Les Sandwichs au Jambon: April 2012

WARNING: LONG

Hello all. I am writing to you because I now have some free time in my life. After taking a final this morning, I have just one class left to finish, which is kind of bittersweet. It means less work, but less time left in France as well. But for right now, I am focusing on getting this thing done. Last Wednesday, the 4, Quincy, Ashley, and myself flew to Greece! How did this happen you might ask. Well, in January, they mentioned Greece as a possible destination, and we all booked tickets. So, on Wednesday, we took a train to the airport in Paris, and hopped on a plane headed for Athens, which left at 9:30, and I never ate dinner, so I was starving. But they served us dinner! And it was so good. It was green beans, two sausages, and potatoes. Oh the potatoes. They were delicious, like, ridiculously good. But maybe it was because I hadn't eaten since lunch at 12:30, but I think they would be good no matter when. Also, they gave us little candies before take off. Also yummy. So then we landed. And "slept" in baggage claim since we landed at 2 in the morning. Sleeping was actually playing cards and listening to the Hercules soundtrack for 3 hours before we caught a bus to Piraeus, the port of Athens. There is a whole story that accompanies this trip, but I think Quincy's blog will express it much better than I could. (Link: http://quincyineurope.blogspot.fr/) Getting off the bus as tired as we were was interesting. We just kind of wandered over to this cafe looking place, and there was a travel agency next to it that some man directed us into. The lady spoke perfect english, and we bought tickets to Paros, a 4 and a half hour trip. Then, we walked next door to the cafe. But I didn't buy anything. Too expensive. Then we got on the boat.

This was by far the biggest boat I have ever been on. It was a massive ferry built for long voyages across the sea, and after a little exploring, we managed to find what might or might not have been our seats. The reason we didn't know what to do was because it was all greek, and also because the place we were told to go looked to nice to be what we bought. But whatever. It worked for us. I am going to skip the details of the ferry ride. Just know that it was really windy outside, and the sea was beautiful. And the seats reclined a lot. And then we got to Paros. We walk out of the ship, and into a big parking lot type thing with taxis and people everywhere. Kind of really hectic. We manage to find the way out, and I am immediately drawn into a conversation with a man holding a pamphlet. He asks how many people I am with. 3. How many nights are we staying. 2. Alright, he says he can give us rooms for 12 euro each a night. I look back at Ashley and Quincy and we say alright. Let's do this. This is the part of the story where the parents out there might get a little worried. He takes us to a van where another man is helping a lone woman put luggage in the trunk. He introduces himself as Andreas, and we hop in. No questions asked. We find out this woman in canadian, travelling around for a month before a wedding in Israel. Then we start driving away from the port. And after just a couple minutes, the van stops, outside the Hotel Franciscos. Andreas took us upstairs to room numero uno. Awesome. It opened up to a room with a double bed, then that room had a door to a room with two twin beds. Sweet. And both had balconies out in the warm greek sun! And we had a bathroom and fridge. After settling in the canadian, Andreas came back and told us it would be 70 euro total. That is how much it costs for one night in any hotel nicer than a Red Roof Inn in Paris, so it was kind of a great deal.
We then set out to explore Paros. It was a super windy day, so we all had some rocking hair. We quickly learned that the main town is quite small, and everything looks typically greek. And their is a pirate bar. With board games. What more could you ask for on an island? We even found a carrefour, our favorite french super market! We bought supplies to make breakfast and snacks for the beach. After that, we found a way back to the hotel where we all laid on the big bead and simultaneously passed out. I guess that is what happens when you try to explore after being awake for around 31 hours. After waking up, we went to the little family restaurant down the road from the hotel to get dinner and watch the sunset. It was beautiful. I had the cheap chicken thing, and we even got dessert on the house! It was some sort of rice cake cinnamon thing. It wasn't too great, but helped fill our bellies more. Then we went back to the hotel and found Andreas to get blankets for the night. He was confused as to why we would need blankets, but got us some none the less. What a great guy. Then we slept.
Good morning Paros. The sun was shining, not a cloud in the sky. Walked out on the porch and it was already warm out. I knew this was going to be a good day. We ate breakfast, put on our swim trunks, and I actually put on sunscreen. Your welcome mom and dad. Then we headed down to the beach, and made our way over to the other side of the bay. We could see that there was a little point, and wanted to be on the beach facing more of the sea. After we got to the point, we saw that there was a lot more to the island, and followed a little path that took us down to a little private beach. This beach was nice. We set up camp, went to test the waters, not too cold, and then laid down for a while. After warming up and listening to some tunes, we got into the water to swim around and enjoy the sea. This was pretty much our entire afternoon, just hanging out, enjoying warm sunny weather, and jumping into the sea from a little cement pier thing nearby. We then headed back to the town before it got too dark so we could watch the sunset again, and ate lunch around 5 in the afternoon. Pork gyros. Back to the hotel to change into real clothes for dinner, but we missed the sunset. We went to a restaurant we saw earlier where the guy asked us if we wanted to enjoy their food, so clearly it was good. I had simple spaghetti. And we got free dessert again! Same exact thing though, still not very good.
The next morning we packed up, and headed out to do some souvenir shopping. Turns out that on Saturdays, most places don't open up before 10, so we didn't actually buy anything except for lunch for the ferry ride. On the ferry, we rode on the back deck, playing cards and reading for class. We got to Athens, found the metro, and found our hostel. They bumped us up to a studio, so we got our own little kitchen and a really big room. It was really nice. Then we headed to the Acropolis to meet Emily! And her friend Ian. We explored a little of Athens with them before heading back to our hotel to cook a 3 course meal for our guests. First we had some cooked peppers, carrots, and cucumbers. Then was christmas shaped pasta with tomato sauce, and for dessert we had the traditional greek easter bread stuff. That night we just hung out in the room spending time with each other before we had to go our separate ways.
On Sunday, which was Palm Sunday in Greece, not Easter, we went to visit a bunch of different old places, and climbed back up to the Acropolis to actually go inside and see the Parthenon and all that good stuff. This whole time Quincy and Ashley were singing Hercules songs too. After lunch in a bakery, we found some ice cream, and wandered around the touristy area Plaka. It was cool. There are so many things you can buy, it was fun just looking at everything. After a while, we headed back to the hotel to rest up before going to the Olympic center to see a professional soccer game. But turns out, we couldn't. The "hooligans," as the cop told me, had been causing damage at the last few games so the team couldn't have fans for a while. This meant we had to go back to the hotel to watch the game, but we ended up watching BBC News and cooking dinner, then listening to Quincy recounted the entire story of the Iliad to me and Ashley.
Monday we headed north. We found a french book store, the school of Athens, the national library, and riot police. Yeah. Riot police. That is when we decided to walk away quickly. We then found a gathering of people behind a van with huge speakers blasting some greek man yelling, and we decided to head the other way. That afternoon, we did some more walking around Plaka, saw the temple of Zeus, and the original Olympic stadium (where I won two races), and eventually went out to dinner at a restaurant we saw earlier in the day. That was after we all fell asleep watching soccer from who knows what country. We got some fried calamari to start, then I had some spaghetti with seafood, which was not bad, but not fantastic either. Dessert was free, and I chose fruit over ice cream. Then we went to bed after listening to Quincy read some more greek myths.
Tuesday we had to pack up and check out. We went to the Acropolis museum, finally bought some souvenirs, and then got lunch at the same bakery, and my lunch was baklava. Nothing else. Then we went back to the hotel to do our e check in so we could choose seats next to each other on the plane. Quincy chose the last row, row 34, which turned out to be a great decision. Although getting to the airport was more difficult than it should have been, we had to take a metro and a taxi which needed to fill up on gas on the way, we got there, and got on the plane. The food was not as good this time, some sort of pasta and veggies, but the man in the row ahead of us and across the aisle was the highlight of the flight. He pulled out his computer after dinner, and started watching The Muppets!! Quincy and I immediately started listening to the soundtrack, syncing it up with each scene. It was brilliant. (Shout out to Mary right there) (Mary is our american friend from Scotland at the Institut) Then we landed, and I don't really want to go into details of our miserable night. Here is the run down: RER was 30 minutes late. We couldn't exit the station. Couldn't find a bus. Eventually found an expensive taxi. Got into our room with no towels, horribly squeaky beds, and in the morning, no breakfast. So then we got out of there, took an hour and a half to find the station again, and were finally back in Paris. Funny how at home we feel there now, even though that is just the third time I have been. We studied a little in the Jardins de Luxembourg, then headed to Montparnasse to wait for our train back to Tours. This is where we met a friendly canadian woman with whom we will be seeing lots of horsies on Monday. Should be exciting. Now it is just 10 days until we go to Senegal, what?! And nothing will be happening before then, so I won't be writing again for a while. So hopefully this will suffice for a couple of weeks. Until then...