Greece

Picking up where I left off last time, (now that you've had plenty of time to read, re-read, and reflect on all my adventures in Sicily), the day after we got back from Sicily I left for Greece! We (myself, Evan, Rebecca, and Chris) got into Athens in the evening. We met up with 3 other archie girls who had gotten there earlier in the day and all went to dinner. I tried a typical Greek dish called "moussaka", which has layers of potatoes, eggplant, meat, and melted cheese on top. It was really good! The restaurant we went to had a great view of the acropolis, too, so that was pretty cool. After dinner, we played cards back at our hostel and went to bed.

The next day was Sunday, so we found a mass to go to--well, the girl at the hostel desk found it, actually. But anyway, it was a Roman Catholic service, but in Greek! I recognized some words, like the kyrie, and "amen", and I think I caught a "Petros" in the Gospel...anyway, it was a really cool liturgy. Very solemn, and they used a lot of incense (a little Greek influence, no doubt), and it was well attended. After that, we walked around for a little while and saw the Athen's flee market, went near the acropolis but didn't go all the way up into it, and saw the ancient Olympic stadium. Oh, and for lunch we had gyros, our first of many. They're cheap, sold all over the place, and really good!


Me, Courtney, and Evan--future marathon runners!--in front of the Olympic Stadium

On Sunday afternoon, we caught a bus to a town up north called Kalambaka. We had a little difficulty finding the bus station, but after that everything went smoothly. We were traveling both north and up into the mountains, both possible reasons for what we unexpectedly encountered on the drive there: snow! Lots of it. We got into Kalambaka pretty late, around 11 pm, and were surprised to find that the owner of our hostel was waiting there to show us the way to the hostel! This hostel was amazing, too--definitely my favorite out of all the ones I've stayed in this year. It felt more like a ski lodge than a hostel. We had two rooms to ourselves, one for the girls and one for the guys, and each had its own bathroom. We also had a lounge with a fireplace!


The Alsos House, our hostel

Now, why did we want to visit a tiny town called Kalambaka? Well, because it's right next to an area called Meteora. Meteora is made up of giant rocks coming out of the ground with monasteries built on top of them.


One of the giant rocks

There are trails connecting all the monasteries that you can hike on. We spent the next day doing that (in the snow! It was crazy).


Evan and I


Me, Chris, and Rebecca. We weren't prepared for snow at all, so we're all wearing our tennis shoes (not waterproof) and basically all the layers we packed.

Some of the monasteries are open to visitors, so we got to go in them and even met an English speaking monk in one of them who explained some of the beautiful frescoes in the chapel to us.


No pantaloons for the ladies...


The sign says "Great are wonderful are Thy deeds O Lord God the Almighty! Who shall not fear and glorify Thy name, O Lord?"


There was almost a disaster on the way down, but luckily I managed to avert it.

After a full day of hiking, it felt really good to come back into town, sit down to a hot meal, and then relax and play cards again in the hostel that night.

The next day (Tuesday by now) we spent the morning in Meteora and then took the bus back to Athens that afternoon.

On Wednesday morning we left Athens again, this time on a ferry to one of the islands, San Torini! The ferry was much bigger than I expected, and kind of like what I imagine cruise ships are like. Though maybe those are just bigger than I think they are, too. Anyway, we had "super economy" seats, which entitled us to sit at the tables at the cafe on the ship! That's what we thought on the way there, anyway. On the way back we learned that we were in fact also allowed to sit in more regular airplane-style seats. But the cafe tables were good because we got to socialize during the 8 hour ride (and play more cards). When we got there we were immediately overwhelmed by the geographical beauty. San Torini is a mountainous island, so there are little towns built up high on the hills, and you're never far from a view of the water below. Our hostel there was really nice, too, and we once again met up with some other archies who were there at the same time.

Thursday was our day of exploring San Torini. We rented ATVs and rode them up to the highest point on the island, and then to a few different beaches. The beaches are interesting because there are three different types: one with black sand, one with red sand, and one with white sand. We went to the black and red, but never found the white. The red beach was probably my favorite. We couldn't drive all the way there, and instead had to hike up and over some rocks, and when you get to the top the view is incredibly striking: red rocks and sand, turquoise water, and bright blue sky. It was awesome. We also swam at that beach for a bit--the water was pretty cold, but I'm glad we got in. We finished off the day by going to a place called Oia to watch the sunset--all the guidebooks and even the guy at the hostel said that's the best place to see it. It was kind of cloudy, but the sun broke through just in time for us to watch it sink below the horizon.


Doing some hiking


The red beach!


The dark island on the left is a volcano!

We spent Friday morning in San Torini also. We walked down a bunch of stairs to the old port, sat there for a while, and then took a donkey ride back up to the top. The donkeys must do that walk dozens of times a day, especially in high tourist season, and so they've made a little game of it, apparently. They kept jostling for who got to be in the lead, and cutting each other off around corners, and mine in particular would walk really close to the wall and right under low hanging branches. It was fun:-)

On Friday afternoon we took the ferry back to Athens, and then on Saturday we FINALLY got around to doing Athens sightseeing things, namely, going in the acropolis! The Parthenon was awesome, of course, even though it was partly under scaffolding, and all the other temples there than we learned about last year were cool too. Oh, and we saw the theater were Sophocle's and all those other playwright's plays were originally performed!


This is that theater.

We also walked around the agora, and I loved thinking about how that where Socrates and Plato would hang out and talk philosophy with everyone. Those ancient Greeks were pretty amazing people.

Sunday was a special day--Pi Day! In the American way of counting dates, anyway. But we thought it was awesome that we got to celebrate a Greek letter day in Greece! And it turns out that a lot of Greek pastries are called "pies", like cheese pie, sausage pie, cheese and spinach pie, etc...so that was pretty perfect. Naturally we all stopped at a bakery to get them on our way to the airport. And then we flew home! It was a fantastic trip. And it was also my last big trip of the year. I might go on a few other daytrips (definitely to Turin to see the Shroud in April), but nothing big. So I get to enjoy being in Rome for a while! And with Holy Week and Easter coming up, that should be plenty exciting.