En Grèce!

Hey guys! I am made of fail, I know, but here's part 2 of the Spring Break series, entitled "En Grèce" (which means "In Greece" in French)!

We flew out of Frankfurt, Germany to Volos, Greece, and from Volos hopped a bus to Athens. The group parted ways there: Anna, Megan, Nick and Grace went to Skiathos, and Annie, Karen, and I went to Santorini!

It's a 7 hour ferry ride from Athens to the port at Santorini. When I say "ferry" I mean "big freaking cruise ship". I have never been on a boat before and promptly freaked out on the inside. Y'all saw Titanic; don't play games/look at me like I'm crazy. Pretty much if your method of transportation is not a car, I don't trust it.

That's the island of Naxos, as seen from the deck of our boat. Naxos is still a good 2 hours from Santorini, so we had a while to go after this.

On the island we stayed in the touristy town of Perissa at Anny Studios, a really cool/pretty hostel run by an American guy from California.

That's our hostel! There were marble steps in front of our room. It rained one morning. I wore flip flops. Do you know how disastrous that was? I couldn't sit down comfortably for 2 days. It was sad but hilarious (in hindsight).

Fun thing about Perissa: BLACK SAND BEACH. By sand I actually mean "pebble", but WHATEVER.
Welcome to paradise, right? That first day, we got to the hostel, ran to our room, changed into our swimsuits, and promptly fell asleep on the beach for like 4 hours. Words cannot express how black I was when we woke up. Yikes.

A lot of the places on the island were closed because we weren't there during tourist season, but all the restaurants were still up and running. Let me just say: Greece = CHEAP FOOD. I was so happy. A plate that would have cost me €12-14 in Louvain-la-Neuve cost me €7 in Perissa. Thank you, terrible Greek economy! You saved my pocketbook from certain death. Below is a picture of Karen with one such plate.



On the day before we left the island, we went up to Oia and Fira, the two main tourist cities. They're the ones where all the buildings are white with blue circle roofs! SO PRETTY. I'm not even going to talk about it; I'm just going to post pictures.

Fira



Fira is also forever endeared to my heart because I found €20 on the ground there.

The view at Oia







If you can be unhappy in Oia and/or Fira and/or on the general island of Santorini, then you just need to go on ahead and end it. I'm a pretty grouchy person, and even I was like, "SO PRETTY WANT TO STAY FOREVER." Pretty much all the place was missing was a herd of unicorns.

We left the island (sadly) and went back to spend a day on the mainland in Athens! Again, I won't talk: I'll just post pictures.



FUN FACT ABOUT GREECE/ATHENS IN GENERAL: there are random orange/lemon trees EVERYWHERE. They're just on the side of the road, chillin', growing fruit. Don't believe me? I have proof.

See the oranges?

The Acropolis!

The Parthenon! There was a little kid behind me; his dad was trying to explain to him that the Parthenon was very very old, and the kid goes, "...why hasn't it broke yet?" Bahahahahahaha

And here's a picture of the Alps from our plane back to Germany!


Greece is a blast in a glass. I like it!

Updates are going to start picking up. I only have 12 more days left here in Belgium, and there's a lot I want to cover. Check back soon/often for more junk!