So after 22 drawn out years of a long anticipated introduction, Greece would finally get what it had been waiting on; another Leonoudakis from Texas. My parents would have been the last ones there, but of course we won’t get into how long ago it was. Graham and I would take a ferry from Ancona, Italy down the Adriatic Sea to Patras, Greece. 8 hours on trains and 21 hours on a ferry later, we would arrive in Athens. After 29 hours of anxiously waiting to see what to me has just been a name and a place for my whole life, it only took me about 5 minutes to see some familiar sights that quickly reminded me of my grandparents that were born here back in the day. They were the only ones of us that ever really spoke any Greek and I can remember it vividly. The Greeks are known for their aggressiveness in their voice and body language when they talk. Waving hands and yelling this and that. When we got off at the train station in Patras I saw a couple getting into it with one of the conductors. At first it seems like they were about to come to blows, but I quickly realized that’s just how they do it here. I can remember conversations between my grandparents starting out in slow “civilized” English and quickly turning into what seemed like all our verbal attacks, in Greek. Awesome to see it all again. So we were off to see Greece. Besides French, this was the language I can say that I knew the most of, without the help of Rick Steve’s Travel Guide. Unfortunately for Graham and me it wouldn’t get us far because my arsenal consisted of all of four words. Papoo & Yaya (Grandfather & Grandmother) Gyro (which was the most helpful) and of course Leonoudakis (which actually got me a little street cred). So unless I wanted to tell someone that the Grandma and Grandpa Leonoudakis wanted some gyros, we might as well have been starting from scratch here too.
We got our stuff to the hostel and I quickly had my eyes on the prize. A Gyro. Now any of you out there from my hometown of Texarkana can appreciate the gravity with which I describe such an ordinary situation. To those of you who may not know where I am coming from I will just say these pita wrapped delicacies hold a deep seated place in my adolescent memory. That being said I felt it was necessary to explain to Graham the reason for which I was probably going to eat only Gyros for the next 4-5 days. I got dangerously close too. Threw in a Greek Salad and a Subway sandwich to mix it up a bit though. He was sold just as quickly as all of you were back in the day at the Four States Fair and Rodeo (that’s for a select few of you.).
Well now that the important things were taken care of we could go see a little history. We climbed to the acropolis; saw the original stadium for the modern Olympics held in 1896 as well as the most recent one from 2004; went to a few museums and saw the old ruins areas where Zeus and Apollo used to hang out.
It was at the end of the day in the archaeology museum that I decided that between Rome and Athens I said seen enough old rocks to hold me over for awhile and I wanted to mix it up a bit. Graham and I had been playing with the idea of going to some of the islands while we were here so we decided to head down to Santorini. We knew we were taking a bit of a gamble by heading there in the middle of November, but we had a few days to kill before we could leave Athens (by flight) and wanted to give it a shot. Our ferry got there at 2 in the morning. We handed our directions (in full Greek) to the place we were supposed to stay to the cab driver and we were off. 30 minutes later we arrive at the address. It was cold and rainy outside and there is not a light on or a soul in sight at “Niko’s Apartments”. Lucky for us, this time there was no national holiday or anything taking up every room in the city so we got him to drop us off at the nearest hotel.
When we got up next day we were surprised to see the sun shining so we got some lunch, a gyro of course, and rented a few four wheelers to cruise around the island. The whole island itself is about 30 square kilometers so we just took off in one direction up the coastline. Though sunny outside, it was one of the windiest places I can remember being but still gorgeous. However by about 4:00 the clouds rolled in and it started raining so we took it to the house. We originally had planned on staying two full days on the island but the outlook looked a little bleak and there was no nightlife whatsoever to speak of so we headed out a day early back to Athens.
It was the first time in my life that I can remember giving someone my name, ID, passport, etc. for whatever reason and they didn’t look up at me with that look of utter confusion as they spilled over each feeble attempt not to completely butcher it. It even got me into the Agora for free. The lady saw my name on the card and let me through free of charge. Small gesture but still pretty cool.
Next stop, Thanksgiving in....
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