and her heart it is in ireland: and now back to reality after a fabulous week in greece

back to reality.

greece was amazing. i had a spectacular time. it is an amazing country and so many interesting things to do. i really enjoyed athens, there was just something special about it. and santorini was just ammmmmazing. honestly. so awesome.

wednesday was a long day. i left my house at 8 to catch the bus to the airport, my flight was at 10 (i love the flight to dub, it only takes 30 minutes) met up with kel and then waited for our 2.30 flight to athens. the flight was long - 4 hours.. lol most of my flights recently have been like an hour and a half tops. i guess thats what i get for only flying to GB the whole time i've been here. so with the 2 hours we gained, it was about 8.30 when we landed in athens. i was so amazed with the greek everywhere, it made me very happy. i dont know why, but i loved it. we easily found the metro and made our way to the hotel. it was funny while trying to find the hotel we turned the corner and there was the acropolis, it was just sooo amazing and i just stopped and took it in. made a few wrong turns trying to find the hotel but found it pretty easily, the streets aren't labeled so well, and most of them are just small little alley's anyway.

thursday was the acropolis. i liked it, a lot! i loved looking up and seeing the acropolis from like everywhere around the city, and it was pretty cool. the acropolis is a huge part of the city and it is kinda in the centre, which is nice. there are sooo many things there, like about 10 major ancient places (such as theatre's, temples and such) and i thought they were just so cool. we took the most round about way there but it was a fun walk, from the stuff i had it said from the plaka just walk up... so we did, along these little cobble streets and there were some gorgeous views of the city as we walked up until we go there. so we walked around, it seemed pretty crowded, so i dont even want to imagine what it must be like in the summer! i just found the acropolis so amazing. i think the reason i liked it so much was because these are some of the oldest things in the world and they are so well preserved. we also walked around the syngmata area, which is where parliament is - we saw the changing of the guards, which was hilarious, they have the funniest uniforms. we also walked throught the national gardens and around the commerical centre of the city.

friday was a looong day. we were up early to get to the port to catch our 7.25 ferry to santorini, which was going to take 9 hours. it wasn't too bad, a gorgeous sunrise from the port and saw a few pretty island, slept a little, mostly read and just relaxed. but the ferry was worth it for the view coming into santorini. honestly. breathtaking. santorini is the island from the sisterhood of the traveling pants. the island is super unique. so in 1600 BC, a volcano erupted, and they think this was one of the worst natural disasters (the whole atlantis thing is said to be about santorini)

so the island used to be a circle, but the volcano, formed the caldera, which the island is famous for. so now the main island is a large crescent, with a few small islands in the center- volcano, and then another one along the other side. so the main island on the caldera side has these magnificent cliffs, and the cities of oia and fira are built into the cliffs. so coming into the port is just awesome.
so santorini was unbelievable. i took some videos at places, because pictures just didn't do any justice. the island is just amazing, the geography of it and how unique it is. the night we got there we just walked around and saw the sunset from fira (the town we were staying in), saturday was kinda cloudy and rainy, so we walked around fira more, where in one of the shops i bough a few paintings. they are super awesome oil paintings, i bought one about the size of a poster of oia, and then 3 small 4x6s of the sunset over oia. i can't wait to have my own place and get them framed. they were super cheap too :) walking around fira was fun, so many little streets, walking only, along the caldera with the cutest shops, sooo many jewelry stores, cafes.. it was fab :) later that afternoon kelly didn't feel well and the weather was icky, so we just relaxed.
monday was nice and sunny, but windy, so we went to the black sand beaches of perissa, soo cool black sand. it is like that from the volcano apparently. it got your feet realllllly dirty.but it was sooo neat. the aegean sea was sooo pretty, and i could imagine the beaches full in the summer, even though they were empty.the beaches are on the non-caldera side of the island. that night we went to oia (the northernmost part of the island) for the sunset, - most of the pants book takes places in oia - which they say is the prettiest in greece for sunsets, and they were totally right. even though it was kinda cloudy, it was still unbelievable. there were so many people there all along the little streets along the cliffs with the sunset, it goes down as one of the top 5 sunsets i've seen. it was super windy, i got so many amazing sunset photos :)

monday we had a few hours before we caught the ferry back to athens so we just walked around and sat in a cafe along the caldera. the ferry back was ok, just soooo long. 9 hours really is a killer. we pretty much stayed on the top deck (i felt sick below, it moved too much and gave me a headache) but where we were was kinda enclosed, at least with glass on top and most of the sides, but it got pretty chillyat night. got back to athens around 12.30 am and was exhausted. seriously tired.

slept in tuesday and took a bus to sounion (about an hour and a half, along the coast) where at the end of the attica peninsula is a temple to poseidon. and it was awesome, it is there all by itself, with some islands in the distance and just so quiet. it is still pretty intact, and lord byron (british admiral, who during the greek independence in 1821, went and helped greece) pretty much said it was the prettiest place on earth. so it was cool and fun :) our last day wednesday we went to kermeikos. to get there we walked around the streets and markets of montastraki and it was fun to see the different random things people were selling. kerameikos was a cemetary, but also where the main road to athens went through, as well as where the gates to heaven were and a ton of other things in its history. so it was pretty awesome. then we walked back along the road along the acropolis, stopping at a few of the things we missed the other day, 2 theatres and something else., i can't remember, but it was awesome :) we walked around the plaka (the area where were were staying) again and then headed to the airport.

the flight back to dublin, was bad. i just couldn't get comfortable and was really restless. kelly slept the whole time. we got in around 12 and found a place to crash in the airport and got back to cork around 10. took a small nap, met kara for lunch and grocery shopped and gossiped about the last 2 weeks of traveling for the 2 of us and then did some readings.

so now i am in paper mode. after work today i spent most of the day in the library, not as productive as i would have liked to, but i had a few good distractions from chats with twin and amy. so i'm off to the library all day tomorrow and sunday to write my bloody historiography. my goal is to have a rough draft by wednesday so i can talk with cindy about it. and then a few days to revise/edit before it is due. plus i'm having people staying at my house from the 16-24th... so i would like to be slightly social, rather than chained to my laptop.