Ciao! I apologize for not blogging recently; I was on my la pausa primavera (spring break).
The first place on my adventures was to Greece, in which I toured and stayed in Athens and Santorini. We arrived in Athens at 8 am, after a three hour flight from Rome. Therefore, as you may think, we were already exhausted from traveling, so it did not occur to us that there was a time difference between Rome and Athens. That ended up being a major problem later on when we were too early for our ferry. Additionally, no one in my group of friends knew Greek, so we are a group of 4 girls and one boy, in Athens not knowing the time or the language of the natives.
We wandered through the city of Athens, and the culture there is shown through everything, from people’s clothes, language, and especially in their food. After getting into the center of the city, we went to the acropolis, and it was amazing to see the ruins of the Theater of Dionysus and the Parthenon. The nice part of the area was that a majority of the ruins are still intact, so it is as if you’re are in Ancient Greece. Additionally, on your way to the top of the Parthenon there is a lovely view of Athens, and poppies are leading the walk ways. After reaching the top and seeing all the white and blue rooftops of the homes in Athens, we adventured to find food and the infamous Greek frappes. A man approached us speaking perfect English, and we were a tad skeptical at first thinking that the restaurant was a tourist trap restaurant, but he did offer us free drinks and desserts. Naturally, being poor, college students, we accepted and sat down to our first Greek meal. Additionally as a side note, I am now obsessed with Greek cooking, and I would like to now marry a Greek man just so I can have their family cooking. All of the food we received was fresh, and better than anything I have tasted, and I am Italian so that is saying a lot about how amazing it was. We had everything from lamb to roasted vegetables to casseroles and drank it all down with frappes. A frappe is an iced coffee, with cream and sugar, then depending on your preference it can have vanilla or chocolate ice cream with fudge. It is like having a milkshake, but it’s with goat milk so it is sweet. After our complimentary dessert and drinks, the bill still came out to less than ten euros per person. If you ever have to go to Athens, never worry about tipping or service fees, and in the end it was alot cheaper than Rome.
The next step of our journey was a seven hour ferry ride from Athens to Santorini. Santorini is an island famous for its beaches. The ferry ride seemed like a lifetime, but we docked on the island at 2 am, and our hostel owner so kindly gave us a ride to the hostel. For the next two days we adventured through Santorini, saw the black sand beach, attempted to find donkeys, hiked, and sat on the docks taking in the scenery. We thought this would be the relaxing aspect of our spring break before we went to Barcelona and Lisbon, but we ended up being very wrong.
So after our time in Santorini, it was time to go to the docks for the ferry ride back to Athens, and then it was onto Barcelona. The weather was slightly raining, but was nothing more than a drizzle when we arrived at the waiting station for the ferry. Our ferry was scheduled to arrive at 11:30 pm, as we looked to the clock we saw it was 11 pm, so we were early to get onto the boat. Slowly time passes, and we noticed that the rain became harder. My friends were getting nervous that the ferry would not come, but I assured them that by growing up along the water that ferry boats are more than stable enough to survive through a tiny rain storm. The time of 11:30 pm approaches, and the Santorini police came into the waiting dock station to tell us that the ferry service went on strike and is not coming until tomorrow night. Naturally, we were nervous that we wouldn’t make our flight for the following day to Barcelona, and would never get off this island! We ran to the ferry desk to see when if we could get our money refunded, or if we could get on a flight off the island for the next morning. The man did not understand or speak English, literally the only man on the whole island who did not know English was at this ferry desk at midnight in the rain. So we called our contact from the hostel, who was kind enough again to pick us up at the dock and bring us back to the hostel for the night. This man was so kind to us, that he even offered to drive us to the airport the next morning to get a flight. He was too nice, that we declined his offer knowing that the morning flight off the island would most likely be full by now. Being the intelligent group that we are, we were right.
The following day, we went to the ferry office to get our tickets refunded, but they said that they did not do them at the office. Angrily, we booked our flights for later that night, and realized that we would then have to cancel our Barcelona flights. We spent the whole day in Santorini wandering around looking homeless with our luggage. Then for the day we basically just ate because we had nothing to do. Additionally, the weather was awful, because it rained and was terribly cold. So we wandered around some of the island, had a break, and then got an early dinner before we had to leave for the airport. We took shelter from the rain in this one restaurant called Mama’s Restaurant, and we were taken in as Mama’s children. She told us that she would feed us right, and that the ferries here are awful so she understood our frustration. As we sat down to eat our delicious meal, which she made herself, it started to hail outside. Nevertheless, everyone thought that our flight would be cancelled, and then we would have to reschedule and lose even more money. However, Mama gave us her blessing, and told us that were would continue our journey with no problems. After the dinner, we headed to the airport, and the weather only got worse, which made us get even more nervous.
In the end, we did get onto the plane in what seemed to be the middle of a hurricane, and it was the scariest plane ride of my life. The ride had so much turbulence, and even though it was only 30 minutes, it seemed like a lifetime. The plane landed safely in Athens (thanks to Mama’s blessing), and since we spent €200 for changing our flights, we thought the best thing would be to sleep in the airport until our flight to Barcelona. At first I was skeptical about sleeping in the airport; however, this airport was nicer than JFK back in New York. The airport was empty when we arrived at 11 pm, so we found a section of suede couches, and slept there for the night. We all took turns in staying awake to watch the luggage, and surprisingly we had a good night sleep. Finally, 8 am rolled around, and we were boarding our plane for Barcelona. All of these events made me even more ready for the rest of spring break, and after it I felt like I could handle anything.
Down below were some of the important phrases I picked up during my trip to Greece:
Hello - γειά σου - Pronounce: Azu
Thank you- σας ευχαριστώ- Pronounce: Echristo
Good Bye – αντίο – Pronounce: Avio
Where is the bathroom - όπου είναι το μπάνιο – Pronounce: Apoo nel un bagno.
Below are pictures from the trip:
This is Mama:
Climbing the acropolis
Greek Frappes
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