Mykenos!

Last night at like 2 in the morning I returned from my weekend trip to Mykenos, which is an island several hours away from Athens by ferry. My roommates, Ali, Alice, and Jen (all of whom live in the apartment building next to ours) all shared an apartment meant for 6 people, and all of us except for Jen left at 6 in the morning on Friday to get there as there are no classes on Friday (Jen had to have an appointment to get her visa extension), and so we got there at like one in the afternoon with the rest of the day to do whatever we felt like doing. The island was absolutely beautiful with super picturesque white houses and dark mountains. We ended up going to the beach, which was like 100 meters from the place we were staying, and we spent all afternoon there reading and doing homework. At about 5 o'clock Jen arrived, and we made dinner, and ate it out on our porch with a fantastic view of the mountains and goats. After dinner most of the girls napped, or went to get a coffee. After a while the rest of the girls started getting ready to go out for the evening. I was exhausted so instead of going out I watched the Bourne Identity (the final scene of which was totally filmed on Mykenos!!) and feel asleep at like midnight. I slept in until like 11 with the rest of the girls who had been out later. One thing about Greece is that the hours of everything are completely different than hours in the United States. If you are going out late in the United States, you get there at like 11. Here nothing gets started until well after 2, and you are early for dinner if you get there before 9.

That morning Hannah, Clara, and I went out to the downtown area to see the area and go shopping for souvenirs. It is the cutest downtown I have ever seen in my life. All the houses were white, and the roofs were all blue, the streets were too narrow for even a moped to get through, and you could get lost in all the beautiful winding alleys. I bought some postcards, and a dress. We got back in the afternoon and went back down to the beach to do some more reading. I sat in the shade but still managed to get some sun. I had promised the night before that I would go out that night, so I put on my new dress and we went downtown to get dinner and wait for the nightlife to get started. I ate a delicious crape, and then we went to a club that was free (and kinda sketchy) and we spent the night dancing and having a good time. We got back at about 3, jumped in the Aegean and went to bed.

The next day we had to check out at noon, so we were all up by 10:30 packing up and deciding what we wanted to do. One of the other girls and I really wanted to go to the Archaeological Museum (does that surprise anyone out there?) but it closed early so we wanted to get there soon, but we didn't want to spend the money to get an extra taxi, so we left our bags at home for people to bring later, and we went back downtown and spent the whole day there as our ferry wasn't supposed to leave until like 7:30, so we wandered around the streets, ate lunch on the sea, wrote out postcards, and at like 6, we walked to the ferry. It decided to start raining right as we started out. And lets be frank, the ferry wasn't exactly close. So we bought a warm scarf and walked though the drizzle. We got on the ferry a little late, and we got back to Athens. Overall a very nice vacation with equal amounts of sightseeing, relaxing, and dancing.