my new favorite place

Greece.

i have to say that greece has made the travel, which turned into 41 hours instead of a mere 37, completely and utterly worth it. the train ride was a little rough though because we went through 3 countries (slovakia, serbia and macedonia) that didn't take our eurorail pass so we ended up paying in 2 out of the 3 countries (macedonia was a little oblivious). if you ever decide to take a train in serbia (for any reason) don't do it. im pretty sure the train moved at about half pace the whole time we were in the country and i felt like they did passport control every 30 minutes (on an over night train so sleep was a bit sparse). here's how our trains worked leaving czech:

czech through slovakia to hungary. hungary to serbia. serbia through macedonia to thesolaniki, greece. thesolaniki to athens.

because of our slow moving train we were supposed to have missed our connection to athens and we made friends on the train that were going to let us sleep on their floor for the night but by the grace of God there was a train leaving about 20 minutes after we arrived in thesolaniki and we made it to athens about 2 hours after we had expected. after a brief nap that morning in our hostel we adventured to the acropolis and the parthenon. what an amazing thing to see! i really enjoyed it. we got to roam around the hill pretty much freely and go into zeus and aphrodite's caves. im pretty sure we went the opposite way of everyone else so we felt like we were alone until we got to the top. the top was amazing and HOT. you could see so much of athens and so much of the history. we didnt have any kind of tour so we didn't always know the specifics of what we were seeing but it was great anyway. i have to say i heard so much about athens being dirty - from americans and greeks - and i think because i was expecting the worst, i was pleasantly surprised. i mean it's pretty much a big city but the people were great so that helped. we ended up roaming athens another day because we got a late night ferry to paros (greek isle) which was also fun to just got to roam freely without an agenda.

paros is amazing. it's one of the more quiet islands but exactly what we needed after so much travel. we got there about 1 am without a hostel but i knew there would be people off the boat willing to negotiate. we got a great deal on a sweet hotel - private shower, balcony, tv, refrigerator and AC! we spent most of our time on the beach reading books and lounging - rough life, i know. 2 nights total.

onto santorini. santorini is MUCH bigger and much higher. it is the result of the active volcano not too far away and has totally different landscape and experience. we once again found a hotel from getting off the boat and negotiated (without knowing it) the price we would pay for a basement. no ac but a fan and there was a pool. i have to say we didn't know what part of the island we wanted to stay on so we didn't really know where we were going but they promised us a room and at a pretty good rate so we took it. since we arrived here around 4 pm we decided to take it easy and do laundry/go grocery shopping. the next day we lounged on the beach with umbrella and chairs. surprisingly, it was the first time i got sunburned - to be a redhead on the greek isles i have done pretty well. after we went back to the hotel to shower off we made arrangements to make our way to italy and see the beautiful white buildings of santorini.

as we were walking, noticing all the restaurants with great views of the sunset were WAAAAAAAY out of our price range we were stopped by a man named nikos. he was a waiter and for some reason wanted us to take up a table at the restaurant to have a drink and watch the sunset - knowing very well we weren't getting dinner. i have to say we had a great view of the sunset so i can't complain and nikos was funny so it wasn't a bad deal. some australians noticed that we hadnt gotten our food yet even though they came way after us so that was funny to explain how we kinda got tricked into it but we didn't lose anything from it so why not. from there we roamed and took more pictures and found (recommended by a local) a cheaper place to eat. traditional greek food never gets old. YUM!

today we are bumming around santorini - a little shopping/beach bumming - until midnight when our ferry will take us back to athens. we have another long trip ahead of us to get to italy but once again i think italy will make it worth it. i have honestly LOVED greece - probably my favorite non-spanish speaking country. italy has some high standards to beat, we'll see what happens.