Greece: The Islands and Beyond
As a disclaimer to start, being the intelligent girl that I am, I forgot to bring my camera charger to Greece with me so I had to drastically cut back on the amount of pictures I took to avoid it totally dying. I will be eventually getting more pictures from the other girls on the trip so don’t worry, I’ll have lots more!
Tuesday morning our ferry was to leave at 7:25 am and we were told to get there at least a 1/2 hour early. Then from our hotel we figured it would be about a 25 minute metro ride, however since we didn’t have a schedule of times of when it would come, we had to factor in the fact that we could be waiting up to 10 minutes for each metro and we had to change lines once. We also wanted to pick up breakfast/snack for the trip so we decided we needed to be walking out the door of our hotel at 6:15 am. Miraculously that’s exactly what we managed to do. I don’t think we were fully awake but we were at least moving! We only had to wait 3 minutes for our first tram which was a wonderful surprise. Then we had to switch metros at Omonia. We had passed through the Omonia stop several times throughout our visit in Athens and every time we did there was a nasty horrible smell that smelled like some animal was maybe hit by a one of the trains and has been left there to rot. I don’t know. We speculated on the source but everyone in the metro would be covering their faces until we pulled out of the station and of course the smell would linger in the car until the next one…horrible! So anyway we get to Omonia, cover our mouths and noses, and started walking to the green line. We were trying not to breath and walk as fast as we could. As we rounded the corner to the escalator up to our next train we heard one pulling in. Worried that we would have to wait forever for the next one I took off running up the escalator hoping Jenna and Kayla would follow. At the top I saw our train waiting there for us. The doors on the Greek metros kind of slam shut and if you’re in the way you could lose a body part so I had to wait until the last possible second until I knew we would all get on the train without risking death. But we made it!
Once we got to the pier we were worried about finding the boats but when we came out of the metro area, we realized how stupid we would have had to be to not find it. There were about 20 ferries in the water across the street so we got that taken care of. We grabbed some bread from a street vendor and some interesting chips as a snack for the ride.
I have no idea who decided this would be a good idea but we bought them. I can’t even begin to describe the taste other than to say they were interesting. So anyway we got on the boat and headed off into the ocean down to Santorini. The boat ride was a total of 8 hours with several stops along the way at various islands. I got some pretty pictures from the boat deck of the other islands.
We pulled into Santorini a little after 3 pm and were met by the husband of the couple that owned our hotel on the island. He was the epitome of how I have perceived Greek men. The whole family was actually. They were so cute! Poppy, the wife and our main contact when we were booking our hotel, was the nicest woman! She greeted us all with a hug when we got to the hotel and sent her husband to the kitchen to get us all glasses of wine while we checked in. Then she pulled out a map to show us where to go on the island that was filled with lines and circles that made absolutely no sense. I have the map with me so don’t worry, I would be happy to show it to you all later. It was incredibly incoherent. But she was nice enough and we stopped into the main office at least 3 times a day to ask questions and Poppy or her husband were always there to help us out. We never learned the name of her husband but he was super laid back, clearly loving the island life, ridiculously tan from being outside all the time on an island, and had no problem taking orders from Poppy. They had two kids that occasionally were behind the desk. I never talked to them but Jenna tried to ask the son some questions and said he spoke basically minimal English and couldn’t communicate at all with him. Our hotel room was amazing! We had a little mini-fridge which came in handy later when we had a picnic in our room, and an amazing view of the ocean, and of course we had Poppy! The day that we left, Poppy made us these incredible donut things as a thank you for staying with her! She’s great, I’m telling you. Find Poppy at the Manos Villa !
View from our room!
That night we went out for a delicious dinner and made it an early night so we could rest up for our adventures the next day. The next morning we got up and headed back into the city of Fira, the capital of the island, to a travel agency we had seen the night before advertising a volcano island cruise. We bought our tickets, grabbed some breakfast at the grocery store, I bought some sunglasses (that’s something else I forgot at home) and headed to the cliff we had to climb down to get to the port where our boat left from. The woman at the travel agency had told us it would take 20 minutes to walk down which we thought was insane until we saw our path. There was a cable car the went down the side of the cliff as well as donkey rides. We decided to walk down. WOW what a walk…it took forever, our legs were rubber by the time we got to the bottom, and we were exhausted. Please look at our hike!
After we made it down the cliff we stuffed down our breakfast and hopped on our awesome pirateship boat to take our cruise. It was the first time we had been around sooo many Americans. There were a ton of kids studying abroad who were on their spring break on the boat with us. They were from all over and all different schools and it was really bizarre hearing so many American english accents again. We cruised our way over to the newest island near Santorini. Let me interrupt with a little bit of the history of Santorini. Santorini used to be a big whole island with a big volcano on it. Now everyone knows the story of the lost city of Atlantis…the big, advanced city that disappeared into the ocean…well as the legend goes, that city was on Santorini. Long long ago when Santorini was the big island, it had this huge city that was very advanced and was this amazing place. Then there was a huge volcanic eruption that destroyed the city and the island. Most of the island was covered in water and disappeared for ever into the sea. Now all that’s left is the main island that’s really skinny and long and some little minis off the coast. There is an ancient site on the island called Akrotiri that is known as the Pompeii of Greece because of this eruption so long ago. It was closed so we couldn’t make it there but we did see parts of the place and artifacts from it in a museum on the island and they had these incredibly painted walls that were apparently characteristic of that time. So to come back full circle to my original story…the area around Santorini still has an active volcano and according to what Jenna read, it’s due for another major eruption any time now. (Any by any time I mean in the next couple hundred years) Our cruise was to go to the little island off the main island of Santorini that is still active. When we were on it we could see some gaseous sulfur-smelling stuff coming out of it. Once we got there we got to climb around it for an hour and 1/2. It was very strange because it’s mostly volcanic rock which I’ve never seen before of course and beautiful views of the ocean and Santorini.
After hiking around the volcano (I’ll have lots more pictures later don’t worry) we got back on the boat to go to another little island where there are apparently hot springs. We hadn’t prepared for hot springs but it worked out in our favor because the water was FREEZING and you had to jump off the boat into the freezing water, swim 100 yards to the “hot springs” to find out that it was only luke warm. Everyone who did it came back on the boat and spent the rest of the ride shaking in their cold, soaking, wet suits. We weren’t too upset about missing out on that part. We watched it all from the boat with about half the other people on the excursion. Something else that was hilarious about our trip was that there was a huge group of high school age kids from Quebec on the boat with us. Jenna had told me that she heard that the Quebecois accent was crazy but we didn’t know for sure until we heard these kids. We heard this group yelling at each other lauging talking etc and I assumed they were from some European country. Suddenly Jenna said, “GUYS! I think they’re Quebecois!” I started trying to listen to what the kids were saying and I said, “Jenna…there’s no way. They aren’t even speaking French.” and Jenna said, “No no listen…you can pick out a few words. They are speaking French.” So I listened carefully trying to pick out words I knew and suddenly I heard a girl yell, “QUI A VOLE MA SERVIETTE?!” and I realized I understood that! She had yelled, WHO STOLE MY TOWEL?! and I understood but damn it was a weird accent. Unless you spoke French I don’t know if you could understand how bizarre it sounds but it was so different from what I’ve become used to that I literally did not think they were even speaking a language I understood. Sorry Quebec!
Once we got off the boat and looked at our hike back up the cliff and decided it would be best to take the donkeys up. It was incredibly scary because the men threw us up on our donkeys and sent us on our way up the hill on our own. They donkeys all knew where to go but they had a mind of their own. They didn’t have to listen to anyone and they decided who would go first. Mine liked being up front and would occasionally run to get up there despite the fact that he didn’t have much competition for the spot. One of the guys on the way up had a donkey that liked pretending to bite the other ones which would make them freak out and run away from him. As a former horseback rider I wasn’t too scared on the trip but once I helped Jenna and Kayla get off their donkeys I realized just how scared they had been. They vowed never to ride a donkey again.
That afternoon we headed to the end of the island where we were promised over and over again a spectacular sunset that would take our breath away. We got there around 4:30, preparing to see the sunset around 6:00 and be on our way back to the city right after. Well we didn’t quite get the sunset we were hoping for. We had some pretty pictures leading up to the sunset but to kill time we wandered around the eerily empy streets and when we were done there were clouds covering the sun and we saw zero sunset. It’s ok because we got to see some postcard views of the island and took some pictures while we wandered.
The next day we spent some time wandering around the island. We tried to go to those ancient archaelogical sites I told you about but couldn’t because they were closed. We also had impossibly high winds. We went to a wine museum and saw some pretty sweet dislpays that had moving mannekins that taught us about the history of wine making on Santorini. Fun fact, there was no electricity on Santorini until 1967. Imagine that people…kind of scary huh? The museum was pretty informative and we got to taste 3 types of wine with it. I had the BEST white wine I have ever had and I would have loved to buy a bottle but knew I couldn’t take it home with me 
Anyway I didn’t get any pictures of the high wind, the other girls did so I’ll have to show you the evidence later, but we managed to round up a gang of stray dogs to follow us around the city for a while. So I just have a few more pictures of the island…
Friday we got on the ferry to go back to Athens. We had a pretty uneventful ride except for the ridiculous rocking. I was ok but Jenna is known for motion sickness so we were a little worried about her but it turned out alright. We got into the port city around 11:30, found our hotel and passed out in our beds. The next morning we headed back to the port to take a small ferry to Aegina, a small island about 40 min away by boat. The boat ride was traumatic both there and back. It was rocking back and forth and we thought we were going to die the entire way there. However we made it and got off at a beautifully sunny port town. From there we got a quick breakfast snack at a delicious bakery and got on a bus to the temple on the island. It was a beautiful temple, pretty well in tact and wasn’t being supported by scaffolding! We got some amazing pictures and went back down to wander the city, get lunch, and head back home. It was just a nice relaxing day on a sunny island, a perfect way to end our trip. After we got home, we took a nap until dinner, found a cute little place near by and went to bed early.
Sunday morning we headed to the airport to fly home. We were sad to leave but it was time. We were actually starting to crave French food despite eating delicious food all over Greece. It took a while to get to the airport but once we were there we found some delicious coffee in a cafe. However as I learned throughout the trip, you can smoke ANYWHERE in Greece. It’s kind of ridiculous. I would love to know their statistics on lung cancer there. A girl was smoking in the cafe. I watched he finish a cigarette, stamp it out in the ash tray as she pulled out another one from her pack. So if that wasn’t enough smoke, a man sat down right next to me and lit up another one. I’m pretty sure I was breathing straight cancer. I made us all get up and leave right after he started smoking because it’s really not fun breathing in and feeling your lungs on fire.
When we went through security Jenna got her stuff searched and had her contact solution, lotion, and a tub of peanut butter thrown away. She put up a fight about the contact solution, arguing that it’s a medical supply but they didn’t seem to understand. The peanut butter was what really made her upset because she had been craving it since she left the states and finally found some Skippy in a grocery store on Santorini. I thought she was going to cry. Once through security we realized there was no food on the other side so we had to sit there for an hour and 1/2, starving until we got on our flight. We were served food which was unfortunately not vegetarian this time but I did a pretty good job of picking through it. We got home safe and sound, took the legal way out of the Frankfurt airport on a bus and got back to Strasbourg around 11:00 pm.
Once again, an amazing vacation! I had a great time with Jenna and Kayla on the second part of the trip. I can’t wait to go back to Greece, there’s so much more to do and see. It’s such an interesting place and we saw remains of buildings and civilizations older than I can even imagine. It was incredible! I recommend anyone that can to go there! Best spring break ever!! 
