A Greek Monday!

I woke up at 6:45 to a beautiful sunrise coming out of the ocean. Seeing a sunrise out of the ocean has been the on thing I have been looking forward to most and it was really beautiful. The sun was a large red ball that was throwing scattered lines through the clouds and made the ocean seem really dark blue. I quickly got out of bed and got dressed, but I was a little too late for pictures. I just enjoyed the moment for the moment instead and not for the picture :) I then went down to the beach and just sat down there for a while as the sun rose. The sun hit some clouds and it disappeared so I went back up to our room. We ate breakfast at 8:00 and it was really good. There was a HUGE bowl of plain yogurt... and it’s no where near the stuff in the US. This is a very thick and creamy yogurt... almos goopy... that you put different toppings on. They had this every morning with four differnt jellys, and two bowls of cearel you could put on it to. My favorite topping was the hot nutella tasting chocolat sauce they had. I put it on my yogurt every morning and it was really good! They also had some eggs, traditional bread, meat and cheese and some little round bread/sweet cheese type things. That had some Cinnamon on top with a drizzle of honey and some sort of sweet cheese inside. Maybe it was cream cheese or something like it. It was really good and I was definitely full afterwards. We got ready to go and left right around 9:00am to go to an old ruin that was once a palace where the monitor battle took place. Each family had a vehicle so it was four cars total. We all had special names to. My uncle Dennie, Aunt Debby, cousins Emily and Ana, my grandparents and I were all in an 8 passenger, manual VW van. Every vehicle got a walked talky and a code name. Since Dennie was leading the pack his name was Gandalf, the Jacksons was “Red squirrel”, the Smiths were the Whomping willows and the Cooks were the nut packets. It was really fun. So once we got ready we were off...

Our first stop came when we met a van coming the opposite direction on the narrow road, Dennie pulled off a little bit and let the vehicle pass, but then found out that the van was two wheel drive and was stuck. So we backed the van down... or actually I should say the whole pack slowly backed up... it kind of looked like a snake trying to slither backwards. We got back on to the cement and then we were off for real. After about a kilometer we realized we had another problem... the gas tank was on E. So our next mission was to find a gas station. We did and it was really big and wide open. There was also a little church (like 10 person church little). It really proved church buildings come in all shapes and sizes. After our gas up we left for the museum again. And yes, you guessed it, we stopped again! This time at an ATM machine. Apparently the one next to the hotel was out of cash. So we were driving down this rally busy street and we all pulled over. We left enough room for cars to pass, but while everyone was crowding around the ATM machine a bus came up and couldn’t get through. Not only were we holding up the bus though, we were also holding up at least 20 cars behind it. My uncle and the other adults made a mad dash back to their vehicles and we pulled out. The last car however got caught behind all the people we held up. The bus driver was really angry... and we saw him again when we got to the museum!! We finally got too the museum and got in. It was really cool to see the ruins and walk around. It wasn’t like a normal ruin where you walk on little side walks and look at everything behind roped off sections. We actually got to walk on it and through some neat stairways and stuff. My favorite part was all the cool stone stairways and the trails to walk on. Also a guy came up to me and had me take him and his wife’s picture with his really nice Canon camera... he must have seen mine and known he could trust me in knowing how to use it. After I was done looking around I joined the rest of the kids and we looked around in the tourist places across the street. There is always so much stuff to buy, but I’m having a hard time buying stuff I won’t use. So I didn’t get anything. We all met up at the entrance and then we loaded up into our vehicles to find somewhere to find lunch. This turned out to be quite the adventure. We spent the next 20 minutes driving around looking for a place that was actually open and could hold 20 people. We then found out another truth about another country. The French don’t use the bathroom and the Greeks don’t eat lunch! We finally found a small pizza place/hotel that would feed us, but we had to wait 20-30 minutes. We decided it would be worth it because we would probably spend that much time trying to find another place to eat and then have to wait there anyway. So we got some drinks and then just hung out for a while. There was an amazing bakery across the street that some of us went to as well. While most of us were off looking around the adults ordered the food. They ordered a bunch of “starters” for lunch so we ended up eating a bunch of "little lunches". We ate fried/battered mushrooms, fried cheese, bread, squid, French fries, kabobs, fried zucchini and then fruit and yogurt for dessert. It was like the longest lunch ever. We were there for at least an hour and a half. Each starter came out like every 10 to 15 minutes and then we would eat it and wait. It was good though! After we ate those of us who wanted to go to the beach walked down. It was about a 10-15 minute walk before we got there. Once we did we were excited because there were huge waves! We ran around in the water a little bit and I skipped stones. I found out that if you skip them off waves tat they really go far. It started to rain a little bit so we went back to the vehicles and then back to the hotels. I was kind of tired and dozed off for a little bit. I kept waking up barely and hearing different parts of different conversations and it was really weird. I woke up fully when we stopped for a bag of oranges for Emily. I got out and took some pictures and then we finished the rest of the 10 minute drive back. We passed a cool beach that I thought would be cool to run to. I think I will tomorrow.

Once we got back a few of us got changed into cooler clothes and went down to the beach. We then hung down there for a couple of hours. We built a really cool; I like to call it abstract, castle out of sand and random things we found on the beach and in the rocks. We found things like tile, bricks AND even a piece of rebar! It was a lot of fun. While the group (Kyle (15), Kerrie (16), Laura (16) Ana (my cousins who is 14) and Delany (12?) were talking and skipping rocks I hiked up the side of the hill across the bay and walked out onto a really cool outcropping of rocks. I’m going to sit there during a sunrise for sure because it has a great view! It was starting to get dark so we went back to the hotel and by then everyone else was eating. We ate (fish, some different salads, potatoes, a yogurt type dish, fruit, rice and noodles). After dinner we went up to the Jackson’s room and watched “Oh brother where art thou”, which was actually pretty funny! It was a really good day.

My adventure continues with.... A trip to the south side!