Travel is a main feature of our life though the algorithm of diminished bank accounts and increasing family size and work means that it's not as frequent, far ranging or luxurious as i would personally prefer. so we hearken back to a simpler time and recall highlights from some of our most memorable vacations.
Every young couple dreams and plans for their honeymoon, that mythological trip where husband and wife get to know each other in the luminous moments after their union. My sweet husband, naturally, had the class not only to propose to me on bended knee but also to plan our honeymoon more or less on his own. He has and always will be the better traveler of the two of us, adventurous and organized at the same time perhaps as a result of a gap year spent working and traveling around the world and generating stories enough for years and years to come and then there was the time when I ended up in norway and the farmer's daughter mother told me: "Lotte is on the pill". Since he had spent some time in a youth hostel on crete, and the only art history slide I could recall to this date is the porch of the maidens, we decided to go to greece and tack on some time in turkey on the end.
We had a mere two weeks as my big ad agency career was waiting so we chose to go to athens to see the porch, and then on to a greek island just off the coast of turkey to save time. Everything went swimmingly until we arrived on the island and noted that the airstrip seemed a bit large. and there was an airberlin 747 parked on the tarmac. we arrived at the hotel with the heart sinking realization that it was not the white washed beach side taverna of my sweet husbands fond memories, but a massive development mainly populated with pasty and large berliners. the room was fine and gave out onto a terrace overlooking the beach. stepping over a large snoring man in a bikini to find our way to the water wasn't really what we had in mind but it was dinner time so we made our way to the dining room. Thursday night: GREEK NIGHT proclaimed the sign at the tray pick up in the cafeteria line and that was when my sweet husband went over the edge. The tricky part of addressing that urge was that this was 1994. no cell phone, no internet, no way to quickly and easily find the right place to stay.
MSH: We have got to get out of here. I am going to go to town to find another place to stay.
ME: Honey, really, it's ok - the bed is comfortable, let's just ask the concierge for a rental car so we can just sleep here.
MSH: can they even do that?
ME: yes, hotel concierges can do anything. and look, we can exchange our dinner voucher for a lunch basket and go where we want, when we want.
MSH: ok, i guess that will work.
The next morning, we set out with a plan to find a beach featured in a book a friend had given us called trekking in greece. easily found, we were the only ones there for the whole day and experienced a perfect blue lagoon kind of honey moon day complete with the addition of a picnic basket that would feed a large family of germans. that evening we had a lovely dinner in the nearby town at a marina and it seemed that things were back on the right track. the next and final day on the island, had it been up to me I would have returned to the same beach but my sweet husband feels the need to forge a new path each day on holiday so we took the road across the other side of the island.
Now, I am hard wired to get to the beach and have a built in radar for good beach spotting from the roadside. there's no magic, you just look for the spots along the road with a few not too many cars parked - enough people to mean that its worth stopping, not so many that it will be crowded. better if the cars are open top jeeps and the like. more chance of cute surfers, not that I needed to be looking for those at this particular juncture, but it's good to know. As we drove along, there were several good looking spots like that but at each juncture, MSH said no, I think if we go a bit further we can find one where we are on our own . . . I want to find one like yesterday. So we drove and when the road turned from asphalt to dirt, we kept driving. and as the track got smaller and the grade more steep, we kept going. in fact, we kept going until all i could see out of the windshield was sky at which point i freaked out and screamed STOPTHECAROHMYGODWEAREGOINGTODRIVEOFFACLIFFSTOPTHECARRRRR.
He did, of course and we were perched on top of a hill with a small footpath leading down to a village and a crescent of a beach beyond. grinning, msh pulled the picnic basket out of the car and we started our way down the path to the beat of the ponk ponk ponk of a fisherman repairing the boat anchored in front of the beach. worth the death defying drive for sure. we got down to the beach ready to settle in for the day but needed to clear off a little debris in order to find a place to sit. somehow, this little slice of paradise was littered with a combination of tangled fish nets, rubbish and a few dead fish. no matter, the view was lovely, the sand soft and the lapping of the waves and the plinging hammer were a nice musical background for a honeymooning couple. so we spread our towel and laid out the ham, hard boiled eggs and wiener schitzel provided by the gasthof. it was going to be fine until we were swarmed by something i have yet to see again: a combination between a bee, a wasp, a dragonfly that came in the size of a hummingbird.
our decision to get out of there was instantaneous and mutual. we scrabbled together our things and beat a retreat up the footpath checking behingd to make sure that the bug bird things were not swarming behind like the bees that take the life of one of the poor campers in the excellent horror 1983 horror flick sleep away camp. I noted on one of these glances that the fisherman was coming in off his boat and registered relief that we wouldn't have to add buying our way out of trespassing to the itemized expenses from the trip. As we made our way along he came up the path after us and my ever chipper, ever sweet husband called out KALIMERA! the response came back in perfect if accented english oh, are you americans.
Hmm. Not even greek. Turns out he was a dutch businessman who had purchased the entire village off of an ad in his local newspaper. So much for the quaint greek fishing village. and so much for using your parent's travel agent to book your honeymoon.
not to worry, we went back and finished out the day quite happily in one of the previously scouted beaches along the road and since it was high noon by the time we arrived, the other beach goers had retreated to the shade or an intelligent nap inside. more beach for us.
up next: honeymoon part two, turkey and its its roadside cuisine.
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