greece lightning!

"For real though, imagine how it feels
going real slow down the highway of life
with no regrets..."
-In the Heights

Ahh, Greece. This was one of my top two "places to visit", but I never imagined it would work out with the price of plane tickets and the added time it would take to go there. So when we finally decided to add it into our itinerary, I was beyond excited. Greek food, ancient ruins, and a beautiful island. I wasn't disappointed in those respects.

We left for Athens bright and early on Friday morning. And by bright, I mean it was still dark outside. The flight wasn't too long, but with the added time change, we only had time for a quick dinner of gyros that night. The next morning, we headed off to the Acropolis! It's an entire city of ruins, so practically everywhere you look there are ancient pillars and such lying around. The climb up to the top wasn't as bad as it looked, and on the way you pass the Theatre of Dionysus and the Odeon of Herodes Atticus. (I'm stealing these names from wikipedia, don't be impressed that I know them all.) Once we made it to the top, we climbed the steps through the Propylaea, a gateway into the Acropolis. From there it was on to the Parthenon! Also at the top are the Temple of Athena and the Erectheion. Every single one is fantastic looking, though it would be nice if there weren't signs of ongoing restoration all over the Parthenon. Still, they are definitely the coolest ruins I've seen, and the view from the top was gorgeous.



After the Acropolis, we headed down into the city to explore. This area was much more traditional Greece than the area by our hostel, which was overrun with shops. We found the Roman Agora and walked through the ruins, and I played peekaboo with the pillars. There were several dogs lying around (throughout the entire city), and Sara managed to rip her jeans while petting one. Oops! Then we wandered through an enormous marketplace for awhile, and Sara got herself a dress to replace the ripped jeans. We ate lunch outside and I got my souvlaki (yum!), and a nice sunburn on the side.



The next day Sara left for Mykonos, so Kaitlin and I were on our own for another day of wandering. We walked down to a park on the edge of the city, and I saw a young boy pull down his pants in the middle of the park to pee. His mother just handed him his sandwich afterwards so he could continue eating. Oh, Greece. Then we went to the Olympic stadium and walked by the Olympic pool on our way to the Temple of Zeus. This one was especially cool, because you could get pretty close to the temple, and the pillars were huge! And I did an impression of Zeus throwing lightning bolts down at people. Yay Greek mythology! There wasn't too much else to do, so we ended up browsing the marketplace for the third of fourth time. Athens has awesome ruins, but other than that, it's just shops upon shops. So instead of finding something else to do, we found some more Greek food and baklava for desert! Delicious.













The next morning it was an early ferry ride to Mykonos! Our first view of the island was a mess of white houses that looked beautiful. We were met at the port by the woman who ran our hotel (a bit of a nut, but sweet), and she drove us to the other side of town. We got to walk amid the adorable white houses, and it turned out that we got our own terrace on top of a white house! Kaitlin and I spent a lot of time walking through the town down to the water. As it turns out, the white houses may be fantastic to look out, but they form a pretty tricky maze that can prove to be impossible to navigate. The town really does not disappoint though, it is just gorgeous to stand on the beach and look back at it. Luckily we were only a couple of streets in from the windmills on one side of town, so when in doubt, you could always just walk too far and find your way back.











That night, it was Kingston University takes over Mykonos. It turned out that a huge group of us were on the island that night, so some of us met up for dinner. Matt, Laura, Katie, Sara, Kaitlin and I ate down on the port, as not much in town was open. Despite the island being very touristy, it was before tourist season actually hit, so most places were still in the process of getting ready for the summer, and weren't open yet. After a delicious dinner, we met two American girls, Codi and Cailin, who are studying in England as well. Then we were joined by Erica, Lizz, and Shauna, and the entire group of us got a few drinks at another restaurant on the port, and I had more baklava! Again, delicious.


And now we arrive at the day where more things went wrong than any other day of the trip. Ironically, it's probably also my favorite day of break. None of the buses were running to the various beaches around the island, so Kaitlin and I rented an ATV to drive around and see some of them on our own. It was my first time ever on a four wheeler, so we both thought it would be smarter if Kaitlin drove. The guy told us that there was a liter of gas, and gave us directions to the gas station. So we head off, and manage to just miss the turn for the gas station. We turn up another road instead that leads to someone's backyard, where we begin to turn around to go back. What happens? Our engine dies. We're out of gas. Having no other choice, we have to walk to the gas station and find a way to bring some gas back to our poor little ATV. We walk, and walk, and walk. It turns out that the gas station is well over a mile, all up a steep hill. It's probably a good thing we didn't make the turn, because there is zero chance that we could have made it to the gas station on our "one liter", and we would have started rolling backwards on a busy hill. We finally make it there, the guy laughs at us and gives us a liter and a half, and we trek all of the way back to the four wheeler, fill 'er up, and return to the gas station. Now that we're both gross and sweaty, it's time to finally start our adventure! We started out going north and saw plenty of countryside before turning around and going south towards some of the beaches. We weren't so great at the hills at first, so I had to get off and push a few times, but we got better as the day went on. We went to three or four beaches on the south coast of the island before stopping at my favorite one, Elias Beach. It was beautiful with sparkling blue water and pale sand. The perfect place to...break down? Yup, our lovely ATV refused to start. Kaitlin tried over and over, but the engine refused to be kind to us. A Greek man drove in on a motorcycle, and tried to kickstart it, but it was a no go. It was then that we finally named our four wheeler: POS (Piece of Shit). So we called the company and they said someone would come down to help us. After waiting for a long time, a guy drives in on a truck and comes over to us. We explain the problem, and he gets on the four wheeler. First try, it starts. Kaitlin and I stand there feeling like complete idiots as he rides around in a circle. So we apologize for him driving all of the way across the island for nothing, and he gets back in his truck and waits for us to get going again. Of course, we still can't get it to start. This time when he gets out to help us again, he can't get it to work either, and decides there must be an electrical problem. I felt much better that he hadn't driven over for no reason, and he loaded up the ATV and we piled into his truck. Back at the rental place, he got us out a new four wheeler (luckily with plenty of gas in it), and we started out for the second part of our day. This ATV absolutely loved us. It was like a power four wheeler compared to POS, and had no problem flying up the hills that our other one would have died on. We lovingly named him BL (Blue Lightning), and had a wonderful time zipping around to another beach or two and going to grab some lunch. I can't even begin to describe how much fun I had this day. Everywhere you looked it was beautiful landscape; yellow flowers, green grass, white houses, deep blue water in the distance. It was the Greek beauty I'd been hoping for!

In case you couldn't tell, I had a fantastic time in Greece. I would love to return someday and see some of the other Greek islands. Mykonos was beautiful, but it did have a tourist feel to it. I can't blame anyone for wanting to spend some time there though! Anyway, if you made it all of the way through this post, then I'm impressed. Next stop? Italy!

au paris!

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow,
learn as if you were to live forever."
-Mahatma Gandhi

Hello world! I'm back from my extended foray into Mediterranean culture, and once again enjoying Kingston on a surprisingly sunny afternoon. I've actually been home for a few days, but blogging has been pushed off by mechanism writing for the Fischer synthesis of an indole all weekend. (Sounds exciting, hm?) I'm actually supposed to be writing up a lab report for tomorrow, but as the Kingston site isn't currently loading, I have a wonderful excuse to write about a city or two instead! Spring break was absolutely fantastic. I'm sure that I'll never again get the chance to travel for three weeks straight, so I tried to make the best of every moment! It's amazing how long three weeks is though, especially when you're living out of suitcases in hostel after hostel, so it's nice to be in a real bed again. And after only three weeks, I'd already forgotten which way to look for traffic on the roads, and seeing pounds instead of euros threw me for a loop. But now I'm back into the swing of things in England, though the laundry pile I have waiting for me tells me otherwise.

Anyway, since I'm a bit OCD about chronological order, I'm going to reverse in time and post about Paris first. Knowing how terrible my memory is, it won't take too long to post what I remember from this trip. The four of us (Erica, Sara, Kaitlin, and myself) left at some ridiculously early hour on Friday to get to Luton Airport for a 6AM flight. Yeah, we're nuts. We got into Paris mid morning, and after finding our hostel and grabbing some lunch, we headed to Notre Dame Cathedral! Considering its status as one of the most famous cathedrals in the world (even kids know about it thanks to Disney!), it was awesome to walk through the interior, but it was the exterior that I really loved. And it was even more beautiful when it was illuminated at night. The climb to the bell tower was closed when we went, so I had to settle for waving hello to the hunchback instead.

Our next stop? Ms. Eiffel, of course! The walk along the river from Notre Dame to the tower was far longer than we expected, but it gave us a good chance to see some of the beautiful architecture in the city. But really, little else in Paris besides Notre Dame can compete with the beauty of the Eiffel Tower. Seeing it up close is an experience, it's huge! And sitting underneath the tower is another experience, because every two seconds you get someone shaking a huge ring of Eiffel Tower keychains at you saying "one euro, one euro!". It's nuts how many of them were in the small area beneath the tower...clearly that many were not necessary. Or you get women asking if you speak English to read a card about how disastrous their life is and asking for money. Eventually, saying no when they asked if you spoke English didn't even work, so I settled for "no hablo ingles!". For anyone visiting Paris soon, be advised that you're better off admiring the tower from a distance if you want any peace.

That night, Sara and Erica went to see Dita Von Teese, so Kaitlin and I were on our own for the evening. I believe we had crepes at a cafe and dinner at an American restaurant. Yup, we go to France and eat American. Oops.

The next morning, Erica and I had French bread for breakfast, and were beyond excited for it. My baguette certainly met expectations, and was pure deliciousness.

Then it was time to hit up the Louvre! Now, I may not be an art person, but my love for The Da Vinci Code had me almost as excited as the artsy kids for the infamous museum. After a photo shoot in front of the pyramid (the featured picture here is Kaitlin and myself imitating fountains), we headed in. An apology to any art fanatics, but I thought the best part of the museum were some of the ceilings. In truth, I much preferred some of the art in the Prado, but that's a future post. But to be fair, there's a whole lot of Louvre that I didn't cover, so maybe I just didn't get to the right sections. There were a few paintings I really liked, mainly depictions of the crucifixion, and it was cool to see Hammurabi's Code, as it's one of the few things I remember learning about in global history, but even Mona Lisa wasn't very interesting. She's tiny! Thanks to Dan Brown, I was much more interested in the point where the two pyramids touch than I was in Mona. But I'm glad I went, as my mother put it: "It's good to get some culture." Yeah, yeah. I got my culture in for the weekend.



Our next visit was to the Arc de Triomphe. We passed by some interesting street performers on the way, and I think somewhere in here we stopped for lunch and ice-cream. The arch was pretty, but it was another one of those things that looked even better at night lit up. We walked down to a park nearby, and Sara and Erica fed the pigeons and then acted as lawn mowers and threw some grass around. Yeah, we also go to Paris and act like six year olds. =)

The four of us explored the city for awhile, and then headed back towards the Eiffel Tower for dinner. (Doesn't Eiffel look good at sunset? Yum.) Then it was back to the Eiffel Tower to ride up to the top! (Yup, Eiffel looks fantastic at night, too!) While waiting in line, I actually met a graduate of Whitesboro, thanks to the jacket I was wearing. Small world, hm? The view from the top was amazing. Some may call Paris the "City of Love", but I prefer to think of it as the "City of Lights". Everywhere you looked, the city was ablaze with light, and beautiful to see. But I heard there was an engagement while we were up there, so maybe it's the "City of Love" too. Oh yeah, and on the hour, Eiffel even sparkles! I just could not get sick of seeing that every day of my life.


The next morning, Kaitlin and I went to Versailles to see the palace and gardens. The palace itself was overly gaudy and lavish, as expected, but fun to see. Once again, I think I prefer the Palacio Real in Madrid, but that could just be my bias for Spain showing through. The gardens were beautiful, but it was too cold to enjoy them for long, so we weren't outside for more than a few minutes.

I can't for the life of me remember what we did that afternoon, but in the evening, we set out to see more of Paris at night. One of my favorite things to do in a city is see the monuments when they are lit up at night, and Paris certainly was a good place to do just that. We started by walking through the Latin Quarter (on accident, I think), which I wish we had discovered earlier. It was a fantastic block full of all sorts of interesting people and places (including a takeaway crepe place that made me a happy camper), lit up by neon signs for bars and clubs, restaurants and ice-cream places everywhere; it just looked like a fun hangout in general. Then we walked to Notre Dame again, which was quite peaceful. I much preferred it to the bustling crowds of the daytime. We walked back through the Latin Quarter so I could get my chocolate crepe and then hopped on the metro to see the Arc de Triomphe. This time, we actually crossed the street and walked through it, which was definitely worthwhile. Paris just seems to sparkle at night (literally and figuratively). Then after one last wave to Eiffel, it was the end of my weekend trip to Paris.

All in all, Paris was one of my favorite cities to visit, but I think it wins as number one on my list of cities that I would not want to live in. It's beauty, especially at night, trumped any city I'd been to before (though I hadn't seen Venice yet!), but there was just something about it that didn't feel welcoming. Maybe it was because I was American, and we all know that the French despise us. Maybe it was because I was going in with preconceived notions that because I'm not a fan of the French language I wouldn't like Paris. Either way, Paris was worth a visit, but I wouldn't want to return too soon. (I know that's heartbreaking for some of you Paris fanatics.)

But then again, they DO have crepes...