A New Neighbor

I was doing some work in the yard this evening and found half of a tiny egg shell sitting in the mulch under a tree in our front yard. I discovered a bird's nest in this tree last year, but when we did our spring clean up a few months ago I had Willy remove the old nest. So I was a little surprised to look up and see the tail of a bird, which was sitting atop, you guessed it, a nest!

I don't know if the egg shell was from a hatched or eaten bird, but it was empty. I wish I'd taken a pic of that too. Anyway, here's our new neighbor guarding her baby/ies. You know I'm going to be out there every day now checking for progress!

Santorini Part 1: Some reviews

Santorini...what do I say about thee? I had such high hopes for you after all the traveler reviews, pictures of your blue-domed and white-washed buildings, your famed caldera. We enjoyed your sunsets, your hikes, and your shopping but, alas, we didn't think you were the little bit of heaven on earth that others have called you. But no fear, we still had a good time.

OK, reviews first...

Car Rental: So I know this isn't the most interesting review to start with, but I'm just writing this up more or less in the order that I took pictures in because that's the path of least resistance :) After checking out prices at a few places we passed around town, we ended up renting from the shop right around the corner from our hotel, Sunbird. Artemis was really sweet and totally took care of us. We loved our little Hyundai and it took us all over the island. While the ATV on Naxos was fun for a day, we knew we didn't want to ride around exposed to the elements for four days. And A/C s a gooood thing :) Oh, and a good thing to know about returning rentals on Santorini: most rental agencies will let you take the car to the airport and leave it in the lot there with the keys. They pick it up later with their spare key and save you a taxi ride. Originally somewhat at Sunbird was going to drive us to the airport but in the end we left it at the airport instead.

Hotel: I had a really hard time finding a hotel in Santorini for some reason. Nothing on Trip Advisor jumped out at me so I went with the suggestion that my travel agent Aegean Thesaurus suggested. Unfortunately, I moved too slowly to take that first suggestion because there wasn't any availability left by the time she went to book it for me. So I went with her second suggestion, which was the Sunny Villas Hotel. Not a great decision. My pictures are kinder than I think the room probably deserves.

First, upon check in, we were given a room at a different facility. Because of the way many of the hotels are built into the cliffside, they all kind of flow into each other and we didn't even realize at first that we weren't in a Sunny Villas room but rather was in neighboring Heliades. We were only told about it later when Willy went back to reception to ask about something else. We had to move into our actual room the next day, which apparently had something that needed fixing. So that's Strike #1.


Strike #2 were a couple of room setup details. Remember when I said my raving over the shower in Naxos was important in contrast to the shower in Satorini? Well I wish I'd taken a pic of the actual shower here, but basically the handheld shower head was mounted maybe three feet up from the floor with no way to stand under a stream of water. I think it's a pretty common occurrence in Santorini, but it was one I had tried to avoid and it made showering a chore instead of a comforting luxury. There wasn't much space to move around in the shower either and the lack of a door left us splashing water everywhere.

The other room setup issue was the fact that the bed was pushed up against the wall on one side. The first night, Willy bumped his knee more than once and we had to pad the wall with extra towels the rest of the stay.

Strike #3: The pool was tiny. I'm talking, 5'1" me pullng maybe two strokes and I'm at the other end of the pool. Santorini isn't known for its beaches so a nice pool would have been a good way to cool off after a long, sweaty hike. I think we were spoiled by the nice pool in Naxos. I normally don't think of myself as a pool person, but was really disappointed by this aspect of the hotel.

Strike #4: We shared a balcony space with a neighboring room, which was fine except that to actually get to our room we actually had to walk across their balcony section to get to our front door. Kind of weird, but generally OK. The thing that really bugged me was that they got adjustable chaises on their balcony whereas we just got a table and two chairs. Which was nice for breakfast on the balcony (which was actually quite a nice breakfast), but for relaxing it would have been nice to have a reclining chair. even the chairs at the pool didn't fully recline!


Overall, the room was just a disappointment. It felt like a budget place for a mid-range price. If we ever went back (which I don't think we will), we'd have to splurge for a nicer facility.

But, OK, the view was really nice :)


Lots more to write still, but I think I'll do this in installments. Let's end this one with a pic of us on the night of our actual 5th wedding anniversary, celebrating (of course) over a yummy meal at Restaurant 1800.

We interrupt the travel updates for a crochet project

I'll get to Santorini soon, really, but those trip updates take forever to write and download pics for so I'm taking a break. In the meantime, here's the last crochet project I finished, probably about a month ago now. Just got around to taking pics of it today so I thought I'd share. It's an 8-pocket tote bag, original pattern here. I didn't sew the tab and button because it doesn't seem very useful. I do want to add a lining to the bag, but first I need to learn how to use the sewing machine I got months ago :P

There are some imperfections, like you'll see in the second pic that the top edge of the side pocket doesn't line up with the top edge of the front pocket, and that's largely because I forgot to crochet the top pink edge of the side pocket before sewing it on so I didn't have that visual aid to line them up. Oh well, that's how you know it's hand-made, right? :)

Naxos

Our next stop after Athens was the island of Naxos. It's not as popular as some of the other islands like Santorini or Mykonos, but people think it will be soon. It was my favorite stop.

Hotel: We stayed in this great place called the Galaxy Hotel. The room was small but very modern and the shower was great--three different shower heads: a rain head, three massage jets, and a handheld shower head. This becomes important when compared to our next hotel in Santorini.

The hotel was also steps from St. George Beach. The only downside is that they charge you 3 euros to use one of the chairs. Because we're cheap ;) we decided to sit by the hotel pool instead, which was a beautiful infinity pool so it wasn't much of a sacrifice.

Every morning we also had a buffet breakfast that was pretty good. There was a lot of variety and it was much better than I would have expected. Eggs, sausage, toast, pastries, greek yogurt, juice, coffee--yum!

The best part of the hotel was the staff. Kostas was super friendly and not only gave us a ton of restaurant recommendations but even told us what to order. Stefano was a hilarious dude who reallyknows how to get a party started. The hotel hosted a BBQ night complete with dancing afterwards and Stefano single-handedly got a bunch of strangers to start doing Greek dances and generally get their groove on. I will say it's a little disturbing seeing 40+ year old women go all stripper pole on a support beam in the middle of the dining area.

Sites & Activities: There are a couple of museums to check out in Naxos, but the main activity here is wandering around the Kastro/Bourgo area. It's an old fortified castle area with a bunch of winding and intersecting streets. Little shops and restaurants line the maze and it's really fun to just walk aimlessly and see what you find. Got many of my souvenir gifts here, in a little shop called The Loom in the Bourgos. It's run by an Australian woman who's been in Naxos for over 30 years. She said she ended up on the island accidentally when she was trying to go to another island, and she fatefully met her husband and never left. Her shop is full of handmade clothing items as well as other Greek antiquities and influenced items like olive oil soap. I bought several silk scarves there that were all made in Greece--the perfect souvenirs since they weigh and pack down to nothing!

There are three museums in the area. The Archaeological Museum was OK, but it was kind of weird that most of the pieces only had signs in Greek because English is pretty prevalent everywhere in Greece, both written and spoken. It was certainly a more quaint/rustic setting than your typical museum, so things felt more accessible. The Venetian Museum was pretty cool; it's a house that's still privately owned but made available to the public to see the various items in the life of one Greek family over the years. Finally, there's the Folk Art Museum where we could have seen things like the silk production process that produced the scarves I bought , but we never made it there.

Outside of the Kastro/Bourgos, the island also has a famous Portara, or Great Door. It was intended to be the entryway to a huge temple, but construction stopped when war broke out.

Every other part of the temple was raided for use elsewhere, but the door was just too big to move so there it remains.

Willy kept complaining that there were way more naked men statues than naked women ones so I made him pose next to this rarity.

We rented an ATV for a day to explore other parts of the island. You don't really want your driver with that look on his face at any point while navigating the windy roads :P

Naxos is also famous for its marble, which is used all over other parts of Greece. This is one of the quarries on the island. I picked up a few stones on the path of one of our hikes to keep as souvenirs. I love free mementos!

Giant marble statue that didn't quite make it down the hillside intact. Apparently it was common practice to move big pieces when they were only partially formed so that if accidents like this happened it wouldn't be too big a loss. If it survived the transport process, then they finished carving it on flat ground.

And to finish things off, two pictures that sum up my thousand words of what vacation is all about:

Next up: Santorini.

We're back from Greece: Athens

It's been four years since Willy and I took our last real trip (Alaska, to celebrate our 1st anniversary). Weddings and the associated vacation time, costs, etc. were the primary culprit, though life in general made us postpone the trip to Greece we've been wanting to do. So it was with a lot of anticipation that we set out on our trip a couple of weeks ago.

We were gone for 11 days, May 22 - June 2. It was just enough time to feel like we really got away, which was nice. The itinerary was Athens for two nights, Naxos for three nights, Santorini for four nights. Everyone told us not to waste too much time in Athens, and for the most part I think they were right. The Parthenon was pretty cool to see, and we also did a day trip to Sounion to see the Temple of Poseidon. Very cool, very old stuff to see. Saw more old stuff in the New Acropolis Museum. They have many of the frescoes that used to run along the top of the Parthenon stored there, though there's also many that are missing because they're being held at the British Museum, which won't give them back. Waaah! If we ever go back, I'd like to see some more of the stuff on the mainland in areas outside of Athens, like this one monastery that's way up on a rock outcrop somewhere and you have to climb a million stairs to get there. Gotta save some things for future trips. We did see the world's tiniest bunnies in a makeshift zoo in the National Garden.

We had our best meal of the trip while in Athens in, of all places, the restaurant in the Hilton Hotel where we were staying. Our guide book said that Milo's was worth a special trip to try, so we decided to check it out. Even luckier, they were running a special deal of five courses for 25 euros--a really good deal once we saw that an entree alone costs upwards of 30 euros. The salmon you see in the pic was a.ma.zing, as was the avocado you see on the right of the plate. We also had this egg thing that had a fried exterior with a liquid yolk...so strangely delicious. Those were our two favorite dishes. Lesson learned, don't underestimate the hotel restaurant!