Santorini Day 2

Hey everyone! This morning we woke up around 10am to check out of our hostel by 10:30. The hostel was really nice and it was one of my favorites; nice room and just in a peaceful area. We left the hostel for the beach on the far side of the island. We spent about an hour or so there just laying on the beach soaking up the rays. Around lunchtime, we decided to head over to the beach closer to the main city back on the other side of the mountain. This beach seemed to have more activity and a majority of the good restaurants. We ate lunch at a restaurant called “Tavern Poseidon” which was pretty good. The rest of the afternoon we just hung out on the beach. I got sunburned (of course) although it doesn’t hurt just yet. The beach was more crowded then the day before and we saw people cliff jumping off a small bluff near the mountain which reminded me of Kanakuk and the bluff jumping we did there.

Around 6:30pm we headed back to town where we returned our ATV’s and ate dinner at a pizzeria with two people we had met in Athens the day before from New Zealand. After dinner we headed back to the hostel, and the owner drove us out to the pier around 9pm for our 2am ferry. He offered to take us later in the evening, but we didn’t want to be rude and have him make another trip just for us, so we went ahead and went down to the pier early. It was a long 5 hour wait for our ferry to say the least. We hopped between two different restaurants and just sat around listening to music and playing cards. For this ferry, we had a sleeping compartment which was real nice since I was pretty tired. We had two cabins, a three person, and a two person. Sam and I stayed in the two person, and when we got in the room, I passed out. We got to sleep about 5.5 hours before the Ferry woke everyone up for our arrival. I'll update everyone again shortly!

Jonathan

Santorini

Hey everyone! This morning we woke up early and caught a ferry to one of the Greek Islands known as Santorini. The ferry was really nice and actually pretty cool. It was much larger than most of us expected and it seemed to be moving pretty nicely. Even still, it took us 5 hours to reach the island. We got to the island port and saw very large cliffs all around us. Santorini is shaped like a giant crescent with beautiful cliffs all around. We had called the hostel ahead of time and so they picked us up when we arrived at port. To get to the main part of the city, we had to weave our way up these very steep cliffs which gave us quite a view. We checked into our hostel, which is really nice. We were split up into a two and a three, Sam and I in the two, and the other guys in the three.

Once we put our stuff away, we headed to rent ATV’s to explore the island with. It seems like the thing to do on the island and a lot of tourists either rent 4x4’s or Moped Scooters which you find everywhere in Europe. The locals suggested we take the 4x4’s though because they were safer and tourists have been hurt taking the sharp curves near the cliffs to fast and dying; so we avoided the Mopeds to say the least. We ended up paying 25 Euro for a two day rental which I didn’t think was bad at all. I really enjoyed riding them around the island; I had never ridden one before. They weren’t hard at all to pick up and pretty soon we were cruising all over the island. We ended up taking them to several different beaches and really across the entire island. We had lunch at the “Black beach” and then laid out in the sun getting our tan on (or burn) for about an hour. We then headed over the middle of the island and took a few pictures off the side of one of the cliffs and took some pictures of the “Red beach”. These beaches aren’t as nice as I would say Florida, Cancun, Hawaii, or other places in the Caribbean, but they definitely don’t have the picturesque cliff views that the Greek Islands have. After checking out a third beach, we came back to the hostel for a few minutes and headed off to another part of the island to watch the sunset. This area was beautiful and is pretty popular to watch the sunset. Most of the tourists on the island seemed to be in this area and we got a pretty good view by jumping on one of the rooftops.

Tomorrow is our last day of free travel before we head to Strasbourg. We have a 2am ferry that will take us back to Athens and then we fly from Athens to Frankfurt at 10:30.

Jonathan

Athens

Hey everyone! This morning we got up at 4:30 to catch our 4:45 shuttle to the airport on the outskirts of Rome. I didn’t sleep that good because I slept on the couch which was not nearly long enough for me; but oh well. We didn’t have any trouble making our flight, but of course I again had to check my bag at the gate because it wouldn’t fit in their luggage bin outside the gate. Those things are so much smaller than the actual overhead bins on the plane, it’s frustrating, and so I paid the 50 Euro to check my bag. We arrived in Athens at 9:40 local time, one hour ahead of Rome time. We stepped off the plane and immediately recognized the language barrier. The airport provided both Greek and English, but once we left the airport, it was all Greek. We took a 50 minute train ride on their subway to the downtown area from what I gather and walked around the streets looking for our hostel. It took us about 15 minutes to find our hostel even though it was a street over from where we got off the subway. We tend to ask the policeman directions a lot for directions and usually they are helpful. One policeman directed us in the wrong direction, but then another was really precise and got us to the hostel. We left our luggage at hostel since we were way earlier then our check-in, so we left for lunch. We ate a Greek restaurant, I wasn’t too fond of. I got some sort of chicken and it was alright. It was hard leaving the comfort of Italian food, especially because it was so good.

After lunch we ran back to the hostel, because I forgot my camera, and then we headed up to the Acropolis where the Parthenon was. It was quite a hike up to the top, but there was a beautiful view from the Mars Rock and the top of the Acropolis. We spent about an hour and half at the top, taking pictures and enjoying the view. The Parthenon was under some sort of restoration project and you could tell where they had rebuilt part of it because the rock was a brighter white then the ancient stones. After leaving, we discovered that there wasn’t much else to do in Athens. I always figured there would be a bunch of history like Rome, but apparently there isn’t nearly as much to do. You could spend half a day here and see all that you need to see. I also heard from some students staying at the hostile about Athens being a bad city to be out late in. I heard about people getting mugged outside the hostels in the bad part of town (thankfully we are in the good part). I also noticed graffiti most everywhere. Graffiti is present in most every town we’ve been in, but especially Athens. Every street you walk down, graffiti is on the walls of the street. I also noticed a very large police presence while walking around. Tonight after we had dinner at the Hard Rock (which was really nice, partially because we got free refills and a full stomachJ) we saw police in groups of probably 10-15 at a time. Some had riot shield like we had seen in Madrid and all had body armor on. They weren’t necessarily doing anything, but monitoring the streets. I guess this is common and just it’s really not a good idea to be out late in Athens.

We leave tomorrow at 7am for our ferry which will take us out to the Greek island of Santorini which I’ve heard is supposed to be beautiful. I’m looking forward to it, and the beach. It should be a good last two days of relaxation before we head to Strasbourg and start our study abroad. Hope the Mavs win tonight, or should I say at 5:30 tomorrow morning (for me) when they play. Update everyone again tomorrow.

Jonathan

Rome Day 3

Hey everyone! Today was a pretty relaxed day. We had to check out of the Yellow by 10am so we got up around 9:30 repacked our bags, and headed downstairs to the bar area. We were on wifi for awhile in the bar, and left around 11am. We took the subway over near the Spanish Steps and walked around all the high end shopping stores. They had pretty much every high end brand I have ever heard of on one street and I’m sure you could spend a few thousand Euros no sweat on this street. We grabbed lunch at a restaurant not too far from the Trinity Fountain, and headed back to the Yellow to get our bags, which we had stored for the afternoon. It was only about 2pm, but took a taxi out to our hotel on the outskirts of Rome which is close to the airport for our 6:40am flight tomorrow. We had seen most of the sights we wanted to, all except St. Peters Basilica where there was a super long line (the other guys didn’t want to go back and see it). So we took a 30-40 minute taxi towards the outside of the city which ended up being 67 Euro but we had previously asked if 50 Euro trip was good and the cab driver agreed. So today turned out to be a setup day for the next few days, most of the guys were tired from the activities from last night (1 got sick, and the other 3 got back at 4am) so we ended up not really doing anything. We got here to our hotel and our room is bigger than any of our other rooms, I’m assuming that’s because this is a hotel and not a hostel and the rate is 180 Euro a night. But it makes sense, because we have to wake up at 4:15 for our 6:40am flight. Our room is also for only 4 people so we have to sneak in the room in small groups since we have 5 people. I found out that if the keycard is not in its slot in the wall, all of our power doesn’t work; so that’s interesting. And sense some of the guys are out getting dinner, we have no power.

But I’m really looking forward to Athens tomorrow and getting back into sightseeing probably for the last big day of it. We have Athens tomorrow, then spending two days in San Torini (a Greek island) for two days, and then to Strasbourg to start my 5 week program at with A&M. These past 11 days have been really good and I enjoy all the sightseeing. It definitely takes a toll on the body though and days like today are good to separate all the travel and stress (if you can call it that) of fitting all the sites into the amount of time you have. I think we’ve done a pretty nice job of seeing all the sites at each city, and we haven’t really missed anything I wanted to see. I believe we get into Athens tomorrow around 9:30 so it should be a full day. I’m going to bed shortly and will update everyone once I get wifi again.

Jonathan

Rome Day 2

Hey everyone! We started our day today around 10am by heading over to the Vatican. Grant’s brother had suggested we get reserved tickets so that we could bypass the line, and when we got there that was such a nice thing to have. There was a really, really long line for tickets into the Vatican but having reserved tickets, we got to bypass the 1-2 hour wait in line. When we got there, we were bombarded by the people selling tours, which got really annoying, because we already had tickets. Every few minutes someone would come up to us asking and of course we kept saying no. We got into the Vatican and we followed the order of rooms of the listening guide Grant, Sam and Austin bought. I didn’t care to listen to the guide and afterwards they said it probably wasn’t worth the 7 Euro price. The Vatican museum had a lot of statues to view and a bunch of artwork. I tried taking pictures of the nicer things, but you could seriously take thousands of pictures in there. A lot of the statues are only partial fragments from being destroyed throughout the years. I think my favorite part, and most everyone’s favorite part of the Vatican was the Sistine Chapel, just because of the notoriety and that of Michelangelo. It was really impressive how intricate the paintings were and I recognized a few of the paintings on the ceiling. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, but most everyone snuck a few pictures; I got a few pictures myself although they aren’t that great. After leaving the museum, we walked out and saw St. Peters Basilica and the big court yard in front of the Vatican. We didn’t get to view the inside because the line was so long and we didn’t want to wait, but I think we may try to go back tomorrow.

After ate lunch in the cafeteria at the Vatican we headed back to the Yellow, to rest. Some of the guys were tired so we relaxed till about 6pm. I took a 2 hour napped and listened to my iPod for awhile. At 6pm, we headed out to Circus Maximus which used to be a huge track-like stadium where they held ancient competitions. I was a little bummed when we got there though, because you could only tell the shape from what used to be the stadium. The area was overcome with grass and you could just make out the gravel track, which used to be nicer I’m sure. I heard somewhere this place used to hold up to 120,000 which seems really impressive for the time. After that we viewed the Roman Forum, which is basically just a bunch of Romans. I think it was a real big area back during the height of Rome. But after that we just walked around for awhile. We ate dinner down a side street of the Trinity Fountain. After that, we met up with Trey and Amy from their two week trip over here. We were supposed to meet them at 9:30 on the Spanish steps but we ended up running into them about 9:10 on the way there. We hung out on the steps till about 10:30 when they had to go back to their hotel somewhere on the outside of town. It was really good seeing Trey and Amy and catching up with them. Sam and I ended up taking a taxi back to the Hostel because the metro was closed, and that’s been my day. I think we’ve hit most of the sites in Rome and I think tomorrow will be pretty relaxed. We have a 6:40 flight I think Wednesday morning to Athens so hopefully we make that. Update everyone again tomorrow.

Jonathan