I had the pleasure of having two of my friends from home over here June 1-10. Jess, my friend since…I think we were 8? And Jen, college roommate and 4-year party partner. We started out in Frankfurt, staying in my new apartment on the Main. Yes, I moved AGAIN, but it was totally worth it because now I live with 3 of my friends, and my window overlooks the river Main in the city center. Couldn’t be better really. So I showed them all the…cough…sights of Frankfurt (took about a day) and we ate some traditional German food (boiled pork chops and sauer kraut...not recommended!!) We also took a paddle boat out on the Main, which was fun and interesting considering Jen felt it necessary to seduce random German men into our boat...
The next day we caught a flight to Athens. We arrived at 2am, and after a long, ridiculously expensive cab ride where we managed to teach our driver the word poop, we made it to our hostel in the Greek ghetto. Aphrodite Hostel…sounds like a whore house as someone later pointed out, because Aphrodite was the goddess of love... I thought that was amusing. Oh, and we arrived during a garbage strike. Nice welcome for us… Anyway, the next day we took a guided tour of Athens organized by our hostel and saw pretty much everything in the course of 6 hours. The Acropolis, Parthenon, Athena’s temple, other random ruins, the Olympic stadium, etc, etc. It was all very very cool. So hard to imagine how old that stuff actually is. Our tour guide was pretty cool as well, he knew a ton of Greek history and gave us a rather lengthy lesson on ancient Greek orgies…but unfortunately, no demonstrations.
The next day we headed out to Santorini island in the Cylcades via an 8-hour ferry ride. We were kind of skeptical about being on a boat for 8 hours, but it turned out to be a very nice ferry, and we stopped at several Greek islands along the way. It was really amazing scenery, I’d never seen anything like it. We arrived in Santorini, and after being herded into a van to take us to our hotel (there was a moment there when the 3 of us couldn’t deny the thought that we were being kidnapped to be sex slaves) along a narrow windy road up cliffs complete with donkies, we promptly got ourselves some cocktails. Oh, and enjoyed the scenery from Fira of course.
The next day we went to Red Sand Beach. Kind of an ordeal because we had to take a bus there, then by ourselves, take a gander at which way to the beach. Well we made it to the water, and after careful consideration, decided which direction to walk. After about an hour of careful maneuvering around rocks, cliffs, and Greek men**, we made it to Red Sand Beach. I had never been to a beach like this before. It was not very long and each end of it was met by steep red cliffs. We rented some beach chairs and umbrellas from a cute little old Greek man named Spiro who lives in a cave carved out of one of the cliffs. He had us come inside his cave and look around, it was pretty cool actually. Then he demanded we try his homemade Greek wine (total piss). But the beach was amazing. It wasn’t too hot because there was a constant breeze off the freezing water of the Aegean Sea, but instead of sand, it was hot, sharp, broken rocks. Sandals were totally necessary. That night we went to the opposite side of the island and had a nice Greek dinner on the beach. I will never forget this. The food was really great, but our waitress would not let us pay so we could leave. She demanded we stay 45 more minutes to watch some traditional Greek dance they were having. That was fine and everything, the dancing was entertaining at least, but the woman just would not let us leave. When we finally got away, we ran into some New Zealanders (I guess they call themselves Kiwis), who insisted we go to the bar where they were working for the summer. Being 3 girls looking for a drink anyway, we went, and after…I think 6?….free shots of Raki (really strong Greek liquor), I have no idea how many €3 pina coladas, and some crazy American-style dancing (the Kiwis thought we were nuts), we made it back to our hotel in Fira via the craziest Greek cab ride ever. And upon arrival, Jen thought it completely necessary to take the neighbor’s underwear from the laundry line, and wear it as a hat (none of us remembered this incident until seeing the photos on my camera the next day)…see pic.
The next day we headed back to Athens, then back to Frankfurt, most of the time being...well, just a little tipsy, including the flight where Jen was under the impression we were on a roller coaster. So yeah, we 3 girls had fun in Greece…..probably too much fun….Nah.
**TIP: We found that the best way to avoid Greek men is to start speaking to eachother in Chinese...or some other sort of jumbled up Asian dialect. It completely confuses them and throws them off from making any further cat calls.
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