Wednesday, August 17
To return our rental car we met a very large Montenegrin man in the parking lot of the Podgorica airport. He seemed very serious up until he confirmed there was no (new) damage to the car and gave us back our deposit, €150, in cash. Then he smiled a big, goofy smile that made his big, bald head seem even bigger. He squeezed his body into our tiny rental car, and drove away.
We took a teeny tiny plane from Podgorica to Athens. We could see the plane’s propellers on either side. When it came time to shove our bags into the overhead compartment, mine didn’t fit. Luckily I had a plastic bag with me so I just started taking everything out of the front pockets and putting it in the bag. Even then, Carl had to put his weight into it to shove it in. He also had to pull it out later and I worried for a moment it would be stuck forever.
The flight was about 1.5 hours and we changed time zones to be one hour ahead. Despite the short time in the air, they still served us food of a ham sandwich and a cereal bar that were both pretty good! The airline staff were speaking in Greek, but it sounded so similar to Spanish that it made us pause and try to remember where we were.
We were only staying in Athens one day, to allow flexibility for delayed flights, before going to Mykonos. When I booked the hotel I thought we’d be leaving Athens in the morning so I got a hotel near the airport (with a free shuttle), but far from everything else. It turned out we wouldn’t leave Athens until almost midnight but our hotel’s weird location ended up being a positive thing because we explored the Athens suburbs and beaches.
We got to Athens about 3pm. We had to wait for our driver outside, near one of the parking lots. It was so so hot. And it was predicted to get hotter. Finally he pulled up in the van and took us on a 10 minute drive to the hotel. He was really nice, and kept asking us if he was pronouncing words correctly. At the hotel he got out and checked us in.
We got settled and then decided to walk to the nearest beach suburb which was 45 minutes away. As we started walking along abandoned dirt roads, in the heat, it seemed like we may have made a huge mistake. But we trudged on.
The route took us through farmland, suburbs, and strip malls. We saw fig trees overwhelmed with figs, grape vines everywhere, and gnarled olive trees everywhere else. On the main road there were many thrift shops.
Finally we made it to Artemida. Despite being a ‘beach’ town, it wasn’t touristy at all and seemed kinda run down. I tried two different nail salons that had no availability and then we gave up and went to a grill for gyros. We got two pork gyros that came with meat, tzatziki, tomatoes, onions, and potato wedges wrapped up inside. They were sooo good.
We walked down the street and found several bakeries. We ordered some baklava and tried to eat it while we walked, which was difficult but delicious and worth it.
Then I wanted to find a place to have a drink and look at the ocean. There was a huge beach bar called Albatross but it was crowded. So we walked down the beach a bit to Mojito beach bar. There was almost no one in the bar itself and the place looked like it was still recovering from a hurricane. We got two beers and watched the stray beach kittens playing with each other.
Then we walked back, sticking more to rural roads this time. Every house we walked by had a dog that barked at us. One house even had a guard goose. We saw a fig tree that was surrounded by rotting figs that had fallen onto the ground. We saw some ripe ones that were about to fall, so we reasoned it would be ok if we had some. They were sooo good. For the rest of the walk we looked for trees that seemed abandoned that had ripe figs.
We also tried some grapes that were amazing. The green ones were predictably good. The purple grapes were so ripe and juicy and tasted just like Welch’s grape juice. Carl also tried an olive, but it wasn’t ripe yet so it just tasted like a bitter leaf.
Eventually we made it back to our hotel, and settled in for the night.
Thursday, August 18
Happy Birthday Mad Dog!
With our dark, air-conditioned room, we had no issues sleeping in. We had a light breakfast of some leftover baklava and figs gathered from the day before.
The hotel staff helped me to try to find a place to get my gel nails redone but they said everyone was closed for the holiday. We later found out the holiday was the Dormition of the Mother of God, which we had never heard of before.
We decided to go to another beach for the day and have the hotel watch our bags. We again thought it was an ok idea to walk all the way. This time it was over an hour walk and google maps literally took us on a path through a field filled with tons of sharp and pointy dead plants. We again picnicked as we walked and eventually made it all the way to Vravona beach.
A place aptly called Beach Bar had a restaurant and beach chairs for rent. We ordered the mixed meat grill and a couple of beers and sat in the restaurant, on the beach. It took forever to get the food, but it was good. Then we migrated to the beach chairs which we got to sit in for free because we’d ordered food and drinks.
The beach was nice, with soft sand, calm waves, and a shallow entry. We swam, read, blogged, and repeated for several hours.
Then we got an Uber back to the hotel and got the same guy to drive us to the airport. We went early because I’d read about a nail place IN the airport. Unfortunately, the nail salon was past security. So I had Carl watch my stuff and went through, hoping to sneak in an appointment. They were still open (and would be for 1.5 more hours) but the lady said, “sorry, no”. She had no idea how disappointed I was.
Then, getting back to the check in desks was a real challenge. I had to explain my life story to one of the security guards and I doubt she even understood, but she let me go back. The next security lady made me scan my boarding pass to leave, as if that made any sense…So I gave up on getting new gel nails and just ripped the gel off myself. So it goes.
Then the check in process was easy enough and, having been through it once already, security was a breeze. Luckily our ticket allowed me to check my bag and Carl was able to shove his into the tiny overhead. The flight to Mykonos was about 30 minutes which is one of the shortest flights of our lives. It felt like as soon as we reached cruising altitude we started to descend again.
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