Planes Taxis and Ferries O My

I seriously feel like we've been around the world!  We have spent the last several days just trying to get to where we are now.  I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting when I was told that we'd have to take a ferry to Santorini but it certainly was not what we encountered.

The ferries here are like cruise ships complete with cabins and restaurants.  For the first leg of our trip from Souda to Athens we had a cabin with 4 beds.  This was very nice as our trip was from 9 PM until 6 AM. There was a catch though.  Our bodies were still operating on East Coast time, so to us it felt like midday and we were not too tired. We forced ourselves to sleep some but at about 2:30 AM we were wide awake wandering about the ship.

The next leg of the trip was from Athens to Santorini.  The trip lasted from 7:30 AM until 3:00 PM. Guess what it felt like to us?  Might as well have been 2 in the morning!  Of course since it was a day trip the travel agent booked us for deck seats and no cabin.  By the time we arrived in Santorini we had HAD IT!  Besides dealing the time differences we had two other major hurdles to deal with. 

First:  It seems like EVERYONE in Europe is a smoker.  So all around us on the second leg of our trip were hundreds of people lit up, puffing on their hand rolled cigarettes.

Second: We speak English and NO ONE else aboard did.  This is to be expected and I'm not complaining about it. We as Americans would not be expected to speak any other language except English to foreigners in our own country. I get that.  It's just that it got very tiring trying to communicate our needs such as food and seat location and bathrooms to people who did not understand us. Several times we resorted to hand signals and pointing.

Our home away from home.  This is the girls room here at Costa Marina Villa.  It's such a cool place.  Gracie gets to sleep up in the loft bed which makes her very happy.

Today we were out walking in town in search of a little pharmacy.  We all have stuffy noses and a cough, no doubt from smoke inhalation yesterday.  Once again I resorted to fake coughing and sneezing to let the pharmacist know what I needed. While we were walking along we heard a little motor scooter behind us and little beep beep.  As the rider approached us he start yelling "Gracie! Ah my friend Gracie!!  Hello Gracie!"  It was Gracie's buddy Tony out delivering food for his restaurant.  Gracie says it's good to have a friend here in Greece that speaks English.