Before I came to Spain this semester I had a pretty good idea of the places I wanted to visit. Many of which I am not going to make it to such as Prague, Munich, or Vienna. One place that I had not even considered traveling to was Greece. When people began to plan what to do for Semana Santa I decided to join a group bound for the ancient country because there was not really much of an alternative. It’s a good thing I did because Greece ended up being probably one of the funnest and most unique trips we’ll take all semester.
To begin the trip we flew in to Athens and arrived at our hostel around 1 am so we did just went to bed and the next day (Thursday) we went down to the port, had a gyro (a cheap, delicious, pita filled with chicken or pork, lettuce, tomatoes, a sauce which I can only say not spell, and French fries) and got on our ferry to Santorini. About 5 to 6 hours later we arrived to the island in the cover of darkness. On Friday, we walked around Fira, the town our hostel was located in and realized the beauty of the island we were on. That night we took a bus to the northern most point to watch the sunset and eat more gyros. That night we went to a club in Fira which had been recommended by several people. Let’s just say were some of the only people there who weren’t speaking broken English and the only one’s not speaking Greek.
On Saturday we rented ATV’s and rode around the whole island visiting 2 beaches which weren’t beaches and the Red beach. After the Red beach we rode down to the Southern most point to see the light house which wasn’t very impressive but the view was totally worth it.
The next day we changed hostels so that we could spend some time closer to the Black sand beach. There’s nothing of great importance to note from theses days except we caught rays during the day and ate at the same pizza place both nights….it was that good.
After 2 days on the Black sand beach we took a ferry to Mykonos. Apparently Mykonos is huge party island during the high season but because we were there in March we relatively had it to ourselves. That day we several of us took a 40 minute hike to the nearest market to purchase inexpensive food and beverages. This was a doozy of a walk because the entire time we were going up and down hills and once we got there we had to turn around a do it again. That night we went in to town for more gyros and to see the city and the following day we returned to Athens. Our flight the next day was in the afternoon so we were able to visit the Acropolis which was the definition of extraordinary.
We arrived back in Sevilla on Thursday at midnight. Although Greece wasn’t as adrenaline filled as possibly lethal Las Fallas, the pure essence of Greece more than complicated (and the Greek isles was a nice fringe benefit). I’m going to make a separate entry for the Semana Santa festivities in Sevilla because they are just too unique to be tagged on the end.
