Greek Yogurt and Pink Sand

Now that the suitcases are unpacked, my husband has headed out on another trip, and the baby is sleeping, I can relax and reminisce about the things I loved most about visiting Greece for a week.

As we were driving to the airport on Monday afternoon, I told Hyrum that my only complaint about the trip was that our hotel didn't change the towels every day.  He said his only complaint was that the chairs and umbrellas on the beach weren't free, and that he burned his back.

[the "not free" chairs, plus a really cute baby]

So with those being the only things we would have changed, I'd say the trip was a success!

Now I will recap my two favorite things about Greece:

1. The food!  
2. The beach!

These two topics alone could probably account for 90% of our pictures, so I'll narrow it down to breakfast, and Elafonissi Beach. 

The hotel we stayed at included a breakfast buffet.  My expectations are always a little low, so I can be pleasantly surprised if its more than cereal, bread, and yogurt cups.  My expectations were blown away.  

The best part was the delicious Greek yogurt that they served every morning along with a dozen mix-ins.  It's much thicker and creamier than any 'Greek yogurt' I've tried outside of Greece.  And it was fun to try different combinations.  My favorite by far was honey and walnuts.  Sometimes I'd eat breakfast when it first opened, then go back right before they closed for one more bowl of yogurt.  Because why not? It's vacation!                     

They also had hot foods.  The best was kind of like bruschetta, except better.  The tomatoes there were delicious, as was the feta cheese.  There were pastries that included a lot of phyllo dough (spanakopita and tiropita) and lots of bread and nutella.  Hyrum probably ate 4 eggs a day, plus endless fruit.  [Needless to say, our breakfast without milk yesterday morning was very boring in comparison.]

One benefit of having so much variety is we could let Tiago try a lot of foods without doing any work.  At home, if I want him to eat tomato, I have to buy it, wash it, cut it, and try to feed it to him.  At which point he usually rejects it because he's not in the mood.  And then I have 10 little tomato pieces sitting on a place.  In Greece he tried feta, tomatoes, breads, cucumber, eggs, and a lot of yogurt.   He stayed entertained (usually) with a piece of break crust in his hand that he could gnaw on while we finished stuffing ourselves.

And the last thing I loved about breakfast was the beautiful surroundings.  We could enjoy the perfect weather and view of the ocean from our table.

 Now on to something even better than breakfast: a beautiful, shallow, pink-sand beach.  I was skeptical about the sand at Elafonissi actually being pink (because I've seen bluegrass, and it has never looked blue).

It was legitimately pink.  Obviously not all of it, but there were patches all over with really pink sand mixed in, and along the water's edge had a pink tint.  Not to mention the beautiful shades of turquoise and blue in the water.

At the beginning of the day, while we were putting sunscreen on Tiago, we were laughing at just how white this baby of ours really is.  He was practically glowing.  Luckily, his body is so little that applying sunscreen doesn't take much time, and we managed to keep him perfectly white the whole trip. 

Just a short walk through the water and you get to an island, so all the water in between is fairly shallow and warm.  The picture below is taken from the island, so you can see water, island, water, and land.  

That's part of the island behind us, taken from the mainland.

This is Hyrum and Tiago playing in the shallow area between.  It was like playing in a giant bathtub.

 Perfectly clear water!  

Tiago decided he liked to eat sand... by the handful. 

Hyrum took the camera out exploring, and got creative with the self-timer.

 After a few hours, Tiago got cold, so we wrapped him up and kept him warm.  And then right before we left, he fell asleep.  I covered him up so the sun didn't bother him, and the result was that he looked a bit homeless.

As we were driving away, I tried to get some pictures from higher up, so get a view of the whole beach area.  (It was huge).  This was the best I could do.  Not bad, but the telephone poles sure don't add anything.  

And just for fun, here's an aerial view from the internet, to get a better feel for the layout. 

There's much more to write about Greece, but at least now I've covered the highlights!