in the past, i have expressed ambitious hopes of rocking the pr industry in new york and being a fly-as-hell business lady. clowning on paros and mykonos this weekend maybe convinced me that living on a boat, sailing from greek island to greek island, selling fish or kitschy tourist shit might be an ok option, too. i could have a pink pelican (see below) named stan as a sidekick. you look me in the eye and tell me that doesn't sound like a phenomenal lifestyle. CAN'T.
karen k, megan, katie and her visiting boyfriend derek and i hopped on a ferry to paros wednesday morning; someone had the spectacular foresight to buy deck seats when the temperature was topping out in the 40s, but after about half an hour we sneaky snaked into some of the lux numbered seats inside to snuggle during the four hour trip. paros was beautiful, despite the chill, and our hostel owners were adorable. it's one of the lesser advertised islands, but i recommend it for sure.
we've noticed that traveling during the off-season has its pros and cons... the pros include fewer douchebag tourists, lower prices, street cred. cons: COMPLETELY DESERTED ISLAND. there was a bad news thunderstorm the night we spent on paros, and an anonymous menacing fisherman with a hook for a hand stalking us in our every move would not have been terribly surprising. horrifying, but not surprising.
during the day we stomped around the hood, taking a bus to naoussa, a fishing village nearby. oh, also we stumbled onto a half-submerged venetian fortress, no big deal. dericious taverna meals were starting to take their toll fiscally, so we had a picnic lunch on a bridge. after the bus back, we wandered into the church of 100 doors, watched the sunset from a bar and caught the ferry to mykonos, arriving on the island around 11 that night. again, super cute hostel owners. this one picked us up at the port, somehow cramming all of us, some greeks and a canadian couple into her hilarious awkwardly sized van. we somehow booked sort of an apartment living situation, which was perfect, minus the treacherous stairs leading to our front door which posed a serious problem for a temporarily handicapped derek; poor guy got into a serious snowboarding accident the day before his flight overseas. greece is a terrible place to be on crutches, but he was a trooper.
mykonos was also deserted for the most part, and though it was sort of a bummer to discover most of the restaurants and bars were closed, it was neat to see them all in renovation mode, getting ready for the tourist season. mykonos was breathtaking in general... i'll never get over watching sunsets on the aegean. probably the greatest part of the island, however, were the pink pelicans loitering around the fish markets. they were huge, no, HUGE, with super soft feathers. they were also borderline domesticated. i guess they must be used to a ton of people milling around the island. i love them and seriously considered taking one home if it would have me.
there was talk of secretly renting mopeds, but ultimately we just ran around the tiny narrow streets near the seaside and little venice for our two days on mykonos. the 5 hour ferry ride back was fairly uneventful, ooh except i learned how to play texas hold em, betting with torn up bits of paper... like i said, we poor.
i feel like this is not an adequate representation of the past 4 amazing days, but it's now 9pm and i have not a sentence done on my paper, so i should probably get to it, for the sake of keeping up the "study" facade of study abroad.
love,
kg
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