Day 30...GREECE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Day 30, July 14th:

Greece Day 1! 

Today was a pretty calm day.  I was not really in exploration mode yet, so I immediately got off the ship and bought my ferry tickets, as well as booked a hotel on the Greek island of Santorini.  We booked the midnight ferry, which means that you can sleep on the boat, since it takes about 8 hours to get to the island from Piraeus.  Danielle and I went to Santorini with 10 other friends; however, they were also planning on going to the island of Mykonos after Santorini and we didn’t want to venture there too.  The ferry ticket was only 31 Euro for the overnight ferry.  While making the hotel reservations, we went to McDonalds to use their free Internet and I ended up eating my first meal in Greece at McDonalds.  I couldn’t resist!  The fries just smelled so good; therefore, I ended up with an entire quarter pounder with cheese value meal!  I know, I know…I the most Greek food I could find for dinner!  (More about that in a minute) 

After making all of our reservations, we headed back to the ship to drop off our laptops before venturing into Athens.  We had to walk about 30 minutes to the metro station from the ship!  We definitely got our exercise at this port!  The metro was an above ground train that moved slower than Christmas!  I got so accustomed to the quick moving metros in Barcelona and the fast trains in Italy that this metro system seemed like we rented turtles to ride to Athens.  6 miles and 30 minutes later, we finally arrived in Athens!  We immediately could see the acropolis from the metro stop.  It was unreal!  We decided that we wanted to see it another day, so we headed up to the shopping area of the city.  After looking in countless stores and exploring the various side streets, we stopped for dinner at ΔΙΟΣΚΟΥΡΟΙ and ordered a chicken pita plate.  The tzadziki was really good and the pitas are much better than they are in the US.  After dinner, Danielle and I returned to the ship by metro to pack our bags for SANTORINI!!!! 

The 12 of us met up at 21:30 to begin walking towards the ferry terminal, a 40-minute walk from the ship!  They obviously had to put us at the furthest terminal from our ship; however, it was basically a stone throw away from our ship.  We all wished we could walk on water!   Boarding the ferry was like herding cattle!  There were so many people all pushing and shoving their way to the front.  No one wanted to get a bad seat on the boat, since we had to sleep there and it was general seating.  The 12 of us all got seats together up on a little stage-like area in this very large open room with a snack bar in it.  The chairs had very low backs on them, so I could tell it was going to be a fun night.  We all sat around talking for a few hours and finally I tried to fall asleep in the chair, but soon moved to the floor as it looked much more comfortable.  By at least 01:30, we were still docked in Piraeus and I finally fell asleep sometime shortly thereafter.  I never saw us leave port.  It was really convenient to take the overnight ferry because that means we didn’t have to waste an entire day.  I was really looking forward to arriving in SANTORINI!!!!