4 days in the Peloponnese!

Our trip began early on Saturday November 14th and were were all tired but ready for our adventure to the Peloponnese! We piled onto our bus and realized it was much smaller than our buses from previous excursions so this time most of us had to share a set of two seats with another person instead of getting two seats to ourselves. It wasn't awful by any means it was just not what we had hoped for. We had about a 2 hour drive ahead of us so most of us slept. Our first stop was at the Corinth Canal which divides the Peloponnese from the mainland. It was amazing to see what the Greeks created so long ago. It was a beautiful sunny day so we all stopped and got pictures and had a snack break and off went went to the next site.

The next site on our trip was Corinth. We were all tired of being on the bus and I'm not sure if we were quite ready to listen to Michael lecture and then the distraction came... there were puppies on site! They were so cute! We couldn't stop playing with them! We did our best to listen to the lecture but I'm pretty sure half of us didn't hear a word he said.



Next up for our Saturday sites was Acrocorinth which is this huge fortress atop a hill. There is the temple of Aprodite there and the views were amazing. We had our picnic lunches there and then Betsy, Tabby, Annie and I decided to climb up to the top of the fortress and take pictures and what not. We got a little confused trying to get to the top and I'm pretty sure all of us are out of shape because we were having a rough time getting to the top but we eventually made it! We took tons of pictures and it was a beautiful day so it made it all the better! After we got our fill of picture taking we made it back down to the bus with about 5minutes to spare. We hoped onto the bus and we were off again once more!


The last site we went to see on the Saturday of our trip was Epidaurus. This theatre had the best acoustics of any theatre around the world. We had a few groups perform some scenes that will eventually be performed at the showcase. It was fun to go down and speak from the center of the stage and see how your voice is amplified. After we did that we got a chance to walk around the site and see the temples and what not that are surrounding the theatre. After we were done there we got on the bus and off we went to Nauplia to check into our hotel.

We checked into our hotel which was quite nice and I was again lucky enough to get paired up with Jessie once again for our hotel room! After we got settled some of us got ready and went with Vassia to a wine tasting. It was only 6 euros and we got to try 6 wines, raki, and ouzo! It was great! The man who led the wine tasting was extremely nice and he taught us a lot about the wines! After we had the wine tasting a couple of us girls got gelato and headed back to the hotel. Betsy and I decided to have some wine back at the room so we had a good time and I was even able to skype a friend from home which was nice! :)

Sunday morning we were up bright and early and off to our first site for the day, Nemea. And we were happy to see yet again there were adorable puppies at this site!! The white puppy was such a cuddly puppy! He just wanted everyone to love him! The furry golden puppy was rambunctious and just wanted to play! The site was cool but we were definitely more focused on the puppies than listening to Michael once again. We told Michael if he just held a puppy while he talked we might pay more attention!


Next we were onto Mycenae! Mycenae was really interesting! It was rough walking all the way up to the top trying to keep up with Michael AKA Silver Fox but we made it! And he taught us all about the tholos tombs and many other features of the site.

We again were off on the bus for a long ride to Adritsena. This was a very small town in the mountains so we had to drive up this winding road forever... some people felt sick but we made it alright. By the time we got there it was dark. We got off the bus and Vassia named me and 5 other girls (Betsy, Jessie, Hana, Whitney and Lisa) and told us to go with this man and she would come get us later... We were so confused... We thought it was the beginning to a scary movie... The man was really nice but he put all of our stuff in his car and had Whitney get in with him then the rest of us followed and we had no idea where we were going we walked down this dark road and finally came upon this house and he took us in... come find out this house was absolutely beautiful! We got so lucky! It was 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, fireplace, deck! It was amazing! He brought us snacks and even raki! It was great! We started a fire and then Vassia came to explain everything. We ended up spending the whole evening playing drinking games and sitting by the fire listening to greek music! Zach even joined us and we asked him at one point if he had any nicknames and he told us... Zachary Daiquiri like from the DARE cartoon... HAHA we all died laughing but he said we could call him that! And Betsy and I took pictures as Trogdor and Dino! It was a really fun night! Jessie and I shared one of the queen beds and apparently at one point during the night I was literally cuddling her... haha but she didn't move... she liked it! ;-)




Up and out the next morning we had to haul all of our stuff all the way up to the hotel that the rest of the group was staying at and let me tell you it was a HIKE! We were sweating by the time we finally reached breakfast... but it was a beautiful morning and we were more than full by the end of breakfast! After breakfast we went to the Vasses where the Temple of Apollo is. It is actually inside a giant tent to keep it in good condition. We took lots of pictures including some "senior photo" pictures... with the trees and bushes and what not. It was fun! But yet again we were off and onto the bus!



We spent a couple hours on the bus and ended up in Olympia where we would spend our last night. We got there and checked into our hotel which was nice but we missed our party house in Adrisena! We had some free time so most of us got on the internet to keep in touch with everyone back home! Later on in the day we went to the Olympia archeological site. It was definitely my favorite of all the sites! We got to see the stadium where we ran across just like the athletes did way back when! Although I told the other girls I wasn't going to run... just jog and they agreed to do the same... but when it came down to actually running they took off and I was left in the dust... haha it was fun though! After seeing the site we were once again free until dinner. We had our group dinner that night at Cafe of Dionysus. It was good food and we had a lot of fun hanging out together as a big group.








The next morning we got up and off we went to the Olympia museum. We first went to the archeological museum which was pretty cool. We saw these pediment statues from the temple of zeus which have extremely interesting stories behind them. One of which is the chariot race is thought to be the beginning of the Olympic games.
Next we went to the museum of the Olympic games which was really cool! It was made just before the Olympics in 2004. Everything that you could read was in 4 languages! And there were lots of artifacts from the original Olympic games way back in the day! Below are a couple of statues showing wrestling and throwing.

Finally our trip was coming to an end! I was very sad to leave... this was by far my favorite trip! We got to have lunch and walk around before we left but then we were back on the road for what we thought would be a 4 hour bus ride... but we hadn't realized it was a holiday in Greece and there was MASSIVE traffic so the bus ride ended up taking close to 6 hours! we were going crazy by the end! but I did get some paper writing done and had a good time hanging out with everyone on the bus but I was more than ready to get off that bus by the time we arrived home! All in all it was an amazing trip! Wish we could have spent more time in the Peloponnese!!!

Parliament

Just a few pictures from our field trip to Parliament. We had a great tour guide and learned a lot but I wont go into any details. Except for the fact that the Parliament actually used to be the mansion for where the old king lived so it was interesting to know that the icon for what used to be the King is now were democracy takes place.

Weekend in Santorini!

I spent the weekend of November 7th-8th on the island of Santorini. It is the iconic image of Greece, when you think of Greece this is the island you most likely think of. It is unlike any other island and it is also where Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was filmed. It is an 8 hour ferry ride from the port of Piraeus, which the port is about a 30-40min Metro ride from Syntagma which is about a 30min walk from our apartments. So it was quite the travel adventure for only about 24 hours on the island. I got up around 4am, got ready and off we went. Finally arriving at the port we got on our ferry and looked for seats. We found these "airplane" seats that we thought were free for anyone to sit in so we made our selves comfortable and tried to get some sleep. About an hour into our ferry ride a ferry worker nudged Betsy and asked her to show him a ticket so she woke me up as well and we showed him our tickets and he told us we had to pay more to sit in those seats... it was only 4 Euro more but on top of what we had already spent we weren't sure if that's what we wanted to do. For some reason the worker didn't wake up all of us only Betsy, Hana and I so the three of us walked around looking for a place to sit Betsy and I settled on a table with two chairs and Hana found a place just down the way from us. We did our best to sleep for a few hours but it wasn't working out very well. We had about 3 stops before we reached Santorini and at each stop people got off so we eventually got a bigger table with a bit better seats and tried to get some more sleep. Again didn't work out very well but we did our best. As we were approaching Santorini we went out and took a few pictures including the wind blown one from below! We were very happy to finally arrive in Santorini and be able to get off that ferry.


After we got off the ferry we knew there was a bus we could take up to the town because there is no way you could walk. We found the bus and hopped on! It took us up this step hill that curved back and forth. We finally made it to Thira and went looking for our hotel. We wandered for a while looking for it and eventually a man saw us and said something in Greek and he eventually showed us where to go. The hotel was nice we were split in two rooms. Betsy and I in one and Ro, Hana, and Whitney in the other. After we changed and whatnot we all decided to head to Oia to try and get pictures of the sunset. We went back to the bus stop and unfortunately found out we had missed the bus by 15min and another wouldn't be coming for over an hour which would mean we would miss the sunset. We ended up deciding to take a taxi. We all jumped in and told our taxi driver to race to Oia before we missed the sunset. He was great! He drove super fast and we were snapping pictures out the window of the sunset as we went. He got us there just in time to catch about the last 15min of the amazing sunset! This is the place where the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was filmed! It was absolutely gorgeous! I am so glad we made it for sunset! It was my favorite part of the weekend! We pretty much ran around and took a ton of pictures a few of which are shown below. After we gathered up again we realized we had about 30min until the next bus came but it was too dark to take more pictures so we just got a couple beers and sat around and chatted until the bus came and once we were back on the bus on the way back to Thira we decided we would grab dinner once we got back. We found this cute little cafe and had yummy food! After which Betsy and I got some wine and headed back to the room where we proceeded to have a power hour. It was a pretty relaxed night.








Betsy and I planned the next morning to wake up and get on our way to go see a black beach and then we would try and ride donkeys afterward... but when we woke up all we could hear was rain pouring down and we decided to sleep in a bit longer and hope that the rain would die off. The other 3 girls were supposed to be on a ferry at 7:30am but later when we finally woke up found out that they had mistaken their ferry time and they were actually on the 3:30pm ferry with us. Betsy and I at this point decided to get ready and go to the black beach of Kamari and just skip the donkey ride because the entire place was soaked from rain anyway although luckily it had stopped raining. We grabbed our spaghetti leftovers from the night before and off we went on the bus to the beach. Once we arrived there it was honestly not that exciting it was just black rocks and a deserted town... I was a bit disappointed but we took some pictures and then decided to see if we could find something to drink to go with our food. We found a little mart and bought sodas and sad down to our spaghetti.... We opened it to find our spaghetti and frozen in the hotel fridge and we couldn't eat it! We were so hungry at this point and it was so sad... we just sat at the bus stop and couldn't eat our spaghetti... awful! We eventually got something to eat from the mart and then got back on the bus to head to the ferry.







We got down to the port and got back on the ferry for another 8 hour ferry ride. This one was much worse as we were unable to sleep but I did get an entire paper written for school! It was a long long long ride... thought it would never end and we were completely exhausted by the end of the day. After the ferry got on the metro, took the bus, and finally got into our apartments and I quickly fell asleep after a long weekend of travel.