Day 1 - Sunny Santorini
Trip Start
May 18, 2007
1
2
12
Trip End
May 31, 2007
Santorini,
Greece
Saturday, May 19, 2007
We shiver and jacket our way down to the poolside where breakfast is usually served. Today everything is sodden so room service is proferred. Since everything coming on the telly is pretty much greek to us, we check with the landlord about when the weather may clear up. He throws his excitable mediterranean body into the reply, "I leeve here forty yeears and never see such a thing in May. May is sunny, for the beach...All the channels in Greek television are asking the same thing - what happen to the weather? Maybe...tomorrow better."
Breakfast over, we head for the shower only to be brought up short by earsplitting screams from the first one to get in the loo - the water is ice cold. We ask Nikitas - "All the Greek Islands have beeg problem", he says."The water ees heated with solar power and for two days now, no sun."
The babies seem weirdly not fond of their milk, though we have lugged their preferred formulae from India and the US.
Ira studios
Wondering why, we brew up a second cup of strong Indian chai and when we have our first sip, we understand their reaction - the water from the taps is sea water, salty as heck!It's past eleven by the time we finish brekker and are ready to go out. Unbathed and feeling like hippies, we head for the nearby supermarket to stock up on basics - bottled water, milk, pasta, Santorini tomatoes, onions and garlic...M and I rustle up a quick lunch of rice and dal which we scarf down quickly.
The rain has finally started bucketing down. There is an incredibly strong wind blowing too, making it impossible for us to keep a door or window open, so we sit around in rather stuffy rooms. Hmm...no portable DVD player, no board games or even a pack of cards...what to do??? We head back to bed, not a bad option considering this vacation was supposed to help us rest and decompress. The kids too are finding it cold enough to be drowsy and we all zonk off for a few hours to the soothing melody of howling winds and pouring rain.
I'm the first to awaken at four pm and make my way to the stove for hot tea. I suddenly realise that my track pants are sodden around the ankles and, come to think of it, my feet feel not only cold but wet. I look down to spy a giant puddle of water in the room, stretching from the door of the balcony to the door of the loo. There's a matching puddle by the entrance door as well. It looks like our water curse has struck again (my husband and I suffer from a water curse and can never live anywhere without being afflicted by some troubles to do with water, including having our first floor flat flooded by rain water 7 times!).
The pool at Ira Studios
Since it doesn't look like baths or showers are on the agenda, I put the towels to good use and lay a white turkish carpet on the floor - there's way too much water to be mopped up. M has woken up too and greets us with the news that her son has thrown up and has the runs and a fever. Also, he fell off the bed and as she raced across the room to attend to him, she slipped and measured her length on the floor, bruising both knees. It looks like the sibling curse has struck too (whenever my sister and I are holidaying together sans parents, she develops strange afflictions, like the allergy she got while visiting us in France or the cricked neck she got when our parents had rushed off to an aunt's funeral, leaving her in my care.) Her knees are red and starting to swell.
She helps me mop up the water on our floor and we start to giggle. She and I have already spent much more time on housework, from cooking to washing the dishes and mopping up the water/ puke/ food bits off the floor on the 1 day of holiday so far than we do in a week in real life.
The rain continues with a rare few breaks and we are housebound. A brief walk in the evening is possible, though it is cold, with the breeze and our light jackets. We come back to Indian food for dinner - thank god for ready to eat packets. We send my husband out for wine and right after he comes back we realise we could also use more bottled water since we're rinsing all the babies cups and bottles in it. We open the wine bottle A bought to let it breathe and proceed with dinner in a relay fashion since M and C are taking turns trying to make their son sleep.
It's been an interesting vacation so far, what with having nothing but housework to do, nowhere to go. The upside is that I've finished both the Anne Tyler's I brought along for a holiday read. Or is that an upside? I now have nothing more to read except labels on packets of food.... !!!
After dinner, we wait and wait for M and C to come back after putting R to bed...that poor wine waits in vain as we drift off
