I Want to Hide in the Greek Islands

I wanna go to GREECE this summer...

:::sniff sniff:::

...to sit at a cafe on an island by the marina, sipping a tall frappe and either reading a book or just doing nothing. Rent a house. Go grocery shopping at the local market and get calamari fresh off the docks or after they dried in the sun on the bits of rope draped around the marina like laundry lines. Pet the local donkey.

Maybe I'll propose that to Mel for a honeymoon - two weeks of island hopping in Greece (do the relaxed touristy thing because I haven't been to the islands yet), or just picking an island and staying put. For a month. Just get away from the world and leave the cell phones behind. Literally fall off the face of the earth (or at least our families and friends radar). Heck, I won't even tell my relatives in Greece that would go - or else incur the wrath of the "You have to visit us, we need to the the yambro!" ("Yambro" means groom in Greek. "Nifi" is bride.) Meaning they all want to see Mel. And me too "the new married couple." My uncle - mom's brother - went with my aunt (who is Irish) to Greece and she got to meet THE FAMILY.

I once told my dad that my dream vacation is to leisurely go around the Greek islands and not tell my relatives that I am coming. My paternal grandmother and my uncle live ALL THE WAY UP in northern Greece where my dad had to ski to school, and I have maternal relatives in Athens and the Sparta area. So its a long haul all over the mainland. Seriously, except for the people whose parents came from Athens, I do not know ANYONE else besides my sister and I who have parents from the mainland on both sides. Everyone else that we know is from one island or another, and has a million cousins their age to take them around too (my sister and I have one, but now she is married - and is in Thessaloniki). Dammit. Nonetheless, it is cool to say that "Yeah I have been to the Albanian-Greek border" and everyone I know hasn't been to Thessaloniki (no real reason for them to go up there). But I want to GO TO AN ISLAND...cue the begging. Seriously. My mother's cousin even has a hotel in SANTORINI of all places!!!

So what did my dad do in response to my statement?

He just laughed his big laugh - the one where he thinks its something REALLY funny, one for the books - and said "Prepeis na theis ti yiayia sou."

"You have to go see your grandmother.

I know it would never happen regardless - the relatives not finding out. There is the network called THE FAMILY. Seriously, sometimes I think I am living the movie. Sans 27 first cousins.

P.S. That photo is an actual building in Kefalonia, one of the islands, and the impetus for this post. I got it off Flickr, so to cover my butt in terms of copyright, that is not my photo. But I love it.