry

So the word ferry is really just a technicality. We boarded what we would call an elegant cruise ship. State of the art, first-class service with valance lights and all. And yet, we found out that, without a cabin key, we can´t really enjoy its amenities.

Sleeping in the hallways is regulated on this guy, too fine and fancy to let the wild 3rd class run free, right?

We actually weren´t allowed to take luggage through any of the eating areas, the cafe, or the casino. Well, when you don´t have a room to stick your stuff, that makes things a little complicated, no?

We staked out a spot on the deck, under the open sky, which we eventually ended up moving to a spot under the rooftop when we found out that we were getting soaked by humidity. (During the night, water collected only on the uncovered portion of the ferry). Furthermore, I kept waking up because the wind was blowing my covers away - and by covers, I mean my rain jacket and tiny bath towel.

But finding a spot was hilarious. Not because of anything we did, but because we were obviously amateurs at this whole overnight ferry thing. People literally set up tents on deck, others blew up air mattresses and took out bed sheets, and some did both. Other brought pool floaties to sleep on, and then there was an abundance of sleeping bags.
And we all just lined up, one by one, and lay down next to each other. Some gathered chairs around their sleeping area so they could sit the next day. We could not believe it.
Some hung up their towels and clothes on clotheslines on the ferry too. Man oh man.

I spread out my tiny little airplane blanket and my even smaller bath towel on the floor of the deck and layed down, spreading my raincoat over myself as a cover. My backpack became my pillow, along with a couple of clothing items I pulled out of it. Good times.

The boat docked the next morning somewhere before continuing to Venice, and people poured onto the deck. It was pretty crowded before, but I could not believe the number of people that boarded. And we packed in like sardines. There were sleeping bodies everywhere - just everywhere. It´s a sight like I´ve never seen before. Families, couples, groups of friends, anyone and everyone. Why didn´t anyone write about this in our European travel guides?

During the full day on board, people tanned, they swam, they ate, they drank, they played cards, they read, and so many just slept through the sunlight.

We grabbed our valuables and toted them with us, hoping our clothes would be okay sitting on the deck. We wanted to eat, and that was the only way to do it unless we wanted to each eat solo.

We had lunch in the nice restaurant, and dinner in the self service. Amazingly enough, we spent the same amount of money at each meal. Between lunch and dinner, we layed out and read, and after dinner we drank excellent coffee drinks and lost ourselves in literature for about an hour in the cafe. And then we went back out to our sleeping quarters and fell asleep soon enough. So it was a pretty leisurely day.

The next morning, I woke up around 6 am, just in time to see the sun rise off of the coast of Italy. It was incredible. I will not forget the beauty of that morning, regardless of the fact that I had sleep two nights on the dirty concrete deck with sweaty bodies sprawled out everywhere.
I wouldn´t trade the experience for anything.

We watched our arrival in Venice from the ferry window, backpacks mounted on our poor backs. It was the last city on our trip.

Fire in Greece

For someone who loves to read the news and watch CNN in the morning, one of the hardest things about being abroad is the inability to keep up with current events. And every time we hit an internet cafe, we spent all of our time keeping in touch with people at home. Newspapers are in different languages, as is the television, so we can cross that off the list of options too. It´s tough.

A couple hours before our train left from Athens to Patras, we´re using the internet in our hotel, and the news is on. We can´t understand anything, but we can decipher that there´s a big fire, and it´s a big deal.

Well, we walked across the street to the station, and we ate lunch outside at the station´s cafe. When we get up to leave, we look down at our bags and there are little white specks all over our backpacks. What is this, we ask each other, cigarette ash? Chipped paint? Weird...

But we board the train to the port at Patras, and as we´re sitting there, I look out the window and white specks are falling from the sky. What...and then I realize that the white specks on our bags were ashes from the fire. And I remember feeling so frustrated that I couldn´t understand what was happening. I mean, here we sit in Greece while something big is happening, and we have no idea what, where, when or why. And we could just see the importance on the faces of people, glued to the television, looking out at the ash.

I actually looked at the women sitting across from me and asked her if she spoke English. A little, she said, and I asked about the fire.
She said, with difficulty, that there was a big fire on a mountain very near Athens, but that was all she could manage to communicate.

The train bumps along the tracks to Patras, and we can see an enormous clould of smoke covering the sky. And then I look up and see that the sun is a burning red color from the screen of smoke sitting in the sky. Wow.

In Patras, we go to a Greek restaurant and the news is on, covering the fire. Our waitress speaks English very well, so I asked her what was going on. She explained that there were actually 4 separate fires, two near Athens, and one near Patras. She said that more than 50 people had been killed and explained that they were members of a village trapped by the fire. Apparently they could not escape, and the helicopters could not land there to rescue them because it was too windy. It was so sad.
She also told us that the restaurant´s internet was down because of damage caused by the fire, which is a hard thing to be sad about when Greece is mourning casualties. Putting things into perspective.

Leslie and I sat and ate and talked for a almost 3 hours with the news running in the background, and then it was time to continue on to Italy.

August 24th - My alcohol-free, 21st birthday

We spent most of our day traveling, minus a seven-hour ferry layover in Mykonos. Which actually turned out to be great, because we got to see a second Greek isle.

Leslie had read a little about the island´s history on the internet the night before, so she filled me in.
In the past, Mykonos had been and island where exiles were sent, including homosexuals. So now the gay community on the island flourishes, and also attracts many gay tourists. That also means that the nightlife (bars, clubs, etc.) on the island is prevalent, which became more and more obvious as day turned into night.

We trekked to a place known as Little Venice because of the way the ocean-side buildings resemble the Italian city. It was a long, sweaty walk uphill, but we made it to the ocean and walked along the narrow streets past so many little shops.
We arrived a couple of hours before sunset, so after walking around for awhile, we sat down to have dinner at a restaurant on the ocean.
And when I say on the ocean, I am not exaggerating. There was a whole line of different restaurants, and the ocean water actually splashes onto the sidewalk as people walk along.
We chose a more elegant restaurant and sat down at a table no more than 10 feet away from the water just as the sun was beginning to set.
We ordered Greek salads and a pasta dish with seafood to split. It was great.

And then Leslie pulled out a birthday card for me and some earrings that I had pointed out in a little shop earlier that day. I never suspected anything, the little sneak.

While we were eating, an Asian couple sat down at the table next to us. And, because it was getting dimmer, the man (naturally) pulled out a light attached to a headband and strapped it to the front of his forehead. One of the highlights of my night.

The ever-so-strange manager of the restaurant also talked to us for a bit, but we told him we were Mexican and only spoke back in Spanish. He didn´t know Spanish, so he had to communicate mostly with gestures and some broken English. Good times.

He actually brought us these drinks called ouzas that tasted like black liquorice, telling us that it helps the digestive process. Gross, so gross. I barely even took a sip. When he wasn´t looking, Leslie actually threw hers out onto the beach, and then I poured half of mine into hers to make him think that we had drank a bit. Hehe, sucker.

Then a clown from Germany strolled by looking for some work. He offered to make us a heart, but, unfortunately for him, I think he may have miscalculated and guessed that we were a romantic couple.
Nope, no love here buddy, but good luck in your endeavors.

But then the ever-so-strange manager saved the Clown´s job, and bought the heart for us. Aww. Gracias, señor.

And that was our 7-hour trip to Mykonos. We walked back to the port, took a bus to another port, and waited for our ferry to arrive to take us back to Athens.
We grabbed a booth in the dining area and slept for about 4 hours until the boat docked around 3 am. Taxi to the train station while dozing in the back seat.
Not wanted to sleep on the ground outside the station, we wandered to the nearest hotel to sleep and shower until our train departure at 3 pm.
Looking back, I´m so glad we did that, considering we would spend the next two nights sleeping on a concrete deck.

Santorini Mou

Leslie asked the owner of a convenient store where we should go for dinner on our last night on the island.
Santorini Mou, he said, like the cow (mooOOooo). Apparently the owner was good friends with Greenday and Jennifer Aniston had eaten there once before.
We decide to give it a try.
It´s just off of the main road, enclosed by plants and vegetation, so one would never guess how amazing it is while strolling by.
But once we walked through the entrance, we fell in love.
The eating area is outside, but surrounded by tall plants and vines to give the restaurant a more intimate feel. Little odds and ends hung everywhere for decoration, including empty wine bottles, drawings on the wall, strings of lights strewn about, and photos of past customers. The owner also passed around an album with pictures of previous customers and a guest book to sign. It was great.
We sit down and order a couple of smaller dishes to try some different foods, and as we´re waiting for our food, the owner a friend begin to play their guitars.
More customers began filing in, and a couple even start dancing traditional Greek dances. All this while we enjoy every bite of our delicious food.
We sat there for hours, marveling at the friendly environment the Greek owner was able to create. Customers singing, dancing, and mingling with each other.
I kept thinking, can we be Greek too? We thanked the owner for his hospitality and left rather reluctantly.

Back the Thira - ever so slowly - on our quad, seeing as that it was nearing midnight and the roads were pitch black. I think I was praying the entire ride back.

This must be the night life...

Going back in time a bit to our first night...
Here we are in Santorini, this amazing little Greek island, and Leslie and I go out tonight looking for the wild night life that we've heard so much about.
Heading into town after dinner (we're about 15 minutes away from Thira by foot from our hotel). On our way in, we decide to stop and use the internet since we had seen a sign earlier today that said ¨Internet 24-7.¨
Cool, we're in.
While walking, we were talking about how we weren't so sure about this crazy night life.
We had been into town today, and we hadn't seen any bars or clubs or anything like that - just really touristy restaurants and shops. Which is great, we definitely enjoyed playing the tourist part, but we were also craving some good Greek music.
So anyways, we arrive at the internet cafe around midnight, walk in, and we stop dead in our tracks.
Picture about 4 long rows of computers crammed into the shop, each station accompanied by a comfy, black-leather chair. Now picture the same room packed with people-specifically people of the male gender-all playing video games. No, we didn´t see their computer screens. Rather, it was the shouting, quick finger movement and intense concentration permeating the air that initally gave it away.
I looked at Leslie and said, "This must be the night life we've been hearing about!"
Made my day.

Swimming, Sunset, and Santorini Mou

Our second day in Santorini was one of my favorite days in our entire trip.

The day before, we had booked a boat tour of Santorini´s volcano, so we got up early and headed to the bus stop.

Back down around the curves on the island cliffs, we arrived at the port and boarded our boat. They would first sail out to the volcano, where we would be able to hike, and then to the hot springs so we could swim in them.



The little island where the dormant volcano sits is one of the dryest places I have every been to. And I live in Arizona´s ¨dry heat.¨ Just rocks and rocks and more rocks and dirt.

But, in it´s own way, it was beautiful.

The island terrain consisted primarily of craters and hills that formed because of the caved-in land. Different shades of black, grey, brown and red surrounded us, and as we hiked up to the highest point (which isn´t that high in the air) the wind just overtook us.

People literally had to brace themselves when standing in one place so as not to fall over. It was like riding the metro in Paris...if you can´t grab onto railing somewhere, you´ve got to take a stance that will keep you upright as the cars jerk forward.

But it was great, and we were completely surrounded by deep, blue ocean.

We couldn´t wait to swim in the springs.



Everyone boards the boat again, and they continue around to another side of the volcano where the hot springs are located. The springs are surrounded on three sides by the volcano, and it´s too shallow near the springs for the boat to sail right up next to them. So instead, the boat anchors about 30-40 yards away from the entrance to the springs and the captain tells us to jump in.

Bombs away!

We throw off our cover-ups, leaving our things behind and free fall into the ocean. That jump into the salt water below was, by far, one of the coolest things I have ever done. And the rush of water felt great.

And then we swam into the springs. The color of the water quickly morphs from a deep blue to a rusty brown, and suddenly you feel the ocean floor beneath you.

We thought the springs would be hot, but they were lukewarm, which actually made the transition back into the cooler, open ocean a lot easier.

The mud in the springs is supposed to create miracles and heal sickness and so on and so forth. I´m not sure that we were witnesses to anything spectacular, but it was an amazing experience nonetheless.

And then we swam back through the ocean and treaded water while people in front of us boarded the boat again, bobbing up and down with the waves.

Back in town, our first order of business is to snag a quad. We needed to use to to drive up to Oia to watch the amazing sunset that locals buzz about. The guy who loans out the quad tells us that we should also head out to Kamari to see the beach and eat lunch at on of the restaurants there. Sounds like a plan.

Now, just to be clear, in Santorini there are, more or less, five ways to get around. By car, by foot, by moped, by bus, or by quad. Walking to the tip of the island is not the most time efficient option, and mopeds can only be rented by those holding international licenses (which probably also holds true for cars). And we´d pretty much covered the bus riding. But I would say about 60% of the people on the road are using mopeds or quads. So it´s a pretty common thing on the island.

The scary part about this is realizing how fast you have to drive on a quad to keep up with regular traffic. And the even scarier part is discovering the sharp twists and turns of the roads.
Well, well, life is an adventure!

We zoom down to Kamari and...WOW. Welcome to paradise. It was the icing on the cake, truly. I didn´t even know that places that beautiful actually existed. In the words of Will Ferrell, it was ¨mind-bottling.¨

We parked our little yellow quad in the line of mopeds (ugh, lucky Europeans) and sat down at a restaurant right off of the beach. Clear blue water, people laying out among the cabanas, soft music at the restaurant, greek salad, calamari and wine. Like I said, welcome to paradise.

After a late lunch, we layed in the lawn chairs on the beach, reading and napping until it was time to head back toward town.

We zipped to our hotel on our newly purchased mode of transportation, cleaned up from our salty morning swim, and headed to the northernmost point on the island for sunset.

There is just something so incredible about watching the sun disappear over the ocean water. Slowly, the radiant circle is interrupted by a straight edge, eventually becoming a half-circle, moving until the last sliver of light disappears completely, leaving only shades of red, violet and indigo behind as evidence that the sun had shone that day.

We hopped back on our quad and drove down the road a bit to take more photos of the amazing blue and white haciendas that characterize Santorini.
And then it was dinner time.

Thira (Fira) in beautiful Santorini

Before our trip, we had made reservations in an inexpensive hotel called Pension George.
George, the owner, picked us up in his van and quickly drove us up the winding streets of Santorini to the hotel.
It was an exhilarating ride, that´s for sure.
His wife introduced herself to us, showed us to our room, and we were just in awe of the incredible beauty of that place. All blue and white, brillant flowers and vibrant greenery around a cool, clear swimming pool. And that was just our hotel. Check-in now, check-out never.
The first thing we decide to do is go running. We run to the nearest beach from our pension, lose our sweaty running shirts, and jump into the Mediterranean (or, more technically, the Sea of Crete).
It was amazing.
We walked - a little painfully - in the black sand created by the volcano that erupted thousands of years ago and created the island. So much of the sand consists of black pebbles, so it´s not the silky little grains we encounter at many beaches in the Americas.
The run back up the side of the island was not as fun as our downhill jog to the beach, but we enjoyed the workout.
And then we were temporarily stalked again.
A guy pulls up and asks us where we´re going and if we need a ride.¨
¨No, thanks, we´re just going to the top of the hill. We´re getting exercise,¨ Leslie tells him.
Well, apparently he though we´d change our mind because he continues to drive beside us at a slow crawl. Leslie waves him along again, and finally he speeds up. Only to slow down and stop, and then turn around and come back.
And Jennifer lays down the law again. As he approaches with his window open, I literally yell, ¨WE DON´T WANT YOUR HELP, AND WE DON´T NEED A RIDE, OKAY!?!?¨
He accelerated and drove away after that, and we kept running back to our hotel.
I guess it´s a good thing I´ve got big guns.

We trek into town, hoping to rent some motopeds, but find out that you have to have an international or European license. Way to let the air out of that balloon.
But, the vendors told us, we can rent something with four wheels...for example, a quad.
We decide to save the quad rental for the next day, and spend our afternoon touring the capital.
Walking into Fira from our hotel, we admire the little shops and purchase some souvenirs.
We stake out a restaurant at the top of the hill among the shops. It sits right on the cliff´s edge, so we have an amazing, unobstructed view of the ocean in front of us. And that sea is the bluest body of water I have ever seen.
From our seats, we can also see Santorini´s volcano, which sits just west of the island.
Lunch was beautiful, relaxing and delicious.
And then we continued walking through the city, and then back to our hotel.
Leslie fell asleep by the pool, I fell asleep (pen and postcards in hand) in the hotel room, and we both had a good nap. We were going to try to watch the sunset before dinner, but decided that it would be too hard to get to a good, open place nearby, and so we went back and got ready for dinner.
Just down the road, there was a restaurant with an electric atmosphere, packed with people. We´ll take that one.
We ordered a fish dish and Greek salad and bread. Started with the salad, and then they bring out the fish. It was literally four cooked fish, just sitting there on the plate with their eyes and all. It smelled delicious.
And no worries, it was.
We ate well, with yogurt and fruit for dessert, and then continued on foot into town.
But that meal gets five stars in my book.

Last day in Athens, to Santorini by night

We could have done a lot of things on our last day in Athens, but we chose to take it easy.
We had a late breakfast - delicious pastries - read a little bit, and then went to make some boat and train reservations.
Back to the apartment to grab our turtle shells (or backpacks, as they´re more commonly known) and then off to get some food.
We said goodbye to our host, with whom we only spent about 20 minutes. He was sleeping on the couch in his undies, so we had to wake him up in one of the most childish displays of giggling I have experienced since the third grade. If you were wondering, Leslie and I were the ones giggling before we tapped his shoulder. It felt like boys had coodies again and we had to raise our hands to go to the bathroom.
I think he was a little embarrassed to be caught, uh, with his pants down, so we left the room and let him clothe himself. Good times.
And then we went back to our little Greek restaurant - for the third time. If you thought twice wasn´t bad enough, welcome to our trip. The food was just that good and that affordable.
On to Pireaus, the port in Athens, so we could grab good benches on the night ferry to Santorini.

We slept on the benches until about 3 am, and then decided it was too cold and wet, so we picked out a good spot in the hallway and passed out. What can we say? Sleeping in luxury will just do that to you sometimes.

Around 8 am, we arrived at the port in Santorini. You would not believe the deep blue of the water as your boat docks at shore. We were so excited!

The Pakistani

So we´re chowing down some great food at our little Greek restaurant and we put in an order for baklava.

Oh, dessert.

We think it all started when Leslie tried to take an inconspicuous picture of a skinny old man that I pointed out, sitting down with one glass of wine and no food.

¨He´s gonna get toasted!¨ I joked, (toasted being my new word for inebriated).

Well, Leslie forgot about the flash, and so it was pretty obvious that a picture had been taken. The old man just sits there, but as we´re waiting for our baklava, a Pakistani man in his late 20´s comes over to our table and asks where we are from.

Uhm, the US?

He tells us he´s from Pakistan and starts making small talk. So awkward.

I can tell he´s been drinking, and furthermore he doesn´t understand us well. But he wants to know if we want to have a drink.

No, Leslie says, we´re actually about to leave. We just are going to finish our dinner and go.

And then he puts his hand on Leslie´s shoulder and tells her that he likes her and he thinks she´s pretty.

¨Oookaaay...we just want to finish our dinner now,¨Leslie says.

And the man repeats himself.

Okay, my patience is up, and he is making us really uncomfortable.

¨GOOD-BYE. You understand that in English at least?¨

Oh, he says, you want me to leave?

¨Yes, please leave RIGHT NOW,¨ I say forcefully. ¨NOW.¨ And finally he goes.

Leslie laughs at how quickly my temperment changed. Well, well, what can I say?

Our waiter comes out with our delicious baklava, and then the Pakistani returns.

What IS this guy´s issue anyways?

¨¿Quieren una cerveza?¨ he asks.

¨NO!¨I answer. ¨You need to LEAVE NOW.¨

And then I grab our waiter and tell him that the Pakistani is bothering us (sounds juvenile, I know, but desperate times call for desperate measures. And when you´re being temporarily stalked by a foreigner in Greece, anything goes).
We finish our delicious dessert while the Pakistani takes a picture of us from his table across the alleyway with his three friends. So comforting.
And then we make a run for it.
Back to the bathroom to throw them off our scent, then through the back of the restaurant and out the side door.
Brisk walk to the main street, dodging behind trees and trash bins and glancing back to make sure no one is following us. We continue walking until we come across the only place where travelers can find solace in another country.
Starbucks!
Ha.
We sit down and journal for few minutes, then continue walking along the street. We found a bookstore, or better yet, we discovered treasure. Starved for news, I pick up a Newsweek and a Time magazine and (for fun) a book by Brasilian writer Paolo Coehlo.
And then we sit down to read at a McDonald´s until about 11:30 when we made our way back to Petros´s apartment.
What a crazy night.