This series will go country by country through my two-year trip. I plan on sharing some experiences, thoughts, and photos of each country that I visited.
Country by Country 12: Greece
My dad had met up with me in Budapest and we visited several countries together. After his two weeks, he flew out of Budapest back to the USA. I flew out of Budapest on the same day, to Greece.
I had a layover in Athens where I would meet my brother . If you've ever arranged to meet someone at an unfamiliar airport, you know that it can be a little stressful. Neither of us would have phones and access to wifi wasn't guaranteed.
My flight out of Budapest was later in the day than my dad's flight, so I had 4 or 5 hours to kill. I got bored of killing time in the city with all of my luggage, so I went to the airport to wait. As I was walking through the airport, a big guy walked up next to me and demanded my wallet! I turned and saw it was ! In the wrong airport! It turned out that his flight out of Portland had all kinds of problems and he missed a layover in Amsterdam. They put him on different flights and we ended up on the same flight to Athens. It was cool to see him early and to not have to worry about meeting up in Athens.
We flew to Athens, then to Santorini. We arrived fairly late at night and caught a taxi to our hotel. Luckily the staff at the hotel were still awake and they showed us to our room. We dropped off our bags and went out looking for something to drink.
The next day we went to one of the main tourist towns on the island. We found a place to have lunch and enjoyed the view.
Not a bad place for a bite to eat.
If the food at this place was half as good as the view it would be perfect. Instead, the food was mediocre and overpriced. The view was worth it though.
There is no shortage of cruise ships in this part of the world.
After lunch, we wandered around and took some photos. The architecture style on this island blew me away. Something about the bold, simple lines intrigues me.
A church tower.
A nice little street.
A bell tower.
After our excursion into town, we went back to the area where our hotel was located. We didn't do a whole lot, as far as activities go, but we still enjoyed ourselves. On one day, we went on a snorkel trip which was a lot of fun. But other than that, we mostly walked around, drank beer, and played dominoes.
Here are some of the random photos from the area where we stayed.
This is the hotel we stayed in.
These covered beach areas are pretty common. I can't imagine anything more boring than laying out in the sun, so we didn't use these kinds of facilities.
The Doc!
There are lots of nice places like this to grab a bite to eat or to have a drink.
Selfie time!
We went out every night, but those memories are a little hazy.
A chruch that we saw.
I liked the style of this gate.
One thing about Santorini that I couldn't get over was all of the snails. The snails appear to be hibernating, but it's hard to imagine them surviving the very hot weather that we experienced. There were millions of snails everywhere and I couldn't stop taking pictures of them. Only a couple of the photos turned out OK.
You get the idea. I'm probably the only who person finds this remotely interesting. Back to the other photos!
The pool at the hotel. It's important to note that I'm drying off in this photo. I am NOT laying out in the sun.
We killed a lot of our down time with Santo Nuts and dominoes.
After a few days, it was time to move on to the next country. We jumped on a boat and headed east.
Leaving Santorini by boat.
Inside the boat.
The boat ride was long and uncomfortable. The seats were fine, but we were on the top deck and the exhaust from the engines filled the area that we were in.
Kos at dawn.
The boat stopped at an island and we had to disembark and find another boat to Turkey. We found our boat and were in a new country without much trouble.
Stay tuned for the next post when and I rent a car in Turkey and go on a road trip through part of that country.