(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.
Monday, April 27, 2009
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....
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!
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!
Saturday, April 25, 2009
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!
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 (
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!
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!
Saturday, April 11, 2009
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!!!
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!!!
Monday, April 6, 2009
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!
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 hotelSo 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 ParthenonThe 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 AgoraAfter 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 ArchAfter 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 dressShe 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 playgroundSo 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!
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