For the last trip of this summer Amma, Baba, and I went to Greece, a country I had wanted to visit since elementary school where I started reading the Greek mythology series, Percy Jackson. The trip started out with a red eye flight making us very tired. Thankfully, we had an activity to keep us awake all day. This activity was a food tour of Athens and while I was super tired and fell asleep at one of the restaurants, this was one of my favorite experiences in the whole trip. We got traditional Greek coffee brewed in hot sand which helped to keep me awake for a little bit and we tried lots of food like Greek mezze, coffee, and gyros which were my favorite food from this tour. We also found a nice breakfast place through this tour that we kept coming back to day after day for their cheese pastries covered in honey called Bougatsa. After this tour, we finally got to sleep.
The next few days were pretty fun. We saw lots of ancient temples like the Athena Parthenon which was a temple at the highest point at the edge of the city. We got really good sunset views but I got really bored of taking so many pictures, even if they looked very good. My favorite temple we saw though was the temple of Poseidon which was a temple outside the city that had a great view of the Aegean sea. This temple was my favorite because of the views of the sea and because it was by the sea, for once it wasn’t hot. That is a recurring theme all throughout Greece as the average temperature for the day was around 100 degrees. This especially bothered us when we visited Delphi which was the center of ancient Greece. We got to see lots of ancient temples and stadiums but as we saw these monuments, we had to walk up a mountain with no shade in the hundred degree temperature. Because of this Delphi was probably my least favorite part of the trip but it was still very good because Baba and I got very good Greek lamb that was cooked for 4 hours at a local restaurant in a mountainous town called Arachova outside of Delphi, which was very yummy.
Similar to how the lamb was the best part of Delphi, rest of the food was my favorite part of Athens. Other than the food tour, we also had a lot of local Greek food because we were staying in a popular town square. My favorites were the cheese bread with honey on it, gyros, and different meat dishes. Amma also enjoyed Greek yogurt a lot and had it at every meal.
After Athens, we went to the Greek island of Santorini. This island was way more of a tourist town than Athens was with tons of shops and very expensive prices. We spent a lot of our time walking around different towns in Santorini which included the towns of Fira, Oia, and Imerovigli (wiggly for short). The towns had amazing views of the sea and what is called the caldera.
Santorini was built after a huge volcanic explosion and is built on the edge of the volcano with the center of it in the water. It is like all the buildings are on the outer ring of the volcano with the actual center of the volcano being under water. That is a caldera.
Along with the water views we got lots of views of the white houses and blue domes of the city. Amma especially liked these and took lots and lots of pictures. Also in Santorini we ate at a lot of nice restaurants and at one, they played a funny prank on us where they pretended to spill a cup of coffee on Baba’s white shirt when the cup was actually empty. Another unique experience we had at a restaurant was when we did the smashing of the plates which was a Greek tradition that they had to celebrate. At 9:00 at night the restaurant started playing music and gave everyone ceramic plates to throw on the ground and break. See the video in the album.
My favorite part of the entire trip was the catamaran ride we did in Santorini. A bunch of other people and us took a Catamaran tour where they took us around the caldera. The first thing we did on the boat was stop at the famous red beach where the rock walls of the beach were red because of iron. We got to stop and swim around for a while. Something that amazed me was that the water was a clear turquoise blue much different from the water in America. After this swimming spot we continued our trip until they took us near the volcano where the water was supposed to be a hot spring. Unfortunately that was the coldest swimming spot of them all as we didn’t end up going close enough to the center of the springs due to currents. Next they took us to a snorkeling spot where we got an amazing view of many schools of fish. This was also different from normal snorkeling because the water was so clear that we could see all the way to the very bottom of the sea in that area meaning we even got to see the fish deep under water. For example, I saw a very weird looking fish which was really long with a pointy nose all the way at the bottom of the ocean floor. Next we traded our view of the fish for a view of the sunset on the water which concluded our catamaran trip. The 5 hour catamaran cruise also had amazing BBQ and mezze and unlimited drinks. I had Greek Fanta and loved it more than regular Fanta here.
As our trip wrapped up, I thought about all the amazing experiences that we had and I realized that sometimes it's worth walking through the heat to enjoy the views.
Click here for the Greece album
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