It's all _______ to (us)!!!

OOOPAAHHHH!!!!!!

Mal is going to write this blog for the most part but she is taking too long to finish up some other emails and I’m impatient.  So for all you joyous followers, now will be the only semblance of sarcastic whit you will find in this blog.

Anyone who has never been to Greece has the exact same expectations…and those expectations are directly from “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”.  However, in most places in Greece, and its surrounding parts, that stereotype doesn’t always play out.  But I guess you’ll just have to see for yourself because there is no way of describing it in this little shout out we call a blog.

We spent a whopping 5 days in the port of Piraeus, which is about 6 miles south of Athens.  To get to Athens you can choose from the overwhelming taxi drivers who are convincing you that paying 15 Euro per person is more logical than taking the cheap metro for 2 Euro round trip.  But I digress…

To get away from it all, Mal and I booked a *last-minute* trip to the island of Paros.  We went with 4 other “SAS-quatches” (I didn’t make it up…I’m just the parrot here) and stayed the town of Naoussa, which is on the other side of the capital Parikia.
(I will now leave this to Mal to finish the story…)

I’m going to back it up here and say that the dad in my big fat Greek wedding, with his whole “give me a word and I will show u the root of the word is Greek” was my tour guide! I had to do an FDP (faculty direct program) for my speech class.  Our tour guide would constantly say a word, break it down, give u the Greek meaning and then say “there you go.”  I really could not stop laughing! Every big word he did!  Did you know the Nike also has Greek roots? Well it does and it stands for victory! Ha! I learned something on this whole voyage, even though I am sure most of you knew that already.  John didn’t so I bask in the glory.

So back to our island adventure:
We get off the ferry and are not sure if our hostel owner will be there to pick us up.  So we followed the crowd to find this big, Greek, smiling man holding a sign to our hostel.  We load up our bags into his “mature” van.  I think the ancient Greeks made this and said “HA, the first suburban!” It was pretty special, especially when we weren't sure if we would have to get out and push it up the hill to the hostel.  Oh the memories! ("Come on ol' girl just keep chuggin!!")

So we ran into the little town and got some food.  I insisted on having something very authentic and the only thing I could remember from My Greek Fat Wedding was “Moosekaka” (cue the mean girls at the lunch table) but really it is 'Mousaka'.  It was really good…

So we woke up the next morning and listen to the owners wife give us her tips on the island.  She said you must go beach hoping and rent a scooter.  So we did just that! Rented a scooter, against the rules of Semester at Sea (shhhhh!), and were off.  We followed this really useful map (sarcasm) but the good thing is there is really only one main road to take around the island and 'usually' (but not always) signs were helpful.  The beaches were simply beautiful with never many people on them.  I mean extremely beautiful with golden beaches and bright turquoise water of just cool enough to relieve us from the hot sun. 

After a good hardy lunch, dinner was nothing more than appetizers and an experimental try of Ouzo.  The waiter informed us that only the elder like it and I guess that is true since my mom said she enjoys it.  However, for you young folks, no dice...  Tastes like extreme black liquorish or as someone described it to us, bad Anise (my family you know the other name for this...everyone else can probably guess).  The house wines on the other hand are very delightful...and cheap!

The next day we kept the scooter for a little longer and decided to bop around to different villages.  We saw the 100 door church, great windmills, and spectacular views from a village in the mountain called Lefkey.  After our short motorcycle adventures we cooled off in the ocean at our favorite beach yet.  Very warm, shallow waters, great sandy bottom and spectacular views.  So after we showered off at the hostel we uploaded some pictures on our facebooks.  We really didn’t make much progress on them seeing as we had to catch the bus back to the port area.

We grab a great dinner, as the food is always amazing! (Generally we ate was gyros (yee-ros) or souvlaki (soov-LAH-kee).

[(Side quote: My Big Fat Greek Wedding)
 “He is a vegetarian”
 “What?! He don’t eat no meat?! Ok I make lamb”]

Meat meat and more meat!  Oh the restaurant was called 'Zorbas'! It wasn’t "Dancing Zorbas"  but oh well.  (If you haven’t seen My Greek Fat Greek Wedding then you really do not understand any of this!) So we then waited as our ferry became more, more and more delayed.  It really wasn’t a problem since we had a great bench to sit and watch the people and the other ferries go by.  So to end this long story we got home at 2am and had to walk a mile and half back to the ship to finally sleep in the comfort of our “home”.  So it really does not matter that we almost missed the ferry ;)

So the next day we enjoyed the heat! And the Plaka, a market place.  For dinner, we got lost, no one spoke English so the food was amazing!  Best time! It was all Greek to me!  The last day we went to the Acropolis before the tons of tourist and the heat set in!  And also caught the new museum they built for the Acropolis and toured around the city.

So in short (I understand nothing is ever short with me) [John: 'except her height'] Greece was a grand old time and we cannot wait to go back!

Onwards to 'Istanbul, Constantinople, Istanbul, Constantinople!'  Play that song and think of us!...unless you're too young in which case go play outside or something

Love always!

Mally & Johnny