How much does a Grecian earn?

...You can thank my Dad for that joke.

Greece was, in a word, amazing. Simply amazing. It was definitely a change of scenery from Prague, which was what I desperately needed. The people there are super friendly and hospitable, the water is blue, everything is green, it was a perfect temperature (high 50s, low 60s), and the air smelled like ocean.

I'll do a quick recap of things, but I have pictures up on the picture site, and there are some stories on there that do a good job of explaining the trip. There are a lot of them, though.

The girls that went on the trip were Lauren, Rachel, Katherine, and Amy. We all had a really nice time together. By the end I was a little annoyed with the whole group, but then I just did a few things by myself and was fine.

We left Sunday night at 11:50 pm, and arrived in Athens at 3:30 am Monday morning. We were exhausted. Then we took a bus from the airport to Piraeus, the port of Athens, and took a 4 hour ferry ride to Paros, a Greek island in the Cyclades. We were at the island from Monday around 3 pm to Wednesday morning at 10 am.

The island was beautiful. There are little churches, white buildings with blue shutters, green everywhere - it was spectacular. There were hardly any tourists there, since we came during low season, but the downside to that was that hardly anything was open. Everyone was preparing for tourist season. It was a really nice time to be there, though. There were also a lot of goats. We stayed in Naoussa, a smaller town that is a 20 minute bus ride from Parikia, the port/capital city.

Some highlights from the island:
-Cheese pastries and delicious desserts from the Grecian baker man.
-Meeting Marina, the woman who worked at a cafe in Naoussa. We talked with her for three hours on our last night there, and she was just really generous and interesting and nice.
-The best nap ever that I took on the rocks by the ocean. I was worlds away from everything, it was incredible.
-Renting a car! I got to drive because I was the only one who could drive manual - it was amazing! I love driving, and to drive around this beautiful island was the best. (My motto, in case you didn't know, is "Eat. Breathe. Drive.")

After we left the island, we went to Athens. Athens is an okay city; it wasn't built very well, so there is the nice tourist area in the center, and then dirty and boring sprawl essentially sums up the rest of the city. I really liked it, though. Greek food is great, I had a good dish called Moussaka (and in my head I always say Mufasa Mufasa Mufasa!), which is eggplant layered under ground beef layered under potatoes and baked, like a casserole. Yum!

Our hostel was nice, the owners were all from Australia (I am still waiting for Aaron to meet a Czech person...) and were very nice. They tried a little too hard to be cool, though.

So the first day we got there, we just wandered around and browsed tourist shops and stuff, and ate dinner and went to bed. I was sort of irritated with everyone at that point.

The next day, I went on a tour that the hostel offered, and I went by myself. I needed to learn something, and no one else wanted to go. I am really glad I did it. I met some really nice people there, too. I made friends with girl from Melbourne named Kerry, and a girl from Argentina named Jennifer. Everyone else was really nice, too, and so was our tour guide, who was a young guy from Boston who had been living in Athens for 4 years or so, and decided to work at this hostel and start giving tours. He knew a lot. After the tour, Kerry and Jennifer and I toured the Acropolis, which is the collection of ruins on top of a hill. Then we did some souvenir shopping in the flea markets. I also got a gyro, which was amazing.

After that, I met back up with the girls and we wandered some more and I showed them some things I learned on the tour, and then we got dinner and it was delicious.

We had to stay up all night basically, because our plane left at 4 am on Friday morning. It took us awhile to get to the airport, though, so we left the hostel around 12:30. I was exhausted when we got back to Prague, and pretty much slept all day Friday.

I loved Greece, want to go back, and recommend that anyone who goes only stays a few days in Athens and spends the rest of the time on an island. My only regret is that it was too cold to swim in the sea.



In other news, I have been here for 2 months now, and I will be back in Michigan in less than 9 weeks! That really isn't that short of a time, but I am excited anyways.

Thursday I leave for France, so there will be another update soon!

I hope everyone is doing well, I love and miss everyone a lot (as usual!)


Kelly