Dec 31, 2005

Greece Day #1 and Happy New Year


So this post is a little late in coming. I went to Greece with Elana in mid-December. We had a great time seeing friends Kathy and Matt (see Wallop the Kat blog on right and the picture on the left). The trip was based in Athens. Athens was okay, but when everyone says that you can go on vacation in Greece and just spend a single day in Athens, believe them.

Day #1: We got a leisurely start and made our way to the port of Pireaus. It's just a port. Elana noticed all the ice cream ads and wanted ice cream. Finding ice cream in December was the task that was used to burnup the hour long wait for the next ferry to the island of Aegina. We eventually found good ice cream.

The ferry ride confirmed for us that Elana and I will never be taking pleasure cruises. She used dramamine to combat the feeling in her stomach and I used willpower to overcome mine. Kathy and Matt said that the motion we felt on that cruise was typical for vacation liners. Ironically, I was in the Israeli navy for 2 years. I got seasick then too. At least neither of us actually threw up!

Aegina was a small, beautiful island that closes down for siesta time- which was just about exactly the time that we were there for. Kathy and Elana trespassed onto the territory of a national landmark- some temple or another. Matt and I stayed back at the whole in the fence near the waterfront and made friends with a cute, clean 3-legged stray cat. Next, we all walked the beautiful streets of the village. It was almost a ghost town if not for the scooters barreling down the walkways too small for cars. All the stores looked fun and interesting, even the butcher, where we could not identify if one of the animals in the window was a rabbit or a cat. Oh, and Xmas was everywhere.

The day ended trying to find a place to eat dinner in Athens. It did not help that everyplace in the Lonely Planet guide were either closed or shutdown. Also, Greeks eat a lot of meat. Elana is vegetarian and I will only eat kosher meat (which was curiously absent in a country with 97.5% Greek-Orthodox). I am a picky eater too, which makes things worse. In the end, we found a little bistro that served a few veggie options such as Cheese pie and Giant beans. It was actually cheap and quite pleasant. We probably couldn't find the place again if we tried.

More on day two of Greece soon.

By the way, I wish everyone a better year in 2006 than it was in 2005. No matter how good your 2005 was.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yippee! We're famous!

meish said...

Happy New Year! Greece sounds like so much fun. Post more so I can travel vicariously through you.