We're back!

Hi Everyone! We're back in Athens this morning, hanging out at the only place open - Starbucks. Guess it's another religious holiday here and the city is really quiet.
Mykonos was awesome! If we weren't lying by the beach, we were lying by the pool. We also managed to have a bunch of fun out with our 8 new friends. The day after the toga party, the 70 Contiki people got on buses and headed to Paradise beach for an afternoon beach party. Most Europeans should really consider being more modest.
The next day we headed into the main town for some sightseeing. It's pretty much just a typical island beach town. That night we had lots of food, fun and dancing. We had dinner at the oldest restaurant on the island where we found out that we love Ouzo. After dinner we headed to the bars and dance clubs. Oddly, we went to an Australian club and a Scandinavian club. Considering the reputation of the island, these were probably good choices instead of the local favorites 'Ramrod' and 'Argo'.
Our last day in Mykonos consisted of relaxing all day long before boarding the cruise ship we'd be on for the next 3 nights.
The first morning of our cruise we docked in Kusadasi, Turkey. We went on a tour of the excavation site 'Ephesus', an ancient Greek city that was destroyed by an earthquake in 614 AD. Only 10% of the site has been excavated, but it was an amazing place to see.
We saw some really expensive Turkish rug demonstrations. Oddly, the salesmen didn't even try to push any on us...we must look like poor tourists. Nicole found a leather salesman that wouldn't give up and was really pushy. She even told him she's a vegetarian and loves cows. He didn't care. Actually, our 15 minutes in the Grand Bazaar was enough. We knew we were done when a salesman asked if he could touch Shelley's freckles. He offered to pay too. Eeeewwwww! Just like Russia, don't need to go back to Turkey.
That afternoon, our ship docked at the island of Patmos. We appreciated the non-pushy laid back feel of the island. There's really not much to do there, so our highlight was feeding cheese crackers to the fish at the port. That night we got dressed up for a nice dinner and night out on the ship with our group.
We had an inside cabin with no windows, so the next morning we kinda slept really late. We ran off the ship an hour before we were supposed to be back on the ship. Not much to say about Crete except that we were there. We didn't even make it out of the port. Whoops.
We made up for the morning with an amazing adventurous afternoon. We took a tender boat to shore where we got on a sailboat that took us to the active volcano of Santorini. Then we took a hike to the very top. When we heard it was a hike, we wore our tennis shoes and shorts. Believe it or not, the majority of the group that went chose to wear flip flops and sundresses. They looked somewhat miserable for the majority of the walk. Once we got back down the volcano, we got back on the boat and sailed to another small island where we jumped off the boat and swam in the perfectly clean sea water to a hot spring. Again, Europeans in speedos - enough said. Then the boat took us back to a different dock on the main island where we boarded a bus that took us to the top and center of town. There we had a short walk through town, enjoyed a gelato, then rode a cable car back down to where we started and got back on a tender boat to the ship.
Our last night on the cruise was somewhat uneventful. Enjoyed a last dinner, drinks and stories with friends and reminisced about the past week of fun.
So here we are, back in Athens, ready to start our last leg of the trip. We start a 3 day tour of the mainland of Greece tonight. We've already met our tour manager and there should be about 35 people on this one.
On a side note, there are a lot of dogs wandering around the city and one of them escorted us to dinner a week ago our first night in Athens. This morning, we were walking with our suitcases to our hotel and were escorted by him and his posse of 3 other dogs. Anytime a car or man was nearby, the dogs would go off barking and charging at them. One of the dogs even followed us in to the hotel to make sure everything was okay. We felt safe with our Athens canine protection. Maybe SVPD canines put the word out to look out for us :)