For pics that go along with Day 1, click here.
It’s Dodge’s wedding. As the sole representative of “the old crowd” hoofing it across the pond to the island of Thira in Greece (AKA Santorini), it’s my solemn duty to chronicle the adventure here. I’m tired and not making a lot of sense yet, but I’m here and ready to go.
Technically, day 1 never happened. I left Portland at 7:30 in the morning on Tuesday, 9/20, and arrived in Greece at 4:30 in the afternoon on Wednesday 9/21 local time. Highlights of the actual travel? Most importantly, I managed to make all the connections around the world to get here, from Chicago to Zurich to Athens with little difficulty. I met up with the rest of the Nashville crew in Athens, sleeping in the airport. Besides Dodge and Sophia, I knew none of them. While sleeping they appeared to be reasonably normal people.
To be fair, I did zero research on the island — or on Greece for that matter — before getting here. What I knew of Greece, and all I felt I really needed to know of Greece, was “Gyro” and “Baklava.” The rest was prayer. Prayer that more people spoke more English than I speak Greek (reference my only Greek words: “Gyro” and “Baklava”). Prayer that my whole packing light regimen wouldn’t be foiled by hot, sweat-enducing weather. Prayer that the hotel really looked as cool as it did in the promotional pics.
On point one: Gyro and Baklava are winners. Strangely, so is Pizza. We had a couple of great pies for dinner last night, though in a strange turn of the menu, it doesn’t matter what you actually order, you’ll always get green pepper on your pizza too.
Point two: So far, the packing light thing has been working out, mostly because I’ve been sleeping and swimming. This will really be tested in the days to come.
Point three: Turns out, our room is the room from the promotional pics. The very room. With the very balcony with the “infinity pool.” Not sure what the infinity pool is? It’s the pool that goes right up to the edge of the cliff so that when you’re in the thing, it feels like you could keep right on swimming to the ocean. Swimming right to the ocean were it not for the more-than-two-foot drop off the sheer cliff that you’d have to endure first.
I woke this morning at about 4:00, restless and ready for the day. Jet lag is so confounded annoying. I dressed and snuck out with my camera to take some night shots around the place. It’s an Escher painting, Oia. It’s a village of these wonderful cave villas built on top of one another in a cascade of abstract arcitecture careening off this volcanic cliff. The whole mess is strung together with the most convoluted mess of stairs leading all the way to the docks below. One wrong turn and you find yourself in someone else’s appartment in the middle of the night. In the dark. With your camera. Not that it happened to me, but it could have. I get the feeling so far that the Greek people are far less parochial about certain things that we are, but I have to imagine they have lines, too. That’s one I’m not willing to cross.
Three hours and 150 pictures later, I was at the top of this cliff in the parking lot of the Santorini water station watching the sun rise over the mountains. That was the part that hurt — for the first time this trip it hit me that Santorini is the Island of Love to the locals. It’s where you go as a couple. It’s where you go to Honeymoon. And here’s me, standing alone on a cliff face in the water treatment parking lot, arguablythe most romantic place on the Island of romance, alone, a third-wheel to someone else’s wedding.
Sorry honey. It would be better with you here.
There is a wonderful German couple in the studio next door to ours, Richard and Ericka. Seems we have many of the same impressions of the US political situation. It’s mighty entertaining hearing my own opinions with a German accent. I even got Richard to call Bush “Yosemite Sam” … YO-sem-EH-tee … We’ll be sharing a Bier later to celebrate Oktoberfest with them. Which they’ve chosen to miss this year for a trip to Santorini instead. Note: These Germans are missing Oktoberfest to come here. THAT’s how freaking cool this place is. It’d be like all these Nashvillians missing NASCAR by concsious choice. It’s that cool.