My Greek Vacation

I realize that to many of you, I've been "on vacation" this whole time, but I really have been going to school and doing homework! I swear!! In fact, I just took a final this morning and have to sit around campus for the rest of the day to take another. The last week however, I decided to throw it all into the wind and go on vacation with my boyfriend!! It was the greatest vacation ever.

It started with hanging out in Thessaloniki. We walked around the town and I showed Marc some of my favorite sites in the city. We went out to the taverna that night with all my crazy friends. Great time. Hilarious photos on facebook from that night, but maybe you had to be there to really appreciate those pictures.

The next day, we took a night train to Athens. This was Marc's first train ride! He's such a big boy now, taking planes, trains, and metros! Well anyway, the "best" part of the train ride was the fact that we had standing room only tickets. Which basically means, you can sit in a seat until somebody kicks you out. Well, we got to sit for about the first 2 hours. But the last 5 hours we were forced to find our own "seats." This is when I learned that I can fit into the little cubby shelf on the train! I was on the floor in the corner, under the shelving unit thing for luggage and Marc sat next to me. It was just wonderful.

We get into Athens and go to the airport to make our way to Santorini! I don't care how cliche and touristy this island is, I LOVED IT!! It was everything I ever thought Greece was (before I came). I definitely recommend it for any trip to Greece. Do yourself a favor, and go in mid-May. Not a lot of tourists yet and the weather is beautiful!

We ate at a taverna next to our hotel the first night, and we were the only people there. There was one Greek man that was running the whole restuarant by himself and he was pretty cool. We ordered some fish and it came just like a little plate of fishes that had been fried. Marc was too scared to eat them, so I pretty much ate the whole plate. We were trying to cut them up so we wouldn't eat the bones and the owner came over and told us to stop doing that! We were supposed to just pick them up, whole fish and all, and just eat them like that. So I did :) It was good. Then after our meal, he came and had a shot with us. I'm not sure what it was, but it definitely was NOT Ouzo. I know Ouzo by now and that was definitely not it. We also had some Santorini white wine with dinner which was amazing!!

The next day, we rented a 4-wheeler to explore the island. We drove to the red beach which was near our hotel. It was amazing! Not a good beach for swimming, but it's really pretty. The views all over the island were spectacular. Next, we drove to Oia. The whole way there was amazing views over the sea! This is where I wanted to go in Santorini. This city is built on the cliffs and there are the awesome blue-dome churches EVERYWHERE!! It was sooooooo pretty!! After that, we went to Fira (the main city) to watch the sunset from a roof-top taverna. We had some more amazing white Santorini wine with chicken soulvaki :) Marc's new favorite food!



*Blue dome church in Oia
Most amazing sunset... in the world, I'm pretty sure.

The next morning we woke up super early to watch the sunrise.

I thought the sunset was cool. I was wrong. The sunrise was even more amazing. We got up around 5:30 a.m. and hopped on our 4-wheeler. We made it to one of the black beaches of Perissa in 15 minutes. There was nobody there, and it was silent. We climbed out onto some rocks out into the water and waited for the sunrise. Perissa is on the east side of the island.

A little after 6 there was all of a sudden this amazing burst of orange and yellow coming up from the water. It was so amazing to watch it come up out of the water and light up everything around! Beautiful.


*Sunrise in Perissa
After that, we drove the 4-wheeler around the island a bit more because we didn't have to return it until 10 a.m. and Marc realllllllly liked it. LOL. My Wisconsin boy loved to drive a 4-wheeler around, who would have thought?

But then it was time to leave :( But our next stop was pretty amazing, Nafplio. This is a city in the Peloponnese, a few hour bus ride from Athens. It has old castles all over! We walked up to the big castle on the first day, and from up there you can see all over the city. It's up on a big rock, kind of like the Parthenon in Athens. It was Marc's first castle ;) It was huge! You don't really realize how far it stretches when you're down on the ground, and can't quite see all of it.



*View from atop the castle

The trek up there was pretty hot. Lots of stairs and sunny the whole time, of course. So once we were done, we wanted to go swimming! I heard that the beach at Nafplio isn't the greatest, but hey, it was water! It was pretty terrible. The waves were super high and crashing all over the place and the beach was like cement rocks. We ended up sitting on a wall somewhere so we didn't have to sit on the "beach". We jumped in once to cool off then got out pretty quickly. But we went to a much better beach later in the trip.

Next stop, Athens. I decided that if Marc comes all the way to Greece and doesn't at least see the Parthenon, then I will have failed him. So even though I really dislike the city of Athens, we went anyways. We went up to the Acropolis the first thing and I made sure we spent some time in the theater of Dionysus! Where theater was born...... Marc really liked that. I think he just wanted to show off to his theater friends where he got to go.



*Theater of Dionysus

After that, we walked around Athens a bit. Saw the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the Ancient Agora, all the good old ruins basically. It was pretty sweet.

We get back into Thessaloniki at 2 a.m. and my roommate tells me that we are all going to go camping on the beach in Halkidiki the next day. So I wake up on Tuesday, go to my econ exam, and then tail it to the bus station to go camping on the beach!

We went to the tip of the 2nd penninsula in Halkidiki. If you look at a map of northern Greece, you'll know what I'm talking about. It's the 2nd "finger" of the 3 fingers of Halkidiki.

We rented little trailers and had a bonfire on the beach. We made Reese's smores! You make smores, but instead of Hersey's chocolate, you use a Reese's peanut butter cup. It's pretty good.

The next day we layed on the beach all day. The water is the most amazingly clear blue and the sun just shines all day long. Not a cloud in the sky. I want to go to Halkidiki one more time while I'm here because I'm going to miss it soooooooooo much.


*Me and Marc on the beach

Marc got sunburned to death, of course. So when we got home I had to go get him some aloe from the pharmacy immedately! Then we had some Gyros and he left this morning at 6 a.m.

It was the best time I think I've had here. Like I said, I know it's cliche but OMG Santorini was so amazing.

I'm leaving in 3 days and I'm really sad to leave! I definitely have to go to the beach one more time, while I still have it. After my exam tonight, I'll be done with school and will have all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to do whatever I want.

Before I came to Greece, I couldn't even believe that I was really coming. Now, I can hardly believe that I'm actually leaving. It doesn't feel real yet. Maybe when I pack up my room it will hit me... I'm happy to go home and see everyone but I really love it here. It's amazing and I'm so happy that I came. I know it wasn't my first choice, but now that I'm here I can't imagine if I had gone anywhere else!

And I'm even a little tan! LOL. This is the most tan I've ever been in my life... and I still look like a ghost. I just have a LOT more freckles and my hair is turning blonde! Well, you'll all see when I get home.

Just a quickie

Ok, I only have a few minutes for a quick blog post! So here are the essentials:

I CLIMBED A MOUNTAIN! I am not kidding. I literally hiked up a mountain this weekend. Mt. Olympus, to be exact. It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. In fact, I can barely walk still because my legs hurt so bad. It was intense, but beautiful!!

It was a school field trip, so I was with about 40 other American study abroad students. We took a bus from Thessaloniki to the mountain (about 1 1/2 hour west). It took 3 hours to walk up to the refuge camp. It was HOT and a loooooooooong walk up. And that was the easy part! It was really cold up high. We stayed the night and woke up at 6 a.m. the next morning to begin our hike to the top. It took another 3 1/2 hours to get to the top. I was at the back the whole time. I had about 4 tour guides with me helping me the whole way, but I did it! It's about 10,000 feet to the top.

It was beautiful and amazing! I was definitely NOT in shape enough for this and probably should not have gone, but I did it! I honestly thought I wasn't going to make it, but the guides helped me a lot.

And as for today!!!!!! GUESS WHO'S HERE!!!!

I'm going to class in a few minutes, and I think Marc's plane just touched down in Thessaloniki. I'm going to meet him downtown after class! Tonight we're going to my favorite taverna and then tomorrow we leave for Athens!

Santorini, Nafplio, Athens, then hanging out in Thessaloniki for a while. Maybe I'll take him to Halkidiki beaches next week. :) I actually kind of planned things for us to do. I'm pretty amazed at my awesome planning skills.

I probably won't post again for a while! My internet in my apartment is broken and I won't be on campus for another week. I'm almost done here :( My last adventures will be the best though, I think.

I'll let you know.

This is the end... (almost)

Now that my time here is winding down, I’m starting to look forward to things that are waiting for me at home. I can’t believe I have less than a month left. It’s all gone so fast! Now I’m trying to cram in all the stuff I wanted to do and put off until now. I’ve decided to dedicate this blog to the top 10 things I will miss about Greece and the top 10 things I definitely can’t wait to get away from:

Top 10 Things I Hate (in order of annoyance level):
10. Slow Internet- A minor inconvenience, but annoying all the same.

9. Pigeons- I just hate these birds!

8. Stray Animals- Not too bad, I usually just feel bad for them. They don’t scare me, but its #7 that becomes a real problem…

7. Dog/cat poop on sidewalks- Pretty self explanatory. Watch where you’re going in Greece, is my best advice.

6. Hot and crowded buses- B.O. to the max. Yuck. Also, getting crammed into a bus in that one spot where I always get hit by the doors. It’s super fun.

5. Shop hours- I can never go shopping here because stuff is never open. Not that I have any money to spend anyway, but I can’t even look!

4. Bed- This bed at my apartment is awful. It feels like I’m sleeping on a board most of the time. I’m going to need serious chiropractor help when I get home to re-correct MY SPINE.

3. Cars have the right-of-way- You pretty much always feel like you’re going to get run down.

2. Laundry- 2 washing machines for an entire building of 8 floors. You do the math. Also, it takes almost 2 hours to do 1 load of wash and we are only allowed to do the wash from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. then again from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. It SUCKS.

1. Not flushing toilet paper- Its strange how used to this you get after a while. But, it’s still pretty gross.

Top 10 Things I Love:
10. Kiosks- Little stands every block that sell drinks, bus tickets, snacks, basically little mini Super Americas! EVERYWHERE! I love them.

9. Convenience of buses- Even if they are a little crowded sometimes, they are really convenient and cheap. You can get anywhere in Thessaloniki on public transportation. It’s great.

8. FOOD- Refer to the “Taverna” section 

7. Weather- It’s a little hot now, but it is BEAUTIFUL! Sunny everyday, gorgeous sunsets, and lovely walking weather at night.

*Sunset by the water in Thessaloniki

6. My new roommate and new friends- I’ve met some of the coolest people ever, and I can’t wait to roadtrip some day to see them again once we’re back in the states!

*The gang at Harry's Spot, one of our favorite hang outs!

5. Relaxed school- Wow, is it ever going to be hard to adjust back to life in Eau Claire after this semester. The professors are so laid back with assignments, and they even encourage skipping class to go travel! Traveling is just as important a learning experience as being here, is the typical attitude.

4. Being able to stay out late- Just not used to this sort of thing in Eau Claire. If you’re not 21, you have pretty limited options and most stuff closes by 11 p.m. Thrilling, really.

*Night in Thessaloniki, by the water

3. Tzatziki- YES, this needs its own category separate from food. That’s how much I love it! I will be making it frequently back home as well, if I can find good enough Greek yogurt in Wisconsin.

2. The people- Greek people have been so kind to me here. People will really go out of their way to help you!

1. The sea- I will be so sad to not live close by a sea once I leave. I love to walk down by the waterfront by my apartment, and the last 2 weekends I’ve spent the day at beaches in Halkidiki. Crystal clear water and sandy beaches… that’s the life for me!!

*Look at that clear water... beautiful!


*A beach 30 minutes away from Thessaloniki

And last but not least… Things I cannot wait to get back to!!
MY BED!!
TACOS JUANITA! SHANGHAI BISTRO! CHINA BUFFET! (Cheap greasy food for college students in general)
NIKO!! (my roommate’s cute little doggy!!)
MARC!
My new apartment
Having a car
A REAL oven and stove top

…and there’s probably some other stuff as well, but those are the big ones that I’ve been missing a lot while out here. I’ll get to see Marc in 7 DAYS though!!

ΤΑΒΕΡΝΑ! (Taverna!)

My mother keeps asking me what exactly a taverna is, so I’ve decided to dedicate an entire blog posting about the Greek tavernas. To me, this is the real “Greek experience” and to travel to Greece without a visit to a taverna would be a crime! This is a place for food, drink, music, and the occasional dance. I feel that this is a brief glimpse of what the Greeks are all about- food and fun!

Every Greek city I’ve been to so far usually has their own little spot that’s filled with tavernas. Sometimes you can’t tell where one ends and another begins! This is because they are essentially outside restaurants. They arrange tables and chairs together in one spot for the guests to sit. There is always live music, our favorite taverna here in Thessaloniki has one guy singing with a guitar, and another guy playing the mandolin. Occasionally, guests can go up and sing for the taverna as well because they always play traditional Greek songs that most of the Greeks know. It’s as if an American went to a restaurant and we could sing some traditional American tunes that we all somehow know. There is usually a little gypsy boy that comes in and sings and plays the drum for the establishment and then asks for money afterwards. (I think he’s pretty good at the drums but his little kid singing voice always annoys me.) The people at the taverna always let him play. People also come in from the streets and try to sell things to customers as well. People selling roses and flowers to couples are rather frequent.


When you go to the taverna, you must go at night and stay for at least a few hours. This is not a rushed affair- you always need to take your time with your wine, and enjoy good conversation with friends. I feel that this is also very Greek. They really like to take their time with things, and eating is definitely one of those. For example, last night we went and tried to ask for the bill before midnight-and they just sent us more wine. That’s pretty typical. They will also NEVER kick you out or rush you (also very Greek). One of the first nights we went to the taverna, we stayed until 2 a.m. and they were cleaning up around us but not once did they ever ask us to leave, bring us our bill, or take food off of our table. You will always be left to finish at your own pace. You will never be brought your bill until you ask for it. Even then, it usually takes a while to get it.
The food you get at a taverna is probably comparable to bar food in the US, but it’s Greek so it’s always delicious. Often, you go with a large group and order a few appetizers and some meats and everybody shares off the plates. My favorites include fried zucchini, tzatziki (cucumber yogurt dipping sauce, I usually compare it to ranch dressing back home, not in taste but how it’s used), grilled feta, cheese stuffed beef, chicken breast, stuffed eggplant, and more that I can’t even think of right now. There is always fish and meat, plenty of feta, and salads.
And then there’s the wine. Our favorite place always serves free wine all night. It’s not the best wine in the world, it’s just the table or house wine of the place. Greek wine is a little different. Their best at the sweet red wines. I love it! Regular wine drinkers tend not to like the sweet wines, so I don’t recommend it for big red wine drinkers. You can get dry reds and whites which are just as good. They serve it to you in a little bronze liter pitcher that they make sure to refill immediately if it ever goes empty! Wine is a big part of Greek culture but getting drunk is NOT. To be drunk is to look like a fool, so that is one reason they take their time drinking.




People will sometimes dance at the taverna if they’re in the mood. I’ve seen lots of women get up and dance on the tables, or just dancing near the music is acceptable too. People like to clap and sing along and just all around have fun! I danced last night because there was this woman dancing near our table who kept trying to get us up to dance! It was fun.



So to those of you who will one day visit Greece (and I definitely recommend it, Greek people are the most wonderful people I’ve ever met and it’s just generally a beautiful country!) you must remember to go to a taverna. It won’t be hard to forget because if you’re out at night between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. you will see and hear the tavernas nearby!

Istanbul, Turkey!

Ok really, THIS weekend I'm going to lay around in my apartment and do nothing! I need some rest in good ol'Thessaloniki for real. I need a break from this paper I'm writing for history class. I haven't even started my econ paper... that will be a weekend thing too. This Greek environment has totally messed me up, I have 2 papers to write and I'm freaked out about it. How strange... this is not even near the amount of work I do back home and I even don't have that much compared to most people! I will need to get whipped back into shape pretty quickly once I return home. Eeeek!! But on a good note, I may actually be able to graduate in 4 years or possibly only 4 1.2. I'm really trying to avoid that 5th year if possible. I think my minor is going to be global studies. This is one that I've considered before, only now it looks incredibly doable! Yay!

Enough babbling, on to my adventures in Istanbul!

I planned to go on this trip before spring break even happened, so I've been looking forward to this for a while. I went with 5 other American girls including my roommate, another girl from the Boston area, and 3 other Eau Claire girls. We took a bus leaving on Thursday night at 10 p.m. It's about a 10 hour bus ride! But hey, the tickets were really cheap!! Our total cost roundtrip was about the price of a one-way on the trains. So needless to say, we were all pretty OK with the super long bus ride.

Got into Istanbul around 8 a.m. Friday morning. First things first, we need to find our hotel. All we had was the name of the hotel. We asked a tourist stand where it was and he told us to walk down the road we were on for about 10 minutes and it was on the right. Seems easy enough. Well, we starting walking. And kept walking. To make a REALLY LONG story short, we couldn't find it. We ended up using the internet at a different hotel and mapping it all out. Yeah, it was definitely not "on the right". It was down a super large hill and way up in a different direction.

But we found it! We stroll in about 10:00 and the guy at the front desk is really nice to us. Our room isn't ready yet, but they were still serving breakfast and he let us eat the breakfast and leave our bags at the counter until our room was ready. The breakfast wasn't great but it was free, every morning. So we filled up on as much free food as possible each day! I love being a college student sometimes... Dana also stole a large amount of tea bags from this place which I found to be hilarious and very suitable at the same time.

That first day we decided to walk around by the tourist stuff. It was really nice outside. Hot, actually. I was wearing long sleeves the whole trip for multiple purposes: 1. Avoid sunburn (which I did successfully) 2. Respect an Islamic culture and 3. Avoid attracting any more attention to myself than what my super pale skin already does. The first thing we did was go into a little Mosque that was near our hotel. They had some scarves for us to cover our heads when we first got in. It was a pretty neat experience for me. The whole culture in fact, was a pretty great experience for me. Growing up in Minnesota, I very rarely get to experience culture like this and at this scale. They did a call to prayer every day 5 times a day right on time. It was a little weird at first. Since at one point we were right by one of the largest mosques that do the call and it was really loud.


*In a mosque near our hotel
We spent some time at the palace. It was really pretty and had a fantastic view of the city! Later that night we saw whirling dervishes! It was so cool. I have a video of it that I'll try to post later. But anyways, we got into where the dance would happen and I got to sit on some pillows on the floor right in front. Then, there was about 30 minutes of music. It was really hard to stay awake at this point because I had been walking all day without any sleep the night before. They turned down the lights and starting this really soothing music... I think I may have fallen asleep a little bit, but so did many other people. After about 30 minutes, 3 men came out in their traditional dress and started to spin. The whirling dervish is a form of worship that is outlawed actually, but they do it for tourists nowadays because it's so popular. When it was over, one of the girls I was with didn't like it. "All they did was twirl around." "Yup, that's pretty much all they do." At any rate, it was amazing just to listen to the music and watch them come out in their outfits. Long white robes that when they spun so close to me on the floor, I actually got cold from the breeze!!


*View from the palace

The next day we saw the Cistern, the old underground water system for Istanbul. It looked pretty cool, but I couldn't tell you much about it. They had some columns that had Medusa's heads carved into the bottom and I still don't understand why. But it looked pretty cool and old, so I guess that's good.


*Underground water system. Columns holding it up


*Medusa Head

Then we went to the Blue Mosque. This is one of the biggest tourist attractions today. It was really neat. I learned that it is called the blue mosque because of the inside! Blue stain glass windows and tiles decorate the inside. It was rather magnificent. I actually feel bad going in there because it is still a mosque for worship for people who live there. They have a "fenced off" area for people to worship and on the other side is a massive amount of tourists walking around and taking photos. It feels disrespectful, but I guess they must be used to it at this point.

We sat on the floor along the wall and there were these 2 Turkish women who walked by us and started saying something and they pinched my cheeks and were petting Sara's blonde hair. They seemed rather amused at the site of us. It was funny and kind of cute. I don't think they've ever seen blondes and red heads up close before or something. We decided that it was cute when the old women did it, but probably not as cute had it been men trying to touch our faces!

Next up, the grand bizarre. I bought 2 scarves for myself. I don't really know why, actually. But I felt like I had to buy something since I was visiting a place where my currency is actually doing better AND everything is super cheap there already. I paid 15 Turkish Lira for 2 scarves, so maybe $5 per scarf US, maybe a little less. Yay for traveling to countries that aren't destroying the dollar!

This is where I should put in the little bit about intense verbal harrassement! These people have quite a different view on how to get someone into their store. We were called "Charlies Angels" once, which I thought was pretty funny. We also got "Spice Girls" MULTIPLE times. Didn't get that one, there was only 3 of us (we split into 3 groups to make our shopping easier). On the streets we got a lot of "Is there a beauty contest in town?" And just your average, hooting, whistling, "Pretty girls!", "I want to sleep with you", etc. on the streets. I would think it was mostly directed at the 2 blonde girls but I was probably pretty noticeable as well. It wasn't scary or anything, just incredibly annoying after a while.

The last day we walked to Asia. We crossed the bridge to the part of Istanbul that is technically in Asia minor, so that Megan could say that she's been to Asia! LOL thats not really why we did it, but it was fun. We just walked around and looked in some shops. We eventually had a really long lunch on a rooftop terrace that looked out over the sea! It was beautiful. Another tribute to the cheapness of this country for 6 people to eat, drink, AND have a hookah (I had to, it was Istanbul) the total bill came to 72 Lira... $46.


*Eau Claire girls in Asia!

I wish I could have written a better blog about this trip because it was honestly my favorite thing I've done so far here! But I gotta catch the bus in a few minutes and don't have time to elaborate. I'll just save the good stories for when I get home to the US!

And in other news, Marc is coming to visit me May 25th to June 4th!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now I have to plan more adventures, and for cheap! This should be interesting...

The thrilling conclusion to the "Spring Break" blog series

(Ok, don't know if it's actually all that thrilling, but I found the title to be amusing.)

I recommend taking a train from Geneva to Venice... it is BEAUTIFUL!! It was really one of the most beautiful countrysides I've ever seen. I didn't really know when I passed into Italy because I was half asleep/half awake on and off but what I saw was awesome. Cute little mountain towns with beautiful lakes and little villas! Plus it was sunny and wonderful out. It was a 7 hour ride, but it was totally worth it.

When we got in to Venice the sun had left and it was raining. Good timing on our part, I guess. We got in and went straight for some Italian food!! I got tortellini in a cream sauce. It was amazing. Our waiter was also wearing some extremely tight pants... it made me laugh. I literally couldn't even figure out how that man was moving his legs they were so tight. Welcome to Italy, I guess. I had a vision of Ross on friends trying to pull up his leather pants with lotion/powder/paste, which made me laugh harder.

Off to the hostel. I was excited to have another "true hostel" experience. Laura said she booked us in a 10-person dorm. The name of the Hostel was "Camping Serenissimo". I was like, "Ummmm, are you sure this is a hostel? Cuz if I have to pitch a tent, screw that. We're finding something else."

"No, it's a hostel. The picture online was of a building, and I booked us in the 10-person dorm. I think you CAN camp if you want, but we're not."

Hahahaha, you already all know where this story is headed.

It was definitely a camp grounds. We stayed in a little mini trailer thing that was just a little box with 2 beds in it. The bathrooms were across the camp grounds. Sweet.

Again, not terrible, just definitely NOT what I was expecting. But really-12 Euro a night. You just really can't beat those prices.

We went back into Venice (it was a 30 minute bus ride) and walked around and got nice and lost. We have heard from people that the thing to do in Venice is to just walk around until you get lost. So we did. It is sooooooooooo beautiful! All the buildings are really old because there are so many building restrictions there. The whole city is literally sinking. So it was a good thing I saw it now because it probably won't be there for much longer.

Just walking around, seeing all the canals, and old cute buildings was really neat. We kept going until we sat down for some dinner. Lasagna for me! Yum. It was awesome. We sat at a little sidewalk cafe on a canal for dinner as it got dark.

Went back to our "hostel" for some sleep. The next day was our last, and we had to carry our backpacks all day :(

More walking around and getting lost the next day. We had a really long lunch at 2:30 with pasta, chicken, salad, and Italian wine.

It is REALLY hard not to spend money at this place!! Every other shop has tons of hand crafted Murano Glass goods and hand painted Carnival masks. It's so shiny and sparkley and pretty... it's easy to be distracted if you happen to be a 20 year old female (which, in fact, I am). I did buy myself a necklace, but for pretty cheap. I think the woman I bought it from may have been going out of business. She had a cute little shop somewhere further away from the "tourist" spots and had all of her stuff on sale. But, what are you gonna do? I'm sure she appreciated me buying at least something from her. And I still think it's cool because I now have a necklace that is someone's art.

Not to mention the food. I pretty much wanted to go to Italy just for the food. We ate at every chance we got. I had lots of gelato, pasta, and other pastries. It was pretty amazing.

So after a full day of walking around with our backpacks on, we headed to our lodgings for the evening-the airport. I may have mentioned before that the Dublin airport is a great place to sleep. It's HUGE and has tons of couches, chairs, benches, 24 hour McDonalds with booths for sleeping, etc. The Venice airport is not QUITE the same. The only place to sleep beside the floor was some metal seats. So 6 hours on metal seats that suck all the heat out of your body was pretty fun. Our flight left at 6:30 a.m. and we had a layover in Germany.

I'm happy to be back in Greece, but it was nice to get away for a while. There are just a few things about this country I don't care for too much... Like not being able to flush your toilet paper, and people not understanding what a "line" is. Greek people don't line up, they just sit in a large confusing mass and push their way around.

I did really miss Greek food!! I need to have a gyro pretty soon or I may lose it. I did eat about half a block of feta in the 2 days I've been back. I am getting a really severe feta addiction, not good. It's pretty expensive back home!! Hahaha, we'll see how long I can last :)

If you have any questions about any of my travels, let me know! I can't really do it all justice with just some typing on a blog. I will have much better story telling skills in person when I get home!

To conclude, I'll just say this, see the world. It rocks.

Spring Break Part 4: Geneva

This story will begin with my telling all of you that being prepared is a good thing. Book a hotel in advance, everywhere. I will now tell you that we did not do that for Geneva.

While getting ready for spring break, Laura and I booked all of our hotels/hostels/planes/trains/etc. because we wanted to be prepared. However, the ONE city we did not do that for was Geneva. We couldn't find a lot online when it came to Geneva hostels so we thought we'd just find one when we got in about 11 p.m. Geneva is a relatively small town, and everyone there is really friendly and most people speak at least some English.

Now I'm going to tell you about our first night in Geneva.

We got off the train and couldn't find any information on hostels/hotels in the train station. It pretty much didn't exist. Ok, odd. But we'll walk around and find something, right? This seemed easy, since there were signs pointing to multiple hotels. We wanted a hostel however. We found ONE and it was completely booked for the week. We soon came to realize that there was some sort of HUGE convention in town and ALL THE HOTELS WERE FULL ALL WEEK. So here we are, 3 American girls, wandering around Geneva close to midnight, asking every single hotel along the way if the have ONE room open for the evening. We got the same response everywhere, "No, we're full all week." Awesome. We managed to find 1 or 2 that had rooms but they were WAY out of our price range.

Close to 1 a.m. we became desperate, and decided to go to a little one near the train station and just pay more than we could afford. (There was no where to sleep in the train station, otherwise I would have just done that.)

We walked in and the guy at the counter was really nice. He reduced our price and gave us free breakfast. I love that guy. I think he could tell we were pretty desperate, and poor. We got a room that was supposed to be 250+ (in Swiss Franc=215US) for 230 plus free breakfast (breakfast was 20 SF per person). So we got one night in a nice hotel with a really nice shower! We all took super long showers the next morning. They also had a really nice breakfast buffet, so we all ate as much as possible.

We then went next door to the Starbucks to use the WIFI on with Megan's laptop to secure a place to stay that night. We ended up having to stay in France because there really was nothing left in Geneva (in our price range). I have some pretty good stories about the hotel in France, but that will come later.

That day we got to tour CERN. It's a HUGE physics lab. Laura's dad is a physicst and knew people there. I'm sure I saw some pretty cool stuff, however, it all went way over my head. I did see the place where they thought the blackhole would appear and suck up the earth in it, killing us all. (If any of you heard that story in the news a few months ago.) Lucky for us, the chances of that happening are really quite tiny.

We went back into town for some dinner and we realized that we had to check into our hotel before 9 p.m. because that's when the front desk closed. We didn't really know where it was, and we waited for the tram in Geneva at about 8:30 and we missed it. Shit. We're screwed. There's no way we're going to make it out there in time! And we thought that if reception was CLOSED, we would get charged on our credit card anyways and we also would not have a place to stay, again. So we ended up taking a taxi. Which we knew would be expensive, but we were desperate.

Trying to get out there was ridiculous. We passed it on the freeway, but there was no actual way for the cab to get there because there was no exit ramp. It was so stupid but we got there at 8:58! And... the damn front desk was closed. Nobody there. Damnit, I'm starting to hate the French a little bit at this point. However, there was a "check in" machine outside that we could use to check in 24 hours. So we basically just paid 50 Francs on a cab we apparently had no need for. GRRRRRRR!! I hate spending money unnecessarily!! Annoying.

Well then we couldn't get the machine to work. It recognized that we had a reservation under Megan's name, but wouldn't accept her credit card. WTF?! We got out of the way after we tried it twice, because there was another group of people trying to check in. They were also having a little trouble with it, and at some point a hotel employee had come outside and we all jumped him, "Help us!!"

I heard the employee talking to the group in front of us, in French. The group tried to speak to him in English. The hotel employee only spoke French and the group spoke Spanish, with some little bits of English. This is where I stepped in to try and help. I was pretty proud of myself. I tried to translate the Spanish guys' English into French to the employee, then translate his French to English for the Spanish guys. Yay language!! It wasn't anything too impressive, the guys just didn't understand what floor their room was on and I had to ask the employee for them. I still felt pretty cool.

The employee helped us with our credit card problem (we apparently just didn't leave it in the machine long enough). And voila! We finally have a cheap hotel room! And cheap it certainly was! I have some photos of it but I can't post any on here now, I'm on a campus computer in the library. It was called "First Class Hotel" I kid you not. Can you imagine a first class hotel for $15 a night?? LOLOLOLOLOLOL... I'm still laughing just thinking about it. It wasn't really bad, just TINY rooms and apparently the reception desk is just an illusion because there was never anybody there, and when we found an employee they didn't know how to get into Geneva. But, like I said, you really can't complain for $15 a night (15 per person).

We eventually got some help on how to get to the bus that takes us to the France/Switzerland border. We pretty much knew how to get to Geneva once we got into Switzerland, it was just getting there that was fun. We walked a few minutes to our bus stop. The buses were not frequent, and we had about a 30 minute wait at that point. I spend a lot of time waiting at bus stops, it seems. We waited. Got on the bus, took it for about 5 minutes, and then it stopped.

Apparently we were right next to the border. We probably could have walked there in less time than it took to wait for the bus. Would have been good to know. So now we got to walk from France to Switzerland! Woot! That also became a pretty funny joke later, "Hey guys, save up your energy. Remember-we have to walk back to France tonight!!"

Once in Geneva, we walked around the lake. It was very nice outside, and the lake was full of swans and ducks. We ate some Swiss chocolate while sitting at the lake, terrified that the swans were going to attack us (we were also eating French bread). We walked around town, had some food, and walked back to France late that night.

We had to walk back to Switzerland at 6 a.m. because our train to Venice left at 7:45 a.m. and we didn't want to miss it!

Now I'm off to Venice....

Spring Break Part 3: Paris

So after the fiasco in the Dublin airport, I completely passed out on the plane ride to Paris! The flight wasn't very long, about an hour. So I got in a tiny little nap on this flight. My traveling companions did not. When we arrived in Paris, it was raining. I was bouncing up and down because I was so excited to be in France once again, Laura and Megan looked like they wanted to kill me. I just couldn't have been happier! We had to take a bus into Paris because we arrived at the Beauvais airport which is about an hour outside of the city. There was a little girl sitting behind me for the whole hour screaming, crying, and pulling my hair. It was just wonderful. I WOULD NOT let anything ruin my mood though. I was in Paris!!

When we finally got to the hostel (we couldn't find it at first) we were all so exhausted that we decided to take a little nap. We were in a room that was just the 3 of us (it was really more like a hotel) so we went to sleep around 1 p.m. We didn't set an alarm. ....

A little while later...

I wake up and it's dark. There is no clock in the room so we don't know what time it is when we finally get up and decide to go for food. It's almost 9:30 at night! We were a lot more tired than we realized. Just took a nice little 8 hour nap LOL! We walked a ways down from our hotel to get some food for the night and ended up getting omlettes at a place that was like a diner.

We were the only people there, and one other guy had come up to us and was asking us where we were from (in English). Turns out he had lived in Chicago for a few years. He was amazed when I said I spoke French. It was really funny. I said a few things to him and he seemed impressed. More so that an American spoke French, probably had nothing to do with what I said.

I was very proud of myself on this trip because I actually spoke French to people and they spoke back to me! My French is pretty rusty because I haven't studied it or spoken it for a few years, but I could get us around. Actually, at one point at our hotel in Geneva, I translated between Spanish speaking people and French speaking! It was cool. I'll leave that story for my Geneva blog though.

It was for this reason that I had a much better experience in Paris this time than I did the first time I went back in June 2005. I'm not sure what the difference was but last time I went, I was much younger and was with a large group of young Americans so that was probably part of it. I also would like to believe that Americans really are getting a better image around the world recently. Everywhere I go, people are very interested in talking to me and asking me about America. They seem very friendly and excited to speak with an American and I haven't been getting critized every where I go. So good work on improving our image abroad! And hopefully the few people I talked to will have an even better view of Americans after meeting a young girl trying to speak their language with them, even if I'm not so good at it any more!

So that was an off topic rant for no reason, but I thought you would all like to know.

The next morning we went to Versailles. This was the one thing I did not do the last time I was in Paris and really wanted to go! Versailles is a grand palace a little outside of Paris that the Louises (Louis plural?) lived in. You know, the one that got his head chopped off, along with Marie Antoinette? Yeah, those people. (Louis the 14th was the one who moved the palace out of Paris to Versailles and the 16th was the one who was beheaded.) It was rather amazing. Very much what I think of when I think of French royality-elaborate! Golden everything, over-the-top decorations, and all sorts of wasteful but very pretty things, basically.

After Versailles, we spent the day hanging out at the Eiffel Tower. Taking all sorts of photos and hanging out watching street performers for fun. We went up the tower before sunset, because as I've said a million times-there is NOTHING like seeing the sunset from atop the Eiffel Tower!! When you all make it to Paris someday, that is what you need to do.

This is where my favorite line from the whole trip comes from. We were discussing that we didn't think being proposed to on the Eiffel Tower would be very romantic. Here is the exact quote from Megan, "I don't think the Eiffel Tower is all that romantic. I mean with the massive amounts of people, the guard rails so you don't fall off, the pigeon killing spikes, and the signs that say 'please don't shit on the Eiffel Tower'..."

"Um, Megan, my French may be a little rusty, but I'm pretty sure that's NOT what those signs say."

LOL. Maybe you had to be there, but we all thought it was hilarious. So of course we like to remind each other of that from time to time. Please, if you have to go to the bathroom, don't do it on the Eiffel Tower, the French really frown upon that.

After sunset, we walked to the Champps-Elysees and saw the L'Arc de Triomphe (my FAVORITE thing in Paris!). We walked down the Avenue a bit, towards the side with all the expensive shops. Not my favorite side, but we were trying to find some crepes. Which we were unsuccessful at. I was very upset.

The next day, we had a train to Geneva leaving around 7 p.m. and so we had to carry all our stuff with us for the day. I am a very light packer and only had a regular size backpack, so to me walking around isn't so bad. In fact, I specifically packed EXTRA light assuming that we would have to carry all our crap with us. Laura also just had a backpack, but hers was a little bigger and heavier than mine. And then there was Megan. Apparently nobody informed her what "backpacking through Europe" really means. She had a huge hikers backpack with her, which would have been fine if that was her ONLY piece of luggage. However she also had one of those little wheel-y bags. If anyone has seen my little red suitcase that I got for my first trip to France, it was one of those. (Which by the way, I lived out of for 3 weeks in France with JUST that.)

Well at any rate, we decided to take a bus tour of Paris that day. Which isn't an entirely bad idea. In fact, when you all go to Paris (I am absolutely convinced that everybody who reads my blogs regularly will make it to Paris one day) I recommend the bus tour. It's a "hop on, hop off" tour that takes you around to all the sites and you can get off the bus and do whatever you like and get back on later. Paris is very large and spread out, so I definitely recommend the bus tour. It will take you to all the sites and you don't have to kill time in between trying to get every where. We didn't hop off at all though, we just sat on the bus and saw all the sites and listened to the commentary.

I was a little upset, there was a few things I wanted to do. Including going up to the bell tower at Notre Dame (which I didn't get to do last time). I probably could have just hopped off and done my own thing but I didn't want to leave Laura and Megan. I probably should have. Hey, it's not my fault I packed practically nothing. I wanted to walk everywhere.

After our bus tour, we went to a little cafe near the Louvre. I had quiche, so I was happy. There was a waiter that felt the need to try and be cutesy-flirting with us. I think he was just a little bored and heard us speaking English and thought he could mess with us. He came right up near me and starting speaking French really fast. I don't think he expected me to actually answer him. But I did. HA! Jokes on you, I still kinda speak your language! lol

Then, it was off to the train station to hop on our TGV to Geneva! I love the TGV, by the way. It is the greatest way to travel in my opinion. The TGV is a French train and is one of the fastest in the world. It is also very comfortable, clean, and nice! "TGV" stands for "Train a grande vitesse" or "high speed train" in English. (For any of my French speaking friends reading this and are critizing the fact that I have no accents on anything-I can't figure out how to do them on this keyboard.)

So it's off to Geneva!

Spring Break Part 2: Dublin

Laura and I arrived in Dublin Thursday about 5 p.m. We went to our hostel where we met our other friend, Megan. In this hostel we were supposed to be with 10 people total, but we had the room completely to ourselves. The three of us and a girl from New Zealand, Jenna. We went out to an Irish pub that night for pint of a Guinness then some food. The next day, we took a free 3 hour walking tour of Dublin and we had the BEST tour guide ever! He was exactly what one could hope for as a guide to Ireland, a 21 year old Irish boy from the North, with curly hair and bright red cheeks! He was so adorable, we all wanted to bottle up his accent and take it home with us. He was really funny too, cracking lots of jokes at the expense of the Irish (and English). He was a great guide, and the tour itself was very interesting. You always learn a lot on those tours!


Dublin Castle-tower was used for prisoners. Now it's a records facility.


After the tour was over, we took it upon ourselves to keep on touring. We went to see St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It was very pretty. It was built on the spot where St. Patrick preached Catholicism and turned Ireland into a Catholic nation. It also has a very pretty park in the area.



*St. Patrick's Cathedral

The next day we had a flight to Paris at 6 a.m. so we have the brilliant idea that we will stay out at a pub late and then sleep in the airport so we can be there for check in at 4 a.m. This will save us from unnecessarily spending money on one more night in the hostel. I have to say, what follows next is probably one of the craziest stories I have from the whole trip…

The pub was interesting. Right away, we somehow got tangled into a large group of British men dressed as cowboys. They were having some sort of crazy bachelor party and of course were already drunk by 10 p.m. And of course, once they know we’re American girls they are more than happy to try and talk to us. They asked if they could pass as real Texas cowboys and which European men are the most attractive of them all. It was pretty funny, actually. One of them kept trying to dance with Laura (unsuccessfully). We broke away from them for a little bit and talked to some Irish guys. They were just out having a good time and it was nice to get away from the drunks (). After that, we ended up chatting with some nice guys from Chicago and their friend from Denmark. They were really cool a lot of fun to hang out with. The pub was playing 70’s-90’s American rock music, oddly enough (this pub boasts “live Irish music” but we apparently missed that) and we all had a great time singing along. It was coming up on 2 a.m. and we wanted to go scope out a place at the airport to sleep. We got a cab to the airport and got there by 3 a.m. Apparently everybody in Dublin that night had the same idea as us and there were people sleeping EVERYWHERE. We each managed to grab a small chair in a lounge to try and catch some sleep. But of course by then we only had an hour or so until we could start checking in. Needless to say, I didn’t exactly get much sleep.

Laura and I only had our backpacks, so we didn’t need to check any luggage. We had checked in online earlier and had our printed boarding passes, so we were all ready to go! We get through security and walk the insanely long way to the gates (by the way, the enormous SIZE of this stupid airport comes into play a little later on in the story). Easy as PIE. We’re sitting at the gate, about a full hour early. Wow, we’re so smart, we think to ourselves. That was so fast and easy! Now we just have to wait!

And we waited. Megan finally came through a few minutes before it was time to board because by the time she had checked in her luggage, the lines for security had gotten really long. This is a really busy airport in the morning oh, and did I mention, HUGE WINDING MAZE LIKE WALKS TO THE GATES? Well, I should mention that. I should also mention that walking at a normal pace, it probably took about 15-20 minutes to walk from airport security down to the gate, and that was BEFORE it was full of people.

We get up to the front of line to board the plane. The woman at the front looks at mine and Laura’s tickets and says, “You were supposed to have your visa checked before getting into the security line. You’ll have to go back to before security and get this validated.”

You. Have. Got. To. Be. F*****G. KIDDING. ME. WOMAN.
NOBODY BOTHERED TO TELL US THAT AN HOUR AGO. DO YOU REALLY THINK WE CAN GET ALL THE WAY BACK THERE AND BACK HERE IN 10 MINUTES??? Will you at least hold the plane for us? Of course not. AWESOME.

So Laura and I start running. Through the crazy, large, maze of an airport, with our backpacks on, against the giant wave of people going the opposite direction. We ran all the way back to security and grabbed the first security guard we saw. “Look, we need these stupid stamps NOW. Our plane is leaving in 5 minutes.” Luckily, the guard we grabbed was really nice about the whole thing and took us straight through security and back. As we RAN (if anybody reading this really knows me, you will know that I DO NOT RUN FOR ANYTHING. I have not run this hard in my life since…. Ever, actually.) back through the giant maze of people, we saw 2 other girls running back towards security. Pretty sure they did the same thing as us, and they looked just as upset as we were.

We made it back to the gate just as they closed the doors on us and there was another group of kids our age standing by the gate who ALSO did not get their stamps. The plane left without them-but we were on it. I almost passed out, but I made it. We didn’t feel as stupid since there were a handful of other people who did the same exact thing. But what can you expect out of Ryan Air when your flight is less than 20 dollars US? So BOO-YAH Ryan Air, WE WIN THIS TIME.

I would also like to mention that the running was made all that more difficult since I hadn’t slept in over 20 hours and had spent a large portion of my night drinking whiskey and Guinness. I am pretty proud of myself. I was SORE all over the next few days, but I did it. Woot.


*Cheers!

All in all, I would say that Ireland is awesome. I know that I only saw Dublin but that made me want to see the rest of the country even more. Every now and again we would stumble upon a park that had the greenest grass I have ever seen in my life. It was a green that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. It really is that bright, almost fluorescent color that you see in photos. It was absolutely beautiful. Any actual Irish people we met were absolutely wonderful as well. They love to have a good time and have some laughs. I LOVED it there.


*I'm just a little obsessed with night photos



*This wasn't really built for any reason in particular, but look at that green! Amazing!

The next chapter of my journey will be set in Paris. But for now, I’m really tired and want to catch up on some of my TV. I’ll finish my posts shortly!

Spring Break Part 1: London

I’m am back and winding down after my mini-European Adventure! I’ve decided to start blogging now before I forget everything that I did. This is part one of five, and I’ll be going in order according to where I went first! So I’ll begin with London.

Took a flight from Thessaloniki to Dusseldorf, Germany, to London on Easter Sunday. I have NEVER seen an airport that dead before. We left around 11 a.m. from Greece so we were in Germany at a normal hour. DEAD. It was SILENT. We had a two hour layover so what did we do? Order up a German beer, of course. This is me and my friend Laura, from DC, traveling together. Once we got into London, we had to find our hostel which was waaaaaaaaaaaaaay outside of London (but what else can you expect with such low prices?). We found our way to the hostel then wandered around for a bit and eventually ending up at a pub for some fish and chips!

The strange thing about London is that public transportation is extremely expensive, but everything at a pub is super cheap. It costs 4 pounds (like $5 US) to buy 1 underground (subway) ticket. Ouch. However, you can buy a pint of beer and a plate of food for less than 7 pounds. Pints of beer run between 1-3 pounds (4 pounds if it’s expensive). I could not believe it. Drinks in Thessaloniki are so expensive it’s not even worth it to try and get one beer out here. A bottle of beer is usually at least 5 Euro.

Enough about prices, on to our tourist day! We got up early and went downtown London for some serious tourist time. We spent 10 hours walking around London, seeing everything we could possibly see! This includes: Parliament, Big Ben, the London Eye, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and your basic everyday walking around and looking at cool buildings type of stuff. We were also pretty sure that we would eventually get hit by a car because it is confusing! It’s really funny though because they actually have words painted on the ground by intersections that say “look left” and “look right” so tourists don’t get run over. How thoughtful of them.


*London Tower Bridge at night


*Parliament and Big Ben


*Look out you crazy tourists!


*Buckingham Palace as we walked up to it. It was swarming with tourists


That day I also set out to buy myself a bus ticket to New Castle. This is a town a few hours north of London where my friend is studying abroad. We hadn’t seen each other in almost 5 years!!! It was really awesome to get to see her, even if it was only for a little while. She met me at the bus depot and we walked around the town. It was really cold, rainy, and foggy-which was funny because it was actually sunny and warm in London- but not too bad. After we had dinner, I saw her apartment and met her roommates and we went out for a drink. People in the UK really like to drink, if you couldn’t tell. That isn’t a stereotype, it’s really just true. I left to go back to London the next morning to meet back up with Laura. Later that night, we saw the play Chicago on stage in the theater district in London. It was awesome.


*Me and Stephanie!

London was the only place where I feel I had the “real” hostel experience. For anyone who doesn’t know, hostels are cheap rooms that fit 8-14 people in them on crappy bunk beds and you all get to share one shower. It’s basically like a college dorm. It’s an experience that I wanted to try because I’ve always heard really good things about hostels from my friends. It was pretty nice. We met some people from Canada, Switzerland, India, Portugal, and Australia. And one guy working at the hostel was from East St. Paul Minnesota! What a small world sometimes. Everybody in our room was really nice except somebody snored really loud and I’m still not sure who it was. It was a good time though.

Off to Dublin!

Life Long Dreams

Goodbye everyone! I'll be off, fulfilling a life long dream of mine for the next two weeks. My mom says I'm too young to fulfill a life long dream but hey-this is only 1 piece of the dream! I really want to see every continent before I die so really, this is just part 1 of my 6 part dream (I've decided to skip Antarctica).

I'm flying into London tomorrow ! I'll be there for 4 days with another girl, Laura. She goes to school in Boston and is from DC. After London, we're off to Dublin where we are meeting up with another girl, Megan. I went to Berlin with Megan and she is also from Eau Claire.

After 2 days in Dublin, we're off to PARIS!!! I know I've already been there but... do I ever love Paris :) It's funny because it is my least favorite part of France (I'm 100% positive that the RUDE Frenchman stereotype comes from Parisians) but still, IT'S PARIS!! lol. I'm a weeeeeeeeee bit excited.

Next stop, Geneva. I'm excited for Geneva because unlike in Paris, people will actually appreciate my attempts to speak French with them. I haven't spoken French for quite a while, but I'd still like to impress the nice people of Geneva with what little skills I still have. I've always heard that people in Geneva are extremely friendly and they love when foreigners try to speak one of the 4 official languages of Switzerland (French, Italian, German, and Romansh). Geneva is a French speaking section but almost everyone there speaks English. But like I said, I'll try my French anyways. I'll let you know how it goes.

After Geneva, a few hour train ride to Venice. I've heard that just wondering around Venice is the best way to experience it. We'll find out.

And for anyone who may be worried about me-don't be. We have all of our hostels booked AND we're bringing directions from the airports/train stations to them. We definitely are prepared for this trip. Although when we get to each city, we're pretty much just going to wander around and look at stuff. Anything that's free :)

I also feel that I will not stand out as much as I do here (in London and Dublin at the very least). So that will be a nice feeling.

So goodbye everyone! I probably won't have reliable access to internet while I'm gone so I'll have to wait until I'm back to blog and post photos of the trip.

I'm so excited!!!

Athens!

It is Monday and I just got back from Athens last night around 3 a.m. I would like to start of this blog by saying even though I had a great time in Athens, I wish I could have been home for the last few weeks. I have just been informed via email that my grandmother has passed away. I am trying not to be sad, it was her time to go and I am happy that she is not suffering or in pain. I am sitting in the school library crying at my computer and I think the Greek kids up here are wondering what is going on with me. What a strange American… crying in the library at her computer.
I love you so much mom and I’m sorry that I couldn’t have been there for you. I’ll try my best to call because Adrianne and Rita both said they felt much better after talking to you. I feel so isolated from home sometimes. The internet is great but sometimes emails and facebook just doesn’t cut it.

So on that sad note I am now going to try and explain my fun and happy weekend in Athens. I hope it will make me feel a little better to think about that.

So as I may have mentioned once or twice before, Greek people don’t exactly do things in a timely manner. It gets rather annoying after a while. We met outside our apartment on Friday morning to get on our charter bus to Athens at 8:15 a.m. The bus didn’t show up until 9 a.m. and we didn’t leave Thessaloniki until 9:15 a.m. We just stood outside for 45 minutes. It was just a lovely way to start the trip. The bus ride straight through from Thess to Athens is approximately 6 hours. And with breaks in between, it’s a little longer. So we got into Athens around 6 p.m. Our hotel was very nice! It was right on the water! So after that long day on the bus, me and some other girls decided to go walk around by the water and check out some things near our hotel and get some dinner. We ate at an Italian restaurant which was AMAZING!
At 10:00 we met with the rest of the group (by the way, this was a school-sponsored field trip that ALL the Americans went on and there are about 80 of us). We all took the tram downtown to go out for the evening. My two roommates were not feeling well so by the time we got down there they just wanted to get some ice cream and go back to the hotel and sleep! I haven’t been feeling too great either- but mine is 100% allergies so I’m just sneezing a lot and really itchy in my throat/eyes/nose/all the fun stuff! I got some pills here but they’re not very strong.

*The Sea, outside our hotel

So my roomies went home and I went to a bar with some other girls. We just had one drink and sat around talking for a while. It was a nice night. We decided to take a cab home because the tram didn’t come back for another hour and it was already almost 2 a.m. and we needed to be up by 9. We were warned that the cab drivers may try to scam us into paying more for a ride then necessary and that we should not pay over 20 Euros (like $25 US). Yeah… the cab driver tried to charge us 48 Euro (closer to $60 US). So that was my first experience with lovely Athenians who try to take advantage of tourists. Needless to say, we were NOT happy. We didn’t pay him 48, we paid him 40 which was still WAY MORE than we should have but we were scared and didn’t know what to do. But it’s OK. I’ve learned my lesson-ALWAYS negotiate the price BEFORE getting in the cab.

The next morning we woke up and had breakfast at the hotel. I wasn’t expecting much, maybe some coffee and bread, a little yogurt. We had a full out buffet style! I told you our hotel was super nice. I filled up on food and we headed out around 10 a.m. to do all the fun tourist stuff we could!

First, we went up to the Acropolis. We had two groups and we each had a tour guide. Our groups were very large, unfortunately. I prefer small groups so that I can always hear the tour guide. I just tried to stay at the front of the lines with our guide so I could always hear what she was saying.

It was pretty amazing to see all of this in person. When you first walk up through the gates, you see the Parthenon from the back. The front is actually on the other side because they built the entrance to face east, sunrise. I can only think about what the ancient people went through to build these amazing temples over 2000 years ago. It really is absolutely amazing to think about these accomplishments when we so easily think that ancient civilizations were not very advanced. It took them 20 years to do it, but they did it. They had architects drawing up plans for this bad boy after Athens got some money after finally defeating the Persians. They felt pretty rich at the time, and it shows.

*Me in front of the Parthenon

The other building that remains up at the Acropolis is the Erechtheion-another temple where the Goddess Athena planted an olive tree. The myth goes like this: the Goddess Athena and the Go d Poseidon were fighting over the city of Athens (before it was named Athens) and they each offered a gift to the citizens to have them choose which God they would dedicate the city to and worship. Poseidon offered water and Athena offered an olive tree. The Greeks liked the olive tree and what it symbolized and choose Athena. Hence the name Athens “Αθήνα” in Greek and all of the monuments dedicated to her.

After the Acropolis, we went to see the Ancient Agora. This is where the ancient city of Athens had its marketplace and many other important things. Democracy was born here-citizens would gather to decide on state affairs. Aristotle, Socrates, and many of the great ancient Greek philosophers walked around here and tried to gather followers! It was pretty cool to be walking around where ancient history happened. I visited to Agora of ancient Pella which was the topic of my last blog-Pella was the “Athens” of the north, if that is an easier way for everyone to make the connection.

*View of the Temple from the Agora

After that, we had lunch in Plaka, one of the oldest neighborhoods of Athens. We ate gyros at a supposedly famous gyro place in Athens. In the restaurant, there were photos of famous Greek people eating there but I didn’t know any of them but the gyros were certainly amazing!! (FYI for anyone that doesn’t know: a gyro is a Greek sandwich on pita bread with tzatziki (cucumber yogurt dressing), tomatoes, onions, French fries, and spiced meat. Traditionally, it is lamb meat, however I have learned that most day-to-day gyro places use beef nowadays.)
After lunch, I walked around the town with some girls and one of the professors. It was BEAUTIFUL outside all day!! It was sunny and in the upper 60’s low 70’s all day. I was happy that I brought my sunscreen because a few people got sunburns. I however know why too much about sun and therefore covered myself in sunblock and I am fine. Anyone who has hung out with me In the summer knows that I rarely go anywhere without massive amounts of it smeared on me :)

Walking around Athens, we saw the Temple of the Olympian Zeus which used to have over 100 columns spread out over one area, but now there are only 16 columns left. It was still quite amazing. I wonder what it would have looked like before the Romans stole all of the columns. We also saw Hadrian’s Arch. It was built by the Greeks to honor him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian is all about Hadrian if you would like a history lesson.

*Temple of the Olympian Zeus

*Hadrian's Arch

After that, we went shopping for a little bit. We went back to the hotel for a nap around 6 p.m. It was a very tiring day. Later that evening, I went for sushi with my hotel roomies, Ali and Kate. They really weren’t feeling well and my allergies were so bad I could hardly breathe at all at this point. We wanted some wasabi to clear out the nasal passages (which worked tremendously). Then we went back to the hotel to get some sleep. They went over their Greek flash-cards for Greek language class and I read Kate's copy of the Little Prince. Sometimes I forget how much I love that book.

On Sunday morning we had another amazing buffet breakfast and set out to watch the changing of the guards at the Parliament. Every hour on the hour, the guards change in front of the Parliament. This is more symbolic than anything else, really. But on Sundays they wear their traditional dress (uniforms worn while gaining freedom from the Turks) and at 11 a.m. on Sunday there is a procession of soldiers in traditional uniform and a marching band playing the Greek national anthem. I couldn’t quite see very well because there were so many people, but it was pretty cool nonetheless. Then, after the hoopla of everyone marching, the guards pretty much just stand absolutely still for an hour until they change to new guards again. To a get a better idea in your head-most people think of the Queen’s guards in England-you know the guys in red coats with the big black feather dusters on their heads? Yeah, these guys are kind of like that. You can take photos with them and do whatever but they are not allowed to move or speak and you are NOT allowed to touch them. I got a picture with them later. During this part of the trip, we encountered another wonderful Athenian jerk. My roommate Ali got pick-pocketed.

*Me standing by a guard in traditional dress

She did everything right-she had a purse that zippered shut so that it would be difficult for anyone to get into it and was paying attention to her bag at all times especially if someone bumped into it. But, apparently doing everything right isn’t enough. Somebody unzipped her bag and pulled out her wallet. Luckily, her passport and credit card where NOT taken. They just got 50 Euro in cash and her debit card and driver’s license. Most of these people want nothing to do with credit/debit cards and just want cash, so we assumed they grabbed the money and dumped the wallet but we couldn’t find it. So she had to cancel her card just in case, and her boyfriend is actually visiting her for spring break next week and will bring her her new bank card. So it wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened, but it still sucks. Such is life.

After all that unpleasantness, I went to the National Archeological Museum with 3 other girls and a tour guide. So few people ended up wanting to go to this museum that we basically had our own little private tour. It was very nice! Our tour guide was so cute. He was an older Greek man and it was apparently his 50h birthday so the whole time at the museum his phone kept ringing off the hook because so many people were trying to wish him a happy bday! He was really funny and made all sorts of silly jokes and was having a good time with just a handful of American girls to give a tour to.

*Statue of Athena-replica of the original one in the Parthenon that was over 7 feet tall (it has mysteriously disappeared through the years-people tried to take it and it is most likely on the bottom of an ocean somewhere)

Lastly on our itinerary, was lunch in Plaka again (but a different restaurant, of course) and then to take off around 4:30 in the afternoon to get back to Thessaloniki.

I would like to remind everyone of how Greeks work: they don’t, basically. Everything is laid back, nothing is timely, etc. This will become important to note in a minute.

We had finished eating at about 3 p.m. and we wanted to leave a littler earlier than scheduled, especially since so many students had midterm exams to take Monday. We sat around until 3:30 and everybody was getting restless and the professors were not telling us why we weren’t going to the buses. Eventually, it came out that one of the buses (we had to take 2 since we have so many students, and they are separated according to which building you live in) wouldn’t start. And of course, it was my bus. Yay.

I would ALSO like to point out that last week on a school-sponsored trip, the students were stranded for 3 hours due to a broken down bus from the SAME company. We thought there is NO WAY it’s going to be more than an hour, I mean come on, we’re it downtown ATHENS and the bus company has an office here, there are tour buses everywhere, etc.

We didn’t leave until 8:00 that night. It’s apparently out of the question to just send us a new bus and the mechanic didn’t come until 7:00 you know, 3 hours after we informed the company about our problem.

I didn’t mind it so much. For one, I wasn’t on the trip last weekend when this
happened. Also, we were broken down right next to a playground and we had fun running around like idiots and playing on the equipment. Also, we were in Athens as opposed to the middle of no-where (which happened to the kids last trip) so I got to walk around a little more and look at stuff. It is still pretty annoying that it could possibly take that long just to fix a simple problem.

*Ali playing on the playground

So anyways, I got home about 3 a.m. and went straight to sleep. Athens was amazing and I definitely recommend it for a tourist destination. It made me feel better about my program in Thessaloniki though. I WOULD NOT like to live in Athens! In Thessaloniki, I never feel scared or worried that someone is going to try and rob me/scam me every time I leave my apartment. People here are SO NICE and helpful!! Even though it is a large city, it doesn’t really feel like it because the people really make you feel at home here. But, like I said, Athens is an amazing place to visit just on the pure fact that everything is so old and it is like walking through history.

That’s about all I can write for now. I’m starting to get exhausted and my eyes are red and sore from allergies + lack of sleep + crying. Not a good combination.
Thanks to all for helping me feel better about my time here and please send love to my mom as much as you can. I miss my parents and will hopefully be spending some time in St. Paul with them before going back to Eau Claire for job hunting when I get back from Greece.

If I don’t post again soon, wish me luck on my backpacking through Europe adventure, which is starting this Sunday. First stop, London!