It’s All Greek To Me – Part Two (Photobomb)

“This title is the lowest of low-hanging fruit.”

Hey it’s me, ya boi, the owl man, anxiously awaiting the release of both my laundry from the basement of a Czech hostel and the Barminheimer triple feature. But in the mean time, I’m occupying myself by traveling the European countryside in a weeks-long excursion touring six different countries and at least a dozen different cities. Oh! And I’m writing this blog, reminiscing about the other time this summer that I went to Europe for vacation. You know, before moving to Europe for the next two years. It’s, uh, a lot of Europe this year. I count myself lucky for that, that’s for sure.

But let’s get back to the main story! This is, in fact, a continuation of last week’s blog detailing my group of 19’s island-hopping Greek birthday vacation. Except as of last week, we hadn’t left the mainland yet! Let’s fix that immediately, shall we?

Last you heard from me in Greece, we had just returned to Athens from our ten-hour bus tour to Arachova, Mt. Parnassus, and the Oracle at Delphi. That was the last time we’d be tooling around mainland Greece, barring the airport on the return flight home. The very next morning we packed up our bags, left our, uh, antifa-approved(?) hotel in Athens, and hopped on a bus to the port of Athens, where we then hopped on another form of transportation; a boat. We took a ferry to Mykonos, an island in the Aegean sea and something of a Greek party island.

By the way, before we leave Athens, I have another fun fact I want to share; did you know that Athens is home to over half the population of Greece? Totaling over 5 million people, but with the land area somewhere between my closet and a large mountain valley, Athens is a very crowded city. I already discussed this. And I already talked about how everyone drives like the rest of the city is out to get them, and how this makes it so you know you’re gonna feel every one of those five million people. But I don’t think I mentioned part of the reason why they’re all such crazy drivers. From what we could gather from our very helpful tour guide, I think part of the reason is that Greeks have an inherent, violent, sometimes self-destructive aversion to doing what the government says.

Now, I think a little distrust of the government is healthy, and a lot can be a great thing in the right circumstances; these days it feels like I’m plotting a revolution in my basement half the time (for legal reasons this is a joke, don’t come arrest me). But the Greek distrust for the government isn’t just distrust; it’s complete and total disregard for any and all regulations. Greeks drive like anarchists because they are, in practice, they are anarchists. Every Greek citizen is apparently born with the ability to purposefully disregard the law just because it’s the law. They don’t pay taxes, they don’t follow helmet regulations for motorcycles, there’s probably other stuff they don’t do but those are the examples our tour guide cited.

And honestly, I can’t really blame them. After being the ultimate Mediterranean superpower of antiquity, they went from free city states to being subjugated under the Romans during Roman times (you know, back in the day), and then the Ottoman empire for much of the medieval ages. And then when the Western European superpowers (your Brits, French, Spanish, Germans, etc.) helped them overthrow the Ottomans in the 1800’s, guess who subjugated them next and stole all their artifacts? Hint: It wasn’t the Greeks. Then we get into World War I and World War II and, if history has anything to say, you know nothing good came out of that.

And finally when the Greeks are ostensibly free and democratically elected, their own government begins to put the pressure on its citizens and bows down to big, international corporations, joins the EU (we already saw how western Europe treated them before), and the Soviet Union watches quietly in the background. So after five-hundred-plus years of questionable foreign assistance at best and outright occupation at worst, I think a little distrust of the government is warranted. Especially since the Greek Government is rife with corruption. Don’t take my word for it though, I’m just regurgitating without fact-checking anything my tour guide said, but hey, it made sense to me! And he’s Greek, so I figure he ought to know. It sure explains the full-frontal displays of exorbitant traffic violations.

But things felt a little different on the islands of the Aegean, where there are fewer cars and no policemen in full riot gear to ensure you’re not obeying the laws. We got to Mykonos and, wow, that salty air and sea spray sure is invigorating! The first thing we did after getting off our boat and getting unloaded at the hotel was go to the beach. Little did we know was that all the best beaches are private. Surprise! Remember when I said the government was in bed with big corporations? Turns out that includes commodifying the ocean! But then again, we should guessed that at least one of the beaches was some sort of uber-rich resort since it had a name like “Super Paradise.” I’m not kidding. One beach was Paradise, the other was Super Paradise. One day you wake up to find they’ve paved over paradise and put up a high-class luxury beach bar with strippers and blow. Sorry, exotic dancers and cocaine. That’s how you know it’s classy.

We did spend a lot of time at the beach, and it was a lot of fun and a great way to relax after the stress of travel, but I don’t have a lot of beach pictures. The simple reason for this is that there wasn’t a whole lot to see. It’s a beach. It’s in a cove. There’s sand. You’ve seen one beach resort, you’ve seen a hundred beach resorts. So I didn’t take any pictures of the beach worth showing, with some exceptions. But the other reason for that is that beach pictures tend to be very personal. You know, of people’s bodies. And it’s one thing for me to post tastefully derobed pictures of myself on here, but it’s another for me to post that of somebody else without asking them first. And I am not tracking down 18 other people to ask them if I can post their swimsuit pictures on this blog. Sorry, no Andy tummy today. (Editor’s Note: I’m not writing that ever again)

As a matter of fact, as you might know, I tend to shy away from people pictures and personal details involving others generally because I think it’s poor form for a personal blog, and a weird precedent to set. “You shared a deeply personal story with that guy, why/why not me?” Of course, on a blog like this, that line is fine and malleable and I make the rules at the drop of a hat, but as such, I won’t be sharing many people pictures or more personal stories of others (unless they’re particularly amusing) for respect for the privacy of those involved. I promise it’s not because I don’t like you or didn’t enjoy your company on this trip; it’s easier this way, I promise. We’ll share stories again at Christmas.

Buuuuuuuut I would be remiss if I didn’t include at least a few good people pictures! Because I did have a fun time and enjoy everyone’s company! So they’ll be scattered throughout, like so many grains of sand uncomfortably stuck between my butt cheeks. That’s the meaning of family. Mixed metaphores aside, we got dinner down at the beach that first night and it was excellent! All the food we had in Greece was varying levels of “excellent,” ranging from “this is the best lamb I’ve ever had” to “this is just ok by comparison but still exceeds my expectations.” I even tried fish at the beach restaurant! I didn’t like eating fish until just a few years ago, and I’m still not sold on it, but when in Mykonos, amirite?

But besides eating fish, I also looked at fish! Quite extensively! I love fish, believe it or not. I love fish studies, fish biology, coral reefs, the deep ocean, I just love fish. I love the ocean. It’s one of my favorite ecosystems. And I also love snorkeling! So I, of course, did quite a bit of snorkeling at this Super Paradise beach, and you know what? It was great! I saw tons of fish, just floating out there and swimming to the bottom over like an hour or two. My back fried all to hell in the sun and then I peeled like a lizard, but it was worth it because I saw rainbow wrasse, gobies, flounders, urchins, other varieties of flat fish, and just all sorts of bright and colorful Mediterranean critters. It wasn’t my first time ocean swimming, but this was definitely the most recent. If I lived near the ocean, I’d be out in the water ever day. I can’t swim well, but I’m an aquatic guy when it comes to fish. I have an aquatic ambiance.

But you know what was my first time? SCUBA diving! Yes, on that beach some of us also went SCUBA diving, and I had a great time being able to breathe underwater, even if the fish were mediocre. My mom’s SCUBA certified, but of those of us that went out, nobody else was, so we did an introductory SCUBA lesson that got us accustomed to being in the water with gear on. And let me tell you, Endless Ocean for the Wii did not prepare me for how fucking encumbering SCUBA gear is. I breathed in the tube fine, I had no issue with my mask or suit, but the guides had to stuff about fifty pounds of rocks into my pockets just to get me to sink. I am very positively buoyant; normally a great survival skill, not so desirable when I want to hover directly over coral and stare at a fish.

All things considered, once we finally got the suits on, went through the basic training and did some lessons for figuring out buoyancy and movement, we only got about twenty minutes of fish time at about twenty feet down. And the fish were kind of lame! I saw more and better fish snorkeling on my own than we saw while SCUBA diving. But it was less about the fish and more about the idea that I’ve now been SCUBA diving, and I know I want to do it again. This was first time diving, and I loved it. I’ve always been fascinated by it, and I’m thrilled I finally got to try. I’ll just have to do it somewhere where I can go for a little longer next time.

Now you may be saying to yourself, “That is not a picture of a beach or of SCUBA diving. Several of these photos have not been related to the conversation at hand. My disappointment is immense.” Fear not, I once again have a good reason: no beach pictures and the SCUBA pictures were shit. So much for fifty euros. But beach things were not all we did on Mykonos! Barely the half of it! See, Mykonos is both the name of the island the name of the town on the island. And this town, Mykonos, is like Greek Disneyworld. It’s a confusing, whitewashed maze of twisting streets and turns, crowded and hot and full of shops and stores selling mostly the same thing, but all designed to extract as much money and time from you as possible. This sure sounds like a really negative description of both Mykonos and Disneyworld, but honestly, it’s great! Every night we were there (which was, like, two nights? Three nights?), we went out in the evening and walked around Mykonos town and explored the area. And it’s a crazy place, honestly.

The Disneyworld comparison first came to me because the streets in the town proper have this bizarre plastic quality where they’re filled in with plaster and then coated in smooth white paint, and this is on everything. Walls, floors, ceilings, everywhere. It’s like a big safety bubble, smoothing over all the rough edges for the tourists. It’s certainly unique, I haven’t seen it anywhere else. But it’s also like Disneyworld in that it sure seems to cater to travelers (not in a bad way from my perspective, but that’s a discussion for the locals, not for me). The main activity on Mykonos, and the primary way we engaged with the city, is drinking. Drinking and shopping. And cats. Lots of those there too, just like Athens. There were so many people just walking around the city, stopping at every bar, grabbing a drink, and moving into the next one to drink more. Honestly, I’m surprised there weren’t more people passed out in alleys.

Mykonos is a beautiful city, with unique architecture, streets that run in on themselves and turn around suddenly to find an extraordinary view of trellises and flowers, houses that have no inconsistent structure or planning but look amazing stacked next to each other, and an incredible view of both the ocean and the hills behind. I really, really liked Mykonos for its aesthetics. I mean, look at this:

I really liked Mykonos for that. But I was perplexed by everything else about it. What do people do here? Most of the residents are seasonal, catering to tourists, but what about permanent residents? What’s the off season like? When did this all develop? What are those windmills for? Who paints everything white? I had so many questions, and they all went unanswered as the staff of places either a) could not quite understand what I was asking or b) knew I wasn’t going to be buying a drink and had other guests to serve. Hey, I don’t resent them, this island is a hustle. But it was still a lot of fun to walk around the town, get lost in the winding streets and stumble into random bars and random secrets. It wasn’t so fun at the end when we had to climb the five-hundred foot hill back to our hotel, but this is the price we pay for travel.

One night, Nick and Katie and I went out to a bar we had discovered earlier in the day, the Skandinavian Disco or something like that. We had actually seen the place earlier via its spotlights (fucking what?) the night previous, but didn’t know it at the time. Well, I’m going to Scandinavia, and it’s the only discotheque on the island, apparently, so we had to go. And it was fun enough for me, who was sober because it takes approximately a liter of whiskey to get me drunk anymore. We danced for a while with just about every other American on the island, and then called it a night after Nick and Katie, presumably, sweat out the rest of the their booze.

The night previous, however, we engaged in more wholesome tomfoolery when we found a random street dog named Manto and decided to hang out with him for a while. Admittedly, the square he was in was also named Manto, so his name tag could have just been a locator…? We didn’t know, and nobody told us to piss off and leave their dog alone, so we got to pet this random dog for a while and throw rocks for him, which he would pretend to chase for two seconds and then waddle back to us. He was very cute, and followed us for quite a while. Between Manto the dog and the random street cats that we encountered on every inch of Greece, we had quite a friendly repertoire with the local animal establishment by the end of things.

The other thing Mykonos is known for, besides its endless parties and Super Resorts, is its windmills. Obviously they’re beautiful and pretty and great to take pictures with, but there is no discernible reason for their continued existence except as a tourist prop. I’m not saying they never had a reason to exist, or don’t serve some continued utilitarian purpose, but I sure as hell couldn’t find any information about them out on the island. The whole place seemed to cloak itself in this impenetrable barrier of “You Will Have Fun Here, And Don’t Try To Engage With The Island in Other Ways,” but not as a means of deception or threat but more as a means of “it’s designed this way, go somewhere else if you don’t like it.” Which, for just this once, was perfectly fine with me. Most of the time.

I still, of course, asked about the windmills. I learned nothing. But I got some great pictures out of it!

You might think it sounds like I’m being hard on Mykonos for being a tourist destination, and maybe I am. But there’s nothing wrong with it! I still had an incredible time, and I loved getting out on the beach and working on my tan (only on my back, though) while looking at fish. And I do want to emphasize that I did quite enjoy walking the town, even if its purpose and appearance seem rather odd to me. It’s a beautiful place. Maybe not one I would go back to, personally, but one that I am glad I went to at least once.

But Santorini, on the other hand… oh, Santorini! Where Mykonos was parties and resorts and smooth and unyielding as a tourist’s coin, Santorini was history and culture and religion and industry and nature, and still had parties and beaches, too. Santorini is more my speed, and I know I would be happy to go back there someday.

We left Mykonos after our days of relaxation and party to take the ferry to Santorini, where our family’s usual blend of mischief and educational, guided outings re-commenced. Santorini is another Aegean island, southeast of Athens and in the ocean somewhere, but it’s also a volcanic caldera island complex. As such, the soil is simultaneously absurdly fertile and constantly buffeted by killer winds, resulting in zero vegetation above a bush. The sand is black, the rocks are craggy and rough, and the middle of the island is an enormous bay with a smaller island (the true, collapsed volcanic peak) inside, with the proper island of Santorini itself being a crescent shape. The twin island of Theracia opposes it, a little spit guarding the other end of the caldera.

Fun fact, a cruise ship sunk in that little inside bay and is now sticking vertically straight down into the caldera, 200 meters below the surface. They like to tell you that nobody died when the ship sank, but neglect to mention the French family that completely disappeared when the ship sank. It, uh, it’s an eerie thing to think about.

But moving on from that! We had a surreal moment upon first arriving in Santorini because we docked in that bay and had to get off our ferry and onto a boat at the main port. The port was on the water, obviously, but the road up to the island proper was, like, fifteen switchbacks straight up the side of a thousand-foot cliff, with the town perched way on top. It was dizzying to look at, and a little sickening to drive, but we got to the top and were then informed we had another twenty minutes to our hotel. Ok, sure, that’s fine. So we drove, on what felt like flat terrain, and got to our hotel, checked in, and decided to grab dinner. Lo and behold, when we walked down the street, suddenly we were on the beach again. Where did the mountain go? It felt like they just kind of… shifted the ocean upwards. It was bizarre.

But our main activities on Santorini involved a day-long guided bus tour the first day, and a half-day boat excursion around the caldera itself. On the bus tour, we first visited one of the inland (well, “inland” for an island, I suppose) towns, and saw some Greek castles and squares and roads and whatnot. It was cool! But the second stop was perhaps one of my favorite; we went to an archaeological site that managed an indoor dig of, I think it was something like, 30 acres of active dig site? So not only was this dig huge in scale, but it was old, too. Really old. Like, pre-Athens old. It’s called the Akrotiri archaeological site, and it’s from 1500 B.C. About 3500 years ago. Again, let that sink in for a second. Thirty five hundred years ago. Eclipsing the age of both the Parthenon and the Oracle at Delphi by at least a thousand years. Akrotiri is to the ancient Athenians as the reign of Charlemagne is to us.

I mentioned this before last week, but thinking about the ages of these things and the history of them is an incomprehensible task. It’s like that whole joke about how Cleopatra is closer to the moon landing than she is to the building of the Pyramids at Giza. But it’s true! The scale of time is truly monstrous when compared to the brevity of human existence. But this is a topic I wish to discuss at another time, since conveying this information is what I did for my job for the last year, so I’ll leave it at this. Despite being a Minoan city of several thousand in 1500 B.C., Akrotiri had (basic) running water and a city sewage city. This was not some hut village. This was a proper city, where people lived fairly comfortable lives.

And then, suddenly, they didn’t anymore. Because their city was built on an active volcano, and all their preparations and experience with earthquakes did not prepare them for a volcanic eruption. Their city was buried in more than ten meters (like thirty five feet!) of ash in some places, and their bodies still have not been found. Did they escape on emergency vessels? Are they buried in a mass ash grave several hundred meters from the city? We may never know. All that remains now are the structures of their buildings and the outlines of the lives they lived. Our world would be inconceivable to them, just as theirs is inconceivable to us.

There is, I think, an apt metaphor for climate change in here somewhere. Writing this from the sweaty basement of a Prague hostel, where there is no air conditioning anywhere, after the world just recently had its four hottest days in a row in all of recorded history, it’s not hard to imagine that we are preparing for earthquakes while an eruption waits in the near future. The world as we know it is vastly unprepared for the damages and disasters we are likely to see in the next century. It may not be sudden, but it will be a long, hot boil, like the proverbial frog in the pot. The story differs now in that, unlike the people of Akrotiri, it isn’t that we don’t have the capacity to predict or survive the eruption. We just… aren’t doing it. We don’t want to look at it and see what it really is, volcano and all. (or, at least, those in power don’t. The rest of the world, on the other hand…)

But that’s a bit more dire than I want to get today! I really, really liked seeing Akrotiri. It’s probably now the oldest archaeological site I have been to, although technically speaking my work in Minnesota once put in touch with a dig that was excavating artifacts over 10,000 years old… But a story for another time. After the archaeology dig, which got me rather hot and bothered for history, we went to the black sand beach to cool off. Which was funny, because the bus dropped us off like five miles up the beach from our hotel. So we just kind of wandered around in the little town instead, and saw the famous church with the five blue domes of Santorini.

The bus also took us up to the top of the island’s mountain, but much to my disappointment the beach was also not up there, too. The non-euclidean geometry only extends to one level of the island, I suppose. But the top of the mountain had great views of the island, and also an active monastery! And active military base! They frown upon taking pictures of either, so please enjoy these scenery photos instead.

After that, we took a tour of Santorini’s third-largest winery. Why did we go to the third largest? Why are there more than three on such a small island? Why was the wine so delicious? I don’t know the answer to any of those questions, but I do know that we tried three wines; a white wine, a white wine, and a white wine. This, despite them all being different colors. Fun fact: the grapes native to Santorini are some of the oldest strains of grapes still in existence, they don’t grow in vines but are rather woven into baskets on vineyards across the island (those little green bushes from earlier are the grapes), they can only be grown in high-acid volcanic ash, and they only produce white wine, which is an entirely technical distinction, not based on a difference in color.

I don’t particularly like the taste in alcohol, wine or otherwise, but I am fascinated with the growing and brewing/fermenting process, so this was fascinating to learn about. One of the wines we tried was a sanguine red in color, with an odd oily color to it that was initially off-putting. However, it was one of the sweetest, most delicious drinks I have ever had, and it was made entirely without adding sugars. It was just grapes. I don’t know how they did it, but it was a miracle in my eyes. It was like drinking adult Kool-Aid. Normally, that’s how you end up in the news, but here it got me slumped in the bus.

Our final spot for the bus tour was the town of Oia (?), a very picturesque town is, apparently, best known for its sunsets and instagram opportunities. This, judging by the fact that there were several spots in towns with people lining up to take photos for their social media. I did not partake in this (particular form of) self-flattery, of course, but I did still take plenty of pictures of the scenery. Because it’s still beautiful, and it’s still Greece, how could I not?

I don’t have much more to say about Oia besides that the pictures should speak for themselves. Look at it! Just look at it! It’s beautiful! We didn’t have to have an activity to do, we just wandered and took it all in. It’s crazy! We’re on a volcano! How cool is that?

After the bus tour, though, Nick and Katie and I went out to the restaurants along the beach by our hotel to get ice cream. The ice cream place we wanted was closed, but this was perhaps a bit of providence on the universe’s part because we ended up at a restaurant where a celebration was happening instead. I don’t know if it was a wedding, or a wedding rehearsal, or just a party or what, but there were smashed plates all over the ground, two guys were playing Greek folk songs on the fiddle and bouzouki, and one of the staff was leading restaurant patrons in a dance. There was a table of old Greek people, and they were clapping, and at one point one of the old guys got up and did a complicated dance during a song, and we all clapped, and some other old guy came over and offered him a shot and they linked arms just like in the Blues Brothers and they downed shots together. Then, the younger restaurant guy pulled us up to dance so the three of us danced in a circle with the old man and the restaurant worker and this Greek lady and some Australians and it was so cool. It was, frankly, the closest I felt to really experiencing life in Greece the entire time. It was such a wild experience, and a very short one, too, but easily a highlight from Santorini, if not the entire trip.

But that leads us to our final full day, and final activity: the caldera boat tour! This tour had three primary portions; the volcanic peak hike, the hot springs swim, and the visit to Theracia (?)(my shitty chromebook is barely surviving my gorilla fingers smashing the keyboard to type this; I cannot confirm the spelling of every Greek word I hear). This was all done on what looked to be basically a pirate ship, which was very very cool, and made me feel like a pirate a little bit. A very sweaty, sunburnt, oversized pirate. Hoist the yardarms and re-angle the falafels; we sail for better seas (WAIT A MINUTE! THAT LINE WORKS NOW! IT’S IN GREECE! I’VE BEEN SAYING THAT LINE FOR A DECADE AND IT’S FINALLY APPLICABLE! SON OF A BITCH I’VE DONE IT! I CAN SLEEP EASY NOW! Alright thanks for listening goodbye)

But that didn’t matter, because the pirate ship dropped us off on the island in the middle of the caldera, the one that is technically the collapsed nosecone of the volcano itself (which erupted and killed the Minoans; see above). It wasn’t a very difficult hike, but it was cool to see all the exposed volcanic rock and the pits that smelled like sulfur but just looked like more rocks. And it had a 360-degree view of the other islands, so that was neat!

I don’t have any pictures of this, but we went to go see the hot springs by throwing ourselves off the boat and into the chilly water of the volcanic caldera and then swimming to the springs themselves. The boats couldn’t get close enough to dock, so it really was a “Throw yourselves to the wolves” moment there. And the springs weren’t really hot, they were kind of this muddy inlet off part of the island were lukewarm, stinky bathwater soaked out of the earth. It was like sitting in a bathtub after someone just had diarrhea in it, but in a pleasant way. This is the best comparison I can make. After bathing in the shit water, we swam back to the boat.

There was another surreal moment where, in the shit springs, we looked up to the top of the cliff above us and saw what looked for all the world like a man in a robe and headdress staring down at us. I, having just finished the Resident Evil 4 remake a few weeks ago, almost added my own shit to the water because the silhouette at the top of the cliff looked just like the red zealots from the castle, goat horns and all, or alternatively, the skeleton scarecrow from the beginning of Planet of the Apes. The Charlton Heston one, I mean. The good one. A priest from a strange cult was up there, I was convinced, and we were about to die. BUt then the thing moved out of the direct light of the sun and we realized, of, it was literally just a goat. That was… weird. But cool! And memorable!

From the hot springs, it was to Theracia, where we really only had time to get lunch and swim a little bit off the main pier. But there was a working windmill! A real one, with sails and everything! It was spinning! So that was worth it, at least.

But from there it was back to the weird, space-defying port and cliff roads, to our hotel, and back to our rooms to pack up and get ready to leave. Which, I should mention, my room that I shared with Pedro had a bizarre dome and plaster ceiling thing going on that made it feel like I was in Luke’s house on Tatooine at the beginning of Star Wars Episode 4. But once packed up, we had one last big dinner together, hung out at the hotel a bit, went to the black sand beaches one last time, and prepared to say goodbye to Greece. The next day was a bus to the Santorini airport and a flight into Athens. Oh, what a trip.

Except, unbeknownst to us, the excitement wasn’t over once we got to the Athens airport because, surprise! We had to collect our baggage, recheck it, go through security again, and then literally sprint through the airport to try and catch our flight. The check-in staff lady helpfully told us we wouldn’t make it. But we did! We ran! And the airport staff stole Grandpa and Jane again and put them in some secret tunnels to get there faster or something. It was nightmarish. And then we did it again in Boston! Where the staff were even less helpful! Gosh, I don’t like this part of travel. But everything else is worth it.

This trip to Greece was an incredible experience and opportunity. I am forever grateful for the chance to go on this trip with people and family that I love dearly, for this trip of a lifetime that I have been fortunate enough to experience versions of every couple years, it seems like. My family has always been travel-heavy, my parents and Grandpa and Jane especially, and so it is fitting that, to celebrate my grandfather’s 80th birthday (and Barb’s 60th! Happy birthday, Barb!), we got the chance to travel with everyone together. What luck, what love, what a world. It was an experience unlike any other, in a place that is new and infinitely exciting. I only wish, really, that we had had more time to spend together, because as much as we did, it was only in about eight-ish days. Isn’t that crazy? All this, in less than two weeks. But I am so glad we did it all. Thank you, Grandpa and Jane and mom and John and Ralph and Laura and Nick and Katie and Barb and Pedro and Betty and David and Jamie and Kina and Luz and Morgan and Mason and Addison that we had this trip together. It’s been amazing.

And because I can’t end on too sappy of a note, here’s the joke photos I took from the second half of the trip! τα λέμε αργότερα, suckers!

I’ve spent the better part of a month trying to tease out the meaning of this message, but it still eludes me. Perhaps you will have a better guess than I.

The strange man from my garage followed me to Greece, it seems.

Alright, that’s enough of that. Thank you, everyone. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it, because really, this is more for me than anyone else. But I hope, especially for those of you who were also on the trip, that it brings back some of those memories. See you soon.