I spent my 25th birthday on Crete. Play that back. My younger sister and I wanted to travel and I had my first real job so took three weeks off to spend in Greece and Italy.
My sister wanted to live in Athens, thinking she would run into Plato and Aristotle on the steps of the Parthenon. Instead, we smelled diesel fuel from Mercedes cabs and looked out on smog-filled skies. Once I left she escaped to Israel and lived on a kibbutz for six months!
We landed in Athens, backpacks on, and found a place to stay, a perfectly clean hostel where we had our own room with a sink, and shared a bathroom I’d like to have now, decades later, with the room next door. [Without the sharing and with double sinks.] All for the outrageously high price of $12/night (her reasoning, not mine, I became the financier because I didn’t want to sleep on someone’s roof for $1 per night).
Settled in, we fought jet lag and went to a taverna close by. Thinking I was worldly, I ordered Campari. Juice glass with an ounce of red liquid, warm and it made me cough with the first sip. So much for worldliness!
I reveled in the food in both Greece and Italy and tried whatever food I could. My sister ordered spaghetti and meatballs every meal and kept Nutella in the room.
More on the boat trip to Italy later and the flight back.
We got to Agia Galini (on Crete), a beautiful fishing village for $4/night with sandy muslin sheets and a 2′ x 3′ bathroom with a toilet that was also our shower.
The next night was my 25th birthday and our parents had given my sister $25 to take me out to eat. I insisted we get a real hotel room for $15 and spend the rest on dinner. We walked into an empty taverna early and the owner took such good care of us with seven courses, ouzo, retsina, metaxa brandy. Spoon sweets, he was the real deal. With tip it cost a whopping $14. I paid the $4.
Before sunrise I was at the airport with quite a headache for an interesting cancelled flight and two stops in the former Yugoslavia with baggage checks and bomb-sniffing dogs before arriving in NYC where my parents were moving in. After 18 hours on the road I walked in the door from an expensive taxi from JFK and my mother handed me a box and said “we work around here.” Welcome home! Then I went home to another place my roommate had found because we’d been broken into again on my trip.
Welcome home, world-traveled and sophisticated Dee, moving twice in two days! It was fun, I was young and got to sunbathe topless in Greece. Dee
Cooking with Dee 