Spring Break, finally!

Hi everybody!  So sorry for falling behind on this thing.  I never even finished the Thessaloniki post, did I?  Oy.  Spring Break was so huge I didn’t even know where to start.  But it was, what, three weeks ago?  So I should probably get on that.  I’m going to divide this into dramatic chapters, for easy reading.

CHAPTER 1:  A DATE… WITH DESTINY

FIRST off, Amanda, Hannah, Amanda’s friend Arielle from Siena and Hannah’s friend Emily from Cophenhagen met me in Athens!  Aggie met us the next day in Mykonos.  Gotta say it was pretty fantastic to see everybody.  We took a slow ferry, and pretty much had a grand time napping and eating in those airplane seats.  It’s always fun to go above deck and check out each island the boat stops at.  UNFORTUNATELY going above deck involved wading through a 200-body crowd of Greek high-schoolers were were screaming, singing, chanting, and banging on bongo drums.  It was seriously bizarre.  I’m not completely sure what was happening– spring break, maybe?  That’s kind of why we stayed below deck.

Mykonos is a gorgeous island.  Its reputation is for being a crazy crazy crazy party place, but since it was mid-april… not so much.  Don’t get me wrong– there were more tourists than I expected, but it seemed more ‘here w/ the kids ” than a constant frat party.  There was this absurdly (ABSURDLY) huge cruise ship docked while were there.  Actually, no, it wasn’t docked, because it was too big to ‘dock’.  It had tiny parasitic boats that took people to and fro.  Hated that thing.  Anyways.  Um.  We stayed at this amazing place called Mina’s Villa (or something like that) that Hannah found.  A+++++++ oh man it was great.  She and her husband were so so so sweet and the apartment was gorgeous.  Even though there were 6 of us it didn’t feel cramped or anything.  Our time was spent on beaches (teal water!  I love Greece), more beaches, eating delicious food, and wandering around Mykonos Town.  Which is probably a pain in the ass maze during summer, but off-season it was more along the lines of a calm, easy-going labyrinth.  Pictures!:

sea

yeah mykonos was pretty pretty

windmills! which never 'milled'

Hannah, Aggie, me and Amanda!

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sea!

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I got the most amazing hand-made white dress from a Greek woman named Joanna there, too.  Just thinking ahead to the Laurel Parade AUGH AUGH AUGH let’s not talk about it parakalo

During the trip back to Athens we were once again joined by screaming Greek teens, which was a little more horrible because we were sitting on the deck.  So I snuck into an airplane seat and slept for a few hours.  V relaxing.

Everyone stayed in my apartment that night.  Thanks to bad planning on my part, Whitney and her friends were there too, which meant, what, 10 or 11 people stuffed in there?  BAD MOVE.  But we made it work. I cooked some pretty decent pasta (what else) for errybody and went to bed at, like, 10.  For a good reason!  I had a 10:40 flight the next morning to my next spring break destination:  PARISI~

Ahhh it was so great to see people though, and to meet Emily and Arielle!

Chapter 2:  Four Murderous Nights in Paris

Perhaps getting up at 4;30 for a 10:40 flight was unnecessarily cautious.  Actually, it completely was, that was dumb as hell.  I left the apartment at 6:30 (I still had to pack, okay L), hopped on the airport bus (which  never asked for a ticket, so, free!) was there by 7:30, grabbed a croissant (cultural preparation!), and got through baggage check and security in about 20 minutes.  Which left well over 2 hours to wait for my flight, without music, a book, or a magazine.  That may have been dumb.  I didn’t miss my flight, though!

Can I just say that Charles de Gaulle is the worst airport ever?  Charles de Gaulle is the worst airport ever.  Instead of escalators they often have those moving walkways, except these tilt UPWARDS.  Which is confusing and scary L  They take you through these strange translucent tubes into a horrible red round place and basically it feels like you’re inside the brain of a terrible robot.  It took me half an hour to figure out how the hell to get on the fast train out of there.

As for Paris, I loved it more than I thought I would. We (my friend Jenny and I) stayed in this place called the Lucky Youth hostel, which turned out to be a pretty good choice. They set you up in an apartment in Paris with a few other people, and it was in a pretty location in the middle of Montmartre. We stayed with this girl from Greenland named Pam who was really cool! Paris just had this vibe to it that really got to me. You’re surrounded by history all the time in Greece, but in a different way. Being on the Acropolis you can pull yourself back 2500 years, but being in Paris feels like being in 1920 and 2020 simultaneously.

The FOOD. I ate duck three of the nights we were there (much to Jenny’s dismay. Sorry Jenny.) I’d actually never had duck before and daaaamn. I tried escargot, too (pretty sure my picky eating days are over), and it was surprisingly really good. Confusing to eat. But good. Especially if you don’t think about what you’re eating/what it looks like. That last part especially, because they drown it in this bright green gooey (garlic?) sauce. It was delicious. The last night we went to Aunt Nancy and Uncle Frank’s favorite restaurant. Café du Marche, and it was really really delicious! I had a duck breast, I think? Jenny and I felt really Greek there—not only did we outlast the people who sat down at roughly the same time as us, but the next couple, too. One of the men sitting at the table next to us was so, so French. While his wife was in the bathroom he offered us her cake (?) which we took, naturally, and he said something like “The chocolate. It is for the good, times, the happy times, yet also the sad times, no?” Hahaha amazing. It just so happened we stayed until closing at just about every place we ate at. At one point we took so long the chef left before us… yeah. Sorry dude. Bread in Paris was also great but everyone knows that.

Man, French people just were not snobby like I was warned.  No more than any east coast city, I thought.  Maybe that was just because I was with someone who spoke French and I sort of tried to use my 10 French words.  When I was lugging my suitcase up the 82 stairs from the subway station (they have a sign that says “CAUTION:  there are 82 steps here” gee thanks) every other person stopped to ask if I needed help!  So nice.  Maybe I can thank Obama for that.  OH, actually, I don’t know if anyone else remembers this/followed every second of that campaign as obsessively as I did, but at one point last summer a bunch of fashion designers made a line of Obama purses and stuff like that.  I saw no less than three French women carrying this one specific one.  So strange.  Imagine someone toting around a George Bush handbag.

We went to bed early the first night there after eating at a cute restaurant in Montmartre called the Maison de Rose or something along those lines.  It was pink!  Day 2 really started our adventures.  We started out at the Musee D’Orsay, which is officially housed in one of my new favorite buildings.  I’m pretty sure I spent more energy appreciating the building than a lot of the artwork.  Oops.  It mostly houses Impressionist paintings and for that it’s really, really impressive.   There was also a cool exhibit on Rodin going on.  Not so impressive were that they charge something like FOUR EURO FOR A TINY BOTTLE OF WATER.  A great thing about Greece:  people are legally held to selling 50ml of water for no more than 50 cents.  <3uathens

the view from our apartment. storybooky!

Ceiling of the Musee D'Orsay

My favorite exhibit was the shadow puppets.

Awesome clock in the Musee D'Orsay, & Jenny's face!

After being cultured and artsy for a few hours, Jenny and I decided to take part in the event that had been planned since DAY 1 OF PLANNING PARIS.  Being completely classy, we wanted to have a champagne and bread picnic at the Eiffel Tower, which, while slightly less classy than anticipated, was a lot of fun.  Plus:  adorable French children on a field trip!  Oh god, French kids are grossly cute.  It’s sickening.  Jenny took a nap and I sketched for a little in my journal… that was about the only drawing I did the entire trip, pw pw.

THIS IS THE FACE OF SOPHISTICATION.

The lawn in front of the eiffel tower

Ahhhhh

.,.

We rode a carousel right on the Siene.  We are fantastic.

I liked my horse.

We then took a boat cruise on the Seine.  Fantasticer!  We learned a lot about the bridges of Paris and how they all seemed to be built in 1900, for the world fair.

hi

After that, we explored around the area of the Eiffel tower on the opposite bank, and ended up at the Arc de Triomphe.  What a view!  We ended up having a 45 minute conversation about WAR and GENOCIDE.  Extreme.  That night we had dinner on the Champs-Elysees, which was fantastic people-watching.  I didn’t, in fact, have duck, but some sort of pork knuckle thing.  Jenny thought it was gross and it made her ill but I thought it was great!

lots of cool fountains in paris

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

View from the Arc D'Triomphe

Creme Brulee on the Champs Elysees. Not gonna lie-- MAD CLASS.

Uhhh the next day we did a day-trip to Versailles which was all crazy opulent and gorgeous.  The best part, though, was that they let you row boats on the pond in the garden!  AMAZING.  It was so so so so so much fun.

RAR.

I told Jenny to "look haughty and hate peasants"

Peek a booo

Right before I got decapitated.

Versailles Garden

c'est moi!

Friend.

rowing. callusing seriously though it can only technically be caled "rowing" i was so badddd

Afterwards we were just like ‘what the hell let’s do the Louvre’ so we went to the Louvre!  I saw pretty much everything I wanted to except for the Caravaggio (rats!), which I of course took photos of:

Louvre from the inside

Hercules is up on the hydras back safdl

WINGED VICTORY

The crowd in front of the Mona Lisa.

The man I REALLY came to see, my homeboy El Greco.

Napoleon <3

every junkie's like a setting suuuuUUUUuun

Sally's in the Louvre!

Some pretty cool architecture

Imitating the "Mona Lisa"??!

Me & St Denis relics!!

That night was the Latin Quarter for dinner.  So hip!  Even though we had to wait like 30 minutes for a table.  Boo, hiss.

Jenny waiting for a table in the Latin Quarter

Sorry to speed through this so fast!  Next day was our last full day, so we brought out the big guns and did Notre Dame, the St. Chapelle aaaand finally went up the Eiffel Tower, which was… interesting?  And disorganized.  Nice view.  There was a fist fight over the elevator going up.  I also dragged Jenny to a thrift store and got a couple dresses ho ho ho sorry Lulu.

Notre Dame!

Look at those vaults!

Some couple getting married at Notre Dame. Adorable!

Rooose windows. If I would get a tattoo of anything it would be the rose window at Notre Dame.

Me and Charlemange.

There was this fantastic english-language bookstore outside the Notre Dame called something like Shakespeare and Co. Books– AMAZING.  I was in there for like an hour and a half.  I ended up getting 2 books, because I’m weak– ‘How Proust Can Change Your Life’ and ‘Book of Imaginary Beings’ by Borges.  A+

Sainte Chapelle!

View from the Eiffel Tower.

The next day before we had to go to the airport we tried to go to the Rodin museum, but it was closed when we got there and we just eventually decided to mosey along to CDG.  Next time, I guess.  It’s funny, while I was there I couldn’t help but start planning all the stuff I wanted to do on some future trip there.

Leaving through CDG was significantly less stressful than arriving buuut because I’m a space case I hadn’t yet figured out how I would get from Paris to Santorini—I ended up flying back to Athens, getting my luggage, buying a ticket to Santorini, re-checking my luggage, eating kind of gross Asian airport food, losing my boarding pass, sifting through garbage to find my boarding pass, finding my boarding pass in my notebook, and finally going through security!  Since it’s only about a 45 minute flight, the plane was this rickety old propeller thing and I was fully prepared to die in it.  The whole flight it was shaking like it was about to fall apart, but! I lived.  The Santorini airport itself is straight out of the 40s or 50s.  Barbed wire, whitewashed, one runway (actually more like one set of doors).

Chapter 3: SLEEPLESS IN SANTORINI such a lie I slept like 10 hours a night

Okay, the length of this post is getting crazy (2000 words?!) so let’s spruce things up with some BULLET POINTS!!!

• v  Santorini in Easter.  Ridiculous.  Delicious. The midnight before Sunday everybody gathers outside their church, which seems normal.  People pray, priest says stuff I couldn’t understand.  I also couldn’t understand why people were slowly backing away the closer it got to midnight, but I figured it out pretty quick when the bells struck 12 and all those guys lined up against the church started throwing mounds of fireworks at the road that led to the church.  It sounded like being in a war zone.  Looking out over the island all the other towns were throwing their fireworks into the sky but I guess ours was just especially badass, who knows.
• v  Easter dinner in Santorini:  yum yum yum yum yum lamb.  Everybody goes out to a taverna after the festivities at midnight and pays way too much for, okay, really good food. So good.  I also ate some soup dish I can’t remember the name of, but it’s innards.  Sheep innards.  And by that I mean intestines. With lemon.  Surprisingly good if you don’t think about it.
• v  ATVs on Santorini NEED I SAY MORE?  We rented ATVs.  All-Terrain Vehicles.  I honestly don’t remember being quite so joyous, like, ever.  I completely understand all the 15-year-olds in Hadley now.  IT WAS SO MUCH FUN ahhhh.
• v  We also rode donkeys!  Do I need to elaborate
• v  Santorini beaches aren’t “sand” like one might assume.  The first one we went to was actually just rocks. Black volcanic rocks, but seriously.  Rocks.  We sat on some until we got creeped on (inevitable), and left.  And waited for a bus for 2 hours with some nice people from Chicago, and then called a taxi which was like TWENTY EURO crazy crazy.  We found a beach that was a lot sandier later, and still black.  Though really, by ‘sand’ it really means ‘fairly small pebbles’.
• v  Easter day itself was so fun!  People dancing on beaches to the rolling stones (yes, dad, I am that good) and lots of good food.  We hung out at a taverna on the beach for a few hours and I had the most delicious fava beans I’ve ever had.  Sorry this blog post is so centered around food, I’m starving okay.  I’m pretty sure I dedicated about 5 words to the Louvre and 100 to innards soup… priorities!
• v  The place we stayed at was called VILLA MANOS.  No torgos sighted :*(  It had a pool!
• v  I’m real tan now.
• v  Getting back to Athens was a struggle, because I’m a space case.  I left my return ticket back in Athens because, you know, it’s difficult to think 5 days in advance, so had to buy a new one in Santorini.  Of course, it was the Monday after Easter weekend, so every single spot on every boat that day is taken.  So I rush all over the island asking every travel agency if there are any cancellations, which there aren’t, and after watching the sunset at Oia with a cute dog (recommended!), I decide I’m just going to beg/cry my way onto the boat.  Maybe drop a piece of paper into the sea and pretend it was my ticket.  Who knows.  So we take a taxi to the dock really early, thinking we’ll grab dinner and figure it out there, and, lo and behold, there’s a boat, sitting there, leaving in 30 minutes.  Beyond hope, I ask the lady at the desk if “there is any way whatsoever that there is a space on THAT BOAT” and she’s just like “yeah,” all nonchalant and slightly unnerved, like this isn’t the best thing I’ve heard all day.  I tell her something like “you have saved my life…” and went home.

Greek easter celebrations. shellshocking!

With my BFF Marilyn the ATV

NATURE VS MACHINE

Santorini at Easter

Ridin' donks

rock-beaching

at the rock beach

Training montage.

Sunset at Oia

Sunset at Oia W/ DOG

I think I’m going to end this post before I reach 3000 words because right now this is about 150 more than the paper I need to write requires.  Did that sentence even make any sense?  Do you see the sacrifice I make for you people?!

MUCH LOVE <3

Hannah

edit:  I got rid of that weird CSS stuff.  God, wordpress is a shitty service.

I think I’m going to end this post before I reach 3000 words because right now this is about