Island Hopping

Greetings!! I know it has been way too long since my last entry and I apologize for that. This one will recap our last week, March 27-April 5, in the islands!

First of all, I want to say that the Greek islands are just as beautiful as they are in any picture that you see of them. None of that is fake... it is beautiful there!! It was kind of sad to leave Crete after the month that we spent there, but we were all pretty excited to go to the islands.

Our first stop was Tinos. We got there and it was rainy and windy… not exactly conducive to beach time. Tinos is a really interesting island. There is a large monastery dedicated to the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary (when Gabriel told her she was going to be the mother of Jesus) and it is a popular pilgrim destination. It is located at the top of the hill, and people visiting will often start at the bottom of the hill and crawl on their hands and knees to the top of the hill as an act of humbleness. There is also an icon in the church that was found buried in the ground. A vision came to a woman named Pelagia in a dream and told her where the icon was buried. She eventually became a saint and there is a nunnery on the island dedicated to her. Anyways, Tinos is an incredibly religious island and there wasn’t much to do there because all of the tourist shops were either closed or sold icons only. The weather was also consistently cloudy, rainy, and windy, so it wasn’t exactly a welcome beginning to our island adventures.

The second stop was Mykonos. We were here for three nights. This is probably the most picturesque island that we were on. All of the buildings are whitewashed with blue or green trim. I asked someone why houses in Greece look like this and they told me that it was because of all of the patriotism that the nation holds. Their flag is blue and white, so the houses are a representation of their patriotism. Very interesting! There is also a line of windmills on the coast that are very conducive for gorgeous pictures.

Weather when we were traveling wasn’t very nice still… extremely windy and cold. But the second day we were in Mykonos was a free day for our group and the sun came out and the wind stopped and it was beautiful! This island is very developed and touristy so there were a lot of shops open in the shopping district. Many were getting ready for tourist season coming up soon and were repainting their trim and stuff, but there were still plenty of places to buy jewelry.

Mykonos was also the moment I realized how much I dislike tourism. I work as a tour guide on the William A. Irvin in the summer, so I already knew a little bit about how annoying obnoxious tourists can be, but I’ve gotten to the point on this trip that I no longer consider myself a tourist in Greece. During one of our days here, a cruise ship pulled into port and all of the inhabitants got off for the day to go shopping. It was ridiculous how obnoxious they were with their disrespect for the local people and disregard for the local culture. It was clear that they were on vacation and felt like the world revolved around them and that all of the people in Mykonos were there to serve them. The worst part was that all of the shop owners would group us in with the cruise ship people and automatically treat us significantly different than they did before. Even if we walk into the shop and offer a greeting in Greek (Kalimera—good morning or Ya sas—hello) they would scoff a little. It made us all not want to shop in their stores just because of the rude vibes they were giving off because of their disdain of tourism.

Anyways, we also went to the ancient site of Delos. This is really close to Mykonos but uninhabited and preserved as an ancient city. Myth says that this is where the god and goddess Apollo and Artemis were born. Myth also says that the island was barren until they were born and then flowers bloomed all over… and there were definitely a lot of flowers there when we visited!

We all know that the world is small, but I have a real-life example of how small it is. There was a group of older adults touring the island at the same time as us, and at one point we had stopped to talk in the middle of a path and they walked through us. There were two people with Minnesota Gophers hats on and we got really excited and were like, “Yay Minnesota!!” It turns out that the entire group was from Minnesota. If that wasn’t cool enough, Dr. Roy Hammerling told someone the two in the hats we were from Concordia College in Moorhead, MN, and some others in the group overheard… Apparently they are both Cobber alumni! And not only that, their son is also Cobber alumni and went on a May-seminar here with Dr. Schmoll and Emeritus Olin Storvick!! How crazy and small of a world is that??!?

The next island was Santorini, which is most likely the island that you will see in pictures or movies about Greece. Santorini is an active volcano. It used to be round but about 1500 BC the volcano erupted and sunk most of the island so now it is a crescent shape like a backwards ‘C’. It is beautiful. We stayed in a town north of Fira which is in the middle of the crescent. It was about 15 minutes to walk into town and shop, which was done quite often. We also took a boat tour of the islands of Santorini which included stopping and swimming in hot springs and climbing the island with the volcano. It was gorgeous and a lot of fun.

We watched the sunset in a town called Oia—pronounced ‘ee-ah’. We sat on a rooftop that said “No Entry—Keep Out” but we climbed on it anyways. In our defense, we are almost positive that nobody was home, and we needed a place to eat our picnic dinner and sit comfortably for the sunset. It was beautiful!! I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to take a bad picture of that sunset.

We also visited a black sand beach in Santorini. That was really cool. Since the weather actually cleared up for us in the islands, it was nice to sit outside and enjoy it. We spent a few hours on the beach in the late afternoon until the sun went down and it got too chilly to be comfortable, but it was fun to sit with a small group of people and just hang out.

So that was the short version of our island adventures. If you want the long version, come talk to me when I get home and I would be more than happy to show you all of the pictures and tell you more stories than I feel like most people want to read on a blog. We are now in Istanbul and have been here for three days but are leaving early tomorrow morning. I have an amazing story about what we did today concerning His All Holiness the Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew, but that’ll have to wait because I am all blogged out.

More pictures, though!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2000658&l=b1486&id=1273320032

Take care and keep reading!