Here we go, the final chapters of “Living the Dream”, or LTD as we’ve nicknamed it. I discussed the origin of this abbreviation with my closest friends, since it was with them that I originally coined the phrase. One insisted that he brought it with him from a friend who used to state it back home, the other thinks he may have come up with it... I’ve said it before, damn my twenties and all of the lost memories! I don’t think we’ll ever truly remember exactly where it came from, but one thing stands true: I owned it for myself, this blog being an extension of me, and have now publicized it as my own creation since I was in fact living my dream - whilst before my cohorts and I would just visit it on vacations from our daily grind. What’s amazing is that so many others out there utilize the phrase for themselves, including the abbreviation. Within the Twitter world #LTD has been trending for years, and probably will be forever. Google it and you’ll find it’s not just a popular blog title, people use it to describe their fantasies around the world. The best creations are usually taken which just reiterates how great of an idea it is in the first place, c’est la vie. I’ll never stop living my dreams individually, but I have stopped living it constantly which is why these final chapters have been so hard for me to write. In a way I’m putting my childish obsession to bed for hopefully someday my own son to awaken, and realize he himself can do whatever he puts his heart to. I’m now taking on a new challenge, a purpose other than make money and have fun. I’m living a life that has so far been an adventure, and I think will be one constant state of discovery for the rest of my days; Fatherhood: Our son is due to arrive sometime in May, roughly two months from now, and although I’ve been procrastinating finishing this project since returning from our honeymoon in August it’s time I do so. I don’t foresee myself all that concerned with this former life of mine once Junior arrives, and I’m guessing my inspiration will be towards new goals for self satisfaction.
I left off with our last day on Santorini, it was simply supposed to entail us traveling from our Villa back to the port, jumping on a ferry to Heraklion, Crete, and finding our way to an all-inclusive resort on the Libyan Sea. The day started with my wonderful new wife bringing me breakfast in bed, exactly the motivation I needed to finish our packing. She had enlisted the help of our hotel to get her back to the port, while I strapped on as many bags as I could fit onto the scooter for one final ride, it was time to return it. We bode farewell to our friends and I made my way back down to the islands main harbor. I arrived with time to spare and into the ferry office to confirm our tickets.
The truly disappointing part is, I've done this before. Pretty much every country in the world, except the grand ol' U.S of A works in military time... We'd missed our ferry, apparently it left at 1:25 AM, about 10 hours prior, and since we'd missed it our 60 Euros was wasted. I promptly dropped another 100 Euros on a second pair of tickets which would not be departing till 17:55, about seven hours later. I sat down at a cafe awaiting my wife’s arrival, and wondering how we would kill time till our ferry arrived. When Dorothy met me her only disappointment was the lost savings, she had worked hard to find that discount fare and it was all for naught, we grabbed a few beers to take the edge off and pondered our next move. We decided that staying at the port would be the most financially guilt free option, although this was a honeymoon we were still traveling on a budget, a budget we had already seriously gone over with our first move of the day. Leaving the port would cost money, and then returning would cost more money.
The port was was boring, extremely hot and not very scenic - we did our best to make due. Our scooter rental agent agreed to store our bags while we wandered the area looking for shade and observing the various ferries coming and going. Our main focus was to stay out of the sun, and hydrated - we joked about my prior travel errors, the big one being that missed flight to Korea 18 months earlier... a trip I’d packed for weeks prior to eventually making the same mistake between AM & PM. One would think I’d learned a lesson.
The heat was pretty unbearable, so we went to the ports edge where we found a small cave next to the water, and I jumped in. Rinse, repeat, every hour or so we’d wander back to a shop and fill our water bottles... and then back to the cave to cool off. It was the opposite of the dreamlike state we’d been floating in since arriving in Greece, but we didn’t have a choice, and we knew that once we toughed it out we’d have comfy seats on a pretty quick boat to our next island. At least we were able to swim... finally our ferry, the “Flying Cat IV” arrived and we were able to board. This was our first experience with a hi-speed hydrofoil style ferry, and after waiting all day all we wanted to do was get on with our trip.
Getting off of Santorini was just the beginning, we still had some complicated traveling to do since public transportation was not very active at night on Crete. Three hours later we arrived in the capitol city of Heraklion, hustled a few block to the bus station and sorted out our next move. We had to wait just under an hour to catch a bus to Rethymno, an hour ride to the east and only half of the way to Plakias, the closest village to our final destination. We found out some more disappointing news, the next bus servicing that area wasn’t till morning - if we were going to make it to our already paid for resort that night our only hope was to find a taxi. Awesome. We got dropped off at the Rethymno Bus Depot and made our way to what seemed like a cab stand, unfortunately the only taxi we saw was already taken but we still asked him if he could call us another.
Now the story turns around - I knew you were waiting.
He could not in fact enlist the help of a fellow cab driver, we were apparently going way off the beaten path. After a short conversation with his current passengers they obliged that the American honeymooners could join them to their drop-off point which was a short distance, and on the way to ours. We found out our co-passengers were Germans, and after a brief exchange of pleasantries they were dropped off at their hotel and we turned south starting up the ancient volcano/mountain that is Crete. Our driver was taking an obscure path, and we started to realize this guy seemed a little nuts. He was chain smoking cigarettes and driving as fast as possible, I just kept my eyes on my compass verifying we were heading in the right direction. He was taking back roads, which I’m usually a fan of but not necessarily this late at night in completely unfamiliar territory. But whatever, we were getting an OK deal, 30 euros for the one hour ride - and honestly we didn’t have much choice. Twisting, turning, zipping through the smallest villages past countless monasteries and farms, it really was an amazing ride. After 45 minutes he found a few “friends” we guess, hanging out on a porch, so we stopped. He gestured for us to get out, which was shady as hell but we didn’t want to offend and so far, other than some crazy driving, he hadn’t steared us wrong yet.
His friends had set us up with some chairs, and immediately he retrieved a clear bottle of what we found out was “Especial” - a Greek Liquor, and several shot glasses. The Greeks, as we’re finding out, are tremendous romantics, and celebrate love at any opportunity. So we toasted to our new marriage and did our first of several shots. Our taxi driver then disappeared, and drove the cab out of sight? This freaked me out since our luggage was in the trunk, but apparently he was blocking the road and needed to keep it clear. All of this was getting explained to us by a man name Stafylos, the proprietor of this establishment who spoke near perfect English having attended NYU in his youth. Our driver returned and we probably did three more shots each emptying the “Especial” having toasting to everything from this serendipity, to the weather. And then, just like that, after handshakes from each of the older men, we were off back into the night with our driver bummin’ more smokes from me and seemingly re-energized after the shots.
I know what you’re thinking, and trust me we were too, but we were at his mercy praying that our karma would carry us through this one. He made one more stop, apparently looking for another place to celebrate, this place was almost dark and from what we could tell the inhabitant had recently broken a leg, so we did NOT do any more shots. (We were already pretty buzzed, and sure our driver didn’t need any more) Our ride crested the mountain and began its descent down to the north side of the island towards Plakias. (from this vantage we could see the African coast twinkling in the distance) More winding down crazy guard-rail-less roads high over deep what appeared to be bottomless ravines. About an hour later we took a quick run through the village where his mother ran a gyro shop hoping for some food, but sadly everything was closed for the night, so we went over one more hill finally passing through the gate of the “Kalypso Creten Village” - our home for the next seven days. We paid our driver and thanked him for the perfect end to a long day, checked in, scarfed down our courtesy plate of food (the kitchen had prepared for us knowing we would be arriving after it was closed) and collapsed onto our bed. It was time to end this day, we would explore our first all-inclusive manana.
I’ve opted to share this as it’s own blog post, and apologies for the lack of pictures. As you can guess pulling out the camera was the last thing on our mind most times, we were moving too fast and more concerned with protecting our electronics than actually using them. More to Come!
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| Returning Scooterini |
I left off with our last day on Santorini, it was simply supposed to entail us traveling from our Villa back to the port, jumping on a ferry to Heraklion, Crete, and finding our way to an all-inclusive resort on the Libyan Sea. The day started with my wonderful new wife bringing me breakfast in bed, exactly the motivation I needed to finish our packing. She had enlisted the help of our hotel to get her back to the port, while I strapped on as many bags as I could fit onto the scooter for one final ride, it was time to return it. We bode farewell to our friends and I made my way back down to the islands main harbor. I arrived with time to spare and into the ferry office to confirm our tickets.
The truly disappointing part is, I've done this before. Pretty much every country in the world, except the grand ol' U.S of A works in military time... We'd missed our ferry, apparently it left at 1:25 AM, about 10 hours prior, and since we'd missed it our 60 Euros was wasted. I promptly dropped another 100 Euros on a second pair of tickets which would not be departing till 17:55, about seven hours later. I sat down at a cafe awaiting my wife’s arrival, and wondering how we would kill time till our ferry arrived. When Dorothy met me her only disappointment was the lost savings, she had worked hard to find that discount fare and it was all for naught, we grabbed a few beers to take the edge off and pondered our next move. We decided that staying at the port would be the most financially guilt free option, although this was a honeymoon we were still traveling on a budget, a budget we had already seriously gone over with our first move of the day. Leaving the port would cost money, and then returning would cost more money.
 |
| Thira Port |
The port was was boring, extremely hot and not very scenic - we did our best to make due. Our scooter rental agent agreed to store our bags while we wandered the area looking for shade and observing the various ferries coming and going. Our main focus was to stay out of the sun, and hydrated - we joked about my prior travel errors, the big one being that missed flight to Korea 18 months earlier... a trip I’d packed for weeks prior to eventually making the same mistake between AM & PM. One would think I’d learned a lesson.
The heat was pretty unbearable, so we went to the ports edge where we found a small cave next to the water, and I jumped in. Rinse, repeat, every hour or so we’d wander back to a shop and fill our water bottles... and then back to the cave to cool off. It was the opposite of the dreamlike state we’d been floating in since arriving in Greece, but we didn’t have a choice, and we knew that once we toughed it out we’d have comfy seats on a pretty quick boat to our next island. At least we were able to swim... finally our ferry, the “Flying Cat IV” arrived and we were able to board. This was our first experience with a hi-speed hydrofoil style ferry, and after waiting all day all we wanted to do was get on with our trip.
 |
| Flying Cat IV |
Now the story turns around - I knew you were waiting.
He could not in fact enlist the help of a fellow cab driver, we were apparently going way off the beaten path. After a short conversation with his current passengers they obliged that the American honeymooners could join them to their drop-off point which was a short distance, and on the way to ours. We found out our co-passengers were Germans, and after a brief exchange of pleasantries they were dropped off at their hotel and we turned south starting up the ancient volcano/mountain that is Crete. Our driver was taking an obscure path, and we started to realize this guy seemed a little nuts. He was chain smoking cigarettes and driving as fast as possible, I just kept my eyes on my compass verifying we were heading in the right direction. He was taking back roads, which I’m usually a fan of but not necessarily this late at night in completely unfamiliar territory. But whatever, we were getting an OK deal, 30 euros for the one hour ride - and honestly we didn’t have much choice. Twisting, turning, zipping through the smallest villages past countless monasteries and farms, it really was an amazing ride. After 45 minutes he found a few “friends” we guess, hanging out on a porch, so we stopped. He gestured for us to get out, which was shady as hell but we didn’t want to offend and so far, other than some crazy driving, he hadn’t steared us wrong yet.
 |
| After Shot #1 |
I know what you’re thinking, and trust me we were too, but we were at his mercy praying that our karma would carry us through this one. He made one more stop, apparently looking for another place to celebrate, this place was almost dark and from what we could tell the inhabitant had recently broken a leg, so we did NOT do any more shots. (We were already pretty buzzed, and sure our driver didn’t need any more) Our ride crested the mountain and began its descent down to the north side of the island towards Plakias. (from this vantage we could see the African coast twinkling in the distance) More winding down crazy guard-rail-less roads high over deep what appeared to be bottomless ravines. About an hour later we took a quick run through the village where his mother ran a gyro shop hoping for some food, but sadly everything was closed for the night, so we went over one more hill finally passing through the gate of the “Kalypso Creten Village” - our home for the next seven days. We paid our driver and thanked him for the perfect end to a long day, checked in, scarfed down our courtesy plate of food (the kitchen had prepared for us knowing we would be arriving after it was closed) and collapsed onto our bed. It was time to end this day, we would explore our first all-inclusive manana.
I’ve opted to share this as it’s own blog post, and apologies for the lack of pictures. As you can guess pulling out the camera was the last thing on our mind most times, we were moving too fast and more concerned with protecting our electronics than actually using them. More to Come!
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