Adam Lamble

I know I’ve kept you all on the edge of your seats regarding our honeymoon but wrapping up the holidays and starting a more time intensive rotation has delayed me from my never ending quest of getting caught up on Flickr.

We last left our couple as they were trying to leave Santorini. Were they able to make the ferry? Did they make it home for their graduation? Or did the general strikes force them to stay in Greece forever!? And now the exciting conclusion…

The final leg of our trip was to the island of Crete. We knew this island wouldn’t be as rich in history as Athens nor as beautiful as Santorini, and in anticipation we saved the nicest hotel/resort for last. It had a spa, tennis courts and a soccer field, and four or five restaurants.

With one of our last days, we decided to go all out and spare no expense. Nina enjoyed a mannicure/pedicure in the morning while I unsuccessfully enjoyed the steam room. In the afternoon we shared in a couple’s massage. This was a first for me and I alternated from feeling relaxed and really enjoying the experience to uncomfortable and tense while a stranger vigorously rubbed oil all over my body. To cap the whole “romantic” experience off, when we got back to our room our bed was decorated with rose petals and the entry way draped with super tacky heart beads.

In the evening we got dressed up and went out to enjoy a dinner at one of the resort’s restaurants. I should have known better, but saving the best hotel for last also meant saving the most expensive. Their main dining area was hosting a buffet which I’m sure was excellent but was also 50 euros apiece. I did the math and told Nina that was something like $1000 between the two of us (rough estimate). I know earlier I said we were sparing no expense but this was enough for me to encourage her to explore the other restaurants with me. We found a nice one nestled away in the corner of the resort that served traditional cretan styled food. It was an outdoor venue and was not teeming with tourists. The ambiance of the restaurant was romantic enough for Nina and it appeared to be much closer to my price range.

The owner was on hand and very involved with the whole production. He told us that we wouldn’t be ordering anything but would be served whatever dishes the chef prepared which were all inspired by his mother. The dishes came out slowly… at first. We started with appetizers which seemed to go on forever. Cheese, breads, a variety of olives, snails, sausages and so on. They brought out bottles of wine and glasses of uzo. Eventually, somewhere between snails and sausages, it dawned on us both that we might be in over our heads. Fortunately, the uzo made it a little easier for me to swallow my pride and ask the owner exactly how much this “traditional home cooked meal” was going to be. Not surprisingly it was a bit pricier than the buffet but thankfully a lot less than the $1000 I playfully overestimated earlier. I had prepared myself for much worse. Of course, I wasn’t out of the woods yet though. Before Nina could enjoy the rest of the meal, she had to know what they were going to do with our leftovers (a substantial amount of which was already accumulating). They kind of just stared at us blankly which we knew implied it was going to be thrown away. Nina would have none of that and insisted that they package it up for us. The waiter of course said yes to all of our requests and therefore we were free to enjoy the last of our entree(s) and dessert. Stuffed, we took our time wandering back to our room and when we entered we were greeted by a table crowded by plates full of all our left over food. I don’t know what we expected but it was obvious that we were the first guests ever that asked this resort for a doggy bag and they had no idea how to respond. Sadly, the food was never really put to good use. Nina hadn’t touched the snails at the dinner, let alone when they sat out exposed to room air for 24 hours. But we did get a good laugh at how ridiculous we must have come off to this way-out-of-league resort.

Another highlight of our final island was my first and only time dipping in the ocean. It had been too cold to swim for the whole honeymoon and while still too cold, I refused to go home without my skin touching salt water. No one else was in the ocean so I had no idea where to jump in and unfortunately chose a spot that had knife-shaped boulders instead of sand at the bottom. It was freezing, I got salt water in my mouth and eyes, and I chowed up my side, but at least I left our honeymoon saying I swam in the ocean. Who’s laughing now, Nina!?

I have a video of the whole sequence floating around somewhere that I’ll eventually dig up but in the mean time I’ve uploaded the last of the honeymoon pictures to my Flickr. Enjoy!

Our third stop was by far my favorite. We went to the island of Santorini. It’s a group of islands that ring around a crater which all was the result of a volcanic eruption or, as we call it in the biz, a giant caldera. Think crater lake, only a lot bigger.

The cliffs were lined with hotels and Nina did an amazing job picking out our hotel, site unseen. The only downside was that our room was halfway down the cliffs and we had to take about 200 steps to get there. This, coupled with the facts that our room was near the outdoor dining area and faced the sunset, we weren’t exactly encouraged to leave, which wasn’t such a bad thing.

We did force ourselves to do a little exploring. We visited a little village called Oia. We made a short lived attempt at hiking. And we joined an American couple from Oregon for a few meals and shared stories of The Motherland. But all in all, our days consisted of eating, reading and basking in the sun. Pretty much perfect.

We did have a brief scare regarding some planned worker strikes that could have affected our ferry tickets which in turn would have affected our flight home. Things ended up working themselves out but Nina had gotten pretty worried over the possibility of missing our medical school graduation. I argued there were worse things in the world than being stranded on a greek archipelago.

More Photos!

For our honeymoon, Nina and I blew the bank on a trip to Greece. It was kind of a honeymoon/graduation present/kick-off to residency. A large portion of the trip was subsidized by Nina’s aunt and uncle. Naturally we didn’t anticipate the amount of money we’d spend on food, touristy stuff, and souvenirs/junk.

Our vacation started in Athens. This was pretty much the touristy leg of the vacation. After sleeping in as late as humanly possible we would get up and partake in a Greek breakfast on our hotel’s roof overlooking (underlooking?) the Acropolis. Then we would go back to sleep. Most of the ruins are in the capitol and we would spend the afternoon wandering the city. We relied mostly on Rick Steeves books. If you recall from our Italian adventure, Nina and I are big fans of his walking tours. We’re pretty much best friends. Then pretty much every evening, we would find some sidewalk cafe and spend hours eating dinner, making faces while trying ouzo, and watching tourists aimlessly wander the streets. It was pretty much perfect but it was also exhausting. I was glad we decided to front load our honeymoon with the touristy stuff so we could spend the rest of the trip lounging around the islands.

For more pictures, check out my flickr!