Just as we neared Amsterdam and the sun was dawning, we flew close to a contrail. It was so beautiful and looked like the white line in the middle of a road. It looked like we were flying on a highway in the sky. I watched it for awhile, then thought, "Hey, dummy, take a photo of it." But by the time I managed to extricate my bag from under the seat in front of me (painful contortions required) and figured out which compartment my phone was in (never mind my actual camera), we had passed the contrail by.
As we were coming in for our final approach in Amsterdam, I noticed all these crazy colors in the fields. By the time I realized they were tulip fields and had followed the above process to get my phone, of course the fields were long gone.
I didn't even bother to try to find my phone as we touched the runway and the sun sparkled off the many cars parked in outside parking lots next to the airport. It looked as though Amsterdam had installed huge flashing diamonds just to give us a jazzy, flashbulb welcome.
Our cabbie had to take us through the main part of Athens to get us to our ship from the airport, so we passed by the Acropolis and one of the Olympic stadiums. Ditto: I didn't even bother to find my camera.
These serendipitous moments just flash by, you know.
I am sitting on the balcony of my stateroom -- that makes me sound rich, doesn't it? -- on a 70-degree, sunny day, looking down at the blue, blue water and the whitewashed stuccoed walls of the buildings on Mykonos. The breeze is lightly blowing and even though I can see a few cars passing on the main road, the only sound I hear is the lapping of the waves on the dock -- and the maintenance people working on the lifeboat right beneath my balcony. "Hi," I said to the startled maintenance guy who popped his head out of the hatch next to my chair. Thank goodness he didn't fall back down the ladder.
We visited the ruins of Delos. We were looking at remnants that were 2,000+ years old. I told the cabbie on the way to the dock in Athens that nothing is older than about 200 years where I live. I don't think he understood what I was saying. That's okay. I didn't want him to get a swelled head over being an Athenian.
The Delos excursion was labeled "strenuous," so I brought along my walking sticks. Well, it wasn't. I put the sticks in Tom's backpack, where it proceeded to poke him in the head every 30 seconds. (I call Tom "Sherpa Boy." Sometimes I call him "Stick Boy" now.)
The excursion boat dropped us off at the touristy Mykonos waterfront. We wandered the narrow, twisty streets. "It's a pedestrian zone," our guide had said. I kept that in mind as we had to clamber up onto sills (not sidewalks, sills) to get out of the way of trucks and motorcycles.
If you have been to touristy areas in Europe, you have seen the barkers for the restaurants. "Hey, come to my restaurant. It is the best. We have good food. You tourist, right?" By accident (that is to say, we were slightly lost), we found a bakery. We bought what turned out to be mushroom pie ("You want THAT?") and some kind of sweet pistachio concoction (because -- follow my reasoning here -- it was mostly gone, meaning to my way of thinking that it was popular. "You want THAT?" again. Oops. I mean, yes. Whatever it is, I want it. With trepidation, we walked to the waterfront with our maybe treasures, maybe horrors, and sat on a bench right next to the water. They were delicious. Delicious! A winning lunch at probably a fourth of what we would have spent at one of those tourist restaurants.
Time for a nap. Don't hate me.
I posted a few of my pictures on Facebook. Here are more.
One of the impressive looking columns on Delos. A lot of the capitals are on the ground now, being used as seats for tired tourists.
These lions are guarding a lake that no longer exists. It had to be drained because mosquitoes were breeding in it, and malaria was a big problem. That's okay about the lake, because these are not the original lions. These facsimiles were created when the originals were moved into a museum.
It is the dry season now. Very dry. But these wildflowers are blooming around the excavation.
I watched this couple from our ship dip their toes in the Mediterranean. Next time I'll join them!
