taking care of "business" in the greek islands (folegandros)

"Are you conducting business?" our friendly hotel manager asked us as we huddled over the hotel's laptop and our ipad for an hour one morning.  "no", we replied, "just booking our ferry and hotel for the next island. "  after talking to her about the islands and our trip, we explained that had we stopped working for awhile to travel. initially, she was confused by this, then, nodding her head, said "ahhh, you were fired."   a good guess, i suppose, but no, not exactly.  in a way, i suppose planning the next leg of our journey qualifies as our business these days and, i think, why we'll look back at this as one of the high-water marks of our lives.  

Someone wrote that "Literature is made out of the misfortunes of others. A large number of travel books fail simply because of the monotonous good fortune of the authors." fortunately for us, unfortunately for the salience of any blog post, greece has been uneventful and blissful but, by no means, boring.

The nearest brush w/ drama came on our first day in Folegrandros as we walked through the peaceful town square.  A young man quickly walked by with a rifle slung over his shoulder. A few minutes later, enjoying our personal sunset happy hour on our hotel rooftop, gunshots rang out, then more a few seconds later.   This sporadic gunfire - some bursts lasting 15 seconds and no more than a few hundred meters away -  continued for some time.  This was slightly disconcerting - from our vantage point, we made good targets from anywhere in town.  We could also see that no one seemed to care.  Later, our waiter explained  it was a typical wedding celebration and no cause for alarm.  Based on the gunfire, which lasted well past 3am, the party was a success. 

Our other business here consists of:

* Choosing which of the ~8 beaches to go to (via bus or scooter).  Some require a hike. once we misread a sign, which meant a 2, rather than 1, hour hike.   That was a bit chafey but we chalked it up as a training exercise for our kiliminjaro hike in december.  The simplicity of the island is summed up nicely by the daily bus schedule.

matt - hard at work

*Choosing whereto have dinner among the charming tavernas serving local fare.  The food has been a highlight since we both love greek food dating back to college when cath worked as a waitress at a greek restaurant in philadelphia to help pay tuition; i ordered a lot of gyro platters delivered from the charlottesville institution, college inn.  Highlights here include the traditional Greek fare - spanokopita, moussaka, feta - and local specialities like rabbit, goat and seafood, featuring whatever-the-fisherman-caught-that-day.

octopus: it's what's for dinner

* Choosing our next  island - cath's mom and szymon are coming to visit for a week, which is surprising and wonderful news, but we'll need to find a place that's relatively close to athens, is peaceful and gives then a good taste of the islands. after considering naxos, we settled on milos. cath and i will hit naxos afterwards .  the search is complicated because some islands shut down towards the end of september.   our hotel in folegandros, for example, is closed for business on september 26th and won't reopen till april 2012.    

matt - pondering life's great mysteries

So this September, we'll pass days filled with sun, swimming in crystal clear waters, sometimes to rocks (i invented a new stroke - its a cross between a backstroke and breaststroke and, i must tell you, it's pretty awesome), reading (kindle for cath;  ipad for matt), happy hours and sunsets. rinse, repeat. 

My little sister, Heather (aka "miss mev") is an experienced and fearless world traveller who was an inspiration for our trip. she's never had much need for a nine to fiver (she once traveled alone through india and thailand for 9 months and leads independent tour groups to india) .  I remember her response when i was complaining (again) about my job. She smiled and said "my wish is for you to get fired" as she figured it would be the only way we'd have the freedom to do something like this.  Happily, we took the initiative and fired ourselves, temporarily anyway.     

santorini sunrise

Santorini sunsets are world-famous and most picturesque in the village of Oia (ee-ya), a short walk from where we stayed. Our evenings in Santorini always included watching the sunset.

I knew that the sunrises would be equally breathtaking and with less of an audience. A few days before we left Santorini, I set my alarm for 6:40am. Matt decided to skip the early morning photography session, but I bounded out of bed with excitement and rushed out with camera in hand. The sun was already casting a warm golden hue across the sky. I couldn't decide where the best views would be and so ran around like a bit of a mad woman snapping pictures from different vantage points. The streets of Oia, normally busting at the seams with tourists, were empty. During the day cats rule the town - they're all over the streets, and at least 2 in every restaurant we've been to. Fights break out often and are broken up by a nudge from the servers who consider it par for the course. I didn't see a single cat that morning. Instead, dogs perched on rooftops and howled to each other. This early in the day, dogs ruled the streets of Santorini. And I got a piece of Santorini all to myself, beautiful views that few others witness. It was magical.

When I recounted my experience to Matt, and showed him my pics, he was moved to wake up early with me the next morning. So I did it again - this time Matt running around like a kid in a candy shop taking in all the beauty of the early morning. He's vowed to get up to see a sunrise in every new place we're at (we'll see how that goes)!

the greek islands - worth the hype

our hotel in santorini charges for internet and for this, we're very grateful, as we've been w/out internet since getting here earlier this week.  it's been wonderful as i've been meaning to give up my crack-like addiction to checking email, social media, etc and cold turkey seems to be the only way i can do it.  my frugality is more powerful than my addiction.  that said, we're grateful for the internet now as we sit at a taverna having coffee, writing postcards and planning the next phases of our trip.

we've been in santorini for nearly a week, staying at the north end of the 12km x 4km island at the picturesque village of oia (pronounced "ee-ya").   it's a lovely place featuring the classic white buildings/churches with blue paint that tumble down the cliffs towards the blue sea below. most pics and postcards of the greek islands are taken here. 

the place has a very chill vibe. it seems to be more about being than doing ... our agenda consists mainly of determining which beach to hit, where to watch the sunset and have dinner.  

to aid in our exploration of the island, we've picked up a pretty rad set of wheels (50cc moped), which helps us get to the different beaches here. there's a red, black and white beach.  

prior to getting our wheels, we thought we could walking to one beach - about 3km away - would be fun and so we did. we didn't realize that the walk home was uphill and, at 4pm in the hot sun, was less fun.  fortunately, a friendly australian couple gave us a lift to town.  on the way, they raved about nearby island they visited called falegrandros.  sounded lovely and so we made plans to go there in 3 days.   

we also took a boat tour to a nearby island with an active volcano, which reaked of sulfur and had smoke pouring out of holes in the ground. fortunately, it didn't erupt but has every 20 or so years this century.  one especially massive eruption sank the middle of the island, resulting in the wonderful views we now enjoy.  

the agenda for the rest of the trip is taking form.  greek island-hopping in september and we just booked an apartment in rome for october.  if anyone wants to visit, we have an extra bed!