Grecian Delights, Dildos And Dinosaurs

After a seemingly infinite amount of time in planes and airports, we’re back home from Chautauqua in Greece. I’ll have more to say about the trip later in the week, but for now, you’ll have to settle for some random observations and pretty pictures while I catch up on sleep.

Castle! I had never seen a castle before and didn’t expect to see one for the first time in Greece. But then, boom! There was a castle and it was pretty awesome:

Editor note: The Mad Fientist reminded me in the comments that I had indeed seen a castle before, just last year in Edinburgh. Oopsie.

Toilet madness! Yes, I went there. I always go there. Sigh… I had never seen a squatty potty in real life and it was intimidating. I’m not sure I’d have the aim to be able to use one of these effectively. Luckily, I had already done my morning business, so it was a moot issue:

Another bathroom observation is that showers and toilets both have emergency systems. At first, I didn’t know what this string was. Thinking it was a drying line in the shower, I yanked on it. Twenty seconds later, the front desk was ringing my room.

Ooopsie!

If you have a toilet emergency (no toilet paper? forgot your reading material??), just pull the string from the throne.

Oopsie poopsie!

The ancient Greeks also had their shit figured out:

Cars! No 8-seat, mega-land yachts like in America! Everyone has reasonably sized vehicles:

At a Greek gas station:

Speed limits: In Greece, speed limits are merely suggestions that are ignored by the entire population. I rented a car one day and found myself being tailgated by an angry Grecian. My first thought was that maybe I was going too slow. A quick check of the speedometer showed that I was only going twice the limit. Sorry Greek dude behind me.

Greek beer: The microbrewery trend has yet to come to Greece and the beer choices were suboptimal. By suboptimal, I mean bad:

Bucolic towns: We explored small towns in Greece that looked like nothing I’ve ever seen before:

Honey, look what I brought you from Greece!

We couldn’t help but notice interesting souvenirs at the airport:

I enjoyed causing mischief with the help of the dinosaurs:

Fantastic people: Of course, the best part of these events is the people and Chautauqua didn’t disappoint:

This was an incredible trip. We met lifelong friends who can’t wait to see again. I’ll have more to say later this week. Now, it’s time to sleep.