We are on vacation from backpacking in Corfu, Greece! We are having an amazing time lying on the gorgeous beach by our crazy huge mountain top party hostel, The Pink Palace. We walked into the hostel bar on our first night here for a beer and Jen spotted a guy who looked exactly like Ben (the Canadian 18 year old backpacker who we met on the random pub crawl in Rome - he and his friend Taite hung out with us and Ashley and Jack a little that night). Strange lookalike turned out to be even stranger, it actually was Ben! We exchanged super weirded out looks and then saw Taite and their third buddy, Simon. They were accompanied by Jordan, a sweet 20 year old studying in Athens who was pretty headstrong about fighting the cultural norm and distinguishing himself as different. The 4 of them had befriended one hell of an "athlete" lacrosse loving Logan, who turned out to love Dutch cougars even more...a scaring discovery by Kelly Puckett. One beer turned into several and we talked about the strange workings of the universe that would bring us to the same island in Greece to the famous hostel here at the same time when we had never discussed this plan with each other. These guys are great fun and we immediately formed a brother/sisterly bond with them and have been hanging out over egg breakfasts and at the bars here...they sleep all day, which we can't hate on them for since we are usually dozing in and out on the beach. We also met a big group of kids studying in Prague...as college graduates we are clearly a few years too old for this place, but the Dutch Logan-loving cougar had us beat by a few decades. Prague kids turned into buddies one day while poolside so our group of vacation buddies grew with the addition of Dan, Ian, Greg, James and there 4 other friends. Chaos hit the Pink Palace on Friday with the arrival of a 700 person spring break tour. Our palace was overrun with 20 year old messes that brought us back to our spring break memories, and lack thereof. If you can't beat them, join them, was the general attitude of the prior palace occupants, so relaxing vacation became more of a party pit stop. One of the best days was when we rented four wheelers from our hostel with Ben, Taite, Simon and Jordan and whizzed off down the windy Greek roads to Corfu Town to get a little feel for the island outside of our party confine. Free wheeling along cliff roads looking down at the beautiful beach and Adriatic Sea below the green mountainside thick with tall pointy pines made for amazing views. We caught parades as part of Corfu's famous Easter festival...which were pretty much one morbid marching band after the next, but an interesting change of pace nonetheless.
Swimming in the sea here was freezing but so clear it felt like you had been dropped into a glass of drinking water. Looking down at not only your toes but every individual grain of sand on the sea floor it seemed like you were looking down through a sheet of glass.
A toga party was Saturday nights big attraction and hundreds of Pink Palce residents attempted to make decent and sturdy togas out of the shiny pink satin sheets that were mandatory to attend. We helped our temporary little brothers tie their togas the best we could and headed to the huge paladium nightclub here. In case you haven't pieced this one together, this hostel is ENORMOUS and reminicent of a summer camp for drunken 20 year olds. The toga party was part rave and part tradition as a traditional Greek dance performance turned into the staff setting the dance floor on fire as a man lifted a flaming table with his mouth. Then hundreds of ceramic plates were carried out, stack after stack and smashed on the head of every guest followed by a shot of Ouzo from the bottle while the Greek music blared and ceramic shards flew everywhere....Greek traditions are weird. The madness was swept up as quickly as it had begun and the smoke filled toga rave continued all night. This was convenient for us and our Canadian and Prague friends as we were all taking an early morning ferry to Venice which meant we needed to be on a bus departing the palace at 5:45am. No sense in going to bed first we reasoned, as this was a 23 hour ferry ride and embarking well rested would make us some bored bunnies. After nearly missing our bus, perhaps due to Jenny's inability to get her life together, we were finally on our way. Help got us up and moving, the perks of befriending the hostel staff over a political discussion that day at lunch. Big shout out to our buddy to Armondo, who Kelly said she would see in 5... Not so much. You are a gem for the personal wakeup and help dear!
We had all been seriously Pink Palaced and were ready for a slice of reality and a return to Italia. A ferry floor had never seemed such a comfortable place to sleep as it did to our group of 11 that morning. Partied as we were, we were no strangers to the danger of travel so we all secured our belongings, hiding our purses and lining our bags up behind our heads. Everyone lay guarding their things and we all fell asleep on our bags, drifting in and out of sleep, but apparently were no match for the agile robbers aboard as we woke up to find 3 members of our squad (including yours truly, Kelly) had been robbed of their most valuable belongings. This was a crime that no one could wrap there heads around, including head of security when he saw the precision with which it had been executed by someone who would have had to make his was through our crowd of people silently. Hours 4-23 were now a giant game of clue and with knots in our stomachs we kept a hand on every bag at all times. We wish the agile robber had had it in his heart to leave Kelly her camera card containing every picture she has taken on our travels for the last 2 months. Losing your possessions out of carelessness is hard, but theft out of a hidden purse behind a 40lbs backpack with 3 people sleeping practically on top of it...that's a loss that's hard to swallow.
So now Kelly is phoneless (our only lifelines to the real world), and camera-less. Which, if you know Kelly, you know her camera and pictures are her most valuable and personal belonging since she was in middle school. When you are far from home and have one backpack, it seems to amplify this loss. Kelly of course will always feel sick about her pictures and the phone is just more or less a pain in the ass. It's strange to be electronic-less for these last couple of weeks, and probably not a bad lesson. Frustration, sadness, anger, confusion... The list of feelings goes on especially after so much good luck and 3 months of being so careful. But the reality is we have had nothing but great fortune (knock on wood) our whole trip, healthy bodies and once in a lifetime experiences. Being with a group was a crucial aid to staying positive all day on our ferry and then we are in Venice. It makes it hard to complain... As the expression goes, shit happens. Kelly feels positive and isn't going to waste time being anything but grateful to be back in Italia :)
We all took turns eating, napping, and being general bums on our long adventure. As a group, we came to a general consensus that selling deck seats on a 25 hour janky ferry is cruel and unusual punishment. Thank goodness we had a squad to stay distracted. Ian had a laptop, so we piled around it an watched hours on end of the Amc show "breaking bad", as our butts went numb. Bored eating got the best of us and ice cream Sunday's made for perfect midnight snacks. Finally the group fell tired again, and decided to get a few more hours of shuteye. Well as best we could... Kelly & Greg undoubtedly had slept with one eye open.
Venice scenery surrounded us all we pulled up to port the next morning. We couldn't wait to be off this boat and bid farewell to our lost belongings and sketchy neighbors. We were in Venice! Venice! Words can't describe our excitement, so we won't bother trying...
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