Get Her to the Greek: Day One

Unless you are talking about getting hit by a bus, in which case, you certainly wouldn’t end up stronger. You’d end up with a funny limp and a medical assistance border collie named Fergus.

But I digress….

Back to the story at hand.

I was drowsing lazily in a fluffy white bed, gauzy curtains breezing around me as a ceiling fan slowly whump-whump-whumped from the ceiling. I could hear the ocean waves just below the villa. I rolled over languidly when…

….suddenly I heard a screeching like a bat and a fire alarm had an unholy baby. What is it Lassie? Is it a hurricane flood warning? Are tornadoes coming? Is the villa on fire???

No. It was just the alarm clock. The 6:00 a.m. alarm clock. On my first day of vacation. In Greece.

This was so WRONG.

In our exhausted stupor of the night before, we had apparently agreed to pay Antonia’s nephew to take us out on his boat IMMEDIATELY. No unpacking, no settling in, no buying food. Just jump up, get dressed, and get on the boat. Antonia has been so insistent and we simply didn't have the heart to hurt her feelings.

I didn't even WANT to do a boat trip on Zakynthos. It wasn't part of the PLAN.

Y’all know how much I hate interrupted plans.

My itinerary (of course there was an itinerary…who do you think I am?), included sleeping in, making the short 2 minute drive to the market for food, and lazing around the villa until lunchtime, when we would pry ourselves off our chairs and make our way to a beach.

It did not include getting up at some profane hour and jumping in a boat to God Knows Where with no breakfast.

And no coffee.

Oh, hell to the no……I didn’t have any coffee!!!

We had 20 minutes. That was just enough time to run to the market before getting on the boat. We could make it. We ran out of the villa before remembering we didn’t have the car keys.

Or any keys.

We had locked ourselves out.

We wasted our beautiful 20 minutes getting the housekeeper to let us back in.

I was cursing under my breath...…when Antonia came out of her little cottage with a complete breakfast tray. AND COFFEE. That gained her a few points back that she'd lost for the whole you-get-on-boat debacle.

“I knew you had no time for food or grocery. I make breakfast. Eat. Then go.”

Lovely, beautiful, blessed Antonia.

Jackie O stood sentry while we had crispy toasted gouda sandwiches with basil and a plate of fresh tomatoes.

She won points for breakfast, but I was still secretly wishing upon Antonia that every chocolate chip cookie she ate for the rest of her life turned out to be raisins – because really…the boat? I didn’t want to go out on any boat.

For one thing, there was nothing I wanted to see by boat. For another, it was WINDY and the boat was SMALL. I know what that means.

I was having flashbacks to the ill-fated whale shark tour we had done in Roatan where the boat bounced so violently that the captain had to move me to the front and tether me to the seat with ropes for fear that I would be catapulted into the waves. My tailbone never recovered. And I'm pretty sure I'm still an inch shorter than I was.

Our captain spoke little to no English. As Matt tried to extract from him exactly where we would be going, we climbed in and our fate was sealed.

“Caves?” he asked us.

Matt looked at me and shrugged.

“Caves are good,” I said.

Whew. I was afraid he was going to try to take us to Shipwreck Beach. While I wanted to see it from above, I had no desire to see Shipwreck from below. THIS is not my idea of a fabulous vacation moment:

I'd sooner shave my head in exchange for a McRib Combo Meal than go to that beach. Or go back to middle school.... with a bad haircut and the wrong shoes. Heck, I'd rather sleep naked on a gas station bathroom floor than go to that beach. Me and crowds don't mix. Especially on beaches.

The caves were actually supposed to be quite phenomenal. I knew the caves were close by and would keep us close to the shore where the water was calmer. I also assumed it would be a short trip and get us back before lunch. Maybe this wasn't so bad.

Despite being torn from my beautiful villa so early on my first day, the boat ride was lovely. The water shimmered in every color of blue and the cliffs rose dramatically beside the boat. The caves were beautiful and mysterious and we felt we had this liquid world to ourselves.

Except when he decided to go INSIDE one of the caves. And got the boat stuck. And knocked the bimini top off. But we made it out. All good.

I was feeling pretty good about the boat ride, assuming that we’d spend these couple of hours in the morning looking at the caves and we’d be back before lunch and could resume our day, uninterrupted.

That’s when the captain abruptly turned the boat to open sea, cranked it up to high gear, and headed north.

As my body was slammed onto the hard seat again and again, and my spine literally lost inches with each minute that passed, I looked at Matt, stricken. I was going to be 4'8" by the time this ride was over and I was pretty sure I had just bitten my tongue.

“Where are we going?” I mouthed to Matt.

He shrugged. “What else is out here?” he mouthed back.

Oh dear sweet baby Jesus in a manger….we were going to Shipwreck Beach. That meant at least a 1 hour body pounding ride that would take us around the north tip of the island to the other side. If it was this rough in the calm bay, I could only imagine what would happen to us when we left the protected coast and traveled around. I already felt like I had been shot out of a canon onto a very wet, bucking bull ride.

Not only that, I looked out to sea and saw several MASSIVE boats loaded with hundreds of people heading to the same place.

Um…no. I hadn't traveled 33 hours to spend my first day getting beat to death on a small boat for 2 hours just to see a beach covered with ten thousand people.

“ABORT! ABORT!” I used every secret hand signal and mind control effort to send my thoughts to Matt and he picked up what I was laying down. God bless 19 years of marriage. He can read me like a cheap paperback.

“Hey, buddy,” Matt said in his perfect southern drawl, “Exactly where are we headed?”

“Shipwreck. You go Shipwreck. Everyone go Shipwreck,” he replied.

“Nah…” Matt said, “We don’t want to go to Shipwreck. We’d just like to poke around the bay here and head back.”

The captain looked at us like we had just sprouted 4 heads, but he turned back, saving my sanity and my spine.

Instead, we made a leisurely stop at the beautifully deserted Xigia Beach. This was more my speed. We enjoyed the pebbled beach and crystal clear water before jumping back into the boat and asking him to take us back.

The beach had two sides, separated by an outcropping of rock. One side had loungers, umbrellas, and quite a few people. Our side? Blissfully deserted.

As we pulled back to Ammoudi, we had a beautiful view of our villa from the water:

We made it back just before lunch and had time to explore our digs a little bit. It had been too dark the night before and too rushed that morning.

Paradisso Beach Villas is essentially a beachfront mansion that has been divided into a trio of incredibly lovely properties. We had rented Villa Antonia, the top floor of the main house. It was simply exquisite.

We wanted to head to lunch and the beach so we did the only thing we could, for fear that Antonia would realize we had bailed early on the boat trip…we hid behind bushes and ran to our Jeep.

We relied heavily on Google Maps on our iPhones on this trip. Sometimes it worked (like the night before in the dark, thankyoujesus). Sometimes it didn’t.

At some point, we found ourselves on a terrible dirt road, littered with the occasional discarded mattress and lots of goats but not much else.

“Are you sure this is right?” Matt asked.

“Heck if I know, it’s where Google said to go.” It was then that we saw the REAL road (i.e., the paved road with no dirty mattresses or fear of lurking hobos) running parallel to us, just down the mountain a bit. Live and learn. At least it got us there intact.

We had seen the beautiful Xigia beach from below, so we decided to enjoy it from above, stopped at the Xigia Tavern, perched precariously on the cliff’s edge with a bird’s eye view of the stunning shoreline.

We selected a table with a view (they all had views….) and ordered our first Greek feast: olives and wine, bread with fresh tomatoes and crumbled feta cheese, a tomato salad, pasta with meatballs, and grilled shrimp. We ate while watching the huge boats pull up to the beach below, the beach that was uninhabited except for us just hours earlier was now crawling with hundreds of desperate, sweaty bodies.

Do you see that HUGE boat? Do you know how many people are on that? Do you know how small that beach was? Madness.

We smiled and sipped our wine, lazy cats twining around our ankles (We learned on day one that every restaurant came with cats. Lots of cats. Lots and lots of cats.)

With the bill came the ever present little plate of watermelon. They simply couldn’t bear to see you leave without offering you something sweet, more like a kind friend than a proprietor.

Even though we’d had sufficient beach time, we decided to make the drive to Makris Gialos Beach and see if it was worth the fuss. En route, we saw a fresh orange juice stand. I’m a sucker for a painted van, so we stopped. The views alone were worth the stop, but that juice….oh my.

Makris Gialos was beautiful, but we were both hankering to get back to our own place and stretch out in privacy.

We headed back to the villa and traded time between our seafront daybed and the loungers down by the sea. We were joined by a wet Jackie who stood sentry while we read books and sipped wine.

After a lazy afternoon, we cleaned up and walked down to the Ammoudi Fish Tavern for cocktails (and cats). Their caipirinha was spot on. It was quickly becoming a favorite spot to end the day.

As the sun began to set, we drove the short distance to To Petrodosiako for dinner. I loved the quiet rural simplicity of the villages.

And I loved this GOAT!

Dinner was a gluttonous affair, with garlic dip, arugula and parmesan salad, baked feta, stewed beef, and pastitsio, a baked pasta dish with gooey cheese and béchamel. It was like mac n’cheese on steroids.

As usual, they couldn’t let us leave without a small gift of food or drink. This time is was a frozen limoncello, so delicious it made me want to cry.