athenaxosantorini

Hokay so we flew to Athens from Slov and arrived on Monday 6th October... I think. We eventually got to our hostel where the guy who checked us in advised us to go to the Rooftop bar for Happy Hour, because there were €1 beers and it was going to be "F-U-N". So we headed up to the bar to find that it looked out over the Acropolis, which was all crazy lit up and stuff. Truly amazing view.

I know it's been said before but I will say it again - I hate French keyboards they are stupid and illogical and it takes me at least twice as long to type ANYTHING.

Anyway, back to Athens... we quickly acquired a krew at the bar and furiously drank through Happy Hour only to discover that beers outside of Happy Hour were only 50 cents dearer. Our hostel ran a free pub crawl every night so we of course joined that, having paid €12 for the same thing in other places. It was a crazy fun night dominated by a hilarious (in an at not with way) pair of brothers from the UK who did pull-ups on a tree Melty style.

The next day we went to the Acropolis which was beautiful and wonderous in every way. We had great photo taking weather too, even if it was a bit hot to be wandering around in the full sun for hours. That night we went on the pub crawl again and were treated to the very bizarre story-telling techniques of a Canadian guy, who told us his very own 'Romeo and Juliet' story IN THIRD PERSON. It took him about an hour to tell us because he paused to stare at each of us in turn about once every three words while we tried not to laugh:

"Two people....... they meet....... they play a season of soccer together....... two years later...... they meet again......they go to a movie together......"
Needless to say, it was quite funny and ended with a surprise tragedy that had us not quite feeling kathartic but instead stifling inappropriate laughter.

The next day we went on a walking tour for a couple of hours. We got to experience the dancey thing that the guards outside the parliament do every hour on the half-hour. Easily the best thing I saw in Greece, except perhaps the Acropolis. Will try to upload the video. Later we checked out the flea markets and went to both the Roman and Greek ancient agoras; which were suitably ruin-y and interesting, and then on to the Acropolis Museum. The museum is really new, so as a publicity thing it only costs €1 to get in. It had all the frescoes and statues and stuff that's been taken down from the Acropolis in order to better preserve and display them, and it was all really light and spatious, not crowded and overwhelming like some of the older museums are. Unfortunately, the 'virtual museum' was closed. Needless to say this greatly disappointed us, as we are always on the lookout for novelty.

We went to HH again at the roof bar that night with our new Finnish friend Janita, where we quickly made friends with some hilarious Swedish boys and I had an incredibly uncomfortable conversation with a socially inept Nepalese man, but unfortunately we had to sit out the pub crawl, as we were getting up at 5.30 the next morning for our 7 hour (!) ferry to Naxos.

We arrived in Naxos that afternoon and after following Jen's extremely detailed instructions, made it up the hill to the apartment. The apartment is on the edge of a cliff and the view is amazing. If you look one way, you see the town centre and the Temple of Apollo (which you can just see in this photo), and if you look the other way you see up the coast towards the mountains.

We spent the afternoon relaxing and wondering whether Claire and Campbell would make it from their flight which arrived at 3.45pm to the ferry, which left less than 2 hours later. We were pretty sure they wouldn't, so were pleased when we called Claire who told us they had (just) made it. So at quarter to midnight, we went back down the hill to pick them up from the port and catch up on the many weeks we had been apart.

The next day passed in a pretty similar way, with most of our time spent lying around the house variously reading, talking, sleeping and eating (we went through a LOT of bread in our 5 days in Naxos...). In the evening, we played middle cup and Claire and Campbell's newfound 'international rules', which included the no-name rule, resulted in numerous new nicknames for Campbell including Pambly-Wambly and Las Camblas.

On Friday, the weather was a bit clearer so we decided to go to the nearest beach, despite the fact that we didn't know where it was. We walked down the hill towards town, along the somewhat appropriately named Grotta beach which was covered in garbage, to the little closed of bay near the port, where Fran and Cambles were brave enough to go in.

That evening, we went down to Naxos to check out the nightlife and experience happy hour (technically, happy half-day as it ran from 2pm til 2am) at one of the local bars.

The next morning, we went and hired quads and drove to Agios Prokopios, a beach Jen recommended. The weather was finally properly sunny and not too windy, and the beach was gorgeous. After several delightful hours passed lying on the beach and occassionally going for a swim, Fran and Pambles decided to go explore on the quads.

They went past the mountains, almost the whole way to the other side of the island.

Claire and I decided to head home, but managed to get lost and end up first at the base of the mountains, then on some neverending road that went through farms and smelt awful, then on a main road that we realised after several minutes led us back towards the mountains. Let's just say, we were relieved when we got back to the apartment.

We had a movie night with pizza and brownies and we watched a truly delightful Nicholas Cage film called ConAir which was Pambles' favourite movie when he was younger and I completely understand why. It was hilarious.

The next day we headed back to Prokopios, but the weather was slightly less delightful so we didn't stay for as long and we split up to explore the island again.

Franny and Pambly-wambles made it to the center of the island and along the coast.

Claire and I tried to find a way to the mountains in the centre, but we got lost (again) and decided to go to one of the beaches instead and then we got lost (again again) and somehow ended up on a private road where we kept on getitng confused looks from locals who were (reasonably) completely confused as to why we were there. Then we found two gorgeous beaches which we hadn't known about, and somehow found ourselves somewhere we recognised so we headed up the coast where we were able to look back towards the port and our apartment which was lovely.

The next morning, after removing all traces that we had ever been there, we left the apartment to catch a ferry to Santorini. The view coming into Santorini was beautiful and we checked in to our hostel and lay around the pool and loved life. Fran and Pambly went to the beach across the road which apparently consists of sand when you first walk into the water and then the sand suddenly becomes a vast, slippery rock which means you wobble slightly whenever you move.

We went out to explore the nightlife near our hostel and it wasn't too exciting, but we did get a few cheap cocktails and take many amusing photos

The next day, we caught a bus to Fira and in just a few hours, we had a look in the church, walked around the stores there, got some photos of the amazing view and complained about how none of the buildings had blue roofs (we did see a few, don't worry).

After our whirlwind 24 hours in Santorini, we got back on the ferry to Athens and the next morning we left the next morning to catch a train (and an unexpected bus) to Patras to catch our ferry to Bari. 30-something hours of almost-non-stop travel: YUM.