Traveling the Greek Isles

In honor of the 10th anniversary of my family's trip to Greece, which actually was 11 years ago (but I didn't have this blog last year), I would like to dub this week "Greek Week," and no, there will be no rushing or kegging or anything like that. I would merely like to reminisce somewhat about our trip.

First, let me say that it was purely coincidental that it was our side of the cruise ship that lost power the second day, delaying our departure to the next port while an electrician came on board to repair the damage. It had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the use, by my sister and me, of unapproved appliances in the outlets. I can say this with complete confidence because we, being conscientious tourists, got approval for all our appliances, including the microwave, from the guy who worked at The Travel Store at the mall back home.

It may be that we did harbor a few, small nagging doubts about his judgment, and this may explain why we also asked about these matters at the front desk of the ship. Now Bekim -- such was the man's name who helped us -- was a very harried man that day, having to deal with an irate woman whose luggage seemingly had chosen to go adventuring elsewhere in the world rather than following her onto the ship. So Bekim is to be forgiven if he made a teensy, tinsy mistake about which teensy, tinsy piece of apparatus we were supposed to use, a converter or an adapter. He is also to be forgiven for not speaking much English, being, as he was, an Albanian in Greek waters, and the fact that the passengers, whom he was there to serve, were 100% American should have had no bearing on what language he spoke. He diligently listened to our inquiries, studied the small contraptions we had laid on the counter, and appeared to do an Albanian -- or perhaps Greek -- rendition of "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" before pointing to one of them. Whereupon we happily collected our appliances and apparatuses and descended to our stateroom, secure in the knowledge that we had complete authority to wreak whatever havoc we might like on the electrical system.

Let me hasten to add that, being conscientious tourists, we did nothing to our electrical outlets that we would not have done at home, the only difference being, perhaps, that here our appliance usage was confined to one room, or two if you count an ant-size bathroom as a room. There was also, of course, the difference in voltage between the ship and home, we being used to 110 volts and these lines being 220, but we figured more was better. So while my sister happily manipulated her hair dryer, curling iron, and other assorted hair-enhancing machines in the bathroom, I did the same out in the main room. At one point I did notice a rather large brown spot in the formica end table, which I didn't remember seeing on our entry to the room, but it is mere speculation to say that it had anything to do with my curling iron.

Now, to those of you might be thinking, Why didn't they just share everything?? I would say, you have never been in a five by five space with two women for nine days.

And after all, we have only the electrician's word that the power outage was due to a blown fuse. It could just as easily have been caused by marine life, such as a mermaid, getting tangled up in some wire or other. We also have only the electrician's word that the problem seemed to originate in Stateroom 3498392022, which, surprisingly, was the one my sister and I were staying in. We maintained our innocence and directed authorities to the stateroom next door, which had struck us as suspicious because we had never seen anyone enter or leave it. Anyone could have been in there doing any number of illegal electrical maneuvers, such as building a bomb. The crew stated, unsmilingly, that it was not likely the room was being used as such, and anyway only crew members went in there as it was a supply closet with no outlets. At least that's what we think they said, as they spoke only in Greek and at a rate that precluded us from flipping through our Greek-to-English guidebook fast enough to keep up. Not that "electrical emergency" was even listed in there, as we later discovered. I have since written to the publishers to beg, in the interest of future helpless tourists, that they correct this egregious error.

When our ploy to implicate the room next door failed, we reluctantly -- for we didn't like to point blame at anyone -- pointed at Bekim. Clearly his "moe" had landed on the wrong choice, so if anyone should be found at fault it should be him. But Bekim, sadly, had already been found knocked senseless behind the front counter, dressed in a woman's pantsuit. The woman with the lost luggage, being driven to such lengths after being forced to wear the same outfit two days in a row, was taken into custody.

But in these difficult situations we must look on the bright side of things. After the unfortunate electrical incident, the cruise line enacted important safety changes to ensure that such a catastrophe never happened again. From that day on, a certified mermaid was on board at all times.

And the miracle of it all is that it did not happen the first day.