So basically, Greece is incredible and amazing and I’m totally obsessed. Every day there were more and more things that made me love it, and there was nothing that turned me off. It is by far one of my favorite places I’ve ever been- and I was only there for a few days in winter!
After my friend and I spent our two days in Athens together, we planned the next day at about 6pm over about an hour. We booked transportation, accommodation, and activities, all completely last minute, and everything ended working out perfectly.
We got up early the next morning to take a ferry to the island of Hydra. It is one of the closest islands to the mainland and is famous for having zero cars, so everyone gets around by walking and donkeys. We ubered to the dock, but found out on the way that the bus and metro strike hadn’t ended, and that it would take longer than we anticipated because traffic was so bad due to lack of public transportation. However, for some reason the Google Maps app of our driver had an arrival time 20 minutes later than the one we pulled up on our phone, which would have made us miss the boat. We crossed our fingers and hoped we were right.
We were only about ten minutes away (according to our map) when the driver looked at his phone and started cracking up. His phone had somehow put the dock in the middle of the ocean, and was telling him to drive out into the water! We made our ferry just fine.
Arriving on Hydra was like stepping into a magical fairy Greekland. The sun was shining, everything was a ten minute or less walk away, there were donkeys literally everywhere, and of course, cats. It only took us a couple minutes to find the apartment we had booked; the woman was standing outside waiting for us. She showed us around, gave us the key, and didn’t even say anything about payment – we had to. She was like “oh, you can do what you want, pay now, or just leave cash with the key on the table when you leave.” Like what. People in Greece are so kind and trusting. She didn’t even have my credit card info from when I had booked it online. She also suggested a place to eat down the road, where we immediately went because we are people that get hungry very quickly.
This place was known for its calamari. They were just opening as we walked in, but the guy was so nice and set up a table for us. He served us calamari that he had caught and cooked himself, and it was literally the best calamari I’ve ever had in my life. It was the whole squid, fried just enough, not rubbery, and so flavorful. I can now never have calamari again because I will be disappointed.
Then it was time for our horseback riding! We got an incredible deal with a woman who has been doing this for a few years with tourists, and she walked alongside us while we rode up a trail on a hill, saw some gorgeous views, and rode back down again. She is the coolest woman: she has some rescue horses, doesn’t even use bits because the horses are trained well enough to respond without them, and seems to live the happiest existence.
When we were all done, my friend and I got coffees and had a snack by the waterside, and walked along the trail that seems to go all the way around the island. We couldn’t do this for forever because we thought it might rain, but it felt so good just to walk (and to go up some unnecessary steps during a wrong turn, which was regrettable because I am out of shape.)
We thought our best plan of action was to grab a bottle of wine from the supermarket and have some pre-dinner drinks. There was a little market around the corner from where we were staying, but the problem was that only about half the wine bottles had prices on them. Here is recreation of the events:
SCENE: Two beautiful and intelligent looking girls carry an armload of wine bottles apiece up to the counter.
Beautiful and Intelligent Looking Girl #1: Uh…could you tell us how much this costs?
Cashier: (scans first bottle) 9.74.
BAILG #2: Mmm hmm. And this one?
Cashier: 13.00
BAILG #1: Ah. What about this one?
Cashier: 3.20.
BAILG #1 and #2: (together) Yes. That. We will get that.
BAILG #2: Also where is good for dinner?
Cashier: (in broken English) Something something something something GOOD PLACE INSIDE OF THE ALPHA BANK.
We headed back to our place, drank about half of the wine, and talked about politics, religion, feminism, and sex. This is most of our conversations. We would be a bad dinner party. But then…it was time for FOOD! We both get really excited about food, and conveniently remembered what the cashier had told us: there was a dinner place inside of the bank! For some reason this didn’t seem weird to us, so when we got to the bank and saw it was closed and that there was no food there, we got confused. We wandered around a bit, but there was almost nothing open – one of the shitty things about traveling in the low season. We finally asked a stranger on the street, who told us to go to the same place as the other girl, and once she said the name, we were like OH YEAH THAT’S WHAT IT’S CALLED. So we put it in our trusty Google Maps, took some roads that didn’t completely exist, and finally found this place called Manna. Hallelujah! Also it wasn’t in the bank. It didn’t occur to us that since her English wasn’t perfect, maybe she meant “across the street from” or “kind of near” the bank. We are smart.
We ate everything. And ate it so fast. We were so hungry. And Greek food is incredible.
Then wine, a bit of TV, bed. Woke up at 6, caught our ferry back, took a cab to Athens, found some free breakfast, headed to meet our guide for an all-day tour!!
There were only three of us plus the guide, and it was one of the most fun tours I’ve ever been on. First of all, it was like 60 degrees, so that was pretty fun for January. We drove to some gorgeous viewpoints, fed some cats, dipped our feet in the Aegean Sea for good luck, went to the Temple of Poseidon (which is all completely original marble SO CRAZY and now apparently I can’t drown), went swimming in a thermal pool with fish that eat your dead skin (so fucking weird you guys), ate the best gyros in Athens, and finished our day back on top of Mount Lycabettus to watch the sunset. Unbelievable.
That night, the three of us hung out and got dinner and went out to several places for drinks. Our American friend got very hammered while the two of us got very tired. We ended up kind of sneaking into the common area of the hostel we had been staying at to sleep on couches – we had to leave at 4am so we didn’t feel like paying for a room. Unfortunately, people don’t seem to understand what nighttime is: there were people like YELLING conversations in the lobby ALL NIGHT, and a guy actually came into the room we were asleep in to talk on the phone, but he was actually yelling into the phone also. Between two sleeping people. At like 2am. Like, bro, I get it, you’re in a common area, you’re totally allowed to make a 2am phone call…but do you need to be yelling for like a half hour?
Anyway. Today was pretty much a travel and rest day…and now, bloop, bloop, bloop! I’M FINALLY HERE! I’ve arrived in Tel Aviv and I can hardly believe it. I’ve wanted to come to Israel since I was a little kid, and finally here I am! Also I both showered AND did almost all of my laundry…so things are looking up!