Santorini!

Hi everyone!

I realize how far behind I've let myself fall in keeping up with my blog, so I apologize first and foremost to everyone who kept checking back and wondering why nothing new had been posted.

In the time that has elapsed since I last posted, so many things have happened that it's hard to begin to write about any of it. About three weeks ago, three of my roommates and I took a trip to the Greek island of Santorini for the weekend. We set off on our adventure at 5:00am on Friday morning and took around two hours of public transportation to get to Pireaus (the main sea port of Athens) to catch a 5-hour ferry to Santorini. We arrived around 1:00pm and immediately found George, the owner of the hostel we had booked online, and he drove us to our hostel in Kartarados, a smaller village than Fira (the main city on the island). As soon as we dropped off our stuff, we found a Motorcycle/ATV rent shop and rented 4-wheelers or ATV's to ride around the island for the rest of the day. I took lots of pictures of everything I saw and you can look at them above.

Our second day on Santorini was entirely filled by a day-tour of the island in which we joined a large group of foreign tourists (like ourselves) on a huge tour bus and then on a pirate-like ship to explore the Caldera (or volcano) and other ports on the island. It was a good way to see the whole island but we got stuck into paying tourist prices for greek salad and traditional greek meals that my roommates and I know are way cheaper in our home neighborhood in Athens. It was a strange experience to feel on the one hand like an American tourist, but on the other like a Greek person visiting the island and understanding that we were getting ripped off. All in all, Santorini is a very beautiful place, but I think my perception of it was tainted by the fact that I knew how much things in Greece cost on a regular basis and being able to see how much tourists are taken advantage of was alarming and disappointing.

My roommates and I had a good time however--I took lots of beautiful photos and some of my best memories from the trip are remembering how much we laughed at everything that we came across that entire weekend. My favorite part of the island was the Red Beach which we visited the last day. I've never seen a more gorgeous beach than the one in the pictures above.

I will try to update more often in the future so keep checking back!

Love and happiness to all,

Mia