Day 13: March 3

February28:

riddle answer: glass
fail: we did not think of that

dare: to celebrate
success: we arrived in Athens and had wine at 4:00 in the afternoon.

quote: "A journey of 1000 miles begins with a broken fan belt and a leaky tire." - Anon

riddle: with potent flowery words speak I, of something common, vulgar, dry. I weave webs of pedanticprose, in effort to befuddle those..

March 1:

riddle answer: a riddle
success: :)

dare: to dance
success: we have invented a dance based loosely off our travels and dance moves acquired from meat commercials. We not dance everywhere.

quote: "American who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages." - Dave Barry

riddle: You are 8 ft away from a door and with each move you advance half the distance to the door. How many moves does it take to reach the door?

March 2:

riddle answer: never
success: I got this one. I never even gave people a chance to answer. How gracious of me!

dare: to buy Alex's gift
success: I got you something. You'll just have to wait and see. And good call on guessing that I wouldn't have bought your gift by now.

quote: "I see my path, but I do not know where it leads. Not knowing where I am going is what inspires me to travel it." - Rosalia de Castro

riddle: What do you call your father-in-law's only child's mother-in-law?

March 3:

riddle answer: Mom
success: it took some time for some of us to wrap our minds around this one, but it was a success all the same!

dare: to dip my toes in the water
success: I went swimming in the Mediterranean (which included being beaten against the rocks by the strong waves!)
fail: I did it the day before.

quote: "Travelling is the ruin of happiness! There is no looking here after at another building since Greece." - Fanny Burney

riddle: Forwards, I am heavy. Backwards, I am not. What am I?

So I apologize both for bombarding you with the last four days of riddles and for not blogging for the last four days. I have a good reason though: Santorini!

On the first day I didn't write (February 28), we went to Corinth and Eleusis. Corinth was pretty amazing because it was a fairly big complex which I haven't actually studied before. It's nice to see something new! Eleusis was very interesting as well. We particularly liked the cave where Demeter allegedly sat and waited for Persephone. To add to Dr. Cohen's embarrassment, we did our meat commercial dance in it! Someone had also cleverly left a half eaten pomegranate. We were also incredibly excited to find that the museum in Eleusis holds the Blinding of Polyphemus amphora. I snuck a picture of myself with it before quickly exiting!

On the second day, we had to get up fairly early (like 5:30 AM early!) to catch the 7 hour ferry ride to Santorini. We weren't too impressed about a boat ride taking as long as the plane ride across the ocean, but it turned out to be fairly fun. The ship stopped at several islands, and the view was spectacular. When we finally arrived in Santorini, we were all pretty excited! Our hotel was amazing. Every group of two essentially got their own suite of rooms that included a bathroom, a kitchen complex, and sometimes a living room or dining room. Besides that, our terrace area looked out over the caldera (which is essentially this big bay where the volcano is). The caldera is apparently "bottomless" and the ferries can't drop anchor there. Our view was the stereotypical island view that looked out over the water and included the white painted houses all built up on the side of the cliff. Needless to say, we were impressed!

The third day, we rented a bus and went swimming in the Mediterranean. We also went to Oia which was another city on the island. Oia is where they filmed the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. It was pretty cool. For the rest of the day, we shopped around and lounged on our beautiful terrace. It's a hard life. I know.

That evening for supper, we went to Mama's House. I mention this restaurant particularly because it included a wonderful woman (Mama), who met us at the door and said, "Say hello to Mama, Sexbombs!" She was this fiery Greek lady who was incredibly charismatic. We danced our meat commercial dance for her and she made the whole restaurant clap. She was definitely the highlight of our time there.

On our last day in Santorini (today), we relaxed. We slept in, walked around the city, and read in the chairs on the terrace. We were very sad to leave. We took a plane back, which was essentially a half hour long. We barely finished eating the snack they gave us 10 minutes on the plane, when they ripped the garbage our of our hands, and told us they were landing. It's ironic that it took us 7 hours to get there on a ship, and so little time to fly back on a plane. Now we're back in Athens looking at the last stretch of our trip here in Greece. We're going to Marathon, Sounion, and Brauron tomorrow... But I have to say, my dreams will be of Santorini!