Hydra

There are a few Greek islands that everyone talks/hears about. Namely, Santorini, Crete, Mykonos. Perhaps the most under-talked about Greek island? Hydra. Good. Grief.

We took a little HAEF (Hellenic American Educational Foundation = the organization that sponsors the teaching fellows I am working with) group excursion this weekend. What an amazing adventure.

This trip was a kind of flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants ordeal, and we didn't really bother to book a hotel. Our first mission, then, was to find vacancy. We looked for a little while to no avail, and then got distracted watching the setup for a (what you've all been waiting for...) a big. fat. Greek. wedding. And the sun was setting, and we found the cliff/rocky beaches, and we were all overcome with, I don't know, LIFE! and jumped into the sea right then and there. Claire started us off with her Houdini inspired presto-change-o into her two euro bathing suit, and we were off and swimming.

This was the most spectacular water I have ever been in. It was a deep turquoise, and you could see straight to the bottom. I was absolutely giddy.

Once the sun was just about gone, we continued our quest, and after getting terribly lost, climbing around two million stairs, and saying wud up to endless stray cats, we found Hotel Theano. The woman who owns it, Theano (ha), decided immediately that she wanted to be our Greek mom.

And then we were hungry.

We found a taverna close to the marina and had, as usual, an extravagant feast. We even tried broiled octopus, and I loved it!!

{I'm trying very hard to learn more and more Greek. Forget the octopus, I am hungry to learn this language like I cannot even describe.}

During dinner, a stray dog decided to hang by our table. We didn't feed it, but we gave it some love, and in return it stayed by us all night. All. Night. After dinner, we went to a bar, and the dog came with us. We totally danced with the dog. A few of us stepped out for a bit, and Eleni, Robyn, and I were ogling the yachts when out of nowhere this gypsy/pirate/ninja appears out from within the bowels of this old boat and shimmies UPSIDE DOWN on this rope to the dock where we were. Scared, Eleni whispered, "Pretend it's our dog. Speak Greek." And we did. And that dog barked at the man and protected us. By the time we got back to the other side of the marina, we watched the gypsy pirate ninja hop into his rickety motor boat and sail away. After that, we started calling the dog "Savina" after the greek word for "savior."

Furthermore, we got REALLY turned around on our walk back to Hotel Theano (endless white buildings and no real signs can be hard to navigate), BUT... we had our dog! She walked with us all the way home. Apparently she waited outside for a few hours and greeted the rest of the group when they got back. Greg, in particular, was just obsessed with this dog, and even though the dog was obviously a girl, he insisted it was a boy because "all dogs are boys."

The next day we had a perfect, lazy, vacation day! We went swimming more, basked in the sunshine, had food and coffee. What a weekend.