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| Papermache snail made out of newspaper in 7 languages |
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| Can you tell which one is on the outside of the net? |
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| Typical Santorini church |
Surrounded by blue in the Aegean, I realize that I love every shade of blue. The sky, the sea, the swimming pools, the domes of Greek Orthodox churches, the trim on every white house kind of wakes you up and then makes you relax - so much beauty!
Getting here by ferry from Crete was easy - just one little hitch worth writing about. After a week of traveling the island, we returned to the same hotel in Hiraklion, the Mirabello. It was like coming home. People remembered us, we knew how to get around town, where the supermarket was,etc. When the Mirabello owner, Kostas, found out we were going to Santorini, he told us he knew someone with a place there and he could make arrangements for us. When he told us the reasonable price and that the hotel picks up from the ferry, we said sure! (The Santorini port is at the base of a cliff, and you either walk 580 steps, get a donkey ride, take a cable car or a taxi.) He made the arrangements and told us not to worry - the driver would be waiting for us, holding a name card.
The next time I saw him he asked if I could carry a package for him. I raised my eyebrows and asked," What is it, a bomb?" Here was a man I barely knew asking me to carry a package to a total stranger. One of those no-no's drummed into us at airports: do not agree to carry packages for strangers.
"Oh, no, no, no!!" he replied. "Just a kilo of snails.They are asleep. They won't bother you."
"Sleeping snails?" I responded incredulously.
"Yes, I want to send my friend, Popi, in Santorini some snails," he confirmed. I immediately pictured Popi as an older man, a buddy from Kostas' navy days.
There ensued a lengthy conversation about all the ways to cook snails, various methods to keep them off your plants, new medicinal uses of the slime, how they "sleep" and even how to prepare my garden snails back home for consumption.
That evening he greeted me with a large plastic bag. I peered inside to find an orange plastic net bag full of "sleeping" snails (they spent the night in our bathroom - a little fishy smelling).
On the boat the next day, I looked into the bag to find that one snail had not only woken up but had figured its way out of the net and was making its way up the side of the bag. I felt great respect for its heroic attempt at freedom.
We disembarked from the ferry and began looking for our driver. There were 20 men waving cards trying to get my attention. I walked through them and could find no one with a sign that said JARDIM. Then I realized - the Mirabello owner had meant the sign would have the name of the HOTEL on it - but he never told us the name of the place! So I started asking the other card waving guys for Popi's hotel (I knew the snails were for Popi). They asked what town - I had no idea. Word spread (they all knew each other) and finally a lanky man came forward and said, "Mirabello?"
We followed him to a van full of six recently graduated girls from Indiana who were on a whirlwind tour of Europe. Ten hairpin turns later the van had climbed to the top of the cliff and we had a birds' eye view of the "caldera" - what is now a bay was once a volcano that blew its top in 1650 AD. The hotel was so lovely (great pool) we assumed the girls were getting dropped off and then we'd be taken to our hovel. But the Vila Manos is where we all got out. I explained I had a package for Popi and a lovely young woman came forward and said, "I'm Popi." When I handed her the snails, she exclaimed, "Oh! From my brother!"
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