I miss college. I think I’m generally happier now that I’m
out of college because I have much more control over my life, but
there are some aspects to college were awesome. The main one was how you could
always count on getting 1-2 weeks off between semesters. I wish work was broken
up into semesters with week-long breaks between each one – that would be
incredible. Anyway, while I was in college and didn’t have to worry about only
having two weeks of vacation, Zach, myself, and two friends decided to book a
last minute trip to Greece and Turkey during the break between Spring and
Summer semesters. My friend Eden had been looking at flights and noticed that a
flight into Athens and out of Istanbul was only $600. We booked the tickets
about 2-3 weeks before the trip, then we got distracted by finals, and then it was
time to pack and go.
We didn’t have much time to plan much for the trip since we
booked it during finals time and everyone was busy, but we did manage to
reserve some hotels for our time there and come up with a general plan: go to
Greece, island hop over into Turkey, make our way up to Istanbul, then fly out.
The flight to Athens went smoothly, and we spent that night
enjoying great food and wine. The next day we spent touring the ruins and
taking pleasure in how empty the city was. It was the middle of May, so the
busy tourism season hadn’t started yet. Outside of the ruins Athens was pretty
lame – all of the buildings looked cheap and run-down and were scattered around
in no particular order – but the people were great. They were all very laid
back, kind, and generous.
A few dogs joined our group throughout the day. This is the first dog we met, we named him Zeus.
Me, Kate, and Eden with the Parthenon
This is the second dog we befriended, we named him Zeus too.
The next day we started the island hopping part of our trip.
Our first stop was Mykonos. We had booked a hotel online but never made plans
to get to the hotel once on the island since we assumed the island was small
and we’d find a way. Luckily when we arrived someone from the hotel was
waiting to drive us to our destination. This further cemented in our
minds how nice and accommodating Greek people are.
Mykonos was beautiful. When you see Greece portrayed in
movies as a coastline filled with white houses with blue roofs and gorgeous
beaches – you are probably seeing Mykonos. I was surprised to see people all
over the place putting fresh coats of white paint on their buildings (I guess
repainting is easier than cleaning?). Anyway, our hotel was right on the beach so we
spent the next two days lounging on the beach, drinking wine, visiting town,
and eating all of our meals at the same restaurant where we had made a friend
who gave us free dessert.
We were so impressed to find a car service waiting for us upon arrival. How did they know when we were going to get in?
Beautiful beach.
Beautiful coastline.
Drinking wine on the beach out of plastic cups - super classy.
Here's the free dessert I told you about.
The relaxing portion of our trip ended abruptly. I
mentioned earlier that we hadn’t really planned out our trip besides booking
hotels in Athens, Mykonos, and Istanbul. While we were in Mykonos, Zach got
online and realized that there’s really only one way to island hop into Turkey
from Mykonos, and that one path started with a boat that left at midnight on
our last night in Mykonos. Unfortunately by the time he realized this he had
about 30 minutes to get into town to pick up our boat tickets before the office
closed for the weekend and we missed our chance of getting to Turkey on time.
Luckily Zach was able to get our tickets,
and we boarded our midnight boat to the next stop - Lesbos.
The midnight boat was pretty fun, but unfortunately none of
us slept very well on the 6 hour ride to our next island. In Lesbos we bought
tickets to Turkey and just waited a few hours for the boat to leave. Lesbos
wasn’t as nice as Mykonos, so we just hung out at a McDonalds until our boat
left – lame, I know.
Our midnight cruise ship.
We're about to take shots on the deck of the midnight cruise ship. (Everyone inventing reasons to take shots all of the time is something else that makes college awesome).
I’ll continue next week with the Turkey part of this trip.
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