Monday 12 October 2009

The beach, some wine, and Greece

My blog has fallen by the wayside due to the fact that my computer here decided to die. No problems in the 3 years I've had it, but of course it would malfunction abroad :)
Briefly, here is what I've been up to the past couple of weeks.
3 weekends ago I took a trip to Valencia, a city on the eastern coast of Spain. We hit the beach for a couple of days and took a free walking tour offered by our hostel which was really interesting and told me a lot about the city's history. We also met and made friends with a gay bachelor party one night. It's a long story, ask me about it later. ;)
2 weekends ago was one of our two Butler excursions, which are included in what we pay to study abroad. All 11 people in our group, our Butler professor and her husband, and two of the Spanish professors headed up to La Rioja, a region in northern Spain known for its wines. We toured 2 vineyards where they explained how their wines were made and we got to taste the wine at each of them. My college paid for me to drink wine with my professors. Not too bad, huh? My favorite quote of the weekend: "Let's party."--Antonio, one of my Spanish professors. We also toured a couple of monestaries the next day. Maybe they thought they should make up for our wine drinking the day before.
This past weekend was my first trip out of Spain. Three our girls and myself headed off to Greece. Two of the girls went straight to Athens, but me and DeeDee slept in the Athens airport and caught a 5 am flight to the Greek Island of Santorini. I guess that's one way to save money on a hostel.
Santorini may be the most beautiful place I have ever seen. Google Santorini and you'll see what I mean. Beautiful white houses with bright blue rooftops overlooking the ocean. The island is pretty small. From the East coast of the island we walked 30 seconds and were on the west coast. We didn't really have a plan for when we arrived in Santorini, but luckily I met a man on the flight from Madrid who saw me doing my Spanish poetry homework and we struck up a conversation (in which he told me he thinks Obama is the best president the United States has ever had and that anyone is smarter than Bush), and he ended up drawing me a rough map of Santorini on the back of my airline ticket that we used to navigate around the island.
To save on a taxi fair, we walked from the airport to the capital which only took about 45 minutes. We were definitely a spectacle since we were both in summer dresses (it was in the 80's there--I heard it's freezing at home. That sucks. :) carrying our backpacks with all the stuff we needed for the weekend since we didn't check into our hostel in Athens until that night. We made it to the capital and spent the day taking tons of pictures, which I will have up in about 2 weeks when my family comes and brings me my camera cord, walking around the winding streets and looking at the shops, climbing to the highest point of the island with a magnificent view, and relaxing by the ocean. To make this amazing trip even better, the small island hospitality was incredible. Everyone in the doorway of their houses would wave and say hello, an old man offered to let us try the dessert he was eating, and more than 1 person offered to call a cab for us so we didn't have to walk with our backpacks. I could definitely see myself going back there again sometime in my life--I already looked up prices for hostels and hotels there in the off season.
After our day in Santorini, we caught a 6pm flight back to Athens, checked into our hostel, and passed out. That's what only 3 hours of sleeping in the airport will do to you. The next day we met up with the other girls and visited all the main sights of Athens--the Parthenon, Zues's temple, the ancient Greek cemetary and museum, the Agoras (historic market places), the ruins of their theater, and the Olympic Stadium. After a delicious Greek lunch, we headed towards the Plaka, which is the main flea market area in Athens. We ate dinner and dessert and again passed out after another beautiful 80 degree day and miles and miles of walking.
The next day, Sunday, we took a free walking tour of the city, where I met a woman who had just gotten back from Uganda and was so focused on talking to her that I think I missed most of what our tour guide said. We got lunch and then headed to the airport to come back home to Spain.
So that's a brief summary of my last few weeks here. Quite a few details lacking, but it'll have to do!

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