Sifnos- By Nicole

After a short ferry ride, we got off the boat in Sifnos in the port town of Kamares. Ok, town might be an exaggeration. The entire island has a population of only 2,500 so Kamares' collection of whitewashed houses, apartments and hotels straggling up the hill from the port and curving around the shallow, clear beach is actually best described as a village. Our hotel room was the biggest yet, with high ceilings, a small kitchen and a balcony overlooking the bay. We got situated and then set out to do what we do best – eat. We got and ice cream and walked around, checking out our dinner options. We later ate our most disappointing meal of the trip next to a loud table of 20 Germans. After all the Greek food we had been eating, not one dish was better than mediocre and the wine was hardly drinkable. We decided to call it an early night.
The next morning we finally ate rich and creamy Greek yogurt in a form other than Tzatziki, enjoying it with roasted almonds, Thyme honey and apples (Sara) or bananas (Nicole) on our balcony. Our plan for the day: explore the island and find a restaurant worthy of celebrating Sara's birthday the next day (we didn't want a repeat of the previous night's disappointing dinner).
We drove to the capital of the island, Apollonia (which I then spent the rest of the trip confusing with Pollonia on Milos) and decided to head directly to Kastro, an old walled village nearby with nice views and a well-known jewelry maker. There were a few adorable cafés at the entrance to the village, but we walked on and quickly became slightly disoriented in the empty, serpentine pedestrian streets. Like Venice, only with out water and people, we walked in circles, not really sure what we were looking for, but not finding anything anyway. The few natives in the village were painting and renovating and the only others out and about were a group of German tourists in sturdy hiking boots. It felt like a ghost town. We did stumble upon the jewelry maker who was busy renovating, painting and unpacking in preparation for the tourist season – he told us he would be ready to open in four days, but we could still come in and look at his wares. He made beautiful things and I believe him when he told us that his prices for gold jewelry were so much better than the competition and for 18k and his quality, etc., but that unfortunately didn't change the fact that
neither Sara nor I were in the market for rings over 500 Euros (+40% = USD). We headed back down to the cafés for our daily iced coffee.
Our next stop was Vathy, a small resort town (village) to check out the chi-chi hotel and restaurant, but decided that, while the food was probably good, it felt too lifeless. As there was nothing else to see there aside from a few German and French tourists rocking the European Speedo look on the small beach, we headed on to start looking for lunch. We ended up back in Apollonia to find everything closed and the only lunch option was "toast" (grilled-cheese sandwich of sorts) or cheese pie at a café or the one taverna that was open. Tired, annoyed and hungry, we went for the taverna and ate food that was just ok with service that was less than enthusiastic. Although the island hardly has any roads to choose between, we managed to get turned around on the way back down to Kamares. Sara then sat down to update the blog and I went for a walk, determined to check out all of Kamares' restaurants to find the ONE for the next evening. Walking around the bay, it was painfully obvious that we were a month "too" early – all the vacation rentals were still borded up, the shelves of mini-market promising organic and gluten-free products were bare and the beach
bars empty. It was a nice walk and I found a place to eat later – Delphini. That evening we dined on stuffed eggplant, slightly fishy swordfish and freshly made spinach pie. As an alternative to ouzo, raki found its way to our table again as our digestive after than meal. We then met up with some of the locals for a few drinks at the Old Captain, a beach bar across from our hotel where we rung in Sara's 30th (oh wait, I mean 25th) birthday with vodka tonic, lemon drops, blow jobs and something else......before moving the party up to our balcony to toast with our own concoction of Sparkling Christmas Raki (the cinnamon-honey raki we found on Crete plus Martini Spumanti sparkling wine) – much to the displeasure of our Swiss neighbors who asked us to move the party inside as they were sleeping with the balcony door open. Ooops.
The next day we took things slow, enjoying an iced coffee in the shade of some juniper trees on the beach of the little fishing village Faros while talking about what 30 meant to both of us and our hopes and dreams for this next year. We spent the hot afternoon curled up with our books (as Sara had a migraine headache) and then had a low-key yet tasty Italian dinner of Strozzopreti in a slightly spicy tomato sauce with Italian sausage and Peccorino Romano – our first non-Greek food in nearly 2 weeks.
We awakened the next morning to torrential rain – the Greek islands must have been sad to see us go! We packed up, dashed across the street through the rain to have breakfast at a covered café and then the sun came back out for our ferry trip back to Athens. We returned to a hot Athens just in time to dash into the Poet Sandalmaker's workshop to pick up another pair of the sandals which had served us so well over the last 14 days (I still have the tan lines on my feet!) before heading to our old room at the hotel in Plaka. We had dinner at the Taverna with the yummy okra and chicken and then returned to the hostel to lie awake in the dark listening to younger folk playing drinking games in the hotel courtyard below.

Our last morning in Greece included Gyros for breakfast, two of the worst (sweetest) coffees of our trip and a mad dash for last minute purchases before heading to the airport to fly back to Frankfurt (via Paris). We almost got stuck in Athens when the flight computer crashed, but after over 1.5 hour delay, they got us up and running just in time to barely miss our connecting flight in Paris. Air France put us on the last flight to Frankfurt and we finally arrived at my apartment without losing any luggage at 1030pm, tired, hungry, and missing the islands a little bit, but happy not to be on the road any longer.