Our first stop was way out in the middle of sheep country to take a tour of the Caves at Kapsia. These are wet caves (by which I mean they still have water running through them and thus are still creating stalagmites and stalactites) and they are not yet open to the public. So we were some of the first people to walk through in a tourist sense.

The caves were pretty neat. There was even an area that had a human skeleton embedded in the rock from hundreds of years ago. But we have caves in Pennsylvania (if anyone has been to Penns Cave, then you know what I mean), so I wasn't crazy impressed. Plus, I spent a lot of time trying to find my way in the dark because the lights they have in there are on timers and go off if you don't keep moving. I ran into a couple people, but we're all friends here so it's no big deal.

Our second stop was just a few kilometers down the road. It's this very strange Greek Orthodox church that was built to look like the architect had taken pieces and parts of older monuments and buildings to create this new one. In reality, he built the whole thing from scratch ... by himself. That in itself is quite an accomplishment. He had all of these deep spiritual meanings behind some of his architecture ... some of which I completely got, others of which I felt he was stretching a it too far for. It took him over an hour to walk us in and around the church describing its inner meaning to us. It was a good thing we had already had lunch before the tour.

The next stop was the one everyone was looking forward to the most ... the wine tasting. This being everyone's first time sampling wine, of course we were excited. ;) We had to be patient though. The owner of the vineyard took the opportunity to stand on his soapbox and let us know that we are the future of a very important nation and we need to make sure that we do our duty as citizens of that nation ... and so on ... I swear, the Europeans have a better hold on what is going on in the American political scene that we do ... which is slightly depressing. After he finally let us we took a tour of the processing area. It is far less romantic than I thought it would be ... no women in big skirts stomping on grapes with their bare feet or big beautiful grape trees. No. It's winter. The trees are in hibernation and look like scraggly old men stuck in the ground and too bitter to do anything about it and they don't use feet here anymore (darn you Lucille Ball, you got my hopes up), they use big metal vats and other types of scary machines that will take your head off.

Finally though, finally, we got to the wine tasting part of this little adventure. They had several different kinds of wines for us to try. They asked us only to sample one white and one red, since they had a limited supply (it is winter after all), but I didn't really listen. I tried two whites, a red and a rose. The whites were amazing, but the red and the rose were not so much (which made me very sad).

They also had bread, feta and meat out for us, which was nice ... don't want to drink on an empty stomach. We also got a chance to purchase some of the wine for a discounted price... how could I pass that up? But knowing me ... I knew I wouldn't be able to finish more than one bottle before I had to leave, so I bought one bottle of white. My very first alcohol purchase! Don't laugh. I was excited and the wine I bought was so so good.

Our day ended with us getting to our hotel in a little port town called Xylokastro and going out for dinner. Overall, I think that this is a good way to start out a weekend. I found myself having to remember ... this is only Thursday