Greece was a rocky start. My friend Margaret who plane from DC to Rome was delayed, thus making her miss her flight to Athens and was stuck in the Rome airport for 10 hours. Meanwhile, I'm at the train station in Linz early in the A.M. about to catch the train to the Vienna airport and I think to myself "do I need my passport?" Nahhh. To confirm my doubts, I call my American friend early in the morning who, after a small moment of thought and hesitation, told me that I definitely needed my passport. So I miss my train, go back to my apartment as fast as I can and grab the single most important document that I feel like I never need and use, take a later train to the Vienna airport and I arrive 35 minutes before take off. Sometimes it's easy to forget you're still a foreigner when living and working outside your homeland. This past year has been so easy visiting different countries with the train and car that remembering to bring your passport has become an unfortunate afterthought.
I meet Margaret at our hotel in a very nice neighborhood at the far north of Athens. It's situated in a neighborhood called Kifissia, with many locals and few tourists. We window shopped expensive name brand stores, ate at an amazing fresh Greek vegan restaurant, then took the train down to the city center where the Parthenon and other sites were. After that, we catch up on sleep and head straight to Santorini the following morning.
Up early in the A.M. again, we arrive at the Athens airport an hour early with time to spare. We head to our gate, chill out and relax while the sun rises. It's 15 minutes before our plane is supposed to take off and we notice that the plane boarding had not started yet. I mention it to Margaret while she's reading her book, and we agree it would be a good idea to check our flight and see if anything changed. I get up and go look at the Departures monitor and see that our Santorini flight is on time with big red letters next to the gate number that says "Gate Closed." I notice that the gate number listed is not the same one that Margaret and I had been sitting at. I dash back to Margaret, tell her that we're sitting at the wrong gate and she darts up out of her seat. We look at each other in shock, and run to the correct gate of departure that is only two down from the one we were sitting at. We spot 5 Greek flight attendants chatting there and Margaret says to them "You have to get us on that plane! We have to get to Santorini! We have to get on there now!" The ladies look at each other with puzzled smirks on their faces and ask to see our tickets. I give Margaret a "shut up, calm down, we're screwed" look and we're both silent and waiting what seemed like light years for a response from the attendant. In a desperate hope, I calmly and firmly told the attendant that we have been here for over an hour and that the gate must have changed between the time we arrived and the time of boarding. She looks up from the tickets to us and tells us that we have to get a new flight. Margaret gasps and tries demanding that there's enough time to get on the plane but it didn't do any good. The attendant tells us there is another flight leaving in a half hour and that maybe we'd be able get on it, so once again, the running and rushing commences and Margaret and I run with our bags out of the terminal to the Aegean Airlines counter not only feeling like idiots but now looking like idiots as well. We wait in line to see what next plane is we can get onto, and we end up getting the last two seats left on the next flight and swallow the doubly expensive price we had to pay. The Aegean Air agent gives us our tickets and tells us there's only 25 minutes left until the plane departs and that we better hurry. We run like hell to the correct gate and are the last ones to board the plane. We're winded, overheated and sweating but are finally on our way to beautiful Santorini island.
We arrived at the tiny airport and took a 15-minute bus ride through winding roads to the central town of Fira and checked in to our hostel. The weather during our time in Santorini was very sunny and windy. We went on a sailboat tour of the island and hiked around a volcanic island, swam in a hot spring with clay mud that exfoliated our skin and relaxed on a black sand beach and swam in the Mediterranean. It was a gorgeous island and spending three days there was the perfect amount of time. Margaret and I were both surprised at the lack of white houses with blue dome shaped roofs that Santorini is advertised as, as well as the amount of tourists. There were about six towns on the islands and just one of them was the unique and picturesque setting that we had in our heads of Santorini. It was in this town where we wandered through the maze of houses against the cliffs and watched the sun set on the sea. The second thing that we weren't prepared for was the amount of tourists who were there. The island was just littered with Americans, Asians and whoever else which sometimes took away from the experience.
After three days in Santorini, we took a 3-hour ferry ride to the island of Mykonos. Mykonos is one of the larger of the Greek islands and was a completely different experience than Santorini, primarily because we decided to rent a four wheeler to explore everywhere. Margaret nor I have ever ridden or driven anything except a bicycle and a car, so it was sure to be an interesting experience to say the least. The man we rented from explained and demonstrated poorly how to start the four wheeler and how to function the gas and brake, which I assumed would be easy, but starting the dang machine proved to be the most difficult. The guy teaching us how to start it acted like it was a piece of cake and made us feel dumb. He was losing patience so he only taught me how to function the four wheeler while Margaret stood there observing eagerly but cluelessly. I eventually get it started on my own and Margaret hops on and we drive off the lot aimlessly.
That day was the most fun I have had in years. There's just something about driving in perfect weather through beautiful landscapes with the wind through your hair, knowing you have the freedom to go anywhere. I didn't expect it to be so exciting and the new driving experience made the feeling even more thrilling. We went to four different beaches on different coasts of the island. Some were big party beaches with lots of people and bumping music, some were for pure relaxation that were off the beaten path. We decided to spend the rest of the afternoon at one of the hidden relaxation beaches on a cove then ended the day watching the sunset on a windy cliff in the edge of nowhere. We laughed at how romantic of a day it was and how we basically were having a honeymoon vacation. Darn it, Cupid, where are you when you're needed?
We had so much fun that day that the next day we decided to rent the four wheeler again even though we only had about 6 hours until our flight back to Athens that afternoon. Using our map, we decide to ride up to the highest point on the island. We ride up a rocky dirt path and follow signs for "Lighthouse." It was a bumpy ride with awesome views of the beaches and cities down below. When we get to the top and park the four wheeler, an amazing panoramic view of the blue sea and horizon surrounded us that stretched for miles. It was the most gorgeous sight I had seen in Greece. The lack of people also enhanced the raw beauty of the landscapes and water. We took it all in, snapped some pictures and made our way back. When I tried starting the four wheeler, it was taking a little longer than usual. And by that I mean I was trying to kickstart it for a solid 10 minutes. Margaret is even filming me during the whole, as it was funny at first, until your foot starts to ache from all the force you're using. We are shocked yet completely unsurprised because the bike had been giving us many problems the past 24 hours, including completely turning off while going uphill. We had told the guy about the problems we had the day prior, but of course he ignored the two dumb American girls who don't know how to properly function anything mechanical with an engine. We give up and decide that we would ask the next people who come up to the lighthouse for a ride back down to the nearest beach hotel so that we can phone the rental agency. Not much longer later, we catch a car ride back down courtesy of an Italian couple. They didn't speak English nor German but Margaret and I managed to find a few Italian words that we knew. We get to the nearest hotel, phone the rental agency, and Margaret and I agree that she will lay out and relax on the beach while I go up the mountain with the mechanic to the broken down four wheeler. The mechanic arrives, and I jump on the back of his moped while inhaling his bodily aromas of grease, sweat and cigarettes. It ends up being over an hour that he works on the four wheeler and with no progress, he gives up and we take a romantic moped ride down on a different dirt path to the beach to meet Margaret. She's all up in arms worried because we had apparently been gone for not one but two hours, so she thought I was the next Natalee Holloway. The mechanic leaves and comes back with his partner an hour later so that Margaret and I can have a proper ending out on the beach on our last day. When they return, they are early. They're waving their arms and motioning for us that it's time to go back to our hotel. Margaret looks horrified as she is swimming nude in the sea and I'm laying topless on the beach. I quickly scramble to find a shirt while she runs out of the water trying her best to cover herself. Good thing we were sunburned because we would have been red from embarrassment from the attention of the mechanics and other beach goers.
Needless to say, it was a trip full of surprises and new experiences and when I do any Mediterranean trip again, a four wheeler will be a must!
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