Last days on the islands

Our last few days on Sifnos were delightful. We spent them wandering from restaurant to restaurant, briefly pausing our eating every now and then to visit some spectacular beaches. In other words, it was the perfect vacation.

This place, man. Where do I begin? Sifnos is a sleepy island just the right distance away from the traditional tourist circuit. There are only a few small hotels on the island, but it's not hard to find a room. And there are only a few restaurants here, but they are all incredible (even by Greece’s high standards). Even better, we generally have the places to ourselves, aside from the owner and his/her kids eating in the corner.

Let me tell you, it’s a uniquely wonderful experience to bring three children to an exotic top-tier restaurant, and see that they’re not the only ones there. I’m probably a bit more self-conscious than I need to be when taking my kids to a restaurant, but seeing the owner's own kids playing with toy cars underneath a table in the corner is uniquely relaxing. I know they'll understand if my two year old doesn't make it through ninety minutes and seven courses.

As any parent knows, you get about 10 seconds to grab a #humblebrag picture of your toddler eating a plate full of vegetables before she devolves into an overactive mashup of high drama and standup comedy.

Social media:

Reality:

And Mimi wasn't the only one struggling. Conrad's confused circadian rhythms generally knocked him out a few minutes after the first course.

If you look closely at Nona's lap, this still qualifies as a family photo. Parenting superwin.

The entire island was just as relaxed as the restaurants that we were eating in. Sifnos is a sleepy, undiscovered gem that makes even Milos feel busy by comparison. But part of the charming sleepiness was because of the time of year we went there. September is the shoulder season on the Greek islands. Most tourists are back at work or school, and the few remaining ones (the upshot of having kids under five) get the islands to themselves.

In addition to the empty restaurants, the beaches were wide open. Maybe one in twenty lounge chairs had somebody in it, and these are some of the prettiest beaches on the planet. It was like living in a Corona commercial. Except with kids. So nothing like a Corona commercial. But beautiful, nonetheless.

Even the city maps were charming. They were hand painted on wood boards every few blocks.

And speaking of charming, this is what a delivery truck looks like on an island of two thousand people.

Today’s run: three apples, seven paper clips, and a single shoelace for the butcher's left boot.

But charming and undiscovered does have a few drawbacks. The most obvious (at least to a doctor and a nurse traveling with their small children) was the dearth of medical services. When we arrived, I noticed a poster announcing that the island was raising money to buy a medical transport helicopter. The closest hospital is on Milos, so people with medical emergencies need to wait for a helicopter to arrive from there before they can be transported.

I did see a sign for a small medical clinic, but the building didn’t look occupied. Fortunately, we didn’t need to find out. Towards the end of our time on Sifnos, Mimi got a bit of a GI bug and briefly developed a low-grade fever. But thankfully she didn’t need much medical intervention beyond a few extra hugs and some underwear changes.

The lifeguard situation was similar. There are no actual emergency personnel on any of the beaches, just a few lifeboats dotting the coastline. I presume that villagers would use the boats to rescue any swimmers or boaters in trouble. But we never had the opportunity to see them in use, and that was fine by us.

Well, that's not entirely true. One afternoon, we saw somebody using a lifeboat to pull a giant plastic swan from one end of the beach to another. Apparently, lack of floating scenery qualifies as an emergency out here.

But who am I to judge? Maybe the secret to longevity isn't having a robust emergency services program, it's spending the afternoon towing a giant floating bird. And I'm mostly serious when I say that. This has been the way of life on Sifnos for hundreds of years, and the residents seem to be getting along just fine.

Speaking of the island’s history, Sifnos has long been a major pottery supplier to the region. The clay soil on the island is apparently excellent for dishes and bakeware. In fact, the pottery industry is still quite active, and there’s a ceramic workshop right next to our hotel.

You know my daughter, and you know where this is going.

Ever-moving Mimi gave me the opportunity to support the local pottery industry by knocking one of the bowls off of its drying rack. It was still soft, but not so soft that it didn’t shatter into a dozen pieces when it hit the ground.

This being Greece, the potter was extremely understanding when he saw that a child was involved. He wouldn’t let me give him money for the bowl, and my Greek isn't good enough to explain to him that he’d actually be doing me a favor if he took my money. Broken bowl, five euros, end of transaction. But instead, we had a broken bowl, followed by “No, please! She’s a child!” followed by guilt, shame, and the related emotions of parenthood. So, unnamed friend who recently got married, I hope you enjoy your new ceramic kitchenware. Mimi says, "You're welcome."

And this will be a surprise to no one, but five days goes by really quickly when you’re on an island paradise with good friends.

By the end of our time on Sifnos, Conrad and Mimi were back on a reasonable sleep schedule. So Nona, Grael, Aimee, and I finally got that drink on the back porch we had been dreaming about.

We’re really lucky.

Next stop, paradise. Again.

We tearfully checked out of our Milos hotel on Monday morning. In Sasha’s case, literally. She’d cried actual, sincere tears at the thought of Mimi leaving. And although we’d like to think that our kids are particularly charming, I think Sasha’s natural warmth and hospitality played the major role. We’ve experienced so much genuine, heartfelt kindness at every step of our journey though this country.

And it was time to move that journey forward. Our next stop was Sifnos, a neighboring island of Milos, and an hour ferry ride away.

As an epilogue to my last post, we saw a poster in the Milos ferry terminal rallying support to have the Aphrodite (aka Venus) de Milo returned to its home island.

This an interesting issue playing out in real time, and it raises a lot of ethical questions that I didn’t fully appreciate as a college student walking through the national museums of previous colonial powers. The full story is probably for more complex than I can understand after a quick vacation here, but my immediate gut-level sympathies are definitely with the host countries requesting their artifacts back.

But I didn’t have much time to ponder the ethics of captured artifacts as I chased a two year old around a working port.

She has spent the week looking at such large ferry boats that she now calls the Greek Navy battlecruiser that docked the night before a “baby boat.”

I don’t think “cute” was the look they were going for by placing a long gun up front, but my two year old thinks they nailed it.

A few minutes later, the ferry pulled in, and our daughter continued her charm offensive by running up and down the port yelling, “Yeah! Our boat’s here! Yeah!” It brought the house down.

We’ve been watching these ferries come in all week, and the speed with which they dock, unload, and reload never ceases to amaze us. It’s astounding. It takes the crew maybe 15 minutes to jump from the partially opened loading ramp, tie the boat to the dock, unload a hundred people, and then wave a couple dozen cars off the boat. And in this case, a full-size passenger bus as well. And then they do it all again in reverse.

We did our part to shuffle onto the boat in a timely fashion, repeating our head count of two adults, two kids, three bags, and four baklavas at several points along the way.

But we made it on board without any trouble. In fact, the crew remembered our kids (we’re no longer surprised by that), smiled, and waved us through pretty quickly.

This boat ride was quick—only an hour journey between islands. And thankfully this was our shortest ferry ride of the trip. The choppy water was rocking the boat quite a bit, and even the crew looked a little pekid.

At one point, I looked out the window and saw a sailboat getting tossed around far worse. I was happy to 1) Not be on that boat, and 2) Get my annual reminder that, no, buying a sailboat would not be a good idea.

But we made it to Sifnos without any vomit coming out of anyone who isn’t already supposed to be spitting up after each feed. And we were kindly rewarded.

I didn’t think this would have been possible, but Sifnos is somehow even prettier than Milos. Like it’s neighbor, Sifnos is a volcanic island, but this one is far more mountainous. Whereas Milos is pretty flat for several kilometers along the water, Sifnos goes straight from coastline to hilltop.

Our friends Nona and Grael (and Grael’s parents) had arrived in Athens the day before, and their ferry landed on the island about an hour before ours did. They were as exhausted as we were after flying 24 hours with a two year old, and they melted into their hotel room as we made our way across the island to meet up with them. One extremely-needed power nap later, Mimi and Conrad were ready to reunite on the beach.

We were just as excited to see Nona, Grael, and Grael’s parents.

Or at least Grael in this case. Looking back, I don’t have any photos of all six of us adults together for at least the first 36 hours, as two or three of us were continuously rotating off duty for a survival nap.

The toddlers continued to catch up over dinner, as the rest of us realized how much harder it was going to be to keep up with a couple of two year olds than it was to keep up with a couple of barely-mobile one year olds like we did in Viet Nam.

You can see Aimee on the edge of that photo making sure that Mimi and Conrad didn’t rile each other up enough to jump from the restaurant into the water. The energy of combined toddlers is exponentially greater than what they can come with on their own.

After dinner, the kids went to bed while the parents had a chance to catch up over a bottle of wine under the stars as we listened to the waves crashing along the shore.

Just kidding. That’s not even remotely true. We continued to chase around a couple of two year olds well into the night, as one of them was still on Mountain Standard Time, and the other one was drawing from his power source. But I’m sure someone on this island slept well that night.

Awake or sleeping, we couldn’t have been happier to spend the next few days together in yet another corner of paradise. At least one of our kids knew how to properly enjoy it.

We’ll miss you, Milos

Our last few days in Milos were essentially highlight reels of the first. We spent the mornings at our favorite beach down the street, and went back (and back) to our favorite restaurants.

Our kids have become local celebrities, and get kisses blown to them everywhere we go from locals and tourists alike.

Aimee and I had a similar thought in Viet Nam, but traveling with kids probably opens more doors than it closes. We’re automatically in with the locals, and have an immediate bond with other traveling families.

Finding ourselves with the type of open afternoon we’d spend at the park in Athens, we took a Milos approach to entertaining a toddler. No metro on the island, but there is a bus that drives up and down the stunning coastline.

Mimi was enthralled, and exclaimed several times, “We’re on a bus! We’re on a bus!” If it were always this easy.

And there isn’t a zoo, but there is a world-class beach carved into the volcanic rock.

Sarakiniko Beach was too beautiful and too unique to only go once, so we spent yesterday evening soaking it up one more time.

To our surprise, we weren’t the only family there. Mimi met two year olds from Spain, France, and Israel, while Quinn received coos in at least five languages.

We head to Sifnos tomorrow to meet up with Nona, Grael, and their son (more on that later), so this is our final night on Milos. We’re really going to miss this place.

Some stray observations:

1) Mimi’s coordination hasn’t caught up yet with her desire to run on cobblestone streets. But I don’t think any of the scars will be permanent.

2) Receipts are a big deal around here. Restaurant servers really make a big show of handing you a printed receipt, and every business has a big sign in it saying that you don’t need to pay if you don’t get a receipt. Further, all of the cash registers are hooked up to some type of networked monitoring device. My guess is that all of that is tied to the national debt restructuring. Part of the Greek economic crisis stemmed from a persistent decrease in tax revenue. Politicians said that the citizens were ducking their obligations, while the citizens said that the politicians squandered what they did receive. I’m no economist, but common sense tells me that it’s probably a combination of both. Either way, everyone can agree that taxes on tourist revenue are low hanging fruit, and should definitely be collected. Even the tourists feel that way. If a few cents of every gyro purchase is needed to keep this place going, sign me up to help. I’ll even toss in an extra baklava or two. You know, for economic diplomacy and all that. Just doing my part.

3) The Venus de Milo is housed in the Louvre, after being obtained under disputed circumstances. And equally priceless pieces of the Acropolis are housed in the British Museum, while Greece’s official requests to have them returned have so far been fruitless. Greece has gone through millennia of ups and downs, and unfortunately didn’t have a particularly strong central government during the heyday of colonialism. With no one to protect the country’s artifacts, countless relics were looted or destroyed by visiting ships from all over the world. But this isn’t just a recent problem. The author of the book I keep referencing makes several wistful claims about how much more we’d know about the ancient Greeks if this library or that school wasn’t sacked by the Romans, Persians, Ottomans, Venetians, etc. But one interesting and ironic anecdote was about us actually knowing more because of a looted castle. A great deal of what we do know about the very early ancient Greeks came from a set of clay tablets that were preserved by a castle fire that occurred nearly three thousand years ago. Before kilns were invented, clay tablets were essential ancient scratch paper. So the set that was preserved gave historians one of the earliest looks into early European society.

[By the way, that link about the Acropolis pieces in the British Museum is worth clicking. It’s a characteristically bizarre story about modern Greek politics involving the far left and far right forming a coalition government, the World Court, and a famous international human rights lawyer who happens to be married to George Clooney. Nuts.]

4) The early leaders of both Ancient Greece and our own country prized individual freedom above all else while also owning slaves. I don’t know how to reconcile that.

5) Don’t worry, my beach daydreaming hasn’t just been about looted artifacts and tax revenue. I’ve also been thinking about these:

This pastry shop is about 100 yards from our hotel. We’ve gone there at least once daily since we arrived on the island. And then usually go back again once more after the kids go to bed.

This was last night’s decadence, an ice cream waffle that disappeared in about 7 seconds.

The photo is poorly exposed because we were eating it in the dark. We snuck out to the alleyway behind our hotel room, and ate it there because we didn’t want to wake up Mimi. Not so much because we didn’t want her to have any, but more because we didn’t want to split it three ways. We’re not proud. But we’re not really ashamed, either.

We’ll miss you, Milos.

Road signs, vipers, and democracy

We rented our car for two days, so we still had one day left to explore the island. We thought we’d go in a more urban direction, and decided to check out the historic capital city of Plaka. The drive was about 20 minutes long, past stunning coastlines and hairpin turns.

That turn wasn’t the most impressive, but I was whiteknuckling it on the ones that were, so the camera stayed in my pocket. I’m not going to lie, it felt like I was in a Bond movie. Something about sharp turns, gorgeous views, tiny cars, and road signs I can’t understand.

On Sasha’s advice, we parked outside of the city and walked up. As a rusty stick shift driver, I was very grateful not to to have to navigate the old world cobblestone streets.

Well, at least not in our car.

We, very intentionally, haven’t been making a lot of sightseeing plans. With two kids determining our amount of leisure time, seeing anything is a win. So I didn’t have much of an idea about what was in Plaka before we arrived. But from the front porch of the cafe we stopped at, we could see a Byzantine-era church and castle overlooking the city.

Both are about a thousand years old, and are essentially modern history on this island. There are several artifacts from 4,000 BC (!) showing that not only was this island inhabited, but the heart of an art-creating, pottery-making, and eventually coin-minting and parchment-writing civilization. In fact, the Milo in Venus de Milo is because the sculpture was found here. It was made around 100 BC, discovered by a local farmer in 1820, and is actually an image of Aphrodite, not Venus. But the name stuck. Tomatoes/Tomahtoes.

It’s easy to write off the Greek islands as sleepy offshoots of the mainland, but they have a rich history all of their own. They likely played a (if not the) major role in why the ancient Athenians were such a dominant force in early western society. The book I read before this trip makes a case that although a lot of the early Greek innovations were borrowed from their neighbors, the Greeks themselves were the singular inventors of democracy. The importance and significance of that development was a major advancement of human civilization, and it’s almost a cliche to say how revolutionary that was.

In all known corners of the world at the time and beforehand, community leaders, large and small, were granted their status through violence or birthright. We now take them for granted, but the thought of elections, or even civil discussions, about who should lead a community were absolutely unheard of at the time.

And how did this happen? The author makes a pretty convincing case that the coastal makeup of the country created the environment for all of the Ancient Greek advancements. The idea of a modern Greek nation-state is relatively new (less than 200 years). Previous to that, it was a loose federation of communities that spoke a common language. In ancient times, the concept of race was not well-developed, and being “Greek” simply meant believing in a common set of Greek values (individual freedom, merit-based advancement, peaceful cooperation towards common goals, appreciation of the arts, etc.). Sound familiar? There’s a reason that America’s early leaders chose Greek columns for the DC architecture.

Although the footprint of Greece (then and now) is smaller than all but 10 US states, it contains the highest ratio of coastline to landmass. As is often the case with coastal societies, the Ancient Greeks were excellent seafarers, and traded with all of their neighbors. This resulted in the constant ebb and flow of both people and ideas. Unifying such a migratory and flourishing civilization would be nearly impossible with a strong-man type monarchy, not that people didn’t try. But the governmental structure that really took hold was an open, direct democracy that allowed for multiple voices in leadership from all of the different geographical and cultural corners of early Greece.

Because the Ancient Greek population was different than ours (thousands of people vs hundreds of millions), their democracy was different, too. It was a direct democracy, meaning that Athenian citizens were chosen at random to join the Ancient Greek version of a Congress or Parlaiment. They served one year terms, and debated everything from the price of bread to whether or not they should go to war. And in addition to this, their court system had juries of hundreds of people for each case! Since there were only a few thousand people in Athens at the time, everyone had several terms in Congress and served on countless more juries. So it was nearly impossible to go about your day without direct involvement in civil leadership. Out of that, the Greek inventions of oration, persuasive writing, and drama (which was essentially persuasive writing masquerading as a fictional story) evolved. And thus western civilization developed because the early Greek people were spread out over the same Aegean Sea that I dipped my toes in earlier today. I’m not worthy.

Woah. I think this post started out at a cafe with a pretty view.

There we are.

Without much of a plan for the day, Aimee and I thought it might be nice to hike up to the castle. Our thighs were finally starting to recover from the Acropolis.

The view alone was worth the effort.

That second photo marked the end of the hike for our stroller. The cobblestone steps every six feet were doing a number on the wheels and our son. Time to strap Quinn on to mama. We hoped the stroller would still be there when we returned, but carrying it any further wasn’t an option.

Mimi didn’t mind getting a free ride, either.

Just like the Acropolis, the hike was worth it!

But we probably would have worn some better footwear if we knew what we were biting off.

By this point, you probably have a flight search going in another browser window. As you should. This place is impossibly beautiful.

The beach in the center of the last photo was the one we drove to yesterday. Delightful from any angle.

We had an early dinner after nap time, which meant that we still had about 3-4 hours remaining to engage a toddler before we all fell asleep. Where’s the metro when you need it? But what Milos lacks in choo choos, it makes up for with stunning beaches.

When I reserved our car, the rental agent gave me a map with some suggestions. She crossed off two large areas on the east and west shores. She didn’t give much of an explanation, but our guidebook says that it’s populated with the Milos Viper. I’m going to take the book’s word for it. But the agent did mark off a couple other areas that are less likely to result in a trip to the hospital.

One of them was Sarakiniko beach. Photos of the gray volcanic rock make up some of the most inconic images of the Greek islands. Which is good, since our photos don’t really do it justice.

You really just need to see it in person. Pretend I didn’t say anything about a viper.

Milos

Milos really is something special. A common refrain around here is some type of sigh noise followed by, “We’re really lucky.” We’ve been saying that a few dozen times a day lately, usually over incredibly fresh fish or some type of filo-based pastry. Often both. And speaking of filo pastries, here’s a fun fact: feta cheese wrapped in filo dough, fried, and drizzled with honey is as good as it sounds. Greek food in the US is wonderful, but they’ve definitely been holding out on us.

But back to Milos. Walkable from our hotel are incredible seafood restaurants, bakeries, and beaches. We spent our first day here rotating between all three.

Don’t judge us, we really tried to get Mimi to wear sunglasses.

Mimi shredding the three inch surf, brah.

Quinn reflecting on his post-uterine existence. Or pooping.

Just saving this photo here to pull back up during her teenage years.

“Mimi’s boat.”

Another dinner along the docks rounded out the day. The slow cooked lamb was easily among the top three dishes we’ve ever had.

Followed by more ice cream!

Mimi shoveled it in, worried that we’d remember this was the second time in a week.

And breakfast was just as good. You may be surprised that toddlers enjoy waffles drowning in fresh Greek yogurt with fruit and honey on top. Shocking.

My intention wasn’t to fill this post with food pics, but that’s pretty much all we did here for the first 36 hours.

But then things got a little more interesting. Milos is actually a pretty big island, encompassing 61 square miles, with 5,000 permanent residents. There are a few bigger villages sprinkled across the island, with small clusters of farm houses in between. We’re staying in Adamas, the port town, but wanted to also check out some other areas of the island.

The most practical way to visit the different villages is to rent a car. Well, as practical as renting a car in a foreign country can be.

The sign on the door loosely translates to “Caution: Driver has not used a manual transmission in several years.”

I’ll admit that I kept the car in first gear for at least the first hundred yards. I didn’t want to stall out until I was well beyond the view of the rental agency.

And then filling up the tank was my next adventure. Do I pump my own gas? Do I tip? Driving a car in another country is tricky, and keeping it fueled up is nearly as tough. But the service station employee was clearly used to tourists, and made it easy for me. Turns out they pump for you, tipping doesn’t seem to be a thing, and I managed to not drive off with the pump handle still in my car. Although, I did briefly roll forward a bit when I forgot that the car was manual. Mimi was in the backseat, but thankfully she’s too young to know what just happened. If she was a teenager, that would have been rough.

Gassed up and quickly remembering how to drive stick, we packed up our go cart and loaded up the family. The Griswalds go to Milos!

Thankfully our first day’s destination was a nearby beach with very little traffic along the way. There’s quite a steep learning curve driving in another country, with loosely enforced driving laws, in a tiny car, with manual transmission. The kids didn’t know how hairy it could have been, but Aimee did, and she was a saint. She deftly navigated both the route and my adrenaline.

But it’s hard to be too anxious when this is the view.

Of course, it’s also hard to keep your eyes on the road. But we made it!

Our destination was a quiet little beach recommended to us by Sasha at our hotel. The water was calm, and it was on the south side of the island, away from that day’s wind direction.

Mimi working on her zen garden.

But we only stayed for an hour or so. We didn’t want to overdo the sun exposure for our kids, and the beach was really more for a generation above or below us (more money or fewer kids). The sun cabanas in our price range were packed together pretty densely, and we didn’t want to ruin someone’s paradise with a flying sand missile or a jarringly loud infant fart. That wasn’t in their trip brochure.

I don’t know if it was the sun or my driving, but the kids were wiped out that afternoon.

Of course, that wasn’t a problem for Aimee and I. We’re mostly through the jet lag ourselves, but we’ll never say no to a two-hour family nap.

That evening, Aimee and I thought we’d venture out a bit after we put the kids to bed. I know I’ve evangelized cell phone baby monitor apps in the past, but I really can’t imagine traveling without them, and certainly not going out. We don’t attempt this often, but the conditions were perfect. Our hotel was safe, and this was right across the street.

However, the restaurant’s WiFi was spotty, so our plan didn’t work quite as well as we had hoped. Our date night ended up just being one of us sipping our beer while the other checked on the kids. Switch, repeat.

But even if the company was infrequent, the view was spectacular. Milos really is something special.