We woke up around 6 AM. We weren’t sure when reception opened, so we called around 7 to ask if our bags had arrived, which unfortunately they had not. We called the airport and they said one was in, and the other’d be in around 7:30, then both driven to the hotel. We slowly got cleaned up and put on the same old clothes to head up to the breakfast buffet. Fortunately, just as we were about to leave for the buffet, our luggage arrived. Toothpaste, fresh clothes, and deodorant ensued.
The poolside breakfast buffet was an eclectic mix of Greek and American food. The Tomatoes au Gratin were pretty tasty (not for Andrea, who is no friend of the tomato), the eggs with mushrooms were great, and the fruit was very fresh. The pancakes were more like a thin crepe. The “doughnuts” were literally that…a little gob of dough, highly fried with honey dribbled on top. They were really weird. 🙂 The bacon was more like ham…not overly fried and crispy. We tried all kinds of different stuff, but the biggest oddity of all came from the most pedestrian of places: the cereal. They’d run out of the “diet” milk, so I (Matt) used the other one, which turned out to be whole milk. I haven’t really drank much whole milk in my day…I won’t be drinking much whole milk in the rest of my day. It’s so heavy and fatty! It’s like a paste! We bought 1% milk the next day for the fridge in our apartment.
We came back to the room to change into swim suits and headed to the pool. We grabbed a couple chairs, got some sun, and read our books. The water was chillier than we expected, so we sat on the edge this first day; we were still pretty fried from all the traveling. We ordered a beer, Margarita, and pork gyros platter from the poolside bar, but there was a bit of miscommunication and we found ourselves with a beer, a margherita pizza, and pork gyros platter. It was a good margherita pizza! The pork gyros were excellent, too. To make up for the missing drink, I picked up a Long Island iced tea for Andrea, but that was pretty gross. it was the wrong color to start with (looked more like Pepsi), and although it was very strong it seemed to be a mix of unfamiliar alcohol. Now that Andrea thinks about it, it may have been Raki (Greek alcohol from grapes, kinda like Ouzo) rather than rum. We still drank the whole thing. The Alfa lager I had was really good.
This is where it gets pathetic. We went back to the room and I (Matt) passed out again. I (Andrea) sat out on our balcony while Matt slept and read a book. After some time reading I listened to the Zune and watched the sunset. Matt woke up after dark, around 8:30pm by this time I was beginning to get tired. We decided to finish our leftovers from lunch and watched Happy Gilmore, subtitled in Greek. Which was cool! Matt tried to figure out the Greek translations for the movie.
We both went to bed around 10pm. Our top priority these first few days in Greece was to relax, to let all the stress and anxiety from the weeks of work and planning the wedding wash away. We certainly accomplished that.
Edmond, our stowaway, snuck out of his hiding place to cuddle up with Andrea. Then he drank himself into a stupor out on the deck, studying up on the Greek Isles. He’s very well read. He hasn’t come out of the apartment since.
