1 month

It has officially been 1 month. 1 month since I left my hometown, my home country and moved almost 10,000 km to, well... a new world. I know I told most of you I would get my blog up and running sooner than this, but what can I say? Settling in to a new apartment, a new city and life with a new husband takes up a lot of your time. 

Home is currently in the town of Oia (pronounced ee-ah). We have settled in and sorted through all of our stuff (read Lindsay’s home furnishings & Ilias’ clothes) and have made the apartment cozy and warm. (Well warm it is on it’s own, we actually try hard to cool the place down with blasts of A/C.) Setting up shop was a daunting task for me at first as the apartment was packed with boxes and bags of stuff so tightly, that it was like a maze getting from the living room to the bedroom. With the addition of a second wardrobe, my love of the game Tetris, and a severe test of patience, the organization really started to come together and now pretty much everything has a place to call home. 

My days consist of taking Ilias to his office in the mornings (we are a one car family at the moment), while Belle tags along with her dad so that I can have a few spastic dog free hours to get things done around the apartment or run some errands. I haven’t been working yet as the hotel is already fully staffed and running very well this summer so we don’t want to rock the boat. I will start working there next season though. 

In the afternoons Ilias and I will either head to the beach or to the pool at the hotel and layout in the sun and swim for a couple hours. We then head back to the apartment to rest and clean up before Ilias’ early evening appointments. This works perfectly for me as it gives me time to email/skype/get caught up on world events & my love of celebrity gossip. After that we’ll head back home for dinner or into the main square to meet some friends at a cafe or for dinner. 

The view from the pool

All of this is of course intertwined with hours of entertainment from our lovable yet totally insane dog, Belle. Well they say she is a dog, but Ilias and I question this.  Her behaviour leans more to a mix of donkey, coyote and garb-orator. She is 7 months old now and we absolutely adore her. I don’t know if it is her stubbornness (how ironic that 2 of the most stubborn people chose one of the most stubborn breeds of dogs possible), a lack of intelligence or maybe it’s just normal, but she is just starting to learn her commands now. I keep warning her that if she doesn’t start getting it together, she isn’t going to know what hit her when her grandfather comes to visit in February.

We take her to a football - what the hell, I am writing this for Canadians - ahem soccer field everyday to play catch and walk along the caldera. We take her with us to the beach some days but she certainly does not have the same love of the water as most other dogs I know. She also isn’t too fond of the Santorini heat/sun but who can blame the poor thing, it’s too hot for most living creatures here. The most memorable moment with Belle thus far has to be the evening that involved a 10:30pm trip to the vet. Belle has grown quite a bit since her first days in Santorini so we had gotten her a new collar and had switched them out earlier that day when driving to the beach. We had just gotten home later that evening and while unloading everything & everyone from the car, we realized that only a small piece of her original collar was left. We searched the car high and low for the remaining piece, she must have only torn it into 2 pieces - not actually eaten it, to no avail. Belle had swallowed almost her entire collar. Wonderful. It was leather and studded with tiny metallic dog bones. That will digest easily. We immediately called our vet and she asked us to watch her for the next hour and if she started acting strange to bring her in immediately. We watched her, she started grumbling and moaning and we took her in. One quick shot later and Belle was sharing her lunch, dinner and collar with the rest of the animals in the vets office. Luckily it hadn’t moved into her intestines yet and the whole thing came up from her stomach. She was groggy for the next day and very tired, but is now good as new and causing all kinds of new trouble for us everyday. I believe it more and more everyday that owning a dog together is good practice for when you have kids. 

Belle & her daddy

Aside from the day to day, we have had a couple of fun trips as well. The first was early in July, with a trip over to Athens for Kiki’s book release here in Greece. It is amazing to me that a book that was so well received all over the world so many years ago, that documents the life and relationships of one of the most famous Greek men, was not released at the same time in Greece. But it worked out well for me. The party was held at a rooftop cafe above a book shop & theater in a rejuvenated area of Athens called Technopolis. It reminded me a lot of Yaletown actually. Tons of bustling cafes and restaurants, clubs filled with young urbanites, parks with kids and dogs playing while the parents watched and laughed. Oh and it all overlooked the Acropolis. I guess it’s a little different than Yaletown after all... 

The Acropolis 

The evening was a huge success for Kiki with tons of influential Athenians coming out for the event. I even got to sit and talk with the mayor of Athens for awhile. (It turns out his nephew is married to a Canadian girl from Vancouver and Ilias and I are now invited to their house the next time we make it to Athens. Sooo Greek!) The book has been very well received and has been getting a lot of press coverage. Kiki has signings scheduled through to the beginning of September in various islands & cities and works so hard that she could run laps around the rest of us I am sure.  

Our next trip was to Crete for a friend’s cousin’s wedding. (Again so Greek, this explains why Greek weddings are so big.) Crete was unbelievable. We stayed in the city of Heraklion, at a gorgeous resort and were met with a kind of hospitality I have never experienced before. I would  like to remind you at this point, that Ilias and I had never met anyone from this family except for his friend Costas, who was the bride’s cousin. They welcomed us to all of the wedding events with open arms and glasses of raki. Raki, for those of you who haven’t had the good fortune to try it, is a Cretan speciality, or very strong liquor. To me it tasted like a mixture of tequila and vodka and they drank it like it was water and they had been stranded in the desert for weeks. The thing about Crete is that if you say no or refuse anything they offer you (food, drink or hospitality) it is considered a huge insult. So on our first night in Crete (at what we would call a rehearsal dinner) while Ilias and I sipped on our never empty glasses of raki, we met and talked with all of the members of the family, learned about Cretan culture and the history of this family. I was lucky enough that most of them spoke some english and in fact a few members of the family had just moved back from Texas so were fluent. It was a fun night filled with great people, great food and unbelievable Greek treats that the bride’s aunt had made. All while being serenaded by Michael Bolton music circa 1991. Oh yes! Welcome to Crete. 

The next day, Ilias and I headed into the main square, to a nice little cafe to have a coffee with Costas and his uncle before the wedding. It was a busy little city with people shopping, eating and drinking their iced coffees all over the place. It was so nice and relaxing. It was at this point that my lovely husband decided to remind me that we were only about 2 1/2 hours by boat to Libya. We better hope Gaddafi doesn’t do anything too crazy while we are here. Well Toto, I don’t think we’re in Canada anymore....

The rest of the time in Crete was less stressful for me. The wedding was very traditionally Cretan at a beautiful outdoor Church that looked like an ancient amphitheater. The dinner that followed was amazing (lamb, lamb and more lamb - I was in heaven) with an unbelievable amount of dancing. Greek dancing is one thing, but Crete has many of it’s own dances that even Ilias didn’t know. Men and women were kicking it up and flinging themselves through the air. To say it was a show is an understatement. We stayed until about 4am but the party carried on for many hours after that. 

The location of the wedding ceremony

Ilias & I at the wedding

The next day we were taken on a tour through the mountain village of Zoniana. This village is famous for all kinds of Cretan specialties. (I’ll let you google that one to get the full details, but to give you an idea, even the Priest of this village drives a jacked up, pimped out truck and lives in a gorgeous brand new apartment. It’s the Sicily of Greece, if you will.) The best man and his girlfriend also joined us on this tour and this is when I got my second dose of Greek celebrity. It turns out that the best man was one of the most famous actors in Greece and in one show he played a Cretan man in a Romeo/Juliet type of story. The Cretans LOVE him. It was pretty funny to hear his stories of life as an actor and the celebrity that follows. 

Our tour ended at the house of the matriarch of this huge family. Costas’ grandmother is well into her 70’s, has 8 children (had the first one at 13) and when we all showed up on her door step she brought out huge plates of Cretan cheese, bread, chocolates & fruit and offered to cook us a lamb. It was 11pm. We managed to convince her that we had just finished a huge lamb dinner already and that it really wasn’t necessary. That about sums up our trip to Crete though. 

Overall, life has been nothing but wonderful so far. I am starting to notice more and more bizarre differences between Greece and Canada, but they provide good amusement for Ilias and I, so there is nothing to complain about. As I continue to work on my blog, I’ll make sure to elaborate on these and share the funny moments with you all. 

Santorini is majestic in a way that I will never be able to truly describe, only your own experiences here will really be able to capture it. Everyday as Belle and I walk along the Caldera overlooking the calm, oil like sea and the volcano that emerges from it, I feel breathless. While it has only been a month, I hope this feeling never goes away. 

The Caldera

I will end this first blog posting sending all of my love to you back in the Great White North and letting you all know that I miss you all and cannot wait for your visits. 

xo