Spring Break: So this past week and a half was our spring break...Last Thursday, Gretchen, Erica and I left to go to Paris...we nearly died on the flight there, no joke. Like, I've been in turbulence before but this was rough...the flight attendants came out and started looking at each other with worried expressions- and that's when you know it's bad...but we survived. Barely.
Once we got to our hostel, we walked in to find glass on the floor and a window that wouldn't shut. But because it was already midnight at this point, they couldn't switch us to a different room so we had to deal with it. Just our luck. But the next two days we decided to get up early and go see all the touristy stuff (And we decided to be complete tourists and take one of those open bus tour things as well) : Eiffel Tower, The Lourve, Notre Dame, shopped down Champs de Elysses street, went to Versailles. All that good stuff. Surprisingly, although it was not warm, it didn't POUR on us which was great. The food in Paris was GREAT though...especially the desserts...I had the best chocolate cake ever at the restaurant we went to the first night.
One of our friends, Caroline, is also studying in Paris for the semester so we met up with her one night. Our friend who had been a tour guide in Paris for the summer recommend this small hole-in-the-wall type place we went to which served cheese fondue and wine in baby bottles. (Not quite sure why but it was fun).
But one of my favorite things about Paris was seeing the Eiffel Tower at night all lit up. We got hot chocolate and walked down and it was soo pretty! So different actually seeing it in real life versus in pictures.
Then the next morning we had a few hours before our flight left so we went to the Sacre Cour (i think?) which was up on a hill and had a fabulous view of the entire city. After walking up hundreds of stairs we then discovered there was actually an elevator that could have taken us up...haha oops? So we went back to our hostel and they were supposed to have a cab there for us but of course the cab came about 45 minutes late and once we got to the airport the longest flight was of course for Aegean, what we were flying to Greece. Well, needless to say we were cutting it pretty close when we ran on that plane but we made it so no worries.
So we got to Athens, Greece later that night and needed to take a cab to our hotel. This is where the second near death experience comes in. Our cab driver decides to drive us down a street where hundreds of men are swarming the streets. Well, our cabbie decides to drive down this street and our cab is swarmed by these men trying to open our cab doors and steal our bags out of the trunk...didn't think we were going to make it out of there alive and in one piece...but he pulls down the next road and goes "here's your hotel. I would suggest not going down that street because it's not great but if you turn the other way it's quite touristy." Ok. But the hotel was very nice and the other side of the street was actually quite touristy so it all worked out.
The next morning we got up real early and went down to Piraeus, the port, and got on a ferry to take us to Mykonos. It took like five hours to get there on the ferry. It was like a scene exactly out of the Sisterhood of the Traveling pants movie...white houses with blue windows! So pretty! So we took a shuttle to our hotel that was on the beach and since it was sunny we decided to lay out for a couple of hours. Then we headed into town and walked through the streets and ate dinner right by the beach. Apparently everything was just opening up for the season because there weren't that many people there yet and a lot of the hotels/restaurants/bars were closed until May when they swing into touristy season. But we were just glad to see the sun and not have to wear a jacket for once.
The next afternoon we headed back to Athens and got in at night...we found another Greek restaurant to eat at (I think i've had enough gyros and meat to last me awhile) and walked around the streets. We headed to the Acropolis the next day to look at the ancient Grecian ruins and went shopping and to the flea market...We found that we were glad we weren't in Athens for the full four days because we were running out of things to occupy oursevles with after just one full day in Greece.
Then Friday we got up real early and headed back to Madrid and have been relaxing/enjoying the sunshine in Madrid for the weekend...I actually have to go back to school tomorrow...what? This whole school thing really is getting in the way here...
