Greece is absolutely amazing! This trip was probably the best ten consecutive days of my life. There's so much to say, but also so much that words fail to describe, so I will just give you a brief overview and hopefully showing you all the pictures when I get home will give justice to how incredible the experience was. This spring break trip was through Loyola and there were 80 spots available, although only 25 students signed up. This was a perfect number I think because it's small enough that we all knew each other by the end of the trip but big enough that you didn't have to be with the same couple people the whole time. The best thing about taking a trip through the school is that I didn't have to think about anything the whole time, which allowed me to have a really relaxing and stress-free break. They just told us when and where to show up and they had everything planned and taken care of, which was great! The Loyola staff who went on the trip were Sander, a Dutch professor who's hilarious and a lot of fun, and Martha, one of our SLA's on campus (who's job is basically that of an RA). There were also two other instrumental people on the trip: Yanni, our bus driver, who's in his 20s and hung out with us when he wasn't navigating the narrow roads of Greece, and Ioanna (pronounced Yo-ana), our tour guide, who is amazing.
Ioanna is probably the most interesting person I have met abroad so far. She is a professor, art historian, and author as well as our tour guide for the trip. Oh, and I should probably mention that she's also a well-known food critic in Greece, so she hand-picked every dish we ate at every restaurant, which resulted in many incredible meals for us. We were so lucky to have her with us for the week. She is Greek and in her early 40s, but she grew up in South Carolina, so she has a charming Southern accent, which adds to her character. She got her Master's at the University of St. Andrew's and her Doctorate at Oxford, so she is incredibly intelligent but not pretentious at all. She teaches at a university in Athens and has taught in the summer at our Rome campus for the past 4 years, so she loves showing Loyola students around Greece for fall and spring breaks. Having her as our guide really gave us a unique experience in Greece, since she is so knowledgeable and her Greek pride is evident to anyone who meets her. It seemed like she knew about every other person in Greece, she ran into people she knew everywhere we went and knew every restaurant and hotel owner where we ate/stayed, which I know got us special treatment. She's written a guidebook on Athens and a bunch of academic articles and is working on a couple books now. Another interesting thing she's done is walked from Athens to Istanbul (over 1,000 miles!), which took her over six weeks and was quite an adventure! If you can't tell, I think she's just about the coolest person ever. She's just one of those people who has done a lot of amazing things in her life and I feel blessed to have met her and gotten to know her a little bit. I don't know what the future holds, but I hope I have the pleasure of running into her again someday (hopefully in Greece!).
Now let me tell you about the trip. In the morning on Friday, March 4th, we left Rome and flew to Athens. Ioanna and Yanni picked us up there and we went to Lake Marathon, where the Battle of Marathon took place (which is very important historically though I had never heard of it before). We had our first Greek meal there at a restaurant that overlooked the lake. It was awesome (details will come later in a whole paragraph devoted to food!). Then we took a ferry to the island of Mykonos. It was a really big ferry that held cars and semi-trucks as well as people, and it was a 5 hour ferry ride. We got to the island around 11pm, then some of us walked down to the closest beach for a while before falling asleep in our comfy hotel beds after a long day of traveling. On Saturday, Ioanna gave us a walking tour of Mykonos, and we saw the cool old windmills they have among other things. Mykonos is exactly what you'd expect of a Greek island if you've seen pictures before - all the buildings are white with brightly colored accents. It's very pretty and definitely makes you feel like you're on an island. Then we had some time to explore on our own before dinner. For dinner we went to this amazing beachfront restaurant, which of course had great food! Then we all went out to a bar together to go dancing, and had a fun night! On Sunday we took a small ferry to the island Delos, which is 45 minutes from Mykonos. The whole island of Delos is an archaeological site, and it was a sacred place where many temples to the Greek gods were built as far back as 1000 B.C. After Ioanna gave us a tour of the island, we went back to Mykonos, where celebrations for "Apokries" were taking place to anticipate the beginning of Lent, much like Carnevale in Italy. A lot of the locals were gathered in an outside auditorium where groups of people were performing. There were people doing traditional Greek dances and kids dressed up in costumes. The best performance was a group of little kids maybe 6-years-old wearing dalmatian costumes and dancing to the song "Who Let the Dogs Out", it was adorable. For dinner that night we went to a great restaurant on the other side of the island where we ate a delicious meal and saw a lot of locals wearing costumes. We saw a belly-dancing performance, then went back to the town and went out for our last night in Mykonos, which was a lot of fun!
Monday morning we left Mykonos to take the ferry back to Athens. We got into the city in the afternoon and had a little time to relax before dinner. Unfortunately it was raining, but the restaurant was only a short walk from the hotel. We had a meal with a lot of seafood because it was the first day of Lent in Greece. We also had ouzo, which is a strong Greek alcohol. It sort of tastes like black licorice, and I was not really a fan of it, but I'm glad I tried all the traditional Greek cuisine. Tuesday morning we woke up and it was SNOWING!! Snow is rare in Athens, plus we were all on spring break in Greece, we didn't want to see any snow! But very few people can say that they went to the Acropolis and saw the Parthenon while it was snowing, so we had quite a unique experience! For lunch that day we got gyros, then explored Athens and shopped a little bit during the afternoon. I haven't mentioned this yet, but you may have heard there are a lot of stray dogs wandering around Greece, which is completely true. To put it in perspective, Ioanna told us there are about 11 million people in Greece and about 6 million dogs! Tuesday night we had a great dinner at a restaurant that had a beautiful view of the Acropolis lit up at night. Due to the snow in Greece, we had to change our trip itinerary, which luckily Ioanna took care of for us.
Wednesday, unable to go to Delphi due to the snow, we headed to Nafplio, which is a charming town right on the water. On the way, we stopped at Corinth, which is where St. Paul wrote his famous letter to the Corinthians. It was cool to walk in his footsteps, and there were gorgeous views of the water and snow-covered mountains from Corinth. After settling into the hotel in Nafplio, we walked around a pathway that goes along the cliffs right by the water, which was beautiful. The water is just so blue, it's unbelievable. We had a delicious dinner that night at a little restaurant in town. Thursday morning we started the day with a big climb in Nafplio. We climbed up many, many steps (supposedly 999!) on a mountainside to reach the Palamidi castle, which was the highest point around and gave us gorgeous views of the mountains, water, and town. Yanni picked us up from the castle in the bus, and we took a day trip to Mycenae, which is an archaeological site. In Greek mythology, it was the palace of Agamemnon, but is only ruins now. In the excavations several grave sites were found with a lot of interesting artifacts. We also went to Epidauros, which was a healing center from the 4th to 1st centuries B.C. There's a cool theater there where many ancient poets and actors performed. It's built right into a hill, so the acoustics are amazing, and Ioanna demonstrated how the drop of a coin onstage can be heard throughout the whole theater. We drove back to Nafplio and had a great dinner.
Friday we went on another day trip from Nafplio. Our first stop was in Sparta, where we saw a statue of King Leonidas, who led the 300 Spartans into battle against Persia. Then we went onto Karyes, which is the small village of about 300 people that Ioanna is from. Ioanna knows everyone in the village, so it was really cool to have her show us around the village she's so proud of. We had lunch at a little tavern where the couple who own it make every food product they serve. They raise the animals for the meat, grow their own potatoes and everything. It feels so natural to get all of your food straight from the source. After lunch we went to the cellar of a house where an older man makes organic wine. He let us have as much wine as we wanted from the huge barrels in his wine cellar. Then the local beekeeper came and sold us jars of the honey his bees produce. Everyone in Ioanna's village was so friendly and gracious. It was so nice to get a glimpse into the quiet lives of Greeks living in a small village, and that is definitely something I never would have done if we didn't have Ioanna as our guide.
On Saturday we were finally able to go to Delphi since the snow had cleared. In Greek mythology, Delphi was the site of the famous oracle and was once thought to be the center of the universe. Many historical figures such as Alexander the Great visited Delphi, so it was an interesting place to see. Then we went to a gorgeous little ski resort town, Arahova, where we spent our last night in Greece. We had a great last dinner and all went out together in the town. On Sunday, we stopped at a working monastery that has beautiful mosaics in the church and crypt. Then we headed to Athens and boarded a plane back to Rome!
Now I'll tell you a little bit about the Greek food. I had no idea what to expect from Greek food, but I ended up loving it, probably in part because Ioanna only got the best food for us! Most of our meals were family-style, which I love, and all of the restaurants had nice, cozy atmospheres. I think one reason I enjoyed Greek food so much is because it's simple (much like Italian food). For example, my new favorite dish is Greek salad. But it doesn't have lettuce like the "Greek salads" in the US. It's just tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, olives, and feta cheese, topped with olive oil. Another one of my new favorite things is Greek yogurt with honey - so good! I actually didn't realize how much honey is used in Greece. Like I said, we bought honey from the beekeeper in Ioanna's village, but we also had doughnuts dipped in honey that day, which were delicious. Another dish with honey that we had a few times during the trip was feta cheese rolled in a pastry and covered with honey and sesame seeds. At the dinner we had in Athens on the first day of Lent I tried octopus! It was cooked with a pasta and I don't really know if I like it, but it's definitely interesting, and I love trying new foods, so I'm glad I tried it. We also had caviar dip that night, which was delicious on bread. When I get home this summer I definitely plan on making and eating some of these Greek dishes, which will remind me of my amazing trip!
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| Greek salad, so simple and delicious - my new favorite food! |
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| Lake Marathon |
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| Mykonos |
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| Ruins at Delos |
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| Athens |
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| Corinth |
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| Gorgeous view from Corinth! |
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| The Parthenon |
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| Laura and I |
Tomorrow night I'm taking a train to Venice to meet my parents and Michael!! I can't wait to see them! We're going to Venice and Florence this weekend, then we'll come back to Rome on Monday and they'll be here until next Saturday. Thanks for reading!
