Ok I'm done with classes foir the week and have nothing to do but give all of you a full detailed account of my February break trip to Greece :)
We all met Friday morning at 4am to catch the bus to the train station that is a ways out of the city. 4 really is the most dead hour of the night but we still met some people walking home from their night and one of them was Greek so she tried teaching us a few words… yea that didn’t work out too well. It had snowed the night before so I was scared that we wouldn’t even be able to make it out of Aix but thankfully the snow had melted and we made it to the train station. So to make this short: we walked to take a bus to take a train to take a metro to take a bus to take a plane to take a bus to take a trolley and we finally made it to Athens J Yea… it really was as complicated as it sounds! We did however stay the day and night in Paris after taking the train.
We saw EVERYTHING in Paris even if it was only from a distance: Notre Dame de Paris, The Latin Quarter, Ile-de-la-Cité, Pont Neuf, The Louvre, Palais Royal, Eiffel Tower, Tuileries Gardens, Les Invalides, Académie Française, Opéra Garnier, Musée d'Orsay, Pont Alexandre III, Napoléon's Tomb, Assemblé Nationale, Champs-Élysées, Arc de Triomphe, Grand & Petit Palais, Place de la Concorde, and more. It was a great overview of the city and was really nice even though I have already been there. After the tour I walked to the Eiffel Tower and just let myself get lost in Paris (I wasn’t too worried I had a map and the Eiffel Tower as a reference). Later I met the rest of the girls at the Louvre and we took advantage of our free admission (European Union Visas) and their extended hours. I saw the Mona Lisa for the first time and so many other really old pieces of art. That night we stayed at a hostel that I now know to be the top of the top. It was gorgeous, clean, bright and new, so my first experience in a hostel and I get the top…
The next day we sat in the airport most of the day. The line was really long to check in and then our plane was delayed. Oh well! I suppose I have no right to complain seeing as how cheap the flight was! (186 euros round trip). The only really annoying thing about the flight was that we didn’t have assigned seats. It wouldn’t have been such a problem but for the fact that Europeans have apparently never heard of a line. They called boarding and people started some semblance of a line so we joined at the back… bad idea! The “line” shortly turned into a blob and we were some of the last people on the plane even though we were in line far before most of them. Right away after arriving in Greece I realized we might have some problems with the language barrier… yes most people speak at least some English but all the bus stops are in Greek… in Greek lettering. So even if we had the name of the stop we needed to get off at we had no idea which stop that was! We ended up asking the bus driver whenever we took the bus and that worked fine but it was still confusing. We really made an effort to learn some Greek though. We first learned Ee-fra-di-sto which means thank you. The greeks loved it when we made the effort! That night we went to a greek fast food restaurant. It looked like we were eating hamburgers but it definitely was not beef we were eating! I think it was lamb but we really don’t know. The hostel was not nearly as nice as the one in Paris but it was still clean and the other people staying there were awesome. We met so many interesting people from all over with such interesting stories. I’m probably forgetting a bunch but Argentina, Israel, France, Spain, Turkey, Ireland, Canada, and states all over the US were represented either by people studying there or natives.
Sunday we went to the flea market (which was quite the experience) and really just got our bearings around the city while stumbling across random ruins. Monday was a national holiday so not a lot was open but everyone was on the mountains within and surrounding the city flying kites. The Acropolis and the Parthenon were amazing and the view from them overlooking the city was gorgeous! We also saw the temple of Zeus Olympiad, Hadrians Gate, and so many other ruins. They are everywhere! So many of them have signs like “they tried to make a sewer line here and came across these ruins”. We also went to the Acropolis museum, the museum of natural history (with pottery shreds dating back to 5000 BC).
Thursday we took a day trip to Delphi which is a 3 hour bus ride from Athens. The ruins are on the side of a mountain overlooking a gorgeous valley and you can see the Mediterranean. It was so pretty! I took a bunch of pictures and will put some up as soon as I can! The ruins were really cool too. Delphi is where the oracle (an old peasant woman) sat above a crack in the earth that emitted fumes. She muttered unintelligible syllables which the priest would then “interpret.” Important people would come from all over to ask a question of the oracle and wars were fought (or not fought) due to what the oracle said. The foundation of the temple is still there but the crack has since closed up due to earthquakes.
One morning some of the girls wern’t feeling well and all the rest of them decided to stay in bed. I however decided to go exploring. I was on my way to the national Archaeological museum (about a 45 minute walk from our hostel) when I noticed a little hole in the wall through which a few people were walking and I decided to investigate. I walked through and found myself in a meat market. When I say meat market I mean it too… It was intense… two whole blocks of intensity! And then I hit the seafood market… another two blocks. When I hit the fruit and olive market I was so happy and ended up buying two huge bags of olives (for a total of 2 euros!) The olives were so good and so cheap!
I suppose that is a good introduction into the food. Those Greeks know how to do their food too. Right down the street from our hostel there was a stand which sold gyros for 2 euros and they were delicious! They had chicken, pork and lamb… YUM!!! The Baklava is so good as well; its absolutely drenched in honey! We found a bakery which we stopped by nearly every day to try something new. I ate so much :)
Well, there is so much more about my trip but I bet I have already bored you all… Aix is still amazing and my classes are getting easier now that I am getting used to listening to someone speak in French at me for 3 hours straight.
Tomorrow I’m going to climb the mountain again with some friends and Saturday we have another program trip this time to see the Roman aqueduct near us. We are also planning a ski trip in the Alps which I am really excited about!
