Rain on Your Wedding Day IRONIC

"The day cruise you'll never forget!!"

Such were the saccharinely cliche yet somehow foreboding words printed at the bottom of the boarding pass handed to me by the unwashed Greek man this early morning. [Was it really just this morning??] We began our soon-to-be epic voyage to the islands of Mykonos and Delos on a fairly routine note; gathering red-eyed and groggy by the bus station after an early wake up, munching on spinach pies and cheese croissants from our favoirte bakery and making our way across Paros to the port where our boat was waiting. Per usual, we were the last group on board, and as the concept of "maximum capacity" does not exist in the progressive nation of Greece, all of the actual seats were taken up by French tourists. We struggled through the crowds into the interior lounge, which resembled either a bad Chinese restaurant or a Golden Girls set gone wrong, and flopped ourselves in a tangled heap on the shaggy mauve carpet, ready for our journey to begin.
Or so we thought.
As we pulled out of the harbor, a few waves splashed their sparkly turquoise magic against the window, making all of us squeal in delight. The boat rocked a bit, amusement-park style, eliciting further squeals. Oh, we WERE naive the twits, weren't we???
The boat continued to rock, the waves continued to roll. We laughed.
A man in beige started handing out little white bags. We stopped laughing.
And thus we entered a hitherto unexplored circle of Dante's Inferno. Oh yes.

For nearly two hours, the waves and wind tossed our little cruiser like a sock in a washing machine. We tipped, turned, dipped, rolled; every possible motion was explored. I felt like I had been injected into a bad sequel for the Perfect Storm. My real problem wasn’t actually the motion so much as the second-hand effects of the motion on everyone else...erm... let’s just say that those little white bags weren’t just for show. Left and right, the carefully savored bakery goods from earlier found their way back into the light of day. Oh, the things I have seen, heard, and smelled. The French curses I have learned. The ways we have all contemplated filleting our serenely grinning professor. I retreated to the top deck for some fresh air only to discover a veritible splash zone dripping with more than sea water.

Yes, the slogan was accurate.“The day cruise you’ll never forget!!" continued to stare back at me mockingly from my poorly laminated red boarding pass. Curse you, irony.

Needless to say, when we disembarked on Delos, one of the most significant archaeological finds in Europe and a UNESCO world heritage site, all we cared about was sitting on the 2,500-year-old rocks to wait for the horizon to stop rocking. I sipped a Coke and picked poppies and half-heartedly listened to a guide ramble about ancient swimming pools. Even Mykonos Island with its picturesque harbor, yellow sand beaches, and waterfront bars did little to revive our drained (figuratively and literally) bodies.
On the way home, I loaded myself with Dramamine, slept like a drunken sailor, and am finally safe in the sanctity of my motionless apartment. Man, what a crazy final trip! Ah, well. That which does not kill you makes you stronger though, right? Or at the very least makes it unlikely that you’ll purchase expensive and fattening baked goods for awhile…