Grecian Adventures

So my mother and I left for Greece on Tuesday morning and arrived in Athens in the early evening. By that time, we both felt extremely tired, slightly jetlagged, and decided it would be best to just lie low in the hotel for the night. I think we went to bed around 9 or 10, meaning we should have gotten up fairly early, right? Wrong. It was past noon before either of us opened our eyes on Wednesday morning. Yikes! Luckily the tour we had booked didn't start until 2:00, so we had just enough time to get ready and run to a cafe for a quick breakfast. You know there's a cafe chain in Athens called "Gregory's":


The tour was good despite our very odd guide, Thanos. He was very opinionated, yelled at me for putting my feet on the side of the car wall, and took the liberty to join us even after the tour ended for dinner and watching traditional Greek dancing. Strange, but we did get to see some pretty amazing sights throughout the day. I feel SO lucky I got these pictures, as the lighting/rainbow looked absolutely beautiful:



Lovely. We also got to see the changing of the guards at the Greek Parliament. I may or may not have tried to harass the guard a bit..?


Traditional Greek Folk Dancing:


So fun! Naturally I got forced up on stage and was twirled around the head of some sweaty Greek man in front of a room of about 200 people. Of course I did.

We got to bed around midnight after our day of Athens exploring, and got our "nights sleep" for about 3 hours until we had to wake up in the wee hours of the morn' to catch our flight to the island of Santorini. I have to say, I would have gotten up at any hour to get to that place. The island was everything I expected it to be, meaning beautiful, cultural, serene, and exotic. We stayed at the Volcano View Villas, which is a series of white buildings perched on the side of a cliff. SO nice. I sincerely hope I can go back and stay there again someday.
Our trip to Santorini included a visit to the village of Oia (the filming location of the movie Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants II), greek food in excess, renting a car and being defensive drivers, getting lost a few times, almost getting blown away by the wind, trespassing on church roofs in the village of Pyrgos, riding a donkey up the cliff, and my mom exercising her skills she picked up from the folk dances. Ta ha:



The island was fairly small, but each region of it was so different. From rugged wine vineyards to rocky cliffs, black sand beaches to red sand beaches, and touristy-villages to almost completely native ones, I'm pretty sure you could spend months exploring it and still not see everything.





Trying to demonstrate the intensity of the wind :)



Sigh. Like I said, I really hope I get to go back there someday.
All in all, my break was very relaxing and much-needed. It was good to see my momma, and I hope she liked the parts of Northern Ireland that she saw, and I'm glad we got to experience Greece together. Only Gregory women could somehow befriend all the homeless dogs on the island...

Back to reality! Cheers.
-karen