crete + santorini

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.” -Marcus Aurelius

Ezra had accumulated a abundance of overtime, so he decided to take a week off. We felt completely spoiled by choice – where should we go and what should we do?

Priority #1: Sun + warmth.

Priority#2: Island.

Priority #3: History + culture.

Crete was the obvious choice. There was one whole week of driving around looking at beautiful beaches, craggy mountains and no cramped quarter with lots of phone calls. In a nutshell it felt like a slice of heaven.

We saw the obligatory Knossos (which I sort of felt bored to tears by), but the best part was sleeping in late, great food, great talks and moving at a slower pace together. The Cretans live long for a reason! So we drank their wine, ate their fare and sipped their herbal mountain teas. Watch out – 120 here I come!

As you may have noticed we were planning to stay in Spain and now here we are in Greece. What happened you ask? Vacation happened, and then we just decided to stay for the remainder of our time. Well that will be short lived as you will see in the next post, just sort of par for the course.

Knossos – so authentically preserved (insert sarcasm).

I’ve seen the pictures of Santorini and have been wanting to see those stark white towns with the brilliant blue-topped churches for years. So we spent a week in Oia, the honeymoon capital as I always think of it. It is decidedly less romantic when your husband works all all day – although the town was blindingly beautiful. On a really sunny day it was just blinding.

We had a great expansive view over the caldera and I can see why people honeymoon here. A week felt a little long, but as a result I made friends with one of the women, Saba, who worked at the hotel. She shared bits about how much Santorini had changed the last 20 or 30 years. How the costs have gone up and she can hardly afford to buy a piece of spanikopita. Every time we talked it was very enlightening and I felt a sadness as she talked about the woes that have fallen on the Greek people.

While I knew of Greece’s economic plight I must admit I was not very informed on what events lead up to the current downfall. The few times people chatted with us about the state of their country, there was a lot of anger and frustration and fear in their voices. Emotions ran high. Sometimes it was directed at their government and other times at different Eurozone countries. I can’t say that I blaim them for feeling trapped. Saba told me she works every day for six months and the rest of the year has only one (sometimes two) days off a week. While also trying to maintain a household and be present for her children. This was a common situation we heard from a few others.