Oh, Santorini...

Santorini is the island that basically everyone thinks of when they picture the Greek islands. Blue water. Black rock. Square white buildings. Blue domes. The whole island used to be one giant volcano, but its eruption was so humungous that it imploded on itself. Now all that's left is the sort-of outer ring of its original volcano and a island in the middle where the smoldering cone still remains.

So when we pulled up to Santorini, it was straight into the "caldera," or the middle of the volcano that is now covered in the deep blue. And, getting over my childhood fear of volcanos (I was convinced our neighborhood lake was going to explode in a pool of magma a la Tommy Lee Jones' Volcano), I got really camera crazy when we first saw all those sheer cliffs and white towns.

The important thing for you to realize here is this: PICTURES SIMPLY DON'T CAPTURE IT!

So if you're looking at these pictures and saying, "Meh, no big deal," you are sorely mistaken, my friend!

My problems with stopping at Santorini are as follows:

1. We had few total hours at this port. Why would you ever set up an itinerary this way? This is obviously the island everyone wants to go to the most!

2. The tender system just takes too long. We ended up waiting for a tender for an hour on the ship! That's one precious less hour we could be spending on the most beautiful isle!

3. There are only 3 ways to get up onto the island proper, which I will elaborate on ... NOW!

Can you see the zig-zag lines across this picture?That is the path up to Fira, Santorini's capital. The old-fashioned way to get up there is to either walk up the many steps or have a donkey carry you. I, of course, was in love with the idea of taking a donkey. However, we were warned that it was a very malodorous trip because the donkeys are sweaty and there is donkey poo EVERYWHERE along the track. (Yes, the walkers take the same path as the donkeys, bless them.) The third new-fangled way to get up to the top is by cable car. It's so much faster (only about 2 minutes once you're in the car) and leaves you NOT smelling like a donkey for the rest of the day.

We decided to take a cable car up (after waiting in a LONG line) to save time and then take the donkey down. Who cared if we smelled like donkey at 11 at night, anyway?

We walked around the shops of Fira for a short while. This is where we bought my favorite Greece souvenier - a painting. :)

We knew we wanted to go to Oia (at the upper tip of the island - see map) for dinner because Oia is arguably the most beautiful town, and is known for being the spot to watch the sunset from. Michael, however, was simply too famished to carry on, so he bought a little waffle. This is unlike your standard Eggo, being a little sweet and crunchy.

JP and Shannon pointed out this little gem to me:

We took a terrifying busride over to Oia. (Hairpin turns, steep cliffs, bus driver talking on the cell phone, etc.) and hurried off to dinner because we knew that time was passing too quickly.

Our view was wonderful. So, apparently, was Michael's Greek beer.

Like I said earlier, pictures just can't capture it. Words can't really either. I hope you'll just take my word for it: it was beautiful.

We left dinner with the understanding that our server had called a cab for us.We waited for the cab. And it never came.

Eventually we came to a point where we knew we would miss the ship if we waited much longer. So we walked along the main road hoping to come across the bus stop we arrived at on the way in. I'll admit, there was a time when I was considering exactly how we would manage to find our way to the next port while was my passport was still on the ship. (If you miss the boat, you are responsible for finding your way to the next stop).

We found the bus stop, but there were at least a hundred people with the same idea we had. A bus pulled up and it was utter pandemonium. After elbowing our way through the crowd, we did make it on to the bus, thank goodness, but were standing up and crammed in the whole way! Then, after a jog through Fira, we found the line to the cable car stretch on forever.

Luckily, they held the boat for us and everyone else in the line. We were on the second to last tender to the boat. It was a close one, but we made it!

This was the first port of call I'd ever been to where you get back on the ship at night. Look how cool the cruise ship looked in the inky night:

We ended the night with a drink on the back of the ship as we pulled away from Santorini. The lights of the town seemed to hover off the ocean, which was an incredible sight.

Next up: Mykonos

Everybody was Cor-fu Fighting!

Docking directly in Corfu meant no waiting for a tender boat to come ashore! However, we did have to cram onto an un-air-conditioned bus to be taken into Old Town. We were dropped off in the heart of a little shopping district about 30 seconds before I was scheduled to have a claustrophobic breakdown.

The Old Town/Liston area was so cool, guys. Each little narrow alleyway was back-to-back shop and boutique. Every little souvenir known to man could be found, including some tee-shirts with crude American sayings which had us laughing.

There was a lot of ouzo (Greek liqueur) for sale along with kumquat liquor, which we sampled and tasted very ... er ... kumquaty. Here's a bottle of the clear version. I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but this particular man-shaped bottle was rather anatomically correct, if perhaps slightly proportionally exaggerated.Above is a picture of us in front of the Saint Spyridon Church, which is a traditional Greek Orthodox Church. This is the tallest tower in Corfu and promised a glance of the Saint's mummified remains through a glass panel. We just stumbled across it on our walk, which was nice because my print out listed it as a "must see." This Saint is said to have saved the island of Corfu 4 times! Is it sacrilege for me to say we were bummed to find that we couldn't see any mummified remains??Then I led my family on a long march through Corfu Town in search of the Spianada, which was listed as "possibly the most beautiful esplanade in Greece!" in my printout. The walk did seem to last awhile, and it was quite hot outside. So at one point we lost Dad to a park bench under a nice shady tree.

Really, the esplanade was lovely. I guess I just wouldn't call it the best in Greece. (Though, to be fair, I don't think I've seen many esplanades in Greece.) It just looked like a big park that was a tad overgrown. There were some structures and art/statues in it, but some were graffiti-ed upon, which was sad. I'm still glad I dragged my family all the way out there, though, because we got some cool views of the Adriatic. And we got to see this awesome Old Venetian Fortress. We ate at a great restaurant (you'll find this is a theme in this vacation series). It was right next to the Cricket fields near the esplanade and was sort of a sidewalk cafe attached to other similar outdoor cafes.We ate traditional Greek food that was incredible. Such as:Gyros.

Mousaka (my meal - kind of like Greek lasagna with meat and eggplant and some kind of cheese. So stinkin' good!)

Baklava. Turns out, I'm not much of a fan.

It was just so nice. I was overcome with contentment to be eating outside with a nice breeze, surrounded by family and native Grecians.

Luckily a lot of people do know some English. Our waiter taught me the one Greek phrase I remembered: Efcharisto ("Thank you." I then said this to every one in every situation I came across. Strangely, I couldn't stop saying this with an odd little bow with it.) Still, almost all signage was in Greek. I now fully understand the saying, "It's all Greek to me."

We walked around a bit more, then headed back to the ship by walking along the coast. We immediately headed to the pool for some sun.Not to be a curmudgeon, but I'm so glad there was an adults-only pool. I love kids ... er, most of the time ... at least the ones I'm related to ... but I saw those kids over at the kids pool. I was glad to have a place to sit poolside where there wasn't constant screaming and splashing. (Oh geez, when did I become old? What's next, me screaming "Get a haircut!" to some 'punk kids'?)

Loved these little window seats around the ship. Here you can see us passing that Old Venetian Fort on the way out to sea.

That night, we celebrated Michael's 30th birthday. The servers were sweet and sang Happy Birthday for him. Here are Estella and PJ, our main servers. On Norwegian Cruise Line, you aren't sat at one specific table for the entire cruise, you're free to eat whenever and wherever you want. However, our family kind of like the experience of eating in the main dining room (formal, 3 course meal. Unless of course you are one of us and it turns into a 4 or 5 course meal) and we like having a friendship with the people we see every night. So we made reservations so we could sit in the same area every night save two - to be blogged about later.

We went to the nightly show after dinner. This night featured the Gem dancers and singers performing 70s music. Beforehand we ran into a cruise staff member who we'd seen dancing at the Country Music Ho-Down we'd been to the night before. We greeted him, calling him The Sheriff (what we'd referred to him as all night since he'd been wearing a star badge) and complimented his two step. He acted offended and a little stand-offish, asking if we were kidding. We later found out that he was the cruise director. (To all you non-cruisers, this is like the head guy on the cruise, a pretty big deal.) We're kind of embarrassed that we didn't show more respect to the cruise director and kept calling him The Sheriff.

We had a late night snack at the back of the boat and then turned in for the night.

Next up: Santorini!

Split's Personality

Croatia is a country that I honestly might not have ever thought about, except that my high school soccer coach was from there and that's really all I have to say about that. I never in my life said to myself, "You know where I really want to go?!?! CROATIA!" But, when our family heard that Split, Croatia was on the itinerary of our cruise, I think we all thought, "Sweet!" (Actually, the itinerary said just "Split," so we spent a lot of time discussing if this meant that there were two ports we could chose from and some people would be tendered to one place and others would be tendered to another, and therefore the people would be "Split." But I digress.)

Split, Croatia - along with the rest of the Dalmatian Coast along the Adriatic Sea - is a beautiful, white, sunny locale.
After tendering ashore, we walked around Diocletian's Palace, a huge ancient edifice that once housed thousands of people during danger. The place was huge, and it was weird to see these old nooks and crannies of the palace filled with vendors selling CDs and modern jewelry.

This little park was just outside the Palace walls.

Just outside Diocletian's Palace was the Green Market, which had a section for touristy souveniers and a section like a local farmer's market.

We stopped for a drink near the water. It was Sunday, and Mass was being shown on a flatscreen in the outdoor bar lounge area. Cultural difference? Guilt trip? The only thing on? You decide! Michael took pictures at each of our stops of the local beer, so here's the first of many:

Then we all walked to Bacvice Beach. It's funny, only about a quarter of this was actual sand beach, the other three-fourths were just stone walkways that dropped off into the sea. Mom and Dad secured us a spot at a restaurant while 'the kids' went down to the beach. Shan got some sun while the rest of us jumped in the Adriatic!

I was a little hesitant after JP shrieking that it was cold, but eventually got the courage to jump in. It was cold at first, but felt good after a few minutes. We all jumped in a few times before joining Mom and Dad for lunch.

After visiting the nude beach:Kidding! We all are wearing bathing suits under this! And you can see our ship in the background!

That restaurant was so cool. It was three stories up above the water with great views. The food was INCREDIBLE (I had shrimp risotto).

Then we headed back to the ship. We played trivia (got 3rd place) and got ready for dinner. This was our quasi formal night. Other cruiselines have serious formal nights, but Norwegian is known for being "freestyle" and casual. Here are a couple pictures from our balcony.

That night was our official celebration of JP and Shan's anniversary. The servers were so sweet on this cruise! They came over and sang a little song for them.

Later, at the karaoke bar, Shannon and I mustered the courage to sing! We did a duet of "A Whole New World" from Aladdin. I was the male role, obvs.

We both felt a little ambivalent about the whole thing. I think we both had fun but thought we could have sounded a little better. Man, karaoke is harder than it looks! But Michael and JP insisted that we sounded great. They are either truthful or very smart.

Since it was the 4th of July, there was a big country music Ho-Down after karaoke. There was a lot of dancing and learning line dances. We mused that only Americans would completely embarrass ourselves by looking so ridiculous in front of others like this. I kind of like that about us.

Then we had this little guy greet us back at the cabin:It's a puppy, don't you think?

Next up: Corfu, Greece!

Where better than a blog to humiliate oneself?

I interrupt your regularly scheduled vacation updates to show you some pictures that will hopefully make you laugh, cringe in awkwardness, be embarrassed for me or some combination of the above.

Since I blogged about how much I love dancing at weddings, I feel it's only fair to show you some of the professional pictures from Tyler and Lindsey's wedding. All photo credit goes to samjstaton.com.

I will start you off with relatively normal pictures of us dancing so you might be mistaken into believing I am an okay dancer. I will then finish off the photo share by convincing you that I am the most horrific creature to disgrace the planet.

No one can mess up "Shout," can they?

Still pretty normal.

Okay, facial expressions and robotic arms moving into the realm of "unpleasant."

I can explain this next one. I was trying to get Michael to 'milk' my thumbs. There is a particular line in a particular song that says, somethingsomethingsomething "Milk the cow!" So I tried to make my hands into an udder-like shape.

This is when things get weird.

Which of the following do you think just happened?

a. I discovered the chocolate fountain in the corner

b. I realized my strong Frankenstein-esque desire to squeeze a bridesmaid tight

c. I got detached from the Conga line and was terrified at the consequences

And, my personal favorite:

Wow, sometimes my grace and poise astounds even me.

The only redeeming quality of this image is that Michael is laughing so hard. That means that only about 99% of this party thought I was OUT. OF. MY. MIND. The other 1% consisted of me and the man that bound himself to me for life.

And in case you were wondering, I wasn't drunk. I do this kind of thing sober.

And yes, these pictures are posted publicly on the bride's Facebook page, for all of creation to see.

And yes, I'm available for hire to come to your wedding and demonstrate these kickin' moves.