back from the cyclades!

How’s everything back there in Holland?! Give us our warm weather back!! ;)
Here everything is fine, the weather is good as well, but not as warm as it was in Holland. Last Sunday we came back from the islands, we have had a great time! However, all the camping sites, except for on Mykonos, were closed so we didn’t camp at all. Thanks for the good info mr Souvlaki! :P

3/4 We (Mieka Glieka, LeFliep and me) left with the afternoon train to Athens. Adam and Ultan managed to be just in time; one second later and they would have been stuck between the train doors. In Athens we went to the hostel and the 4 went out to party. I stayed because I had been sick since Tuesday and I went on internet to find out when the ferries would leave to Syros. The best ferry went at 07.30 and so at 06.00 we left to the port. The boat was incredibly full with people, so we sat/lied at the restaurant next to two gossiping old Greek ladies. Syros is a very nice island with Italian influence; so that means coloured houses. We stay in a nice apartment with our own little kitchen. The first day we explored Ermoupoli (the capital where we stayed) and we went to bed early, because we hadn’t slept the previous night.

4/4 I went to the hospital with Mieke. My ears felt weird for almost a week now so I wanted to go for a consult. It’s good that I went coz I turned out to have a nose and ear infection, so the doctor prescribed me antibiotics for a week. After that we went to visit Ano Syros ( a church) and we went to two little villages called Galissas and Finikas.

5/4 Unfortunately Mieke has to go back to Holland, but Levien and I continue our trip and take the ferry to Mykonos. When we arrived an employee from Paradise Beach came to us with an offer. The black guy next to us was also interested in staying on the camping, but the employee first thought he had other intentions and asked; are you looking for a job?! Fortunately, the crazy American guy could laugh about it. When we arrived at the camping we understood why the employee asked it; all the people working to get the camping ready for high season were black people. We kinda felt as if we were in Kenya; we slept in a small hut, between high grass and African people. We stayed on the beach during the afternoon and in the evening we went to the city to see some sights like the famous church and the windmills. The famous church was different than I had expected though. Since it’s said to be the most photographed church of Greece I expected it to be a really big sensational church but it turned out to look more like an igloo! Not what I expected, but it was cool! We had a nice dinner is a taverna that has a special every day guest; a big pink pelican. For most people a big attraction, but I found it rather scary since he bit everyone.

6/4 Just in time we got to the boat that goes to Delos. Delos is an island without population; it only has ancient remains. On the boat is also a large group of senior American people. The grandma next to us is rather funny and her husband dropped packets with food above Amsterdam during W.W.II. Delos itself is really nice! There are many remains and we also climbed the hill, from which you have a nice view on the Cyclades. There was, however, also a Belgium school class that, as soon as the realized we were Dutch, started to play the worst Dutch music like Watzgeburt and Nu ga je dansen klootzak.
After we got back from Delos we went to the hospital, this time for Levinia. She turns out to have an ear infection as well and gets drops for 4 days. In the labyrinth (all small white streets) of Mykonos we try to find a pharmacy to get them. After a pita gyros we go back to the camping and climb the rocks nearby the camping and then go to sleep.

7/4 Early in the morning we get up to get to the ferry to Paros. There we stay in a nice hotel for a good price. We visit the church and then wait for the bus to go to the Butterfly valley. The valley is closed but we walk till the monastery and then wait again for an hour for the bus to bring us back. In the evening we go the church to see what the Eastern service is like. The people are all dressed really nicely and have a candle and from the speakers you can hear the priests singing. We feel kinda unconformable so we decide to leave.

8/4 Kalo Pasxa! Around 10 we get up and have breakfast on our balcony. The owners of the hotel ask us to come to the party downstairs and help them with grilling the lamb. The sweet little lambs, I can see them jumping around being happy…the picture downstairs at the party is different; the poor lambs hang above the grill and you can still see the eyes. However, since the owners really insist that we help them we do so, even though I feel bad about it; lambs are my favorite animals. After a while, we leave the ‘great’ party and take the bus to Lefkes. We take a look around in the village and then take the last bus back to town and go to the beach. Since I’m not really a fan of the beach I’ve had enough of it after a while. So we go back, take a shower, have a good meal, visit another part of the town by night and then go to bed.

9/4 At 9 o’clock the alarm clock rings, but I’m dead tired. I have had a busy night. In the middle of the night I saw Levien sitting straight up in bed and she was talking. At first I thought she was on the phone but that wasn’t the case. When I asked her what she was doing she asked me; Marie, do you also need KLEMMETJES for the sun. I had to say ‘what?!’ 3 times before I understood her. And when I said ‘huh’ she explained me; yeah, those little animals that when you unfold them you get a parasol. Again, huh?! Yeah, the ones we used yesterday. ‘Where?’ Yeah, the one on my head! “ehm Levien, stop talking shit and go sleep’.
Anywayz, we took the ferry to Naxos and got ourselves a good deal again concerning our place to stay. It was really warm when we got of the ferry and the woman of the pension brought us there with the car. We put on our skirts and tops and go outside. But Naxos turned out to be really windy! So we go back to dress a bit warmer and go to explore the town.

10/4 At 9.30 we were in the bus to Filoti, together with a whole bunch of French children. Nearby Filoti is the cave of Zas (Zeus). At first we have to walk on the asphalt road, then the road turns into a path in the mountains and at the end we had to climb some rocks to get there. The walk was really nice, the views great and the weather warm. The cave, however, was kind of a disappointment. It was just a whole in the mountain on which was written with red graffiti; cave of Zas. There were only some rocks in it, and that was it. But ok, at least we had a good walk. Later we take the bus back home, do some window shopping in the town and watch ZDF at the apartment.

11/4 At 6.45 the alarm clock rings. Today we want to go to Sagri in the morning and to Melanes in the afternoon, so we have to take the bus at 7.30. We are waiting for the bus….that doesn’t show up. We take a taxi with two tourists from Switzerland and go to Sagri. First thing we do is buy bread in the supermarket. Already there some weird kinda not 100% sane guy asks us if we want to go to the temple of Demeter. That’s indeed where we want to ok and we are ok with him showing us the direction. However, we don’t want him to walk us there, showing which road to take is enough. He doesn’t understand that though and keeps walking with us. So we stop to have our breakfast and tell him to just keep walking, that we want to go together. Finally, he moves on and after our breakfast we continue our walk. Nevertheless, after 10 minutes he is standing around the corner and starts to walk with us again. He won’t listen when we tell him to leave us alone and so we walk a few meters behind him. After 30 min. we get to the temple but we don’t go up to visit it coz the guy is getting a big too creepy. Maybe he’s just a bit mentally ill and harmless, but you never know, so we decide to walk back, quickly. I think we walked a new record, in the heath we walked as if we were in the military and didn’t stop till we got back to the village. There we want to take the 11.00 bus back to town, but when we ask the first bus (at 10.00) that stops the driver says that bus aint going to we get on his bus to Halki. However, in Halki there aint much to do and the bus back goes at 14.00, so we call a taxi. The driver brings us to Melanes and tells us that it’s about 10-15 minutes walking to the Kourous (man of stone). Well, it turned out to be more like 75 minutes. In the heath we walked through the mountains to get to the Kourous. We couldn’t stay there for long though coz at 15.00 the bus would go back….or not. We had been waiting and waiting but the bus didn’t show up. So we called the taxi driver again and he brought us back to the city. We walk around, have dinner and are dead tired so we go to bed early.

12/4 We can sleep till late but we are awake early. We watch some ZDF, because the weather isn’t so good and we don’t feel like sitting outside. At 12.00 we check out and go to the port to catch the ferry to Santorini. At Santorini we will meet other Matsi people; Marijn, Mieke, Juud, Peter, John, Jan and Preety. They told us they would arrive at Santorini at 16.30, half an hour later than we were told that we would arrive. However, when the ferry arrives I look at the people on the deck and see Peter. I tell Levien but she is like; noo that’s not Peter. ‘Yes it is, and look, next to him is Marijn’. No way, that’s not possible, says Levien. ‘Look well, then.’ Aaah yess, you’re right! We call Mieke and she picks us up at the luggage room. When we get to the seats we see three sea sick people; the sea had been really rough and Peter, Jan and Preety didn’t feel so well. Also, they couldn’t believe how tanned I was; I did get really tanned on Naxos. So anywayz, we continued the travel together. Fortunately, I had seen Peter and Marijn on the deck otherwise we would have been on the same ferry for 2 hours without knowing. On the other hand, it would have been funny as well as we would first see each other when getting of the ferry. But anywayz, in Santorini we found ourselves a good place to stay and went to check out Fira. We walk down the many stairs down to the port. All day long mules have to go up and down these stairs with tourists on their back. The mules look tired and not well taken care of and we feel sad for them. Their owners rush them down the stairs and we fear that they might slip and break their legs. We are really kinda angry about this and when they ask us if we want to go down by mule we give them an angry look and shout Oxi! Back up we take the cable car and we enjoy the sunset. We enjoy dinner in a taverna and then go back to the hotel.

13/4 At 11.15 we take the beach to Red Beach. In Santorini there is a black, white and red beach at walking distance from each other. However, a lady tells us that we cannot get to black beach this time a year so we go the red beach. It looks really nice and it’s absolutely friggin hot! However, since we want to see more than just red beach and we check out the bus schedule that we took. The bus to Perissa will be here around 16.00…so we go back and wait for the bus….that doesn’t show up! We ask the lady of the supermarket and she tells us the bus will come at 16.20….or not! We have been waiting till 17.45 before a bus came! So we took the bus back to the town, showered and went to the taverna.

14/4 This day we made an excursion around the islands of Santorini. We went with a sailing ship (with motor) to the volcano island. The guide told us that the last real big explosion has even been heard in Sweden. After the volcano we go to the hot springs; a part of the sea in a bay that is really warm. However, when we get there the boat cannot get very close so you have to swim to the hot springs. But it’s like a 5 minute swim in the cold sea water to get there and since I’m not a good swimmer and don’t like the sea very much I decided not to go. Only Mieke, Preety, John and Peter went and came back all covered in mud, but satisfied. After the hot springs we went to another island where we all ate at a nice taverna with a great view over the sea and islands. After 2 hours the boat left to go to Oia, which is said to be the best village of Santorini. Unfortunately, we have to stay on the boat and go back to Fira coz we have a ferry back home to catch. At 20.00 we take the ferry back home. We all have discount on the tickets because we have the Greek student passo. Peter forgot his passo, but the guy of the travel agency still gave him a discount card because he had his sport card. However, when we get on the boat we all can go to our seats except for Peter. So while we are sitting on our seats we suddenly hear through the intercom; Can miss Marijn please report to the information desk. So, miss Marijn and Levinia go to the desk and it turns out that Peter has to pay extra because he doesn’t have his Passo. The ferry trip takes 10 hours and we all slept in the restaurant on couches, except for John, he slept on the ground. We arrived in Athens 6 in the morning and went to the train station. However, all the tickets for the train were sold out! We did get tickets, but just without seat numbers. We had to wait for 2 hours and while Judith and I played cards the rest was asleep. In the train we decided to sit somewhere and just wait till people would come to claim their seat. I didn’t take long before Peter and I had to leave our seat. After a while Levien and Mieke also had to leave their seats, as well as Marijn and Judith. Finally, we ended up sitting with 7 people on three chairs, very comfortable during a 6 hours train trip! In the end, we were glad to be back home after such a long trip!