After a jam-packed week in Italy, we flew to Greece to start the second and more relaxed half of our vacation.
We arrived in Athens and learned our first few words in Greek from our taxi driver, phonetically captured on Danisha's left hand.
No = "OH-kee"/"OH-shee"
Yes = "Neh"
Thank you = "EfcareeSTO"
We ate lunch - chicken souvlaki, some yummy beef and onion dish, and Greek salad (later we would add gyros, mousaka, and baklava to our food repertoire).
This was the main plaza by our hostel, conveniently equipped with a Metro station. You can faintly see the Acropolis in the back on top of the hill.
Since we arrived on Easter Sunday, mostly everything was closed in Athens. We went wandering around the city, looking at the Acropolis from afar. One museum was open, however, and granted free admission to European students, so we browsed ancient Greek marble statues (many of the goddess Athena) for a little bit. It is such a small world, because I ran into Stephii (a friend from high school) and her boyfriend in the museum!
We ended up turning in early and playing UNO with some people from our hostel, which worked out anyways because we had to catch a ferry to Santorini before the sun rose the next morning. Below is the view of the Acropolis at night from our hostel window.
Santorini
Our "high-speed" ferry to Santorini left the port of Piraeus in Athens at 7:30 a.m. We arrived at the port around 6 a.m. to buy our tickets, and then boarded the ferry around 6:30 a.m. This "high-speed" option was supposed to take five hours, as opposed to the regular BlueStar Ferry that would take eight hours. I took half of a Dramamine, courtesy of Jackie, to avoid any seasickness. I pretty much passed out before the boat took off.
Unfortunately, we hit some stormy weather, which caused us to arrive an hour late. We almost got off at the wrong port because at around 12:45 p.m., which was supposed to be our arrival time, we arrived at some other island, and a very quick announcement with the words "immediate departure" made us and others very confused. However, we avoided that mistake and continued on to Santorini on choppy waters. Seasickness was evident in pretty much everyone around, with one guy holding a handkerchief to his mouth and green cheeks.
We finally made it, and Stavros (the owner of our hostel, appropriately named Stavros Villas), was outside waiting to pick us up and drive us home! He was a very nice older man who treated us like granddaughters (minus Kevin, who was not as favorably coddled...haha); he would make us coffee, ask us if we needed anything else, and hug and kiss us on the forehead in the mornings before we left for the day.
Stavros Villas
The view from right outside our door.
For lunch on our fist day in Santorini, I had a Greek salad and mousaka.
The weather was still pretty dreary. We rented a car (the small Chevy, not the big Jeep) so that we could drive around the island (shaped like a 'U') and go exploring.
A rainbow appeared outside of our villa right as we were getting ready to go exploring - a good omen?!
Cold.
Cold.
Windy.
The white buildings with specks of blue that are built in to the cliffside - just like the postcards!
We drove up to Oia, supposedly ~*the place*~ to see one of the most beautiful sunsets in Greece and in the world. That night, we got the stormy, dark, extremely windy and cloudy version. But that's okay, because over the next couple of days the clouds would disappear and we would return to this same spot to see a completely different view.
On our second day in Santorini, we scoped out the beach and then hiked up to Ancient Thira.
The leather jacket club.
One of the many black sand beaches of Santorini.
On our way to Ancient Thira.
Ruins of Ancient Thira.
View of part of modern day Santorini from above.
Then it was back down the mountain to search for a place to eat.
Gyros plate and gyros wrap.
Free espresso shots topped with whipped cream and cinnamon from our waiter.
Day 3 in Santorini consisted of a mini-excursion on a small boat to see volcanic craters and hot springs. First was a visit to the volcanic craters: two inactive, and one active - you could see and feel the moist, hot air coming out of some of the vents in the ground!
Our boat.
An inactive volcanic crater.
The group.
Next, our boat took us to some natural hot springs. I didn't get a picture of them on my camera, but they looked like this:
They were brown and rusty in color, with the bottom feeling like a soft spongy mud laced with sulfur. We had to swim between 50 and 100 meters to get to the hot springs, which didn't look that far. As soon as I jumped in the water, though, it was so cold that I felt as if my muscles were frozen and wouldn't move. Jackie's camera has some wonderful pictures (courtesy of Kevin and Danisha, who stayed warm on the boat) of Jackie looking stoked on life, Heidy swimming, and me struggling. It was my first time being in hot (these were lukewarm) springs though!
To get back up the mountain from the port at the bottom, we rode donkeys up cobblestone switchbacks. I had eagerly been looking forward to this (as I had been with the camel rides in Morocco), but the whole donkey-riding business was actually very sad. They treat the animals badly, sometimes hitting the donkeys in the face or pushing them unnecessarily. However, the ride was an experience, as the pathway had sharp turns and at times there were 15+ donkeys fighting for the same space. Jackie's donkey and my donkey had some weird competitive contest going on, and as Jackie's donkey was humongous, mine would get cornered (by donkey ass...haha..haha) when it tried to make a run for the front.
That afternoon, we returned to Oia in time to see a beautiful sunset.
The next day (Thursday), we had the morning in Santorini before heading back to the ferry port. We spent our last few hours on the island at the beach, playing volleyball in the sun and relaxing by the waves.
Stavros drove us to the port, where we would end up waiting an hour for the ferry to show up. Then we began our 7-8 hour voyage back to Athens for our last day of spring break.
Athens, Round 2
This time around, we made it to the Acropolis and were able to walk around inside.
On top of the hill, we could see the Temple of Zeus from a distance:
Next, we walked through the Ancient Agora:
Walking by Parliament, we were lucky enough to catch the changing of the guards:
In the afternoon, we went on a short hike. It was overcast and sort of drizzly at times, but we were still able to get a pretty nice view of Athens.
The Olympic Stadium.
The Acropolis.
Our flight back to Barcelona was scheduled for five minutes before midnight. I guess we should have expected something wacky to happen since it was Friday the 13th. We hopped on the metro to head to the airport, but about four or five stops before the airport, the train stopped, the lights turned off, and there was an announcement saying this was the end of the line for that train and that all passengers were to exit. Confused, we got off the train and stood on the platform wondering where to go next. I looked over towards the train, still stopped, to see a man hunched over a box, holding a lighter with a burning flame over some plastic bottle containing a very dark or black liquid. I hadn't realized that this man had been on our train, apparently yelling/talking to Jackie and Kevin and others in Greek. Anyways, seeing him with a lighter and mysterious fluid by the tracks was enough to freak all of us out. We tried to tell security what we had seen, but this was the one and only time during our stay in Greece that no one spoke or understood English. Seeing it was a lost cause, we stopped trying to explain and left the metro station in a hurry, catching a cab for the remaining trip to the airport. We'll never know if that guy was just crazy or actually dangerous, but I'm glad we didn't stick around to find out.
The Greek flag, and baklava, a delicious Greek pastry consisting of flaky layers filled with chopped nuts and sweetened with honey.
---
Despite the fact that our trip ended with a rush of adrenaline, the past two weeks were unforgettably amazing! The icing on top of the cake? - ending spring break only to return home to Barcelona. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment