Greece!!!!

Hi Everyone!

Well, it has been a crazy week! It took a 15 hour ferry and a 5 hour train/bus ride but we got to Athens on Wednesday. We met this girl Amanda from Arizona along the way, who was just finishing up her travels and getting ready to head back to Doha, Arabia for school. She is studying Arabic and advised us never to go there lol. We all were heading to the same place, Athens Backpackers, so we buddied up. When we got to the hostel, we immediately fell in with our roommate Matt, and Aussie who is studying law in Graz, Austria. Unfortunately, Amanda had to leave the next day so we headed to the Acropolis (basically our back yard) and got some Gyros (the first of MANY). The Acropolis at night is truly something to see!

Once Amanda left we became a tripod. We stayed in Athens until Friday and explored the city. We had a picnic at the Acropolis (Angela - I have some sand from there for your Mom) and we met up with Jill's friend Alex who lives in Athens with her husband. We also shopped the Plaka and basically got to know every Gyro stand and side street in and around the Acropolis. Anyone who wants to go, just let me know!

On Friday the three of us took a 6 hour ferry to Santorini. I wish I could get photos uploaded because it was absolutely gorgeous!!! We rented quads and explored the island. There was rain, hail and finally sunshine before we got to Oia, which is where you will find all the white and blue houses on the hills that Santorini is known for. I'm not going to lie, driving on the cliffs was hella scary in the dark but getting to see the sunset in Oia was well worth it. The rest of our time in Santorini was filled with wine, gyros and Matt and I getting caught in a down pour.

We stayed in Santorini for 2 days and returned to Athens via ferry on Sunday. Jill managed to leave her daypack in Santorini somewhere but her passport and train pass were on her so all in all it wasn't such a disaster. We stayed in Athens for one more day before leaving for Patras, Greece. We were expecting to take a ferry to Bari, Italy from Patras but there was a ferry strike so we had to go further north on the Italian coast to Ancona, which was 6 hours longer than it took to Bari (21 hours on the ferry total). We finally made it to Roma yesterday though! Today we saw the Trevi Fountain and tomorrow we'll be going to the Coliseum and the Vatican before departing for a no name town in southern Italy where we'll stay on a farm for two days and learn how to cook Italian food, speak some Italian, go horse back riding, tour a cheese-making shop and drink LOTS of vino! I'll do my best to post an update when I get back to Roma after our farm experience!