After catching up on a bit of sleep with a nap at the hotel, we ate a long last lunch at Byzantino's in Plaka - touristy, but totally worth the excellent food.  Go early in the day to get a serving of roasted potatoes - I learned years ago that they run out by the time the dinner rush starts.  Shared plates of roast pork and potatoes and a dish of tortellini (aka the most magnificent thing ever) kept us going until dinner at the gyro man. 

Venturing down Ermou to the sandal man - I can't leave Greece without my requisite pair of custom fit leather sandals, I wear them every day and have since that first visit to his shop in June 2005.

Stops at our favorite stores - we discovered a new H&M on Ermou and even though we had both run out of money, it was still fun to window shop.

A last trip up to Syntagma for free internet, people watching, and cold Viennoise chocolates.

Dinner at my favorite gyro stand, Antonis on Andrianou.  A last walk through the bustle of Plaka at night.  There are few places I feel more at home than amongst the crowds on those tiny old streets.

After a movie at the rooftop theater, walking up to the Acropolis for a last glimpse of the Parthenon illuminated in all its glory against the dark night sky.  The requisite tears that come with being in the presence of something so holy, so sacred.  It never ceases to take my breath away. 

~RLM 

I'm slowly working through my photos from this trip, editing and uploading to flickr grouped by location.  I've only finished Rhodes & Kalymnos, but it's a pretty good set...

Greece: Dodecanesos (on flickr) 

~RLM 

In some ways it still feels like the entire trip never happened - it was just too surreal to have actually been my life for five weeks.  

I'm still hanging out in Kentucky, off to a different side of the family this afternoon, but once I get back to Indy and regular internet access, I'm going to finish posting about Greece.  I have a ton of photos to upload and lots of journal entries to type up, so it may take awhile, but I'm anxious to start sorting through all of it.

In the mean time, blogging has resumed regularly back on the main page...

~RLM 

-the Weepies-

I had a bit of a moment last night, alone here at the apartment.  All I seemed to want the last few weeks of Greece was a few moments of solitude, some time alone - and yet as I sat there, utterly alone in the middle of the night, empty apartment, I realized that I didn't know quite what to do with myself.  I hadn't been alone for more than an hour since May 13, and it was totally freaking me out.  Like, "had to find my iPod, learn how to use the sleep timer, and go to bed with the lights on" freaking me out.

Me, the girl who has spent four years living in a dorm room all alone, who has wandered nearly a dozen foreign countries either alone or with complete strangers, who could happily go a day without speaking to anyone - was alone and terrified.

It's amazing, that even though I was getting extremely frustrated by the lack of solitude, how quickly I got used to just having someone around.  How, subconsciously, you become accustomed to the sound and comfort of having someone else sleeping nearby (Sonia and I either shared a double bed or had small twin beds for the duration of the trip), and then once alone again, how distinctly you miss that closeness.

So I found myself curled up with my beloved down blanket, listening to the Weepies' Hideaway album on my iPod, and trying to coax myself into calmness/falling asleep with the lights on.  I knew that I wouldn't stop if I let myself start crying - I'd managed to make it out of the city yesterday morning and all the way back to Raleigh without shedding a single tear - and letting the floodgates open in the middle of the night would not help anything.

I couldn't believe that I am perfectly calm and comfortable alone in the vastness of Athens - yet was freaking out about spending the night in my own apartment.  From the surrealness of the last few weeks, it just seemed too odd, too sad almost to be back here.

The hard part of this journey, I guess, is in learning to approach my two weeks in Kentucky as I would experience island hopping through the Mediterranean, or spending two weeks in Athens, or randomly going to Albania for a day.  Because I can't keep comparing everything - I'll go crazy, become horribly depressed - so if I can venture to find/appreciate the beauty of whatever place I'm in - life just might be grand.

But for now I'm going to sit here with the lights on, listening to The Weepies, hoping to get another few hours of sleep in before I need to get ready for my only Sunday of church in Fuquay for the foreseeable future.  I can't wait to get to Grandmother's - it has been far too long since I've seen any of my family - and the next two weeks should be pretty amazing.  Caitlin is coming to stay for a few days then Dad is coming for part of the weekend, and madre gets back from Belize on the 25th. 

I'm still in this sort of shock-state about the fact that these five weeks in Greece actually happened - they don't seem real in any way.  It feels like the time I spent between airports was just a hazy dream - totally surreal and wonderful, and too good to have been real life.  I love the lyrics from this Weepies song, its quickly becoming a favorite on the album...

 And what you make of it, let me say
You get what you take from it so be amazed
And never stop, never stop, never stop
You gotta be brave

'Cause all this beauty
You might have to close your eyes
And slowly open wide
And watch the sun rise

One day, at some point in their lives, everyone should experience something so wholly wonderful that you can't convince yourself it actually happened.  Puts everything into perspective.

~RLM 

I can't believe I'm back in the States - that it is all over - that it happened at all.

Our last day went well, albeit tearfully.

And my flight to Philly this afternoon was fantastic - the flight wasn't full, so I had three seats to myself.  I stretched out and fell asleep, then wrote almost 20 pages in the moleskine.  

I'm on to Kentucky tomorrow for the next leg of this summer adventure, never a dull moment, as usual.

~RLM 

I will be leaving Greece much changed this year; this trip has been revelatory for me and I will be returning to life in Raleigh with a bit of a different perspective. More so than summers past, being here this year has helped me figure out what I want out of life – how I want to move forward in the next couple of years.

I wrote in my moleskine while on Santorini that being confronted with such stark natural beauty forces you to confront your own demons, your own true self – and it is true. The past few weeks of continual surreality have forced me through a lot of self-discovery and I’m leaving Greece feeling much better about being me. And I could not ask to have gained anything better by being here.

I'm flying back to Raleigh tomorrow, leaving Greece for the fourth time in three years.  I am stunned that this trip has gone by so quickly, and also feeling slightly disoriented by it all - it easily feels like we could have just arrived yesterday.  I will have less than 24 hours in Raleigh to unpack and repack for the summer in Kentucky and Indy, as I fly up to Lexington on Sunday to spend two weeks with the grandmothers and cousins.  Its been far too long since I've had this much time for family and I'm excited.  Sad to be leaving my city, my second-country, but also glad to be getting back to home and the people I love.

~RLM

We are in Kefalonia today – I was here before, last year, but only for an afternoon. I never really thought I’d return to this island, let alone so soon. We are at a different port this time, a small town called Sami, which is near the famous Melissani Cave Lake. Melissani is an underground lake created by a water system that reaches across the island – it is famous because the roof of the cave collapsed hundreds of years ago, illuminating the cavern and its adjoining chamber, which is full of stalactites. The two rooms are toured by a small boat, but the 10 minute tour cost more than our hour long small boat tour of Palaiokastritsa, so I didn’t feel like it was quite worth the 7 euro or the 10 euro taxi. We ate a very late lunch at a restaurant in the harbor, enjoying the view and delicious food, as there is not much else to do in town.

We stopped yesterday in Preveza, a small town on the coast of the Peloponnesus, for a quiet, relaxing day after the excitement of Corfu. We wandered about town, spent the afternoon on a very humble local beach, and then ate dinner and watched Greece lose to Sweden in the Euro2008 tournament. Each day of the cruise has been so distinctly different, as each place has its own local character and sensibility. The pace here on Kefalonia is much like Preveza, the towns seem sleepy almost, as if they are really taking their time in moving throughout the day. It is not laziness, but more an awareness that life doesn’t have to move so quickly. I liked Preveza, it was cute and quaint, not a tourist town by any means. Walking to the small local beach reminded me of summers at Carolina Beach outside Wilmington, the air scented with pine trees and the din of children laughing. It had the same laid-back vibe as Carolina, lacking the tourist overgrowth of Wrightsville – and the more popular Greek destinations. I was content to nap on a chair in the sun, and then escape under an umbrella to read in the shade.

~RLM

As we waited for our car, and for the storm to break, the shop owner gave us roses from his garden, and a lesson on life. He also begged us to return in one piece, as he was dismayed that we had no men with us.

We were headed for Palaiokastritsa, the famed beautiful refuge of Edward Lear – a painter of the area in the 1850s – and Lawrence Durrell, the writer friend Henry Miller describes visiting in the Colossus. The rain stopped as we made our way across the island to the west coast. We found Palaiokastritsa to be as confusing as the rest of Corfu – a strikingly beautiful landscape marred by the developments of the tourist industry. Hotels, cafes, and tourist shops lined each street as we made our way towards the coast – but the view from the road was breathtaking.

Neither of us had planned on swimming today, seeing as how it was raining and all when we left the ship, but there was no way we were going to spend an afternoon in Palaiokastritsa without getting in that water. It was a blue as I’ve seen nowhere else in Greece.

We parked, bought bathing suits from a roadside stand, and decided to take a small boat tour of the beaches and grottos in the area. It was the best 6-euro I’ve ever spent – and quite possibly the most surreal hour of my life.

The photos seem cheap representations of the sheer natural beauty, virtually untouched by civilization. I was struck, at that moment, at the surreality that Edward Lear in 1850 and Lawrence Durrell in 1939 had seen those caves and grottos in much the same manner – and that for all the development and destruction that have occurred in their wake, we would recognize those rocks and waters as the same. At one point I looked at Sonia, us both in complete awe, and said – this is our real life, we are actually here. It is hard to believe sometimes that places like that exist, and being there today was a swift reminder that life is an amazing thing.

We spent the rest of the afternoon swimming or collapsed on the beach, exhausted from trying in vain to take it all in.

On the drive back into town, Umbrella came on the radio and we both burst out laughing. It was as if the guys were back with us, in spirit at least, and we couldn’t help but feel a bit sad that they weren’t here to share it.

Coming back, we drove around the older part of Corfu town, and I fell even more in love with the island. We parked by the old port and wandered back towards the old fortress, stumbling upon Edward Lear’s apartment and a garden dedicated to Gerald and Lawrence Durrell. I was shrieking with delight in the streets, amazed that by sheer luck we had found remembrances of the people who had been guiding us all day. The old fortress was closed, but next to it we discovered the Esplanade, Cricket Pitch and Liston – an area of town that fully enamored me of Corfu. It seemed utterly European, the British style park and the French style row of cafes. We sat in the shade sipping cold Vienna style chocolate, a drink we discovered at a café in Athens, and have been ordering whenever we’ve seen it since. The streets tumbling back from the Liston remind me of Prague, they have old world elegance to them, and I could have wandered around for hours.

The most random moment of the day was discovering that Corfu is known for Kumquats and Kumquat related products; at a small store in town, we were offered dried fruits and liqueur to sample – and Sonia and I both walked away with small bags of random souvenir Kumquat goodies. Who knew?

I am writing this from the top deck of the ship, and have to admit that I am sad to see Corfu go. It is the only one of our cruise stops to have enchanted me so, and I will leave a tiny piece of my heart here. I am determined to return one day to collect it, as there is much left here to explore. It is hard to explain the kind of feeling that overwhelmed me as the day progressed – the island is like no place I have ever been. It does not feel like Greece at all, and despite the Italianate influence, it does not feel like Italy. It is simply Corfu, a wonderfully complex world of its own.

~RLM

Walking into town from the port this morning, I was kind of regretting that we didn’t still have the guys here – it certainly wasn’t dangerous or scary at all, but it wasn’t a comfortable walk.

To start, we found a restaurant recommended by the cruise director and had one of the most amazing meals I’ve ever eaten - risotto with a fresh herb cream sauce and grilled pork chops – for about 10 euro a person.

We shared a taxi out to Butrint with a couple from our cruise, since none of us was really sure what to do in town – it was a bit too sketchy to just explore on foot. Ancient Butrint turned out to be the most magnificent find of this trip – the ruins were incredibly beautiful and well preserved – and completely deserted. We were the only four people on the site – a massive, several hundred-acre complex of Greek and Roman ruins. It seemed like a step back in time, wandering the forested pathways around the old city. Cyclopean walls developed into Roman fortresses and palaces, and crumbling staircases gave way to breathtaking views of the distant mountains. It was like a fairy tale – a surreal surprise of an afternoon.

Back in town, we found the under-whelming ruins of the old Jewish Synagogue. I’d expected something a little more impressive, but what we discovered was a crumbling mess of low stone walls fenced in off the corner of a busy street; history forgotten in the hurried development of a poor port city.

I would say that Albania seems to be about 7-10 years behind Greece, and that given enough time and economic input, it could turn into a beautiful place to travel. For now, it is still unprepared for the demands of a tourist industry. Our taxi driver was the only person I saw with a cell phone all day, garbage littered the streets and sidewalks, and dozens of unfinished buildings lined every road. However, the beauty of Butrint totally made up for the lack of character in Saranta.

And at least now I can say that I’ve been to Albania.

~RLM

Left behind everything I knew
All the colors were bone white and sky blue…
-Antarctica
The Weepies

Much of today has passed in a dreamlike state, from the tiny deserted island I watched the boat pass alone on deck shortly after dawn to the secluded beach on Anti-Paxos a group of us spent the afternoon on.

I called Dylan as the ship passed Atoko this morning – a private, practically deserted island owned by the man who owns EasyCruise – I was alone on the deck, and the moment was truly breathtaking. The new sun glittered off the water and islands in the distance emerged from the early mists. I imagine that any period of life on an island would be thoroughly soul changing – to be that secluded from the rest of the world, that close to one’s self – it would be amazing. After spending the day on Paxos and Anti Paxos, I’m more determined than ever to make my dream of living a month on Hydra a reality.

We finally arrived in Paxos after noon, surprised to find the tiny island to be so full of charm – and utterly lovely. After a very late brunch at a café in town, we found a group of people from our cruise also looking to take a boat out to Anti Paxos, the even smaller island off the coast. The beach was stunning – white sand ringed in white cliffs, with the deep crystalline blue waters so typical of the Ionian Sea. The afternoon was sheer perfection; three hours spent swimming, napping in the sun, and reading on the beach. There is no way to do the island any sort of justice in words, but thankfully, the photos came out well.

Tomorrow we go to Albania – which will be a completely new adventure.

~RLM