Europe Trip: Mykonos & Oylmpia/Katakolon

I think Mykonos was our favorite (besides Burano) and I’m not really sure if I can articulate why. It seemed like it had the best features

of each place: All white, but still a lot of color. No steps, but fun alleys. It felt new and very clean but still very old.

The alleys were very skinny and often lead to nowhere. On the left it appears a building was added because you can only see half of a

shutter? We ran into that in Venice too.

They seemed to have a stray cat problem. But I’m not sure they looked at it as a problem since we saw all sorts of people feeding them.

Nori loves cats and would have freaked when she saw them all over. I took several cat pics just to show her. 🙂

The people of Venice and Greece must sweep 50 times a day. Sweep! Sweep! Sweep! Mop! What are you sweeping? There’s NOTHING

there! They must take mass pride of their property. Funny because I still haven’t managed to rake up my leaves from last fall and

the season is already here again! FAIL!

These windmills are apparently a big deal. Biggest tourist attraction on the island.

They called this Little Venice. How’d you like to have the seat at the restaurant where your chair legs are inches away from

the Mediterranean with no railing to stop you? Wowzers.

This is Petros, the mascot of Mykonos since 1954 when he declared it his home. We weren’t even searching for him. There he was, just

hanging out on a ledge while people got inches from his face to take a picture with him!

YAY Niko! I took these pics for our Nico. These two taverns were separated by about 3ft. Hmmm?

OLYMPIA

This was Constantine, our tour guide. He was awesome. His humor was dry and his style rocked. (Damn European men and their long curly

hair, style and murses (man purse). Adam and Eric would offer up a few fingers to grow some locks like his.) That was the only place we

paid for a group excursion. We felt like we wouldn’t really gain any knowledge by looking at piles of rubble by ourselves. We learned quite a

bit from him! For instance I had no idea where the 26.2 miles was developed for a marathon? It was the distance some dude 😉 ran back to

Greece to say the war was over. Once he stated his victory, he collapsed and died.

Part of the original Gymnasium.

I’m happy I paid attention in 8th grade mythology. SO much of what our tour guide discussed, I already knew a bit about. Pretty cool

when he’d ask a question and I knew the answer. Woot Woot! Props to Mr. Richardson!

Did you know they still to this very day, light the Olympic torch right there on Hera’s Altar? Who knew? The god Apollo (the sun) lights

it for them just like in the beginning. Fascinating.

What’s left of Hera’s Alter.

So this lady was chosen in a round about way from our group to represent the single woman allowed in the Olympic Stadium. Then the

other hottie, Adam, was chosen because his foot was the closest to size 12. He represented Hercules, whose foot measured the 600 ft length

of the arena. Constantine gave him an olive branch as his big foot trophy.

Adam “Bolting” and me…being special.

It sounds like I’m enthusiastically shouting, “my butt is sore, from DOIN IT!” I’m not. Though Adam and I laughed A LOT pretending that’s

what I was yelling. I was complaining about all the things going against me racing Adam, who was also wearing gym shoes! My glutes were

sore from the steps to Oia, I was bra less from sun poison (that took 13 days to stop looking like I had a skin disease), heavy full pumping

back pack, chafed thighs from wearing a dress to Santorini, and flippy floppies!! So what I said was, “My butt hurts, but I’m doin it!” 🙂 I

gave him some lead so he didn’t except me to sneak past him to the finish! Hollerrrr!

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This is actually the only pic we took of ourselves with the real camera. Woops.

After the stadium we went to a privately owned winery/olive orchard. There we learned a bunch cool facts about Olive trees and oil.

This food was delicious!! I’ve already cooked our zucchini in the extra virgin olive oil I bought there. SO GOOD.

I was dancing in my seat to the music which must have been an invitation for them to pluck me up and lead me around the grounds for

what seemed like a 15 min song. It was hilarious. Every freaking time I conquered the step he was doing, he changed it up!

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Adam and I don’t drink. (Though recently I have had one or two margaritas in hopes it’ll help Nico sleep through the night. :-0 ) The lady

insisted we drink their wine and try this shot. I was afraid to insult her since it was her winery, so when in Rome, it was! Bleccch! People

always try and convince Adam and I that you “can’t taste the alcohol AT ALL!!” Ya right. The shot tasted like I drank my hairspray and

chased it with some hot cinnamon! Barf.

So glad we chose a cruise instead of the original plan of island hoping ourselves. That would have been a disaster and I likely would have

starved. Each place was beautiful but I felt we experienced enough in the 9 hrs we were at each port. It was great. The cruise concept

seemed perfect for what we wanted. Good food always available, constant entertainment and all we had to do was make sure we were back

on board by embarkation time! I will totally do a cruise again.

 People always say how important it is to have kid free time, that your spouse came first and one day you’ll be empty nesters forced to

talk to each other more than you had in 20 something yrs. We DEFINITELY needed alone time a lot more than we had realized. I mean, I

only wanted to punch him in the face like three times the whole week and a half! It was a perfect way to celebrate our 5 yrs of marriage, but

Lord, did I miss the kids and English Language!!

Hope you enjoyed the breakdown of our trip. If anything, I’m sure I wasted some time for you all who are bored at work!

Heart, Melanie and Adam.