Mykonos

(Note: this post was written on Friday, June 20, though I'm only just now posting it.)

I'm currently sitting in a fancy airport hotel in Athens on our 5 year anniversary.  We just had a delicious pizza buffet lunch at the airport and bought a couple of mini wine bottles to sneak back with us for a real celebration!  We have to get up at 2:30am to catch our 4am flight to Spain (who schedules a flight that early?) so we are laying low and going to bed early - and pretending our real anniversary is tomorrow.

We also just got done with three relaxing days in Mykonos and are wrapping up Part Two of our 3 week jaunt around Europe.  I also just had the realization that we will officially be home to Dallas in less than 2 weeks and I'm feeling...antsy.  And numb.  Part of me thinks traveling for 3 weeks is too long but I never want the fun traveling and great times with Drew to end.  There's so much left to do in Dublin but I don't want to go yet because I don't want to be done.  There's a lot to look forward to in Dallas but I don't want to leave Dublin.  Everything is conflicting and makes me anxious but excited but frazzled but eerily calm at the same time!  I thought I'd be crying all the time at this point because of my sadness at leaving but...my emotions seem to have left the building.  I'm sure they'll pop up when I least expect them at a very inopportune time.  Ah well.

So...Mykonos!  Mykonos is a lovely little island that's full of beaches and wild night life, along with beautiful young guys and girls to go with it.  We decided that 'mykonos' in Greek either means "We're young and slutty!" or "God, we're old."  You can guess which category we fell into.  If you're a hot young gay guy or a scantily clad 20-something lady, this is your place.

That's not to say we didn't have an amazing time!  Our hotel was a real highlight - they do orientations every day for people that arrive and Anna and Yianni (the owners) have "Greek nights" once every 3 days - where they teach you how to make tzaziki and how to Greek dance and introduce you to everyone in the boutique hotel.  We were naturally feeling intimidated and awkward but we instantly clicked with a gorgeous gay couple from London who were just as anti-social as we were.  Gary and Peter became our fast friends the rest of the week!

I didn't take a ton of pictures in Mykonos but here are a few for fun:

View of the pool from the pool bar.  Really pretty.

Another view from the edge of the pool.  Lots of cruise ships!

Sunset drinks at the pool.

Hey.

We saw so many pretty sunsets this trip but its virtually impossible to capture them on a camera!

Views of Mykonos town.

And some blue/green water with some giant ships.

Dinner at Niko's Taverna!  This was a large copper jug of wine.  Yumm.

They're known for a dish called the Lamb Kleftiko, which is basically the most tender lamb ever with potatoes, onions, carrots, feta cheese, and loads of olive oil and garlic baked in foil.  I'm going to learn how to make it when I get home but this stuff WAS GOOD.

We had so much success with the four-wheeler in Santorini that we decided to rent another one here for 2 days.  We drove to Agios Sostis beach on the first day, a "virgin" beach (meaning there aren't any chairs or restaurants on the beach), and it was rugged and beautiful.

There IS an (evidently) world famous restaurant, Kiki's, up on the hill, that serves huge grilled meat dishes and super fresh salads.  

I forgot to get a picture of the giant feta and tomato stuffed chicken breast we ordered but managed to capture these colorful salads.

Anna at our hotel told us we HAD to go to either Paradise Beach or SuperParadise Beach one day "for the experience".  Paradise Beach is exactly what you think a crazy party town beach full of sluts and guys on the prowl might be.  Packed full of beach bars and chairs and waiters bringing everyone drinks and loud bumping music!

And here's me, eating a watermelon.  In a one-piece.  Which I thought was cute and thought were coming back but even if you DON'T have the body for a two-piece, you should wear one anyway.  Or risk being scorned!!

At 4:30pm, the music REALLY starts pumping, and hired dancers start twerking on the table tops.  This goes late into the night when the party moves to the actual clubs up on the hill where famous DJs usually frequent in the summer.  Boy George is playing next week!  Gary and Peter are going.
We left around 5:30 because we'd had all the fun we could stand and there was no way I was ever going to get drunk enough to dance on a table in my suit.  Sorry, partiers.

Another pic on our last day before we flew back to Athens!

And here's Drew eating a delightful room service anniversary dinner, consisting of a club sandwich for him and a burger for me.  We had ourselves a nice little staycation.

 If I had to choose between the two, I'd say I liked Santorini more, but only by a hair.  Our hotel and the owners were so wonderful and that really made our stay so memorable.  The food was delicious and the city was fun to wander around and get lost in.  The people watching was more fun than anything and we loved/hated being reminded exactly how old we are.  Dangit!

In present day, it's currently our last night of our trip and we are headed to a fancy dinner to celebrate/mourn.  More soon!

Santorini

Santorini.  Paradise.  Beautiful.  Quintessential Greece (in my mind).  We'd heard great things and our expectations were wildly exceeded!  

Santorini is a gorgeous island that was formed by a volcano erupting so everything is set up very high on these steeps volcanic rock cliffs.  There is one main city, Fira, another tiny one called Imerovigli, and another one on the very edge of the island called Oia, rumored to have the best sunsets in the world.  We stayed in the tiny town of Imerovigli, and while there wasn't a ton going on except a few (amazing) restaurants, we're so glad we were there - we stayed in a cluster of white washed resorts/buildings and our owner/host was the cutest, most attentive Greek man you ever met.  We were a great distance from the action of Fira and the quaint sunset town of Oia, perfectly positioned in the middle.  

We rented a four-wheeler one day and it might have been our favorite day of the whole trip thus far.  We just zoomed all over the island and hit up some beaches and drove around the mountain roads and got to see everything.  And Drew didn't kill us, which was a huge bonus!  We also took a sailing trip around to the volcanic islands and hit up some more beaches, had a BBQ on the boat, and drank lots of Greek wine.  That was fun.  We truly loved this little island and highly recommend it.  Here are a bunch of pictures!

Sunset on the balcony our first night.

And I thought I'd do some blogging overlooking the blue water.  Why not.

View from our balcony looking down on Imerovigli.

Dinner on our first night at Estia!  This was my Mousaka....

...and Drew's Lamb/Pork/Beef Souvlaki.  SO GOOD.  We are going to try to figure out to make this when we get home and you're all invited.

See that tiny cluster of white houses on the very far left of the island?  That's Oia.  We hiked there, 2 hours, from our little town.  Sheesh!

But we did get some cool pics, like this beautiful church (behind me) overlooking Oia.  I love it.

After our hike, we went on the yacht tour of the island!  This is Drew jumping into the icy water.

Pulling into the Red Beach (named for obvious reasons) for a dip.

Sunset cruisin and boozin.  My hat flew off and a young weird newly married Indian couple nearby was too busy staring into each other's eyes to bother helping me and the hat fell into the water.  Lost forever.  I was livid.

The sunset off Oia's coast.

Deep thoughts.

Our last day we rented the four wheelers!  We were made Dumb and Dumber quotes/comments the whole day and generally just had a damn good time.

After our trip to the beach and snacks of beer and watermelon, we went back to Oia to wander around the town.  This is the view from the top of the city looking down.

And some more typical Greek scenes that I adore.

Oh, and one more stop by a gyro place in Fira that changed our lives.  

In terms of placing Santorini among the cities we did in Italy, we'd still say Positano and now Santorini were our favorites.  We love love loved it and enjoyed the 3 days we had there wandering around with no agenda and seeing the Greek sights.

Off to bed - I'll try to post about Mykonos tomorrow.  Night!

Athens

From Italy, we flew to Athens for about 24 hours before we moved on to Santorini and Mykonos.  We really didn't have much planned except for seeing the Acropolis, and we made the sweaty and ridiculously hot hike up there for the afternoon.  

The Acropolis is a famous "citadel" built atop a large hill, and it contains the remnants of several ancient buildings of "great achitectural and historic significance" - the most famous being the Parthenon (the big temple dedicated to Athena).  Looks like a guy named Pericles was responsible for the construction of several of these sites on the hill, built in the 5th century BC.  That's old!

I took some pictures but honestly..?  I don't have the brochure with me anymore to tell you what exactly everything is.  So just know that it's really old which makes it really cool and really significant.  Sorry dudes.

Dionysus' Theater!  That's what I can remember.

The Parthenon!

Trying to cover our sweat in the picture but failing.

We had a delightful low key dinner in town that night consisting of Chicken Souvlaki and some buttery potatoes, and went to bed early in prep for our flight the next day.

We had a 4am flight to Spain this morning (everything time/place/date/blog-wise is wonky with me right now, I can't keep anything straight) and I'm so tired I can barely keep my eyes open to type out this uninformative blog post.  So I'm headed to bed.  More soon!

Sorrento

Up next after Capri, we took a quick ferry over to Sorrento!  Sorrento is located closer to Naples and set up high on some cliffs.  It's not known for it's beaches (or really...anything) but we actually really liked it a lot.  We were only there for 24 hours and wish we had more time, but we made the most of it while we could.  

Deep ravine/road leading down to the water from the city centre.

Piazza Tasso - main square in town.

One of MANY old shops selling limoncello and a wide variety of other citrus products.

Best pals exploring.

Inside of a pretty church we popped into.

Agreeeeed.

This is a beautiful lemon granita.  It's basically like a Lemon Chill in slush form and it's the most refreshing, wonderful, sweet, cold, thirst-quenching thing you've ever had.  I got at least one a day in Positano and got two of them the day we were in Sorrento.  And I'm already missing them!

Drew also took us on a side trip to some lemon groves in the heart of the city!  This was a delightful little oasis where we could sit and have some drinks in a lemon-tree covered courtyard.

And then we had a pretty damn good Napoletan pizza at Da Franco,  a very chill, no-frills pizza place that delivered on it's quality pies.  Yum yum.

Bros and limoncello shots.

We went back to Evan and Elise's hotel for some champagne and moon gazing and World Cup watching before we had to leave them :(  We were heading to Greece and they were going to France.  I hate saying bye to friends.

We also stayed in a beautiful old hotel that used to be a private residence called Maison Tofani.  We didn't get to spend near enough time here and the breakfast was UNBELIEVABLE.  I'd pay for 3 more nights if I could just have that breakfast one more time.  They had the biggest Italian breakfast spread you've ever seen, complete with sweet and savory dishes alike. They also had Arancini, the deep fried cheesy rice balls that I live for, but Drew only let me have two as we were both afraid I'd throw up again on the road back to Naples.  Ugh.

Sorrento was a lovely little town that I wish we spent more time in, but we really enjoyed the time we had!  It was the perfect wrap-up to a gorgeous week in Italy.  Now...onto Greece!