Weddingbee Blog

Sure, we were sad to leave Santorini. It truly felt like paradise. (Well, paradise where you can’t flush paper down the toilet, but paradise nonetheless.) But we were so excited to hop on our first ferry to Naxos!

We arrived just in time to see the sun setting over the Temple to Apollo. Kind of apropos, since he was the sun god after all.

Finding our hotel was a bit of a challenge, as all of the “streets” in the little port town where we stayed were very tiny and windy. It really felt like we were walking in a maze! We finally got to our hotel that we had booked the day before on Expedia, and the owner told us that he didn’t have our room anymore! He had given it away minutes before he got the fax from Expedia. Luckily, he was very nice, and he had already arranged for us to stay in a nearby hotel. This lesson we learned over and over again in Greece—it’s better not to book your hotel room in advance because you will probably stumble upon one that has a room available!

We headed back down to the water’s edge to have dinner, followed by some Greek coffee and Ouzo.

Greek coffee, although served in adorable espresso cups, is NOT espresso. It is very tasty, however. Just make sure not to drink the grounds at the bottom of the cup. Instead, when you finish, turn your cup upside down and let the grounds trickle down the sides of the cup. After a few minutes, turn your cup back over and read your fortune in the grounds. I have no idea if people in Greece actually do this—I learned this from my MOH’s mother, who grew up in Istanbul.

We spent the next day exploring the village. First on our agenda was breakfast. Look what we found on the way:

Ghetto Luxury Dance Club. Do they even get the irony?

Then we enjoyed breakfast near the water. Well, I enjoyed breakfast. The Dude enjoyed a chocolate milkshake.

We got some up-close action at Apollo’s Temple.

We walked around the village for a bit.

Next, we decided to splurge on a cab ride to an ancient site in the interior of the island. It’s a tiny island, so there really wasn’t any public transportation to speak of. We were so glad we made this decision (even though I got a bit carsick from the windy roads)—we ended up at one of our favorite sites of the trip!

Demeter’s Temple was actually quite interesting, as it had recently been reconstructed to reflect the various periods of its existence as a religious site: first, as a temple in ancient Greece, then later as a church. In our opinion, the historians and restoration artists did an amazing job of deciding how to restore it.

The temple was nestled into a beautiful, lush valley. I imagine it’s no accident, as Demeter was the goddess of fertility. It was breathtaking.

We ended that day with a delicious dinner where we got waited on by two very hot Greeks (one male and one female–lucky us!). I got a little bit drunk and accidentally kicked over the chair across from me when trying to feed a begging cat some bread. Ooops! Luckily there was a table of loud Germans next to us, and I don’t even think they noticed!

The next day, we explored a 10th Century castle that was literally built into the hills of the village. It was an incredible place, but it was sad to see what bad shape it was in. They just don’t have any money to work with.

These are views from the castle windows!

Then it was back to the port to wait for our next ferry: back to Santorini! Wait, what?

I’ll end with a short video from our dinner on the second night. In Greece, many of the restaurants have a ton of appetizers, called mezes, that you order for the table to share. It’s similar to the idea of Spanish tapas or Turkish mezes. (And the word actually comes from Turkish. Yeah, I’m a linguistics geek. What, I haven’t told you that yet?) Anyway, I thought the mezes we ordered at this restaurant were so pretty I had to share—they were yummy, too!

Did you miss something? Try and keep up, OK?
Mice in Europe: Paris Part I
Mice in Europe: Paris Part II
Mice in Europe: Versailles
Mice in Europe: Milan
Mice in Europe: Santorini