Janingalina

for the record, this bombshell had nothing to do with the wildfires in greece. i don't know what you're talking about.

or at least i wouldn't if it weren't for all the concerned friends and family sending heartening vacation messages like, "Greece is burning! Get Out NOW!!" and "64 died trying to escape fires. be ready to evacuate!!"

ok, that's still not entirely true. gin and i got 10 TV channels, for the first few days of our trip 9 of these channels were broadcasting pictures of forestfires with incomprehensible greek captions. the tenth was Albanian MTV - you do not know what you are missing without Albanian MTV.

That said, we had a great trip to Greece.

First she came to Germany for a couple days. I picked her up from the Nürnberg airport. Luckily she was just in time for the Sandkerwa (annual founding festival for the church on the bar street).



We ate a traditional Weißwurst breakfast accompanied by chocolate chip muffins and Bamberg's famous Smoked Weissbier. Nothin but culture.



We caught some trains to the Köln/Bonn airport and hopped a plane to Heraklion on Crete.



My bad museum karma carried on into Greece, where the Archaeological museum on Crete was mostly closed for refurbs, and half of Knossos was closed for.. because i was there.

the one room of archaeological treasures that they _did_ have open was fascinating. full of treasures from the Minoan culture.



There was some wandering around seeing the sights in the city, eating ice cream for breakfast, y'know the usual.





We had some laughs over the signs posted on islands:



The first for how much Parking (in Greek) resembles Napkin in English. The second just for the english translation itself. I believe the city would have been called something more like a "Traditional Settlement" but i love the irony.

After a couple of days that didn't go to plan in Heraklion, we caught a boat to Ios. It was supposed to be the gay party capital of the Cyclades, but that's not how we found it. Our hotel overlooked the bay, where the sunsets were pretty nice, especially since we were able to pick up beers from the fridge downstairs.



The whole Island was pretty quiet when we were there.

The path into town:



The Church in the main square:



Windmill on a hill



Gin and I spent two days in chaise lounges under sun umbrellas on the prettiest beaches on the Island. We took a ferry (glass bottom!) to Manganari the second day, and had lunch at the Taverna right on the beach. White sugar sand, clear blue water. No pictures, because it wasn't a fully-suited beach. Sorry folks.

Then we moved along to the island of Santorini, which is a Caldera. Click the link, Wiki's got a cool satellite picture of the island.

We stayed in Oia, on the north side of the Island. Well, see, first we tried to book a room at a hotel in Oia at the tourist office. But when we got to that hotel, it was about 2km outside of town, and not reachable by vehicle. We had to walk through a tortuous maze of (very traditional!) little white stone houses. The only way we found our way home that first night was to follow the little blue arrows spraypainted on the walkway. We stayed one night there, spent the day in Oia, and then moved to a swish hotel/spa in town.

Oia is the sunset capital of the island and every night cruise boats dump herds of people out to see the sunset. They line the streets.





and when the sun goes down they clap. We clapped too.

The city was very pretty by day and at night:





The next day we took a boat like this:



around the caldera. We stopped on the new volcanic island in the middle and climbed to the top.




and then the boat took us to a place where the volcano vents into the ocean, creating a hot spring. of course we jumped overboard and swam to it/in it.

All of the cities are perched on the edge of the Caldera




Which makes getting things onto and off of the island a bit of a logistical headache.

The second night we watched the sunset from the balcony of our hotel.



I prowled around the city a little bit afterwards, trying to catch it, and shop, and soak it in.



The next day Gin and I wrote postcards by the pool



and got "The Pesto Treatment," olive oil massages with a basil exfoliation in the hotel's spa.

it's a hard life.. and sometimes all that massaging wears a girl out



In the Santorini airport we met an 24yo American girl who was very excited to be running around in her bathing suit. From Santorini we flew back to Crete, and the next morning we flew to Berlin, I left Ginny in her pal Phoebe's apartment before jumping a 4h train home myself.

It was so much sun, great food, and a loooot of laying on beautiful beaches. I think I might have to go back next year.