I'm never sure where to begin, so I'll just start from where I remember.
We woke up bright and early, hoping to leave our apartment by 7:30 to make our 11 AM flight to Athens. The commute to the airport is kind of a pain in the ass to say the least. We have to take the metro to Termini (Rome train station), and then catch a 30 minute train to Fumicinio (Rome airport). The train to the airport only leaves every 22 and 52 of the hour. Yuck. We were racing to make the 8:22 AM train, and had minutes to spare. But we did it! We got the airport, checked in, and had about 45 minutes of waiting time by the gate. So we did well for our first trip to the airport, let alone with 6 girls (Catherine, Carolyn, Tori, Liat, Raina, and me).
I was a nervous wreck about the flight, especially since I compared easyJet to the "Ikea" of flight airlines. Hah. And I just hate flying in general. You would think that since I've flown transatlantic flights since I was 9 years old I could handle flying, but nope...it just gets worse with age. Lovely. Okay anyways.
Tori, Liat, and Raina went straight to Mykonos (an island off of Greece) by ferry once we arrived. While Carolyn, Catherine, and I went into Athens for the night. It was about an hour bus ride from the airport into the Syntagma Square of Athens (city center).
We stayed at Athens Backpackers hostel, which was...ehh, about what you get for 20 euros worth. or maybe 25..don't remember. We shared a room with 3 other girls, which wasn't bad, except when we had to wake up at 2:30 AM to catch our 5:45 AM flight from Athens to Mykonos. It's difficult to pack in pitch black light, so we packed in the hallways haha.
Back to Athens! The first we did was grabbed some lunch right by the Acropolis. I had a salami and feta sandwich (I had to get feta cheese! I was in greece after all!) It was reallyyy good :] And of course, I had my first piece of Baklava. It was amazing, and huge. Everyone does baklava differently, but in Greece they use honey as their syrup, and then usually pistachios...but you can find them with lots of different nuts.
We walked to the Acropolis after lunch, and saw all we needed to see which included: the Parthenon, Old Temple of Athena, Erechtheum, Propylaea, Temple of Athena Nike, Eleusinion, Herodes Atticus, Stoa of Eumenes, Theatre of Dionysus, and Odeon of Pericles. Among a lot of other things that I just can't remember...goodness
We only got to spend a little over an hour there because they closed at 6:30, but we made the best of it.
After that the New Acropolis Museum is right across the street from the Acropolis ruins, so we had to spend a few hours there! What made all of this so much better was the fact that BOTH of these trips were free. We saved about 17 euro total on our little excursion. I'm not complaining. I enjoyed the museum because I read up a lot about it when I wrote a reserach paper on the Elgin Marbles :] so I felt like I actually knew something about what I was looking at.
We then took a little 3 euro train ride (a dinky little blue and white train that cruised through the town...slowlyyy) through the more historical parts of Athens, which included the Plaka neighborhood, the acropolis remains, and we saw the Temple of Olympian Zeus, and Hadrian's Arch.
We hopped off once we realized it wasn't exactly what we thought it was going to be and wander through the Plaka neighborhood for the remainder of the night. We had some greek dinner of course! I had a greek salad (I was nervous about flying in the morning) and Carolyn and Catherine had gyros. We then wandered throughout Plaka some more, picked out some souvenirs, and of course I ran into a little place that had endless amounts of baklava in so many different flavors. It was the best baklava I had allll weekend :]
We then took a "nap", slept for 3 hours. and started our journey to Mykonos. Woke up at 2:30, was out and walking to the bus by 3 am. A dog followed us from the hostel to the bus stop (about 10 minutes), which was creepy but comforting at the same time. Carolyn believed it to be good luck, so I took her word on it. The dog was actually rather sweet, and crossed the road before us and then began to bark once we were on the bus because I'm assuming he was sad we left him. Haha.
The plane ride to Mykonos was a breeze, only 30 minutes, and not a pedal jumper plane like I assumed. Ahh I was feeling good.
We take a taxi to Mama's Pension (our hostel) around 6 AM, and realized once we got there that NO one was awake, and we had no phones to call anybody let alone had no clue which door was the owners to wake them up and ask for a room key. I made the mistake of knocking on a door which I thought (based on context clues/my silly assumptions) was the owners...mmm...it wasn't. I woke up a very frightened older couple, which spoke no english and told me "up, up!" not sure...possibly where the owner's room was? With no luck, we opened a door, saw a couch and warmth (it was absolutely freezing outside) so we slept on that couch for about an hour. Haha. When the sun came up, I found the appropriate green door, and got us a room from the very sweet lady named Christina, who ended up being a savior for us throughout our stay. We slept in too late (11:30 am!) because we missed our alarm, but we made the best of our day in Mykonos!
We visited Little Venice and the famous windmills first. A very rude man came up to us and decided to explain what he believed to be the appropriate picture taking etiquette. Personally I think he was just an asshole who was trying to ruin three young girls day in Mykonos, but we won't get into that.
We walked through Little Venice, and I saw a sign that said "Waffles" at a restaurant. My eyes lit up immediately. I missed waffles terribly...I needed a waffle. We proceeded to have the best waffles ever, full of ice cream, maple syrup, and just...waffle goodness. Then we continued on and spent the day walking throughout the town of Mykonos. Oh! I'm forgetting the encounter we had with a Pelican that was the size of a 7 year old child. He could've sat down and had waffles with us, and I would've thought nothing of it because it was a damn huge bird. This pelican was just waltzing through the corridor of a street, while we were eating our waffles, when one of the waiters at the restaurant picked the child of a bird up and threw it into the water. You had to see it, but it definitely was a sight.
After our "brunch" we just wandered throughout Mykonos, found some churches, souvenir shops, and just various little sights that we enjoyed.
We wanted to go to a beach, so we took a taxi to one that Catherine said was beautiful (I can't remember the name of it...so sorry) but once we got there we immediately laid down on lawn chairs that faced the water, and then took like a 30 minute nap haha. After that I decided I was craving hot chocolate, which immediately sparked an interest in Carolyn and Catherine. We had hot chocolate and baklava at a waterfront restaurant as a pre dinner snack haha.
Took a taxi back home to Mama's pension, and then had dinner at a local greek restaurant.
Unfortunately, Catherine and Carolyn got food poisoning from there, which ended up being quite the Sunday trip home...two girls with food poisoning having to take multiple plane rides home is never a good thing. But they made it through, and were happy to be home. I went with Carolyn to a greek hospital, which was definitely a step up from other foreign hospital experiences I've had (erm, Nigeria for example), but it wasn't the greatest either lol. They had mercury thermometers (old school). And it just...wasn't like health care back home.
I'm impressed by how short I made this post, but I'm tired of blogging and I have homework I need to do.
Ciao,
Kate
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