Spring Break in Greece

I just retrned from spring break where I went with my roommates Melissa, Leah and Jackie to Greece. We left on Saturday March 20th at 9am and got on a bus for five hours with a group of about 40 other American students studying in Rome. We then got to a port on the east coast of Italy where we boarded a smaller cruise ship for 14 hours. There was a discoteque, two restaurants, small shops and a ton of café areas. In the hotter months there is a hot tub and pool but unfortunately they were not open because Italians and Greeks think that 70 degrees isn’t hot enough to be in a bathing suit. Luckily we had the choice of upgrading to a cabin instead of just sleeping in airplane style seating. I got a bed, thank god, and I got a lot of sleep on the boat. On Sunday we arrived at Iguamentsa, a port on the mainland of Greece where we boarded another ferry for an hour and a half to bring us to the island of Corfu. We took a half hour bus to the Pink Palace, a famous hostel known for its partying atmosphere and fun excursions. Our room was very spacious for a hostel and we had our own bathroom with a tub and shower, which is pretty unusual for such cheap accommodation. We sat on the beach for the first day and ate traditional greek food. I had a veggie pita with cheese which was delicious. That night we ate in a big dining hall called the “Palladium” and ate more Greek food and danced all night and got to see traditional Greek dancers doing crazy dances in ridiculous outfits. It was really a sight. The next morning we boarded a hot pink boat for a “Booze Cruise”. It was a beautiful day, but not that warm, and to get on the boat we had to swim out to it and climb up the ladder! It was freezing but worth it because the trip was incredible. We first went to this huge rock in the middle of a bay. We were going cliff jumping! I was the first one to jump in the water after the tour guide/bartender to follow him up the cliffs. We had to climb up this gigantic rock wall and I had to do it in flip flops and a bathing suit. After I climbed up two feet and I was holding on to barely nothing I started freaking out. I froze and thought I really couldn’t continue. I really needed someone to root for me and cheer me on but the boys in front of me weren’t much help and the people behind me were just waiting for me to go up. It was the SCARIEST thing I have ever done in my life. I was in flip flops and at one point I lost a flip flop and the guy behind me had to put it on my foot. I was hyperventilating when I got to the top and I couldn’t stop shaking. It wasn’t even the height I was scared of. It was pure adrenaline that got me up that vertical cliff and it was the biggest rush I’ve ever felt. On my way up I turned around and yelled down to Melissa “DO NOT DO THIS I AM HARDCORE AND I AM FREAKING OUT IF YOU ARE A GIRL DO NOT CLIMB THIS CLIFF!” and she turned around and went back to the boat which I’m glad about. I was the fourth person to jump off the cliff and it was INSANE! It was okay at first but then I just kept falling! I started screaming about halfway down. I landed okay and pretty straight but something happened to my foot and as soon as I came up for air I yelled “I BROKE MY ANKLE!!!” But I didn’t actually break my ankle but it sure felt like it. I swam to the boat and could barely make it up the ladder. My ankle was throbbing and it really hurt. But it was okay because jumping off that cliff was the most exciting thing I’ve ever done in my life. It was such a rush of adrenaline, I can’t wait to do it somewhere else again! Then after the cliff jumping, we went to a bat cave where usually they let us jump off the boat and swim into the caves and make the bats fly out, but it was too rough and we would have been smushed up against the rocks. Then we went to a private beach accessible only by boat and hung out and played games like charades on the beach there. We finally started heading home and I had to take a quick nap before going to a “Toga Party”! We all rented a pink sheet to make a toga out of and went to dinner where everyone was wearing a toga! The dinner was delicious, but my ankle was throbbing and hurt a real lot so I had to leave and go to bed while everyone stayed up and partied. I guess I missed more greek dancing and plate smashing on peoples heads, but I really needed the sleep and my ankle needed the rest. The next day we rented ATV’s and cruised around Corfu in the rain. We went on this one trail for a very long time and it turned from pavement, to worse pavement, to gravel, to dirt, to mud…and it was a long trail. We kept taking the trail and finally got to the end somewhere up in the abyss of the Corfu mountains. It was a good thing we were with our two guy friends because they had to turn our ATVs around one by one and we had to go back up the other way, but by the time we did this the rain had ruined the trails and everthing was mud. We all got stuck a bunch of times and were covered in mud and I was really surprised no one got seriously hurt or even cried! We really toughed it out but I think I’ll be smart enough to never take a back road that long again. It took us a good hour to get back to a trail that had even gravel instead of mud. That night we ate dinner in the Palladium again and got on a bus at 10:00 to go to Corfu port to get on a ferry for an hour and a half to get back to Iguamentsa, and then take an 8 hour bus ride to Athens. We got to Athens at around 9:00am on Wednesday morning and ate breakfast in the hostel. This hostel wasn’t as nice with two sets of bunk beds in the room and one shared bathroom for the entire floor. We then went on a walking tour of Athens and we saw the Parliament building, Temple of Zeus, Hadrians Arch, and the Acropolis (The Parthenon and temple of Vestas). The view from the acropolis was insane! You could see the entire city and it stretched for miles and miles. I took a 360 degrees video of it because I couldn’t capture it in one picture. Seeing the Parthenon and Temple of Vestas was really incredible because I studied them in my AP Art History class senior year or high school. The walk up the acropolis was really long and I’m glad my ankle was feeling better because there is no other way to get up but to walk. All I kept thinking about was the old men in togas that ran Greece long ago and how they had to walk up so far to go to work every day! Wednesday night we went to this dinner where it was unlimited wine and a 6 course meal for 13 euros which is really good. The first appetizer of four that we got was a Greek salad, the second was grilled Feta cheese which was SO good, the third was these incredible meat balls that I loved, and the fourth was calamari which I didn’t eat because it grosses me out. Then for dinner we had a choice of pork, veal, chicken or eggplant. I got the eggplant but barely took one bite because I was so full. Then dessert was fruit which was really good too. After dinner we went to an area full of bars and clubs. First we went to an authentic Greek hookah bar and that was a lot of fun, then we went to a club called Spirit. But I was exhausted from walking around Greece all day so I went home pretty early with my friend Melissa. The next day we took the metro, then a bus, then the metro again, then a ferry to an island off Greece called Aegina. It really reminded me of Block Island a lot and I got kind of homesick. While we could rent scooters or ATV’s, I just wanted to have a relaxing day on the beach. So first Melissa and I ate at this restaurant and sat in the sunshine and I had a tuna sandwich on a croissant (which was so incredible) and my first pina colada since being in Greece (I had been craving one all week). Then we walked around and I bought a t-shirt that said Greece. Finally we sat on the beach and slept which felt really awesome considering it’s one of my favorite pastimes and I hadn’t done it since maybe last August. That night, after doing some more insane traveling, Melissa and I ate at a local place and ate Kebap. I think it was veal, but regardless it was SOOOO good. I didn’t know something that looked so weird could be so delicious. And the old man who ran the restaurant gave us this excellent bottle of wine from Macedonia which was also very good. The next day we woke up early and walked to STARBUCKS!!! They don’t have any Starbucks’ in Italy so this was really exciting. I got two drinks, a passion iced tea and a French vanilla iced coffee. It was great except the people who worked there didn’t speak a lick of English which was like uh hello this is an American company? Do you even know anything about Seattle? Come on obviously American tourists are going to visit here. Then we got on a 3 hour bus ride to Petras, a port where we boarded a 20 hour ferry to the east coast of Greece. The ferry back was a lot of fun because the entire group hung out together and we all were just hanging out with the new friends we had made. I made a lot of really good friends on the trip, but some of them live in Florence which is sad. But all in all I had an incredible vacation to Greece with a lot of amazing experiences. I have to say that jumping off the 40 foot cliff made the entire trip. Even though it happened on the second day, it really made my life. I’m proud of myself to know I can do something like that and deal with the adrenaline the way I did and I can’t wait to do it again. So today is Sunday and I’ve been in bed all day sick and keeping my ankle propped up. Hopefully it’ll get better and my cold will go away. But I’m so happy I chose this vacation to go on for spring break and I had an incredible time.