Greek Cruise

After we played at Kalamata we went on a cruise which included several Greek islands along with a stop in Turkey. The islands were just beautiful and it was quite impressed. For most of us it was our first cruise experience and we weren't ready for the tiny rooms and tiny bathrooms. I'd never been in a shower that I was able to touch the shower curtain as well as the shower wall. It definitely took a little bit to get use to.

Our first stop was the island of Mykonos. I didn't go on the island and decided to relax on the ship and hang out with our AD, Bob Beeman. I can't really tell you much about the island other than it looked really cool from the boat. The next stop was Kusadasi in Turkey. I was told that the "bizarre" there was just great and that I would really like it. I was told wrong. It was a really nice island with some interesting stuff but the bizarre wasn't much of anything. The shops that I've been to in Tijuana, Mexico were much better and more entertaining than the ones they had in Kusadasi.

After Kusadasi we headed back to Greece and the island of Patmos. Patmos was our first stop to be able to swim on their "white sandy beaches." We went into port and headed to the beach. It was a quite a site. We were told that the beaches were white and sandy. The shells and rocks were a little bit brighter but it wasn't exactly Jamaica. I don't want to place a terrible picture of the places that we went because they were great but it wasn't exactly what we expected. Carl Hipp, Noah Aguirre, and myself all swam out the buoy near our boat for a little workout after being on the boat for a couple of days. It was pretty tiring but a good workout. There was a great hotel there though, it was called Chris Hotel. I took a couple of picture but of course I didn't have the cord to transfer them to my computer.

Our next stop was the island of Crete. We got off to an early morning start and took a tour with our guide, Yanni. We walked around quite a bit and checked a Greek Orthodox mass which was thirty minutes in to a three and a half hour service. Quite impressive. We also got to see the most famous water fountain in Crete. It had four lion heads around it. After drifting around the rest of the city Dan Andersen and myself checked out the castle and pier that was the entrance to the island. The castle had wasn't huge but it was quite interesting. Tons of stray dogs surrounded it and just hung out all over the place. Dan and myself walked about a mile of the pier before headed back to catch the cruise boat. Some of the views from the pier were just awesome and it like many of the sites are once in a lifetime opportunity.

Last night we pulled into the beautiful island of Santorini. This island is most famous for being the place where they filmed the movie "Mamma Mia." It certainly didn't disappoint. As soon as we got there, we had three choices to the city from the port. 1) Take the cable car, time was about 2 minutes and it cost five euros each way. 2) Take a donkey up the zig zag trail, takes about 30 minutes and cost 4 euros each way. Being the cheap and competitive guy that I am, I took the third option. The third option consisted of walking or running up a total of 582 steps and it was free. On top of that, you had to avoid the donkeys on the way up as well as their feces (it was everywhere). All but one of the guys went this way (Charlie went with his dad on the cable car). It was quite the workout.

Once we got to the top, the view was picturesque. Having never seen the movie, I didn't know what to expect. The view was more than breathtaking. All the buildings were white and it was just fantastic. We got to go around the shops a little bit and took some great pictures. I hope to take some of those pictures will hopefully be hanging up in my house sometime soon. Noah and myself decided that we want to the take the "donkey" trail again on the way down and it took about 30 minutes and was much harder than I expected. Not exactly the best thing for my knees.

After leaving Santorini, we headed back to port in Athens. We got into port before 5am, just before the seaman strike that would've held us out to sea for at least two days. We got into Athens and on the bus by 8am and immediately went to the 1896 Olympic Stadium. It was quite impressive for being build in 1896. It sat 67,000 people and was used for the marathon in the Athens Games of 2008. After heading to Olympic Stadium we headed to the Acropolis. What a site that was. They are doing a lot of renovation to the grounds. I really wanted to see everything in it's own form but with the renovation they did a lot of restoring to these old pieces. It certainly mixed a lot of the old and the new. On top of the Acropolis was one of the best sites I've seen in a while. You could see vast amounts of land just jam packed with buildings. When they say that Minneapolis or St. Paul are big cities then you need to see Athens. It is just flat out jam packed with buildings. Not a lot of open spaces at all. It was quite a site.

Tonight we play Maroussi Basketball Club. This should be a really great test for us. As fas as I know this team is getting promoted to Division A in the Greek League. Next year they will play Olympiakos and Panathinkous (I know I spelled these wrong ). We also found that Vassilis Spoonoulis (again spelling) played for Maroussi before he was signed by the Houston Rockets. We are expected a very talented basketball team. Hopefully, our guys will be ready to go.

That's it for now. I am stealing the internet right now so I don't know if I'll be able to update after tonight's game. Hopefully, I can get something out tomorrow.