Congrats Yang & Tony and happy birthday Melanie!

Yang and Tony's wedding was yesterday and things seemed to turn out great. That is, at least from the parade master's perspective (me). I only had one person fall down some stone steps on the way to the ceremony and I don't think too many tourists/shopkeepers were creeped out by 12 guys handing out candy while wearing lais.

The ceremony was very nice and the meal after was great. I'm not sure if the locals have seen many western weddings or if they do things differently here, but at one point I had a waiter lean over and ask me, "So...is it 2 boys and 3 girls getting married?" In his defense, Yang and her 2 attendants were all dressed up, as were Tony and his 2 attendants, but Tony didn't have a lai on so I guess the waiter thought he wasn't part of the wedding.

Unfortunately there was a fire burning on the cliff right by the restaurant. The waiters said they are usually started by people throwing cigarette butts over the stairs. But every cloud has a silver lining (and this literally was a cloud so I'm glad to use that expression). You see, the steps from which the cigarette was likely thrown is filled all day long with donkeys and mules. They don't smell very good, and neither does their crap. But the smoke from the fire totally blocked that out!

Today we leave Santorini by slow ferry to Athens (about a 7 hour boat ride). We were told the slow ferry lets people go outside an see the area, where as the fast one (about 4 hours) is enclosed and 1/2 the people get sea sick on it. We should get to Athens around 10pm then fly to Venice tomorrow at 7am via Rome. We're traveling with Alitalia so we'll see if I get to add them to my growing list of terrible airlines.

Today is also Mel's birthday I'm sure she'd appreciated some birthday wishes from home.