I was in bed 12am-10am. I had tons of crazy dreams and kept waking up because of various noises, but it was still my best night of sleep so far.
When I woke up I was going through my papers and I found a receipt from the previous day. Apparently I paid €4 for "going down". Not a bad price I suppose, but I wish I'd had some memory of the blessed event. Eventually I figured out it was for the cable car.
The power had gone out at some point (I think I heard someone say 8:20am) which had the effect of killing the cold water in the hotel. I'm guessing the cold has to be pumped up but the hot is stored on the roof, so it still worked. Good thing I showered the night before. We had to check out by 11am but weren't leaving till 2:30pm, and with the power out there wasn't much to do other than just sit around. The Internet was of course out as well. We weren't sure how widespread the outage was and if nearby businesses were affected. Fortunately my water and retsina were in the fridge and stayed cold, so I went out to the pool and wrote this as I had my final glass of the latter.
This reminded me of when my dad would shout "8 feet!" and threaten to drag one of us to the deep end of the pool. Seems like it wouldn't have been so terrifying if we'd grown up in Europe and he shouted "2.7 metres!" instead. That in turn reminds me of the "6 dollars 40" guys on Family Guy. Can't find it on YouTube, but if you're cool you know what I mean.
Our hotel and pool.
At 11:25am the power came back on as most people were packing/checking out, which I had already done. I got on the Internet as soon as one of the computers had booted up. Boners have fallen to 3rd, a half point behind Brian. Quite a drop over the past week.
Gabriel asked if we'd gone to the place last night that was playing the Macarena, because he heard it all the way from the hotel. Yes, we did. It was when they were showing the '90s videos, after the '80s videos.
I walked down to the beach (my first and only glimpse of the famous Santorini black sand) and met up with 5 of the others for lunch. I had red Thai curry and a large Alpha. I tried to get a discussion going about the power outage with this opener: "You know what I hate? Taking a dump in the dark." For some reason the group seemed averse to such a topic during mealtime. After lunch we sat on the beach for a while (free use of the chairs for diners) and I had another Alpha.
See, black sand.
We had a 4:15pm-6:30pm ferry ride to Naxos. Waiting in line for the ferry I had another beer. Four brothers waiting with us were all working on Rubik's Cubes. Reminded me of the competitions they used to show on That's Incredible!. (I'll always remember that show for the Chinese guy with the twin on his face, which might still be the single most disturbing thing I've seen on network television.) I took a Cube from one of them and hoped my hands would remember where to start, but it had been too long since I last touched one. Same problem I have with the ladies heyooooo! On the ferry I had yet another beer.
On arrival in Naxos we were loading the bags onto the minivan and I offered mine first because it was the biggest. Gabriel said it wasn't. I insisted it was. He conceded "yes, but it's not the hardest." Oh my. It never ends.
The Naxos hotel is in a labyrinth of unnamed streets. Much worse than Dubrovnik. I paid close attention to the route so I was always able to find my way back, but only if I started at the same point (i.e. from anywhere else in the labyrinth I had no clue where to go), and getting from the hotel down to the main street always dumped me way farther down from where I wanted to be.
At dinner (9 of us attending) I had fried calamari because they were out of fried shrimp. I couldn't eat much because I'd had some intestinal discomfort for 2 days (and I still do a week later as I transcribe this...I didn't let on during the tour, but this is why my alcohol consumption slowed a bit). I did make room for one of the eyeballs from Gabriel's fish. That was something new. Gloria had the other eye. Eating and swallowing the eye wasn't as bad as the psychological effects afterward. I said that I kept sensing the eyeball inside me, looking at stuff from the inside. And especially looking at my "junk". This seemed to nauseate people even more than the dump-in-the-dark comment. Yep, I'm on again today.
Highlight of dinner was Jodi spilling wine on one pant leg and then honey on the other. She's unlucky.
The Group of Six, excluding Sarah, stuck around after dinner and had ouzo. Gabriel and I wanted to stay out after that but Jodi and Patty were done. Too bad, as I would have liked to try the karaoke bar Gabriel was touting. We left the restaurant at 12:30am. Bed 1am.