Kos

We had it all planned out. It was Friday, our last day of finals and if Michelle, Kim and I finished our finals in under an hour and brought our stuff with us we could run and juust catch the bus that would take us to Milan so we could catch our early plane the next morning to Greece. We'd made this decision last minute to avoid the fact that the trains were striking on Friday. With little time to spare, we made it out of our finals in time and booked it to the bus stop but were a little confused to see just a few empty buses and a couple of bus drivers smoking and talking. We apprehensively showed them our printed out bus tickets and asked them where we should be. They looked quietly and then told us to catch that bus at the train station. So we ran there. We found a few buses lined up and one said to Milano. We showed the driver our printed tickets and he looked quietly and then said, "No, I have no idea what this is. This is not a ticket. This is not for this bus. We're leaving." Shut the door and left. That was the exact time our bus was supposed to leave and there is still debate on whether that was our bus or not but we ran over to the ticket office anyway to see what we could do. She also claimed to never have seen such a paper and at this point we were out of luck. We'd wasted some money and done a lot of running for nothing. Wherever this so-called "bus" was that we'd booked, it was surely gone by now and there were no others that left Friday night. We were forced to do what we'd been trying not to do, go hang out at the train station and wait for the strike to end.

The one upside of the extremely frequent strikes is there are some trains thats still run. We weren't sure that we wanted to risk it- hence the bus tickets- but we had no choice now but to hope that for some reason Milano bound buses were still running. We were in luck. To Milan was one of about 2 buses still running. This was both a relief as well as a slap in the face just Really emphasizing the fact that we didn't need those godforsaken bus tickets. But we weren't in a situation to complain, so when the train came we got on with our Eurail Passes and thanked our stars that at least this worked out for us. At that point a woman came by saying we were in here seats. Having a Eurail pass means you don't need to book seats and anyone sits wherever they want. We had noticed this train was nicer than most however, and now we were faced with the fact that a few trains do require reservations, we didn't have one and the train was about to leave. We walked back and forth a little, being careful to be as in-the-way and touristy looking as possible when we finally found the conductor, stepped off the train and explained our situation. He looked at our passes, and made a phone call. We waited. We looked around. We gave each other looks like "Does this call involve us or is he talking about something else and just happening to stand by us?" when finally he looked back and said, "10 Euros each." And we were on our way.

We didn't have much time to spend in Milano. It's a huge city, it was late-ish when we got in, we were tired and we needed to find a hostel. Michelle had written down a few so we thought we'd find one close to the train station and probably just relax. The first one we looked up on the map was relatively close so we went straight there. On the top floor, we made it up, sweaty and exhausted to have the two friendly Italian brothers who owned the place tell us they had no room for three. We started to get up, buuuut they had a room for 2 and a 4 person room with 1 bed left. We took it. Heck, we're not picky. As we made the arrangements and paid up, they noticed my last name and refused to speak to me in English anymore. With a name like that they said I had to speak Italian. One brother said, "to you, I speak only in Italian," to Michelle, "to you in Korean," and to blond, blue eyed Kim, "and to you.... I don't speak at all." The rest of our time in Milan was uneventful. We found a nice restaurant close by and sweated ourselves to sleep just to wake up at 4:45 am to catch a taxi to the train station, a shuttle to the bus (an hour) and then catch our Ryanair flight to Kos.

But then finally, we were in Kos. Why Have I Not Been To Greece Before? It was simply amazing. Kos was less of a hilly island with all white buildings and blue roofs but more a mixture of that and Hawaii. We rented a little blue car right by the airport and drove the 15 minutes to our town. (It takes about 40 min to drive the length of the entire island). When we got to our adorable little beach town of Tigaki we began looking for our hotel. They don't have hostels in such a little place but they do have some really cheap hotels. We drove through the entire town in about 1 minute and a half and didn't see it so we turned and went back. Still didn't see it. On the third time through we decided to pull into a parking lot of an unmarked building to turn around again when we noticed on the sign, we'd arrived. Not looking at all like a place that would cost only 17 euros per person a night, the Irina Beach Hotel looked to us like paradise. A big white building with blue columns, a big bar lounge area opening into a back patio/ pool area with a pool bar and steps leading down directly to the beach. And lets not forget that the first thing we saw when we walked in was a baby kitten running around that I promptly picked up, named Hercules and carried around the entire time. The staff was lovely (everyone in Greece speaks English. Everyone), and the little old British woman who was the bartender made us fancy drinks every day as we lounged by the pool and even gave us her signature uozo, sambuca and lemonade. Almost too good.

Our days consisted of waking up at some point (we were never actually quite sure what time it is. I'm pretty sure there isn't a clock on the entire island), having a lunch breakfast on the patio with a nice tequila sunrise to start the day, laying in the sun and chillin in the water for the rest of the day, and driving to one of the little towns to wander around and have dinner, and finishing up the evening with a bottle of wine on our balcony, playing with Hercules and once even smoking cigars. At one point we found ourselves in a grocery store buying cards, wine and cigars. Apparently after just about 2 days in Greece everyone starts to turn into little old men who hang out on the steps of churches doing those very things. If we'd stayed longer we would have fully transformed. I pretty much had to shave off my gray mustache when I got home.

We found a few cute little shops in which the owner was also the maker of everything in them. One made beautiful fancy white crocheted (?) table cloths, one of which I bought and the little old woman gave me a free little souvenir bell with Kos painted on it to go with it. Another sold mugs, plates and other pottery painted by the little woman working there, with pictures of gorgeous Greek island scenes. Lovely. And apparently the Greeks love to give things away for free. Besides the drinks and the bell, one day when we went to a little fruit stand to get some veggies, apparently the onion, tomatoes and cucumber we'd picked out would have cost so little she just told us to take them.

Oh and let's not forget the fact that the food was just ridiculous and Greek food being pretty much my favorite kind, I was in heaven. I could have just sat around eating that Tzatziki sauce with a spoon. And I did. And the Kalamata olives were like none I've ever had.

Long story short, if you're thinking of going to Greece, go. It is wonderful. Oh and the trip home was much less eventful then the trip there. It went off almost too smoothly. We kept expecting something to be late or canceled but it never was. And so, we were lucky.