the world as i know it.

There is no other word to describe Greece except..unreal. I didn’t even know such a place existed. I think other people had much different experiences than I did, depending on what you did, but I would definitely describe Greece as the craziest place I have ever been, ever. More on that later..

When we first got to Greece, we arrived in a port called Piraeus, which is like six miles outside of Athens. Athens is ugly, to say the least. It looked very similar to Naples (gross, sketchy, trashy, etc)…but the good news is I spent less than 24 hours there haha. Since we were there we obviously had to do the main sights so we went to the Acropolis. There’s not much to do..you kind of just stand there and stare. It was also 106 degrees that day and people were just passing out everywhere from heat so it wasn’t very pleasant. It was neat to see something that I’ve been hearing about in all kinds of Greek mythology for years. You can see the Acropolis from pretty much anywhere in Athens because it’s on top of a huge mountain. We also went to see the other important buildings in Athens (whose names I cannot remember because I’m convinced heat stroke erased my memory), but I do know one of them was the Parliament building because there were people demonstrating against it in front (scary…I’m assuming that’s what they’re always talking about on the news) and we took pictures with the guards that aren’t allowed to move. It was fun until someone “sexually harassed” the guards and someone else kicked a pigeon and then we got kicked out. It was fun while it lasted. We also went to the Olympic stadium from the 2004 Olympics. I think I’ve seen more Olympic stadiums on this trip than I’m ever going to see in the rest of my entire life. We ate amazing, amazing, amazing Greek food. I’m partial to Italian, but I think Greek may have stolen my heart. Just the Greek salads were great everywhere we went. They serve feta on top of the salad in a block. You know it’s fresh when you have to crumble it yourself. It was delicious. Then we ate a bunch of other traditional Greek food and tried not to eat anything that was less than the best. We had mousaka, all sorts of kebabs, lamb baked in a clay pot, and lots of bread with oil and vinegar. Yummmm. I am going to miss it so so so much. The good news is…Turkish food is very similar (totally learned that today). Thennn we went to bed pretty early because we had to catch our ferry to Mykonos at 5am. Nothing is fun that early in the morning.

Mykonos is known as the party island of the Greek isles (apparently no one has discovered Ios yet because they have another thing comin’), but it s also the gay island of the Greek isles. That was interesting. Lots of gay activity in this country…totally not expecting that. Mykonos was the picture perfect Greece that you see in movies and much different than Athens. The ferry ride was about 5 hours to get there (who knew the islands were so far apart? I was under the impression they were like a quick boat ride apart, but definitely not) and then we checked into this gorgeous hotel called Petinaros and it was more like condos. I took a picture of the pool because it was so pretty as soon as I got there, not thinking, and all these women started freaking out because little did I know I was taking pictures of topless women sitting around the pool as well. Oops.  I still haven’t gotten used to this whole nudity everywhere thing. Then we got to the beach as fast as we possibly could. There were like a million to choose from so it was tough but we went with Platis Gialos. And I’m glad we did. It was absolutely breathtaking. The water was crystal clear, white sands, white hotels, it was just perfect. We posted up there and ate more delicious food and frolicked in the water for the whole day. Once we got to the hotel we passed out for a few hours (the normal sleeping hours in Greece are like 8pm-12am) and then went to dinner at midnight. So strange. The little town of Mykonos was toooo cute and they’re also known for their windmills so we got to see those lit up at night too. There are only 30 cabs on the entire island of Mykonos so trying to find one was pretty much a lost cause. Sooooo..we hitchhiked. I didn’t think I would ever participate in such an activity buuuut it was successful and we survived and I’m alive to tell about it so that’s all that matters. Never again. We went to Paradise Beach Club for the night, which was really beautiful and fun, but we had to get up early yet again to head to Ios in the morning.

The ferry ride to Ios was scarier than any roller coaster I have ever encountered. And I love roller coasters. They called this ferry the “FlyingCat” for a reason. It is literally a flying cat. 8am is normally a time I would be sleeping on a boat, but no sleeping could happen on here. Half the time the boat was like tipped over on one side going at least 100 mph and there was stuff flying all over the boat everywhere. The Greeks didn’t seem to mind…everyone else thought they were going to die, including me. It was just the roughest, craziest ride of life. Thank god I did not inherit any sort of motion sickness. 95% of the ferry was puking their brains out into bags..including our friends. It was disgusting. There were specific people that were strapped into harnesses on the wall that were designated to literally float around and hand out barf bags. That went on for about two hours before we were on land again ahhhh. We decided to wing it and not book any sort of accommodations so as soon as we got there we had to find somewhere to stay. Luckily, that is the cool thing to do because there were just lines of people everywhere trying to get you to stay at their house. Creepy, kind of. We decided to stay at Popi’s Place (sounded safe at the time) and it actually ended up being really nice. It overlooked the beach and a bunch of donkeys..fine with me. We then, of course, got to the beach as soon as possible. Ios is the rager’s dreamland. Not only does the entire island only consist of nightclubs and bars, but there are also daytime clubs. The people here do not sleep. There was even a club called “Why Sleep?” That pretty much sums up the whole island. I slept on a lounge chair all day. I like to sleep. Mylopotas beach was fun, the town itself seemed to be abandoned. Later that night we decided to attempt to go to a nice dinner. It was almost impossible to find a restaurant because..like I said..nothing but clubs and bars. Once night hit (night meaning like 2am), the town is no longer abandoned and thousands of people come out from like caves or something… and the streets are so packed you cannot move. There is literally not a soul over the age of 25 on the entire island. Every single club and bar is jam packed. There were hardly any Americans (my theory is that there weren’t any because there aren’t many Americans that could party this hard) and it was all Aussies and Europeans. Everything is dirt cheap, which explains why there were people passed out in the middle of streets everywhere. It was a fun time to say the least; I don’t think I could spend more than 24 hours there. I’m still trying to process the whole experience because I still am convinced it was a dream. Oh, they also have these things called unisex clubs (Sweet Irish Dream), which we were not aware of. So all the boys dress as girls and all the girls dress as boys. They do not mess around. It was very disturbing and confusing and we ended up in one of these and laughed and then got out as quickly as possible. The people that are most into these kinds of clubs are Slovenians…hmm. Jess has pictures. I’ll try to get them from her because it was quite a sight. And that was my first and last experience with Ios.

Once we got back to home sweet home, MV Explorer in Athens, we decided to go to the Plaka, which is the main shopping district. It was all touristy shops, but it was still neat to see and I got to get presents for my favorites :) We found the first Starbucks in weeks and I have never been happier ahhhh. I’ve missed my Starbucks. Turkey has them too, thank god. At midnight it was Jess’ 21^st birthday and as tired as we all were, we obviously had to go out and celebrate. We somehow found this street called Gazi, which is not only the gay district of Athens, but also the most fun. There weren’t any tourists at all, except us, and we just got to meet and hang out with locals all night and it was really fun. She doesn’t remember, but she had fun too.

Today is Turkey day on the boat, so pretty much an excuse to not have class and watch movies about Turkey and listen to different seminars. I need to write a paper about the Holocaust…but instead I am writing this. I should probably do that. Life is too much fun to be writing papers right now. I’m getting super, super excited for Turkey, definitely was not at first, but now that I know more about it, I’m looking forward to it! And I can’t wait to download the Bachelorette tomorrow…ahhhh.

My opinion on the Bachelorette: Chris is my favorite, but I think Roberto will win. But that’s okay because I still like him a lot too. Frank is a douchebag and needs to get out of there asap, I don’t know why he’s still even around. Ty comes back?!? Very confused about that one. And that is all. I love that show so much.

Nooooow off to get the Seven Seas massage with Jess for her birthday…of course I so graciously volunteered to do it with her. 80 minutes of bliss comin’ up…

I miss Maxi :( oh, and the other members of my family, I guess .. xoxo