Before we get into today’s travel journal,
I just want to say thank you to squarespace
for always supporting us and sponsoring this video.
I'll get more into why I love their platform later but for now
let's just take in this incredible island of Elafonisos.
This was the first Greek island that Lou and I went to
in Ody, actually the first island we ever took Ody on
and it was a wild experience getting him on to a
ferry and then on to this remote island and
truly was some of the best times that we've ever had in the van.
So, I was really excited to sit down and reflect on
the island and our time there with this travel journal.
I think it had been like a month or something like that since we actually
were on the island and so, yeah I was really excited to journal and go through
our little momentos from the trip. though I have to say I did not
keep a lot from it, I by accident threw out
my ferry ticket and a lot of the receipts and things like that
when I was cleaning the van so,
this is the travel journal without a lot momentos.
So, it's going to be a little bit more creative and I feel like
it's kind of nice to show that you can reflect on a time
somewhere even without keeping anything from it so,
this is where I did my first drawing.
I think this is actually the first day that we got to the island and
we've been driving all day and then taking the ferry until then we kind of got
to this top point and looked out on the beach and it was...
it's so crazy. I don't know if you realize but
did you see these two like, semi circles?
The ocean like comes together and this two
crescent moon shapes leaving a teeny little strip of beach in between.
And so, I thought that it looked so crazy that I had to get it down on paper.
So, I tried out my colored pencils which I had been trying to improve on
but really didn't take it very seriously, just enjoyed the space and
happy with how that one turned out even though I did spell Elafonisos
wrong in the top corner
but, don't worry I'll get it right on the actual journal, which is what's important.
Oh, and then here so, I met an amazing
woman on the island named Maria and she ended up giving me
Greek lessons, which was like the coolest experience so,
these are some of the notes that I had from working with her.
And I thought it would be fun to put those into the travel journal because
learning Greek was such a fun part of my first two weeks there.
I haven't stuck with learning Greek as much as I would have wanted but
at the same time just spending like two weeks of focused effort
has gotten me so far, and has really allowed me to engage with
so many people here, which I love.
I think I mentioned it in maybe the learning Greek video but
for Lou and I like, we don't eat out at restaurants
and we don't even drink alcohol anymore.
So, learning a language was such an amazing way
that I got to actually interact with people here
and you know chitchat when we're buying gas or
get to know somebody who's
looking out at the water the same time I am.
And even on hikes and stuff just
being able to say hello or ask somebody what their name is has been
pretty incredible so, I wanted to have a little spot of
the journal commemorating those times learning Greek with Maria.
Sorry a car is going by here.
I don't know if you can hear it but
it's difficult for us to get a quiet recording spot.
I think there are going to be bells on the background
from a bunch of horses and cars going by but
that's just the nature of recording in a van,
but yeah, wow! Elafonisos.
It was just so special because it's a pretty small island
and so Lou and I like to take morning walks or strolls after dinner
and things like that and we actually were able to walk
almost the whole island while we were there.
We parked in a few different spots like we were
at one wild camping spot near that crescent beach
and then we found a really nice campsite
and that's actually where I met Maria
and then, there was another amazing wild camping spot but I think,
I hope Lou put a footage in later in this video.
But I really wanted to commemorate the
closeness that we felt with water while we were there.
We had never gotten a chance to go swimming
as much as we did on this island.
at least before like we've gotten.
We are really lucky we spend a lot of this summer by the ocean but
getting to Elafonisos we were swimming multiple times a day
and those crescent shapes
were kind of to represent the water and then...
getting a little distracted.
It's kind of funny voicing this in real time but wow!
Look at these goats.
This was one of our nightly strolls.
We met these beautiful creatures,
it's kind of weird they were actually like tied together all four them.
So, they had difficulty walking
but they were very happy when I picked up
some of the grasses and leaves that were just outside their reach because they had
picked up everything that was in their pen so,
getting a little extra green
to make their night better
and yeah.
I'm about to draw something but before I do I just want to
say those whale pictures that I pulled out of the Nat Geo.
I really wanted to get something that would make me remember how
much fun we had getting to know our underwater camera
and so I wasn't going to attempt to try like draw something under water.
So, I thought that it would be kind of fun
to use these under water pictures of the whales
as a background for...
I think I end up putting the I like to draw outside,
which is one of the sentences that Maria taught me how to say in Greek.
So, I put that as the backing for those words and
yeah, even though you can't see the whale or anything
I feel like in my mind I can look back
and know that, that little blue background is actually to represent
how much fun we had taking photos and videos under water and
playing in the ocean. And so this section
is about these umbrellas that were just
standing, this is at the other wild camping spot that we found
and while you did have to pay for them during the day,
at night after people had gone home or early morning at sunrise,
they were totally empty and free. And Lou and I
would bring our morning tea out there and sit and enjoy the sunrise
or at night after we went swimming we'd lounge in them
and it just felt so luxurious and like the epitome of island life and
yeah. I didn't want to forget how special
they were and so I decided to draw a bunch of them,
I painted them with water color
and then added a little bit of pen on top and so I thought that I wasn't exactly sure
how I would end up putting them down as a whole border or split them up.
I ended up bringing three to the top and using only two at the bottom so
I had a few extra but it was good because my glue to stick thing kind of exploded
and got on top of one of them and which made all of the paint and
pen smudge. So it was really nice that I had made an extra one.
This was a lot of our life on the island
you know the van just lets us
see such different places like these.
We thought this was like an abandoned restaurant, it turned out
it actually opened just as we were leaving. So we just got there before
like big season had happened.
So, we just used it as like a shaded
dining area while we were at this parking lot, which felt really nice because
shade was far and few between
and so yeah, oh, my gosh.
This was hilarious
our haircut experience,
Lou used to make me cut his hair when we were in Berlin.
I can't remember if I talk now.
But haircuts were so funny though because I did really mess up
a haircut for him in Berlin and have not cut his hair
since that. It was like right before my brother's wedding
and I cut it so short
and it was really embarrassing and
the hair dresser that we took him to, to salvage it
was not very nice about it. But Lou is
a brave soul and he really wanted free haircuts
so I'm getting back into it and I have done another one since Elafonisos
and I'm getting more confident.
It's kind of nice Lou's hair grows so fast that I'm just going to
try to cut it once a month
and slowly build up my confidence and
who knows
maybe I'll have another calling as a hair dresser but probably not.
I think that my true other calling and for Lou and I both
is actually to live on a boat
and that's actually why I cut this sail boat out from...
I forget that's like a book I got in Barcelona.
But when we were on the island, we spent so much time looking
out at the ocean from the parking lot and things like that. From the beach
and there were a bunch of sail boats out in the water
just anchored enjoying you know, boat life and
this is something that Lou and I have had like on our life list
even back when we were living in New York. So,
five plus years ago we've always talked on how
at some point we'd love to sail around the world.
But seeing it in Elafonisos in reality and
how different the perspective is from living in a van in the parking lot
to living in a boat and having like the ocean be your home
instead of land. It just,
it really sunk in that
it's something that we need to make happen for ourselves and
I don't know, it made it seem like real,
like it was possible it's not just like a figment of our imagination.
People do this, people live on boats, and
we could be those kind of people.
Oh, yeah before I get lost talking about how much I want to live on a boat
I thought I would read the little portion that I had wrote in the journal.
I might have lost my ferry ticket and the receipt from the loveliest campsite
but even without the momentos,
this island is clearer than any other memory from our adventures in the van.
The white-hot sand still lingers on my toes,
when I close my eyes I'm still splashing in the water
bathing in the moon light.
But most of all, it is the sail boat a hundred yards off the shore
swaying in the wind calling us to make the ocean our home one day.
Elafonisos may be a lesser-known Greek island.
It may be hard to get to resting at the bottom of the Peloponnese Peninsula
but I know we'll be back one day
maybe we'll even return by water instead of by road and yeah.
I really love like the little written memories
that we've been putting in each of the travel journals because
it's such a nice way to actually reflect
on my emotions from whatever the location is.
And I think that when I look through this you know, 20 years from now
I can just get teleported right into the space and the headspace I was in
and the adventures that we had
(Speaking Greek) I like to draw
(Speaking Greek)
I like to draw outside.
So, this is how the travel journal all turned out and I'm really happy with
all the little details from the umbrellas
to the little pieces of sand that I included there on the left.
Kind of framing in the written words and
it just feels like it really encapsulates our entire time there and
it was a joy to make and I feel like that's the whole point. Is
just to carve out a little bit of time
to reflect on our travels as we go because
we are seeing a lot of places and it's really nice
to slow down for a second and get creative.
So, thanks for watching and before you go,
I just want to say a big thank you to Squarespace
for sponsoring this video again.
Their platform is incredible it's so simple to use
much easier to do than me trying to lift this rock and run with it under water.
It's actually called like an all in one platform so
you can use it, one of their beautiful templates and make a website
without knowing anything about coding and if you are interested
go to Squarespace.com/wildweroam and use our offer code at checkout
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So, thanks so much for watching and
I hope you enjoy this travel journal series it's been really fun to make and
I'll see you here next time.