GREECE!

slowly but surely, I am finding time to write blog entries.  It's going to be tough, though - I have 17 pages left to write IN SPANISH in the next three days! eek.

Here's the account of my time in Greece!

Wednesday:
The first day in Greece was one of the hottest days of my entire life. Karyn, Megan and I went on a tour of Athens and went up onto the Acropolis. I picked the best day of the trip to forget my sunglasses - all the white marble was reflecting like crazy in the sun, and I could barely open my eyes.  All joking aside, though, it was really really cool to see this place in person. The parthenon was awesome!  After walking around for a little, we came down off the hill and got frozen lemonade for like 5 bucks.  It was a total ripoff, but this place knew they had a monopoly of frozen goods right outside the gates, and they were totally taking advantage of it.  I also got a little salami, feta cheese, and tomato sandwich-on-a-roll thing, which was yummy.  After this, we went back to the boat and took showers, which was completely necessary; we were all really really sweaty.  We went out to eat at the first restaurant we found outside of the port - an (you guessed it!) Irish pub called O'Connell's. I was really craving some sort of american food, so I had a tuna melt - quite possibly the most delicious tuna melt of my life.  We also had a bottle of Greek white wine, which was so yummy.  I actually took close up pictures of the bottle so we could be sure to find it again.  For those of you who care, it was called Hλiδα ("Ilida"), a blend of 50% Moschofilero, 40% Chardonnay, and 10% Gewurztraminer.  I don't know what those mean, but it was good.

Thursday:
Thursday I went on a day trip to Delphi, the ancient mountain city where the "Oracle" sat.  When we arrived there, we went around the museum to get a sense of what we would see out in the site, and the museum was great!  It was informative without being boring.  After looking around the museum for about an hour and a half, we went outside to the archeological site.  Because Delphi is built on a hillside, it was a bit of a zig-zagging climb, but it was awesome!  We saw the temple, the amphitheater, the stadium, and all sorts of other cool ruins - not to mention a beautiful view of the valley.  On the way out, I found a stray kitten friend.  I don't know if I've expressed my love for the stray kittens on this blog yet.  I may or may not pick them up :-/  Don't worry (especially lolo), I always purel heavily afterward.  After Delphi, we went to a small little family-owned restaurant in the valley below.  It had floor to ceiling windows almost all the way around the building, and the views of the mountains around were so gorgeous.  The food was awesome too!  They brought us out appetizers like dolmas, spanakopita, fried cheese, and a fried zucchini ball, not to mention the mass amounts of delicious pita and tzatziki sauce.  Then we got a salad, which basically consisted of feta cheese, olives, and a little bit of lettuce.  AKA the salad of my dreams.  New rule for my future household - there will always be a brick of feta cheese at hand.  And tzatziki.  And pita.  Then we got a plate with rice and what I can best describe as a burger patty made out of lamb, which was yummy.  I smothered it in tzatziki, too.  For dessert, I took the flaky pastry option that they called Baklava, but it was pretty different than any baklava i've ever had before.  It was like a roll that had these stringy things inside.  After lunch, we went to a Greek Orthodox Monastery back up in the mountains - it was really interesting to see the similarities/differences between catholicism and greek orthodoxy.  After visiting the monastery, we went back to PIraeus to the ship for dinner.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday (they all kind of mesh together)
Friday morning, Karyn and I woke up early and took the train/subway thingy into Athens to go to the flea market.  We shopped around for a couple hours and got lunch at a little gyro stand, which was obviously delicious.  I love how they put french fries in their gyros over here!  Around noonish, we went back to the ship met up with some of our other friends.  Then we all (Karyn, girl Brett, Ryan, Kati, and I) took a taxi over to the ferry station and hopped on a ferry to go to Aegina (a greek island).  The ferry boat was insanely nice - it had couches and a snack bar and we all spread out and lounged. When we got there, our first order of business was finding a hotel to stay in (we were winging it on the "somewhere to sleep" front) we walked down the road a little bit and got to a row of a couple hotels and walked in one - it was beachfront, pretty nice, and only cost 25 euros a person for the night.  The old man at the desk was also really nice; he would give us huge water bottles out of the fridge for free!  (water bottles have actually been a pretty large expense on this trip - i miss the US and free water with meals).  The rest of Friday and all day Saturday, we just hung around the town: walking around the alleyway shops, laying on the beach, and swimming in the ocean.  At basically every meal, I got some kind of meat and smothered it in tzatziki.  New favorite food, definitely.  At 1930 on Saturday, we took the ferry back to Piraeus and went back to the ship.  We met up with boy Brett and Megan, who had been on other SAS trips, and went back out to eat a really late dinner and go hang out in Athens for the night.  We went to a hole-in-the-wall gyro place in Piraeus on the way to the train station, and it turned out to be the most delicious of all, and the cheapest!  It was around 3 euros for a gyro (btw, "euro" and "gyro" sound the same - it makes for funny conversations).  I tried ouzo for the novelty of it, but I was not too fond of it at all - it tasted like liquid licorice, and I am really averse to licorice.  After dinner, we got on the train into Athens and went to meet up with some people that Brett had met the night before.  They were some traveling guys that basically did nothing else but wander europe with their guitars; they were just chilling and loving life.  Don't worry - it was totally safe and there were TONS of us SASers there.  I'm not stupid enough to hang out with strangers in a foreign country if my friends and I aren't the overwhelming majority.  Anyway, we sat around on this rocky hill near the acropolis and listened to the gypsy guys play music all night.  Literally all night - we stayed there to watch the sunrise.  It was really fun seeing the acropolis lit up in the dark; venus was crazy bright that night, too.  At sunrise, there was this random guy that showed up playing bagpipes, which was interesting.  Sitting on a big rock with a ton of semester at sea kids, watching the sun rise over the acropolis, and listening to a greek bagpipe player.  When the sunrise was over, all the SAS kids split up, most going back to the boat.  Brett and Karyn and I went to an Orthodox cemetery that Karyn had to visit for one of her classes (a really weird requirement, if you ask me).  Then we said goodbye to Athens and went back to the boat to eat breakfast (we got back in time for the ship's breakfast!) and sleep :)