As I promised, here is my blog entry for Spring Break. I will warn you, it’s probably going to be fairly long so I can fit most of the story in. I think I’ll start with our pre-departure fun that was and was not expected. About a week before we left, I decided to ask Connie and Alexa in the Office of Student Life what time we would need to leave Florence to make it to Milan for a 12:15 flight. I was told that it would be impossible or nearly impossible to leave at any point on the same day and actually make the flight. I brought this up to Patrick and Courtney to see what they thought about it. Courtney was on my side that we should take a train up to Milan the night before, stay at a hotel, and make our way to the airport leisurely the next morning. Patrick didn’t feel it was necessary to go up any earlier than necessary, so he would catch a train the morning of the flight. I went to Stazione Santa Maria Novella to buy all of our tickets for travel to Milan. Patrick’s train left Sta. Maria Novella at 4:35 am and had a transfer in Bologna around 7 am. Courtney and I made our way up to Milan on Thursday night, which was a good idea because I would need the extra sleep due to getting sick right before we left. I’m still not fully recovered, sadly. Sooo…I woke up around 6:30 to get a shower and get dressed to leave for the airport. While Courtney was getting ready, I decided to call Patrick to see how far along he was on the trip. Surprise!!!! As soon as he answered the phone, I knew something was wrong. He sounded awful. His first words to me were, “I’m very sad. I’m on a train somewhere between Bologna and Florence!” Now, for anyone who can’t put two and two together, a train between Bologna and Florence is a lot farther from the airport than a train between Bologna and Milan. He proceeded to tell me that as he made his way to the platform to catch his connecting train in Bologna, he realized that he had left his luggage on the train from Florence. As he hopped on that train, which miraculously didn’t leave almost an hour later, the doors closed behind him and proceeded to return to Florence. Oh yeah, I forgot. His luggage was removed while they were cleaning the train! So now, he is on a train returning to Florence, and his luggage is in Bologna. All this while we are waiting for him in Milan. He hopped off at the next station, took a bus back to Bologna, collected his luggage, and hopped on a Eurostar train to Milan. We got to the airport around 9:30, about twenty minutes before check in started, so we had plenty of time to kill. While we were sitting there waiting, we were back and forth on the phone with Patrick trying to find out where he was and if he’d make it. Well, when we checked in, we found out that our flight was no longer at 12:15, but at 11:55! He now had twenty minutes less to move himself along to Malpensa. Luckily for me, a nice Southern lady who now lives in Spain kept me occupied with small talk so that I wouldn’t worry about Patrick making it…Courtney got to do all the worrying. About five minutes before boarding began, I heard a huge commotion behind me with all kinds of yelling and jumping up and down. Patrick had made it to the airport with literally five minutes to spare. As you can see, we had a completely stress-free start to our Spring Break. After about two hours of sleeping on the plane, I opened my window shade to see land. We were over Greece! The combination of mountains and coast was absolutely amazing. We landed in Athens about half an hour later and collected our bags. After traipsing all over the airport to find information on the non-existent shuttle to our hotel, we finally found the “easiest” way to reach our hotel. Take a subway to one of the main squares, transfer to another subway, and walk two blocks. ”Easiest” my eye…I would’ve hopped in a cab and paid the Euro 8,000,000 for the 10 kilometer ride to the center of Athens. Anyway, we made our way down to the hotel from Omonia Square. The hotel, a “newly renovated” Best Western was actually still undergoing some renovations, so it had a lovely mix of scaffolding and netting in front of it. I wasn’t overly concerned, however, since I didn’t plan on doing anything other than sleeping here. I have to say, though, that the rooms really were nice. They had just been finished, so everything was brand new. After changing our clothes that we had just traveled in all day, we made our way out into Athens! We roamed around for a little while until we decided we couldn’t go any further without food. We found a little restaurant that had tables outdoors around a park, so we went there. The food was possibly the best I’ve ever had. The tzatziki sauce was AMAZING! Seriously, I didn’t used to like the sauce, but now I’m addicted…can’t wait for the Greek festival back home! I had souvlaki for dinner (which I actually had every day of the trip…it’s that good). Oh yeah…the restaurant was also right beneath the Parthenon, so we had a view of that all night! We walked around for a little longer after dinner, but we were drained so we headed back to the hotel early since we knew that tomorrow would be a really long day. We woke up around 8 or 9 so that we could beat some of the crowds at all of the historic sights. Also, since it was a holiday weekend, everything closed ridiculously early, so we had to make sure we beat those closing times as well. We decided that since it was such a beautiful day that we wanted to walk to the Parthenon, which was about 3 kilometers from the hotel because none of the streets run directly to it. After about 15 minutes, we were in the park that leads up the mountain to the Acropolis. It is such an imposing sight when you get close to it. It’s intimidating in a way. After the long trek through the park and up the hill, we finally made it. I was at the Parthenon! I honestly cannot describe in words what it is like to see it in person. It truly is breathtaking. The views of Athens and the surrounding mountains are unparalleled. I really didn’t want to leave the top of that mountain until we had to go to our next destination, which happened to be the next day. After staying up there for a while just to stare at the amazing architecture and views, we made our way down the mountain so we could explore a little bit more of the city. There is a mountain with amazing views that has a church and a restaurant on top of it, so we were going to walk in that direction. Along the way, we saw the Parliament building, the Presidential house (beautiful, but much smaller than expected. You can walk right up to it since there is a fence that only keeps you about 50 feet from the front door.), gorgeous public gardens, and the original Olympic stadium. That was quite impressive. It underwent some serious renovations for the 1896 Olympics, but they have taken amazing care of it, so it looks brand new. On that note, I have to comment on the condition of Athens. I was really saddened to see all of the garbage, graffiti, and stray dogs in the city. Honestly, nothing seems to be done about any of these three problems PLAGUING the city. They are such huge problems, yet nothing is done. Garbage is everywhere, people write graffiti on any available surface (yes, even churches and antiquities), and stray dogs have free reign of the city. We made our way down to Hadrian’s Arch after we saw the Olympic stadium since we thought it’d be something interesting. It really isn’t all that special. I mean, yes, the history is really cool, but there is not much to look at. This brings me to my next fun story of the trip. While we were looking at the arch, Patrick decided to pull out his map and sit down to figure out where we’d head next. While he was sitting there, this crazy homeless guy I had noticed came up to him and asked where he was from. Patrick, not wanting to talk, told that guy he didn’t want to talk to him since he’d probably just annoy him. Well, that didn’t really sit well with the homeless guy, so he hit Patrick in the head and said “Rude (insert string of obscenities) tourist.” Patrick was surprised and said he thought it was pretty rude. Again, the guy came up to him and was like, “I asked where you’re from.” When Patrick ignored him, he got hit for a second time, along with the same family friendly response. I decided that we should probably not stay there since the guy had a beautiful collection of broken glass bottles in his cart, probably along with a few knives. Patrick didn’t want to leave, but I did not give him the option this time. We were going, and that was final. After wandering all over one of the ritzier sections of Athens, we made our way up a series of steep staircases and hills to catch the funicular to the top of the mountain. When we got there, the lady selling tickets informed us that there was also a path that we could walk if we were feeling adventurous enough to climb it. It wasn’t steep, but was fairly long and windy. After walking all over Athens, the last thing I wanted to do was climb to the top of a mountain. Courtney and I took the funicular to the top and met Patrick up there (he decided to walk). The views, again, were absolutely spectacular. There was a small Orthodox church on the top which had some of the most beautiful icons I had ever seen. Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures since it is illegal to take photographs in any of the churches in the country. I couldn’t bring myself to break that law considering I was in a church. After taking some great pictures overlooking the city, we ventured back down to the hotel to get ready for dinner. Since it was the last night of Carnevale in Greece (they follow the Julian calendar, so everything is different from the rest of the Christian world), we wanted to go to dinner near the water where there were supposed to be fireworks. The guy at front desk told us that we could take the subway to the second to last stop and walk to the water behind the basketball stadium where we’d find some traditional Greek restaurants. When we got to the stop, we didn’t really feel comfortable with the area near the basketball stadium since there were no lights and a lot of sketchy people, so we walked around a little park to the other side where we saw lights. Well, there were a lot of clubs, not a lot of restaurants, and no fireworks. Apparently, we had either missed everything, or they weren’t really celebrating much. We’re still not sure which case it was. In any event, we walked around for a little bit, passed a creepy little amusement park set up for kids (think creepy slasher movie where everyone in the park is involved), and walked by a lot of really drunk Greek people. We finally decided on a little restaurant that had apparently been there since 1948…we figured the food was probably decent if it survived for that long. Using our Greekified English and the owner’s broken English, we were barely able to order, but I knew that I’d be getting souvlaki (which kind I wasn’t sure, but that didn’t really matter). The dinner was great! His window had a little Visa sticker, but he made us pay in cash (probably because we were the last people there and it was really late). Two nights in Greece and I still haven’t found kataifi, that lovely little dessert that looks like shredded wheat but is pure heaven (and by heaven I mean sugar, honey, nuts, and some kind of wheat-type concoction). The next day, we headed out to catch an early bus to Patras, our next leg of the journey. We got to the bus station, which was in the middle of nowhere in a not so friendly neighborhood. As we were walking into the station, we were approached by a taxi driver who asked where we were going. I ignored him since I knew it’d be obscenely overpriced (I honestly didn’t care that it’d probably take us half the time…it was NOT worth the money). When Patrick told him we were heading to Patras, he looked at us for a second and said, “For you, 150 Euro.” ”Wow,” I thought, “only 150 Euro to go to Patras! I wonder if he could rip us off a little bit more!” Again, I kept on walking. So did Patrick and Courtney. When Patrick went to pay for his ticket, he pulled out his Visa, to which the lady behind the counter responded, “CASH ONLY!” Greece is not a very traveller-friendly country when it comes to accepting credit cards. It’s almost strictly cash-based business there. I ended up having to pay for our tickets since I was the only one with cash on hand. Luckily, Citibank is much more American-friendly here than it is in Italy and has branches everywhere. After about two hours, we were in Patras. The ride along the coast was beautiful, but after about two hours on this bus, I was ready to get off it…FAST! Patras is a port city, and the third largest city in Greece. Despite this last fact, there isn’t all that much to do here. Patrick and I explored the whole city probably in a matter of three hours just before the sunset. There was a cool lighthouse that we found with a really nice restaurant, but they only served seafood, and none of us eat seafood. Just across the street was the most amazing Greek church I have ever seen. Truly, it is the most beautiful non-Catholic church I have ever seen. The paintings and icons were unlike anything I had ever seen before. It was very busy (visually), yet peaceful at the same time. We went to the top of one of the hills to catch the sunset. There were literally well over 200 stairs to reach the top…and it was steeeeep. At the top, there was a really sketchy park that you know is a prime spot for cruising, boozing, and other wonderful nighttime activities. After the sun had set behind a cloud that was the only thing ruining a perfectly clear sky, we headed back to the hotel. Oh, I forgot…I found kataifi!!! We walked by this really chic little pastry shop that had all kinds of specialty pastries, but they had kataifi hidden in the one corner. It was probably the best I’ve ever had. Naturally I had to have a piece, even though it was before dinner. Dinner turned into a debacle that night since we decided to go out later like Italians do. I won’t even talk about dinner. The next day, we woke up to a beautifully sunny day, but there was a threat of rain. We had planned on going to Olympia or Delphi that day since there was nothing much else to do in Patras. We decided to chance it and hop on a bus. About halfway to Pyrgos, the town you transfer buses in, the skies opened up. It was a horizontal rain with a spectacular thunderstorm. Courtney and I felt that if it was going to continue to rain this much, we were going to return to Patras once we reached Pyrgos. I was still sick, she was getting sick, and there was no way we were going to walk around outside in the pouring rain. Patrick wanted to go on since he didn’t know when he’d get back to Greece again. We arrived in Pyrgos and the rain had stopped, so we figured we might give it a shot. Well, Greece had different plans for us. Due to a slight delay in our travels to Pyrgos, we missed the 2:00 bus to Olympia. The next one wasn’t leaving until 4:15ish. Everything in Greece closes early, in case I forgot to mention that. Since it’s not high tourist season, things shut down between 4 and 5 in the afternoon. I was not about to get on another bus to go to a site that was already closed. Courtney agreed. There was a bus leaving for Patras in 15 minutes, so we were going to be on that. Patrick wanted to head on to Olympia, so we gave him Courtney’s cell phone and told him to call us when he was returning. He assured us he’d be on the 8 pm bus at the latest. The next bus didn’t leave Pyrgos until 12:15 am. For those playing the interactive home game, this is fun story number 3. Courtney and I got back to Patras absolutely drained, so we took a nap until it was time to go to dinner at 8. We found this cool little restaurant, but the kitchen didn’t open until 9, so we went for drinks (I had a cappuccino since I was still sick). The dinner was awesome. I had braised leg of lamb in a red wine sauce that was to die for. The waitress, while she spoke limited English, was eager to help us with whatever we needed, and the restaurant staff really took care of us (the bartender even came to our table to help figure out what to make Courtney to drink). Remember, we told Patrick to call us when he was leaving Pyrgos, but we still hadn’t heard from him (after the 6 pm bus and the 8 pm buses had left for Patras). We thought that maybe he thought he was supposed to call as he was getting close to Patras, so we waited until around 10ish before we called him again. No answer. For a few hours, all we got was that the phone was unavailable. We were a bit worried since we hadn’t heard from him at all that night and it was getting late. Not to mention, there were some pretty bad storms heading for his area. We decided that, after not hearing from him for the 12:15 bus, we were going to have to contact somebody to figure out how to find him. Despite being such a “large city,” Patras does not have an American consulate, so we were going to contact the British consulate which wasn’t far from our hotel. We waited up until 2:30, at which point I was getting ready to go downstairs to talk to someone about how to contact the British consulate, when there was a knock on the door. It was Patrick. He had gotten stuck in Olympia because the bus was half an hour late. He just missed the 8 pm bus back to Patras, AND the phone shut off, locking him out of it (he didn’t have the pin number). Our phone numbers were in the phone, so he had no way of calling us or getting in touch with anyone. Finally, I was able to get to sleep. The next morning, we had a little bit of time to kill before getting onto the Superfast ferry that we had booked to travel to Bari, Italy. We took Courtney around to a few of the sights we visited and, of course, stopped for more kataifi. I had to buy two before I left (one for the walk to the ferry, and the other for dessert on the ferry). Once we got to the port, it was time to board, so we got on fairly early. It was really like a miniature cruise ship. It kind of made me want to go on another cruise. I’ll have to remember to give subtle hints to Mom and Dad about that! The trip was fine until around 10 pm when the boat started to rock a bit. I popped a Xamamina (Italian Dramamine) and was comatose until the next morning when we arrived in Bari. From the port, we hopped on a city bus that dropped us off two blocks from the hotel. We got a great deal on this business hotel that we couldn’t pass up. It was beautiful. We were also the only people under the age of 45, I’m fairly sure. We wandered around Bari and saw some pretty cool little churches and old city walls. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, so we stayed outside as much as we could. As with Patras, there isn’t a whole lot to do in Bari, so we decided that day trips would be our best bet. We went to Taranto, a little port city that gave tarantulas their name, Castellana-Grotte, where there are amazing stalactite caves, and Alberobello, where you can see the Trulli houses. The only way I can describe the Trulli houses are a real world version of Munchkinland. They were the coolest little buildings I’ve seen. They are all still used today, some for homes and some for businesses. Our last night in Bari, we switched hotels to be closer to the airport since Patrick and Courtney were flying home on Monday. I had to return to Florence on Sunday because of a class on Monday. We had dinner at this great little restaurant right by the water. It was dead when we got there and by the time we were leaving, there wasn’t an empty seat in the place. Sunday morning, I woke up at some un-Godly hour so that I could catch a cab back to the train station. A cab from central Bari to the hotel cost us Euro 36. The one thing with cabs here is that they start charging you from when you call for them. So, if the cab had to drive all the way from central Bari to get me, I’d probably have to pay around Euro 72. My cab arrived a little early, already with around Euro 14 on the meter. It was fun, though, because my driver didn’t speak English, so I got to use my limited Italian. As we went speeding along the highway, he informed me that the police in the area are really nice, so I didn’t have to worry about wearing a seatbelt. I looked over his shoulder to see the speedometer since it seemed we were going a bit fast for the area. We were doing 150 km/hour (93 mph) in a 50 km/hour (31 mph) zone! I wasn’t worried about the police. I was worried about dying! I have to say, though, he was a good driver. He even dropped me off at the back entrance to the train station so I wouldn’t have to pay for him to drive around to the front entrance, which probably would have added another ten Euro to the already staggering bill. I ended up paying Euro 45 for this cab ride. Don’t look up the conversion; you’ll probably cry like I almost did. After waiting for my train, we finally left for Bologna, where I’d have to transfer trains to Florence. It took around six hours on a Eurostar to get there, but the ride wasn’t bad. I finished a book and got a ton of sleep on the train. The train station in Bologna is big. It’s not huge like the one in Rome, but it is certainly more of a pain to get around. My train from Bari arrived on track 3 (which is right across the platform from track 4…remember this, it’s important). I had about twenty minutes before my train left for Florence, so I went to find a monitor to see which track my train left from. I also desperately needed a drink and snack before I passed out (the food cart didn’t come through like it occasionally does on the Inter-City trains). I got up to the snack stand in the center of the station, but the line was ridiculously long, so I decided to grab a snack from a vending machine near the platform. My train left from track 9, one of the farthest from the center of the station. I lugged my huge piece of luggage and shoulder bag down the stairs to the underground walkway and then back up the stairs to platform 9. About five minutes before our train was scheduled to arrive, an announcement came on the loud speaker. All I was able to make out was “Binario nove (garbled Italian) cambia (garbled Italian) Binario quattro.” This was enough for me. Track 9 has switched to Track 4 was the last thing I wanted to hear! I was just standing on Track 4’s platform. Couldn’t they have made their minds up earlier? As I made it up the stairs, I spotted a vending machine, so I got my snacks, and as I was putting my money into the drink machine, two things happened at once. My money jammed AND the train pulled in. I was able to unjam the machine and got my drink. Finally, something good had happened. My ticket was for Car 5. Guess which car was in front of me? You guessed it, 5!!! One of the doors had a million people jamming into it, so I just went down to the other one to avoid the crowds. Good idea? Well, it was a good idea if I wanted to avoid a crowd crush going into the door. It was a VERY bad idea if I wanted to get in on the right end of the car near my seat. I was in seat 5, the door I entered took me to seat 100. Yes, the opposite end of the car. So there I was with my 22 kg bag of clothes and souvenirs, only weighing 58 kg myself, trying to drag it, push it, and carry it over ignorant people who couldn’t get into their seats without a full theatrical production. I finally made it to my seat after literally ten minutes of fighting my way past the crowd. Luckily, we left ten minutes late, so I was able to relax for a few. I was sitting backwards, so I got motion sick on the last leg of the journey. The 6 hour train ride couldn’t make me sick, but dammit if the 45 minute ride didn’t! I reached Santa Maria Novella, ready to drop over, but I made my way to the taxi stand and caught a ride home since I was way too tired and lazy to walk. I made dinner and passed out, not caring about the work that I had to do for the next day of class. I did that the next day right before each class, and it worked out just fine. Sorry this took so long, but I figured I’d give you as close to a full account of my trip as possible. Hope you enjoyed it! More to come when I post about my field trip with “Indiana Jones”!!!
