Greece: the heart of ancient mythology, the home of so many great ruins, and an endless collection of breathtaking islands just waiting to be explored by seven rampaging California girls. I thought (and still think) I was lucky to be living in Rome, but visiting Greece is something I’ve dreamed of since my second grade obsession with Greek mythology and, a few years subsequent, with Disney’s “Hercules.” In other words, I feel that I’ve been looking forward my whole life to visiting this place that I sort of decided to visit on the spur of the moment.
We started our first day absurdly early – our taxis left for the airport at 4:15 am. Many of the girls in the group went out the night before and just stayed up (Granny Ali was not one of them). Since our flight got us there around 9 or 10 local time, we had a chance to drop our stuff, rest up a bit, and were still left with a day to run around Athens. The group split up since the girls who went out wanted to sleep at the hotel, but a group of us went to go visit the Acropolis, meaning the Parthenon, the Erechthion, and the rest of these uber-famous ancient ruins. We even found a hill that overlooks all of Rome and stopped to just take it all in for a bit. After our ancient exploits, we jumped back to contemporary Greece and did some shopping in the Athens flea market. I have to admit, the sandals were quite tempting but I was somehow able to control myself and only get a bracelet (this means spending about 7 euro instead of around 50). For dinner we found an adorable family-run restaurant with INCREDIBLE tzatziki and fresh Greek salad. The meat-eaters of the group also enjoyed what’s called souvlaki, a Greek style of preparing chicken or pork on a kebab.
Our second day started off pretty rough – on our way to the bus stop at 5 am my friend was attacked and had her purse literally ripped from her shoulder. She handled it incredibly well, but afterwards we were all extremely wary and tended to harbor a general hatred towards Athens. Despite the drama, we made it onto the four-hour bus that took us to the ferry out to Zakynthos, also known as Zante, another island about an hour away. Our time on Zante was absolutely amazing. The water is crystal clear and warm, the beaches are just beautiful, and the clubs are open all night, each with a better offer on drinks than the last. The guys who ran our hotel were super nice, helping us call cabs, find tours, or just get settled easily. Who could believe for ten euro a night we could stay somewhere so nice?!?! While on Zante, we did a day trip where we got to see the sea turtles!!!! We visited their home in the water off an island just off Zante in a glass-bottom boat and later also got to visit a really nice beach nearby. We even got to swim in some of the caves on the island called the Kerry Caves. SWEET! I got some good use out of my waterproof camera, that’s for sure. I think the turtles were my favorite part of the Zante trip, though a night of sitting on the dock singing Disney songs around 3 in the morning is also in the running.
We had to get back to Athens to go to Santorini and had to change our whole gameplan as updated ferry schedules apparently do not exist in Greece after July. Instead of attempting to do two nights in Mykonos and two nights in Santorini, we had a layover day in Athens and spent three nights on Santorini. It was unbelievably lovely and I think we really made the right choice. Santorini is just insanely beautiful everywhere you go. We visited the volcano that helped to create Santorini itself, rode donkeys up 600 stairs, saw the sunset from the picturesque town of Ia which is said to have the nicest sunset in the world, did some souvenir shopping in Fyra, and had the best gyros of the trip in Perissa near our lovely little hotel. The owner of the hotel, Freddy, really took us under his wing, driving us all around when we wanted to go places and fixing breakfast for us every morning. He was quite a character. On Santorini we spent time at both the red beach and the black beach. I have never seen water so clear in my life. Each place we went in Greece had nicer and nicer ocean, I think.
And so, after an insane week of running around, driving each other a little crazy but overall having a wonderful time, we were able to get back to Rome in time to rest up a bit and start classes! It’s been about two weeks already, but that’s a story for another time. Ciao!
