Only the beginning...

This has been a busy week and is only the beginning of tons and tons of traveling I've got ahead of me the next couple of weeks!

Last weekend, I did a lot of studying getting ready for midterms. On Saturday, my friend and I went on a search for cheap wrist watches and did some shopping and wandering around Monastiraki and talked. We had fresh squeezed orange juice at a nice cafe that looked up at the Acropolis and did homework. It was a great morning. The rest of the weekend was pretty chill with tons of work.

The week was full of midterms and boring studying, but it was great to get them over with. We had some fun throughout the week! It was my friend's birthday, so we all went out to Yum Yum and had yummy Chinese food and took a study break. A few of us also went jogging most nights, which is so fun and gorgeous. It is so nice to jog, even late at night, to see the city and get a workout! How incredible to be jogging on the Olympic Stadium, past Hadrian's Arch, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, and the Acropolis! We also had a lecture on Wednesday night about the Thessaloniki Film Festival, which was really interesting!

Thursday morning was great, despite the rain! I was supposed to have class at Kerameikos (Ancient Cemetary), but as I was on my way there with some other students, but class got cancelled due to the intense rain that made the site pretty muddy. I kept walking to the site with a friend that didn't know where it was exactly, then decided to just camp out at a cafe for a frappe and wait for the travel agency to open. I wanted to book my Fall Break ferries to Santorini and Milos with Mom! I ended up at a nice little cafe and drank an amazing frappe for over an hour, watching the shop owners and Athenians interact in Monastiraki. It was really interesting. I got a different glimpse into daily life for Athenians that I usually don't see at 8:30 in the morning. I had a really pleasant time just being solo, journaling and praying, and figuring out some things that have been on my mind. On the walk back, I went into a few Byzantine churches in Athens and checked them out. After a while, I went to the travel agent and booked my ferry tickets before meeting up with girls to buy train tickets to Litochoro!

Friday night was so crazy! We saw a bunch of stuff, something like stage, being set up in the area beside school right at the plaza area of the Marble Stadium. We had heard from someone at CYA that it was some sort of Street Theater show and was going to start at 9. So, around 8 we left school, grabbed food, and ran back to see. It was absolutely insane!!! It lasted about 45 minutes and was all in Greek! Most of the actors were running around on stilt things doing crazy flips and carrying fire around, while the ones without stilts did crazy acrobatics on the stage/scaffolding area. At one point some of the guys had fire shooting from their feet! They also did the awesome acrobatic thing where you climb up a piece of fabric and spin around and such (wow I wish I knew the word...). The simplicity and yet complexity of the show was beautifully done and really a work of art. It was a very powerful and moving performance, even though we did not know what they were saying. We took a few pictures with some of the actors after! :)

This weekend, two friends and I ran away from the crazy big city of Athens to seek after the solace and beauty of Mount Olympus. Yep! Right now, as I type, I am in Litochoro, a small town at the foot of Mount Olympus, in the restaurant of our hotel, eating amazing fried potatoes and drinking a frappe. Let me explain how we got here!

Upon an earlier whim this week, we decided to come visit Mount Olympus, so we started looking up trains and such. I kind of hopped on the boat with their plans, and I'm so glad I did! Nice and early (5:45 am) on Saturday, we hopped on a bus and metro to get on a train to end up in Litochoro! We arrived at 11 am and upon calling our hotel, we got a ride to our hotel! But on the train, there was lots of studying, eating, and snoozing. At one point, Kelsey was trying to put my backpack in the overhead storage and it cascaded down into the floor, as the guy across the aisle offered to help us. Pretty funny.

At the train station, we had a sort of rough time trying to communicate with the person from our hotel on the phone! We ended up having two people help translate what we were trying to figure out (a ride to our hotel) to the person on the hotel. It was interesting, and we shortly after hopped in a car with a really nice guy to head to our hotel! He enthusiastically welcomed us to Greece and Litochoro! I awkwardly slammed my seat forward trying to give the girls in the backseat more room! The driver and I had a great time chatting in the front seat as I tried to practice some Greek and communicate. We got to our hotel and had a lot of fun meeting the people at our hotel. They are so sweet!!! They treated us to frappes and we chatted with the lady, Zoey, for a little while using our little bit of Greek, which was really fun and good practice for sure! She also gave us this strange alcoholic drink, which her mother (yiayia) made, and it was super fruity and yummy.

Afterwards, she set us up with a taxi and we spoke some Greek/English to him as we drove up to Mount Olympus. We had a deal that he would take us up to an area to take lovely photos, then bring us to a monastery, drop us off at the center of Litochoro, then would pick us back up at 10 pm to bring us back to the hotel! It was great! We headed up this crazy mountain road up to a restaurant area and field and practically drooled over how beautiful the mountains were. It was a sort of overcast day, rainy at times, but ended up being gorgeous. The Autumn leaves and trees were absolutely amazing, although it did make me miss the Fall in Virginia! Athens does not have so many trees! As I tried to tell our taxi driver how beautiful the trees were, he corrected my grammar! It was cute, since I did not quite know what I was saying! I could not stop smiling looking at the trees and at the mountains. I can see why the Ancients would have seen this site as so beautiful and sacred. It is ridiculous how nature can be so stunning. We had some fun taking photos and hanging out looking at the mountains as a man walked up from Athens. He spoke pretty good English and we chatted a while. He had been to Mount Olympus many times and was here with many friends. He said that they were having coffee and he wanted to check out the mountains, not just sit inside and drink coffee, since he can do that in Athens! He told us about mythology of the area and we talked to him about our experiences studying in Athens. He took some pictures for us (so we didn't have to figure out our self timer for EVERY pic, and after his friends called, he headed back inside. We then took more fun photos and played with a precious dog following us around, until a crazy bee started buzzing around my head relentlessly. Seriously, this thing was crazy. I actually started to freak out and was sort of crying trying to remain composed! I ended up just running!!! I was so sick of that thing. It was totally like in my ear and buzzing away. I wanted it to either sting me or get away!!! We ended up coming back into the restaurant to meet our taxi driver (we had an hour there!) and we hopped back in our taxi. Feeling slightly carsick, we began our next mini adventure...

We ended up at a Monastery to St. Dionysus and checked out that amazing place! So beautiful! I'm going to post tons of photos of all of this, but it was very beautiful. We walked around and took it all in. The church was absolutely gorgeous and highly decorated. We looked all around the monastery and little pavilions and the like. After a little while in there, probably a half hour or so, we headed back to meet our taxi driver friend!

Our next stop was the center of Litochoro, where we made plans to meet up with our driver friend at 10 pm. It was about 2:30 or so by the time we got there, and it was so cute! We stopped for some amazing food for lunch. The restaurant, "Gastrodromio in Olympus" was actually Fodor's choice for dining inLitochoro in 2008. It was incredible! I had some stellar veal bolognese and spaghetti. The bread was absolutely amazing. We took tons of photos of our food and spent over two hours there just trying to finish ALL of our food and taking in the crisp air of Autumn! We had great conversation and felt ready for our next adventures of exploration. We had heard about a beautiful river area in Litochoro from our buddy we met taking photos earlier, so we were ready to find it. We asked the man at our restaurant and he said that there were two areas to see it, one with a small waterfall. This was our challenge!

We set out after eating to explore Litochoro and find this river. We walked up some beautiful path and saw the little river/stream, and ended up moseying up some crazy sketch path, only to turn around after getting the heeby jeebies! Our next effort was up and around past the main area following the sound of water and our gut instincts! We ended up walking and walking up to the top of town and around some crazy curvy roads. We wondered at one point if we should turn around, but kept going. Good thing!!! We ended up just wandering until we found the Mount Olympus National Park! We started up a random path, after joyously jumping up and down. We were crazy excited as we kept hearing water and continued on this absolutely amazing path. It was absolutely incredible. I do not have enough adjectives to describe how cool this place was. We ended up and were walking in the bottom area of the path through the Enippeas River Gorge! My jaw dropped as we were looking at the mountains and this gorge. We took SO many photos! We stumbled across this fun little water area that said the water was "dringable," so us being thirsty, filled up my water bottle and drank it! It was so clear and so tasty and clean! I haven't died yet, so I think it was okay!!! As we kept walking, it kept getting more and more beautiful, until we found the little waterfall!!! We were so excited! We found someone to take photos for us (we ran into only a handful of other people on the path). I slipped under the little fence and got a photo a bit closer up with the waterfall, then as we hopped back on the path we decided to check out the European E4 trail we went past. It was more natural (as opposed to a man-made path with a fence) and is actually the path that people hike that includes the Pyrenees and Alps!!! So we checked that out for a while and took more crazy photos. It gave us a much better view and we felt obviously cooler since we were on such a sweet path! :) When the sun started to go down a bit, we figured it was time to head in for some hot chocolate and to find our way back to the town before dark. It was a quick descent and although we passed some punk kids spraypainting some grafitti, we made it back safe and sound to the city center.

In the city center, we ran into a wedding! The main church in the middle of town was packed with people and a beautiful bride!!! Everyone was outside and taking photos and it was so beautiful! This is the third wedding I have run into since I have been here in Greece!!! We found a sweet restaurant to camp out at and do homework with hot chocolate and Fanta to wait for our driver. After a few hours there, we were heading back to our meeting place when our driver stopped by us and called us in! He was so nice. Right when we got in, he handed us each a sweet little pink rose!!! He asked us how Litochoro was and kept asking if it was beautiful, which it was. We were still kind of in shock that 1. we found such an awesome place and 2. it was so incredible! After our ride back, we headed to our room to do a bit of work and sleep!!! What a day!!

Today, we have been relaxing ALL DAY at our hotel restaurant. After a much needed full night of rest, we woke up and got ready for our day. We went down to breakfast and were so very excited, but we had no idea what to expect... It was SOOO GOOD!!! I'm going to post a photo, but we had cereal, yoghurt, fried eggs, ham, cheese, granola, peaches, orange juice, coffee, and bread with jam/nutella/irish butter. We ate like pigs, and sat there for over two hours!!! Afterwards, we wanted to go to the Dion Archaeological Museum, but found out it was closed on Sundays off-season. We were considering taking a walk, but it is rainy! So, we have been camped out here all day, loving being away from Athens and in such a sweet little town with such great people. We've been chatting, getting work done, and blogging (obviously)! A great weekend! Our train back leaves at midnight back to Athens, and we'll be arriving at 5:45 am. I've got a presentation for my Byzantine History class at 10:40 am, and tons of homework to do, so I'm looking forward to a busy day! But this weekend has been sooo worth it!

I've got tons of traveling this next few weeks, so I'll keep you updated!
Tons of love!!!

Ps, we made it back safe and sound! I have to tell you about dinner!!! It was incredible!!! Surprise surprise... haha. We had a great time chilling in our room listening to old boy bands and random music for a bit, then headed downstairs to dinner. I ordered an amazing pork steak with scrumptious fried potatoes (i call them medallions of happiness). Chanel had Zoey pick what she wanted to eat for her and she chose this amazing pork thing with meat so tender it fell off of the bone. Reminded me of barbecue from home! But dinner was just crazy and so filling and cheap! So great. After dinner, we hugged our new friend Zoey and said farewell to everyone else as we hopped into the car with her husband to go to the train. They were so amazing to let us check out 12 hours late free and to drive us back to the train so late!! :) They told us we have to try to visit every summer and hike Mount Olympus! We'll see how that goes, but I would love to go back there!!!!