So I'm writing to you at the very end of my spring break, wearing my new spiral ring that I bought in Athens. (Ok, I only pointed out the ring because I can see it as I type and I like it, so I thought I'd share.) I hope this post isn't too rambly...a lot happened in the last week, and it's hard to process all of it into a coherent post, so here's hoping...
So...
Friday morning, Monique and I set off on a very long adventure to meet up with Christine in Athens. Long story short, we made it, only a little rough around the edges, and had a full evening to enjoy. Of course the first thing we did was set off to find a view. It wasn't too hard...
This was on our way up to the Acropolis...as you could probably tell by the sign. We walked right next to people's houses on little paths that really seemed like they were private property, but no one seemed to mind that we were there.
There it is! We couldn't really go inside, it was too late in the evening and they had closed the gate, but we got up pretty close (closer that from this particular picture) and mostly we were just excited to be in Greece!
Something that you won't find in America are casual ancient ruins just laying around. In Athens though, anything goes!
We had a delicious Greek dinner complete with free wine. The people were so so friendly in Athens! Granted, it was a tourist area and their business relies on tourists picking their restaurant over another one that's honestly, pretty similar, but the friendliness was super nice. Also the Greek salad. I did photograph the Greek salad, but I'll spare you because I know I care way more about the food than most people :)
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The next morning, we had to get up super early to go to the ferry. We decided that it would be a cute little adventure to take the ferry from Athens to Santorini. Besides...it was considerably cheaper than the flight we took back. Here is the boat we took. It was complete with filter coffee. Christine and I were super excited about the filter coffee.
Even though the ferry ride was super long, it was like a whole adventure itself. We were able to sit outside and the views were stunning. Also I ended up with a little bit of a sunburn by the end of it...whoops...
When we arrived in Santorini, we stepped off the boat prepared to find a bus up to our hostel. We had our game faces on, ready to attack the next portion of the journey. Much to our surprise though, we found Stella, one of the owners of the hostel waiting at the boat. Apparently there was another woman on the ferry that was also staying at the same hostel, and she knew to contact the hostel to have them pick her up from the ferry. (Later I went back to the hostelworld website and found that they said they would pick you up if you told them where and when.) We reaped the benefits though, and hopped in the car. I was super excited by this! What good service.
And it gets better! She showed us to our rooms, and then brought us coffee. I was already in love.
After the coffee break it was time to find the sunset. We walked up to the town of Fira, a short 15 minute walk from our hostel and started to explore the glorious island of Santorini.
There's Christine and Monique!
And that's me...a little sunburnt...
Ok, I know that was a lot of pictures, but how could I pick?? I'm still amazed by how stunning it is, even just going back and looking at the pictures I took.
So random picture: but this was the little panna cotta we got with our dinner the first night. It was too cute to not show it to you. Also, delicious. (I purposefully omitted the picture of my dinner because I'm trying to not obsess about food too much, but it is difficult for me)
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Now fast forward to the next morning: We set off to find the red beach. (It did require a short bus ride. Santorini is a small island, but way not small enough to tackle by foot...we learned a lot about this, but more on that later.)
Pretty sure that's a horse? I feel horribly ignorant that I can't identify all of my animals. It doesn't look like a donkey though, and that would have been my first guess.
So, one thing that I really liked about Santorini, is that they didn't compromise the nature of the island to make access to places easier. What I mean, is that in order to get to the red beach, you had to hike a little. It was super fun.
The red beach is around the other side of that cliff.
There's a view from the cliff but the other direction, away from the red beach.
This was what we saw as we started to climb...but the view gets better.
This. Just this. I still can't handle how cool that is. Absolutely stunning...and that, ladies and gentleman, is the red beach in Santorini.
Oops...out of order...but this was on the way...
So gorgeous. I can't...
So we spent some time at the red beach and then decided to head to the black beach. One of the woman at the souvenir shop told us that we could take the bus or that it would probably take about an hour to walk. We thought walking would be nice, so we set off.
...Two and a half hours later, we arrived at the black beach. I was pretty exhausted from the walk. It's a totally manageable walk but it wasn't what any of us were expecting. We did get to see the southern part of the island though, which is (surprise) gorgeous.
The black beach was nice, but honestly not as great as we were expecting. We were just as happy to lay down and enjoy a little break though.
We had learned our lesson and took a taxi back up to our hostel. After a little break we went to a restaurant with a spectacular view of the sunset and the water for dinner. We made friends with the waiter and spent and embarrassingly long time trying to guess where he was from. Turns out, he's Albanian, but we couldn't guess it without a little bit of help. I really need to work on my European geography...
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So I think I'm going to cut off this post here and save the volcano adventure for the next post. I have a lot more catching up to do after a full week of adventuring! Also, it was a full week of adventuring and I'm pretty exhausted :)
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