Giggles is a 20-something graphic designer, discovering her love of travel. She also loves to cook, especially bake, and is trying to start her own bakery. Check out her blog where she writes about culinary adventures, make up, and photography.
I’ve always wanted to go to Greece because of those pictures you see on the Greek Isles calendars in Barnes & Nobles. But I have to admit, the real push to go to Greece came from watching the movie version of one of my favorite book series, The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. After wanting to go for years, my cousin J and I finally went on a 10-day tour of Greece, specifically Athens (2 days/1 day), Mykonos (3 days), and Santorini (2 days) recently! Now, I don’t want to be negative about my trip, because I definitely enjoyed the views and the relaxation, and the views, and exploring. Did I mention the views? But unfortunately, anything that could have gone wrong, went wrong.
Getting to Greece was nothing short of a minor miracle because for some inexplicable reason, the tour company decided to send us to Montreal for a transfer flight to Athens, even though direct flights from New York were available. And of course, we had less than 40 minutes to catch our flight! But once we were on board and landed in Athens, we were smooth sailing.
Or so we thought…
Even though we left NJ on a Monday, our first official day of the trip was a Tuesday. After having no more than 2 hours of total sleep in the last 24+ hours, and settling into our room at the Acropolis Select, J and I decided to go exploring and grab some lunch, since we didn’t have to meet our group till later that evening (we quickly made friends with E and S, from Toronto). During lunch, I started to feel symptoms I’ve felt before - signs of dehydration.
Oh crap.
Needless to say, I didn’t eat more than a few bites of grilled octopus (which was a staple for most of the meals I could eat) and chicken souvlaki, and drank a bunch of water. I think it was the combination of the plane, the super strong sun, and the food, but I couldn’t eat anything except for toast and pita, a few bites of things here and there to try, and a butt-load of Gatorade for the first 8 days of my trip.
The street to lunch.
Despite this setback, we ventured on. So we decided to explore Athens on our own. We walked around the Acropolis (Acropoli), which is an incredibly long walk with amazing views of nearby towns/villages, and of course the Parthenon. Even though I knew I was there in Athens, it didn’t feel like it was real - the thought of me being in Greece hadn’t kicked in.
The Parthenon {R} and arch wall {L}.
One of the other highlights besides the Acropolis that day, was when J and I asked (well, J asked since I felt like crap) a pair of firefighters where the nearest “water closet” (WC) a.k.a restroom was. We thought he was telling us that “we had to go in the trees.” Apparently he meant it was a small stone building hidden behind the trees. Can I add, that most of the officials (police and fire people) were ridiculously good looking in Greece?! I actually wanted to go back on our last day of the tour to ask if they wanted to hang out with us… and I NEVER want to do that.
The fire fighters were at the end of this walkway.
While walking the narrow, crowded, winding streets of Athens, J and I found row after row of cute little restaurants, shops, cafés, and bought tons of souvenirs in the Plaka (old village). Everyone was pretty friendly, helping us out when we asked for directions or inviting us to sit and have some drinks or food, granted this may be because we were clearly tourists. But we were on a mission. We had to find “The Poet Sandal Maker.” One of J’s friends had mentioned that we should go there for custom leather Greek sandals. So, after a while of walking down some fairly sketchy streets, we finally found his store! Initially I wasn’t going to get sandals because it’s really hard for me to find shoes that fit my feet, but when I found out he could really customize the sandals — changing out straps for thicker straps, and making said straps fit around really chubster, small feet — I was ecstatic! I bought myself 2 pairs, as well as pairs for my mom and my sister.
The next day, we did a guided tour of Athens and the Acropolis. We walked up the stairs of the Acropolis, through the Propylaia (the entrance to the Parthenon) and saw the Parthenon, (unfortunately under restoration for the next 5 years), the Erechtheion, and the temple of Nike Athena. The site took me back to AP Art History class, where I had seen the Parthenon through only slides and books. It was just amazing to see everything firsthand! I was starting to remember things like “Doric segmented columns,” and other structural terms. The guide told us of the history of the Parthenon — starting as a temple dedicated to Athena, being used a church and a mosque, and then being blown up by a cannon ball from another island that landed in the middle, which caused much of how the Parthenon stands today. The Erechtheion is a temple dedicated to both Athena on one side, and Poseidon on the other.
The Parthenon.
Ruins - the top of an ionic column.
The Erechtheion, Athena side, with 5 maidens.
Walking around on the Acropolis gives a 360° view of Athens, including an aerial view of the Theatre of Dionysus, where we later sat in the actual seats that the patrons did. At the base of the Acropolis, is Aeropagus (Mars Hill), a marble hill, that we climbed and had awesome views of the Athens and the Parthenon. The bus tour took us to the area around Parliament, University, and Olympic stadium. We also explored the Temple of Zeus, which is a temple that had 104 Corinthian columns, now down to 16.
Aerial view of the Theatre of Dionysus
Mars Hill
Parliament
The Temple of Zeus
After the guided tour, J and I did more shopping (some more leather goods), including getting my Hard Rock Café pin (to continue my dad’s collection with every city I’ve been to), we headed to the New Acropolis Museum, a museum dedicated to the Acropolis. It turns out that the museum is built over an ancient part of Athens, and you can see the excavation site with all of the pottery work, stone walls, and the grid work of the ancient city! I totally should have brushed up on my art history before coming to Greece. I saw so many figures of Kore and Korai, Athena statues, relief work, classical statues as well as Byzantine style work. It was amazing to think that these items were from thousands of years ago, BC! The third floor is really interesting, as it is set up as an exact replica of the pillars and relief work as the Parthenon, and explanations of the relief work on the pediments. After educating our minds and kinda falling asleep (we did the head-bob thing) during the video of the Parthenon, J and I needed a little caffeine pick-me-up and got some coffee at the museum’s cafe that overlooked the Parthenon.
The museum excavation near the entrance
Ancient pottery seen in the floor of the museum
Iced cappuccino and Greek coffee, with the Parthenon
Thursday started with a 4:45 a.m. wake up call to get on a 6.5-hour ferry ride to Mykonos. Ouch. I took some pictures of the different ports we stopped at along the way - Andros and Tinos. The bus ride from the port to the hotel was actually pretty exciting because of the buildings. I think that a lot of movies that take place in Greece are shot in Mykonos. The tour director told us that there’s a Mykonian law that every building must be whitewashed every year before the Greek Orthodox Easter, and the accent color can only be selected from half a dozen shades of blue and green.
Homes in Mykonos
Soon, we arrived at our hotel, the Dionysos Hotel, dropped our stuff off and made a beeline to the beach. Mykonos is definitely an island for relaxation and late night partying. I didn’t do the late night partying since I was still sick, but I definitely enjoyed the relaxation part. If you look at me now, I’m still pretty pale - haha - since I spent most of my time under the umbrella. It was so relaxing to sit out on the beach, take a nap, have a quick dip with the fish, and then come out of the water to grab a bite with beach side service.
The hotel’s lounge/pool area
Ornos beach, 1 block away from the hotel
Later on, we ventured into town with the group.
I fell in love with it.
J, E, S, and I separated from the group and decided to get drinks to watch the sunset in “Little Venice.” We were literally a step away from the water, and had a clear view of the sunset. It was perfect. Afterwards, J and I parted ways with E and S and had dinner- of octopus and squid, of course - right by the water and the windmills, which Mykonos is known for. We missed the bus back to the hotel, but stayed, hung out a bit looking at the shops, found the beautiful port area and got some gelato.
My strawberry juice and J’s Piña Colada
Sunset at Little Venice
Famous Mykonos windmills (before sunset)
Friday entailed an excursion out to Delos. This is an uninhabited island (minus the archaeologists) that has the most well preserved residential ancient city. The island is named for Apollo, which makes complete sense because the sun was super strong and it was effing hot! The guide showed us residential quarters, the slave market, the local theater, and even the bathrooms. It was fascinating to be able to walk the same streets as the people of ancient Greece. Of course, J and I went to the museum before heading back to the ferry to go back to Mykonos.
Approaching Delos
Unfortunately, I think being under the sun for those few hours, plus the little beach time made me sicker. After dinner with J, E, and S, I had to go back to the room, while the other girls went out to the night clubs in town. I think they went to a few places - Lola, Jacuzzi, and Scandinavian Bar.
Don’t worry. Back at the room, I had an adventure of my own.
Let me preface this by telling you that I’m arachnophobic. I was standing in the middle of the room, with nothing near me, getting ready for bed, when all of the sudden i feel something wet hit the side of my left heel. I look down and there’s a giant-ass black spider on me!!!! I freak out and spazz, shaking my leg to throw the spider like half way across the room. Once I somewhat compose myself, I look at it and it’s trying to crawl away but it’s back end won’t move. It turns out the freaking thing basically killed itself when it landed on me, and that splat was its guts!!!! So I shot it with Febreeze, and left it for J to dispose of it when she got back that night.
Saturday, J and I got up way too late, and spent the day at the beach. On the way back to the hotel, I got my extremely brief ride on an ATV with the rental guy we met on our first day. That night we had dinner with the tour group, and unfortunately I still couldn’t eat much. We also found out that our stay in Santorini would be cut short because of a general transit strike on what would have been our last day, when we were supposed to be traveling back to Athens. We had to basically cram everything that we wanted to do in Santorini into one day.
J & me on an ATV
That news was really disappointing to me. Santorini was the island I was most excited about going to because of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I was really looking forward to spending all of my days in Santorini experiencing similar things that Lena, Tibby, Carmen, and Bridget did. Okay, maybe not the whole falling-madly-in-love-with-a-guy-who-saves-me-from-drowning situation, but as a Fine Arts major, I would have loved to be able to draw some of the scenes that I saw, just like Lena.
Maybe next time!
Read about what I actually did during my stay in Santorini on Friday…
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Opa! (Part 1) is part of our Summer Series.
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