The return to France

I met up with Carson in Paris on the afternoon of the 22nd. Since we were only in Paris for a night, I chose a place that was close to the train station we would be departing from the next day. Or at least, that's what I wanted to do. I quickly realized that it was very difficult to find a hostel that didn't have terrible reviews online (not that I'm picky, but the number of complaints about rats in these places was terrifying) and was also less than 40 euros. I ultimately found one in Montmartre for a decent price that more than likely didn't have an infestation of any kind.

When I got to France, I was overwhelmed with happiness. After staring blankly at Hungarian, Czech, and Greek, languages that all look as if they were formed by aliens who decided to play scrabble but instead of making words just wanting to win the most points, being able to read signs made me feel very competent. Carson was already at the hostel when I arrived, and we immediately went out to find some Fischer (our favorite cheap beer) and sit outside because it was a super pretty day. Later on we went to a lesser known park with an awesome view of the city that Carson knew about and took the metro to the Seine for one last look. Overall, a great way to spend less than 24 hours in Paris.

The next morning we caught our train to Mont St Michel. I wanted to go there for my final destination because I wanted to 1. end in France 2. no longer be in a city 3. stay at this awesome bed and breakfast that I found online. In fact, my choice was almost entirely based on the incredible marketing of this bed and breakfast (it's called Au Bon Accueil and I suggest it to anyone and everyone). They picked us up at the train station and took us to the castle that day after giving us a brief history lesson about the area. When we got there, we decided to get all the workings for a picnic before going up to the castle, however it immediately started pouring down rain because the weather in Brittany is unpredictable and changes drastically about every ten minutes. We improvised and just had our picnic in a Brioche Doree (small cafe chain kind of like Panera).

After leaving a remarkable amount of crumbs in the restaurant, we managed to get a ticket for the castle tour by pretending to be french students (i.e. said nothing and handed the man at the booth our french student ids). The tour was great and we ran into some very friendly people wearing NC State hats who referred to where we were as Mount Sheh-mell.

The castle was cool, but we mostly just harassed
this seagull for an hour 

That night we walked up the road to perhaps the only restaurant within walking distance because our hosts insisted it had the best galettes in France. This is seemed like a bit of an exaggeration, given that we were in the middle of nowhere Brittany and France is a big place, but when the food came out their claims proved to be true. I'm going to stop there because I could probably write a novella centered around this galette.

I will never know a higher love

Since we were the last people in the restaurant, one of the two chef/owners offered to drive us back to our hostel. We promised we would be back before we left.

On the following day we rented bikes from the hotel so that we could ride to the next town. Of course, my back wheel kind of exploded about halfway through the journey, so we just locked both the bikes to a fence and walked the rest of the way. This actually turned out to be a good thing, because we got to walk on the beach. It was low tide, so the beach was comprised of miles of sand and beautiful shells (I got a little ahead of myself and collected about 30).

There was also this grass stuff on the beach. If you look REALLY hard you can
 see a tiny Mont St Michel in the distance.

I forgot to mention that I booked this bed and breakfast a month in advance for the nights of the 23rd and 25th, however it was completely booked up on the 24th because there was a huge marathon in the area. I was so determined to stay at this hotel that I decided to figure out a plan for the 24th later on. Turns out, there aren't that many options around the area. We ended up at a youth hostel in Pontorson that either used to be a prison or a school. It was gigantic and probably could have fit 100 people, but we were two of four staying in the creepy building. It was totally adequate for one night though, and the next day our fantastic bed and breakfast hosts picked us up and took us to the train station so we could go to St Malo, a port city that used to be a pirate republic. Both the hotel owners said it was a necessary place to see and that we would love it. They were once again correct. We had a great day walking around the city, sitting on the beach, and hanging out at the creepiest bar ever that had swings instead of bar stools and was decorated with doll appendages.

A good and completely candid shot of the city

Creepy but awesome

Totally worth the most expensive pint of my life

We gave ourselves plenty of time to walk back to the train station even though it was a straight shot. However, somehow, we ended up getting kind of lost and lost track of time, which resulted in frantically sprinting around the city 5 minutes before our train was supposed to leave and asking every pedestrian how to get to the station. Although I was dry heaving, we made it on the train with about 30 seconds to spare. 

That night we went back to the galette place to try the Camembert crepe (the essence of perfection) and prepared to head back to Montpellier for our last night in France. 

Sifnos

After Santorini, I traveled semi-alone for the first time. Tally (one of my best friends from Chatham Hall) was staying a few hotels over, but due to my lack of computer it wasn't always easy to get in touch. However, during these few days in Athens I met a slew of very interesting people and I'd be super interested in traveling alone(ish) again in the future. When I did meet up with Tally, we had a great time catching up and hanging out with her study abroad group.

I became extremely familiar with Athens because I was there for so long, and one day I decided I was familiar enough with the area to go on a run. I asked the Russian bartender who I befriended if the National Gardens would be a good place to go on a run. She explained that the gardens were nice, but ALL the Greek people go to the Olympic Stadium to jog. Apparently, it was illegal, but everyone did it and there was a place where you could sneak in. So, the next day I jogged to the place on the map where there was supposed to be a secret entrance into the stadium. After five minutes of just staring at a fence and hoping for an opening to appear I decided I would try to just fit through the bars. It was a tight squeeze, but I somehow made it to the outskirts of the Stadium. The fence hole was so tiny that I was certain that 1. either no one would be in the Stadium and I would get tased or 2. everyone who ran at the stadium would be a smallish woman. Neither of these certainties turned out to be the case. The track was filled with people, almost half of which were giant Greek men. I reasoned that there must be another entrance, but I couldn't find it, so I ended up exiting through the fence once again which I'm sure was very confusing for all onlookers.

Isabelle (our other best friend from boarding school) met up with us in Athens the day before Isabelle and I went to Sifnos. Sifnos, like Santorini, is a Cyclades island with classic blue and white houses and beautiful views. We arrived in Sifnos around 9pm, and since it is not a big tourist destination, it was completely dark. We thought there might be something like a mountain on one side, but it was almost impossible to tell. We were also a bit disoriented because 1. we didn't know what side of the island we were on or 2. what side of the island our hotel was on or 3. the name of our hotel. We were kind of freaking out due to our less than good planning, but luckily there was a tourist office right next to the port with WiFi and we were just a 5 minute walk from our hotel. I was super happy that I had accidentally chosen the port village as our destination.

Our hotel was SUPER nice and we were surrounded by the elderly and honeymooning couples (so we fit in perfectly). When we saw the island in daylight, we were pretty taken aback by its beauty. We were situated on the ocean between two mountains and there were a lot of farmland and animals all around. Sifnos was surprisingly not touristy at all and that made it all the better. While we were there, went on a two hour hike up to a monastery on the mountain, explored around and became regulars at a bar on the beach. The first time we went to the bar, we ordered frozen daiquiris. Isabelle's was notably stronger than mine, so when the flamboyant bartender came to ask how we liked them, I jokingly pointed out the difference between the two drinks. He responded: "Yes, that's because I made hers stronger!" I guess I gave him a pretty confused/irritated look, because then he said: "I bring you another drink on the house, and this time you won't complain." This sparked a beautiful friendship that consisted of us more or less living at his bar and him giving us a ridiculous number of free drinks. As we were pretty much the only customers, I'm not sure how this bar wasn't going bankrupt, but I didn't ask questions.

Good view of Kamares

Another good view from the other side

On top of the monastery 

Sunset at our favorite (perhaps only?) bar on the island

Anyway, Sifnos was great and I'll be happy if my actual honeymoon manages to be even half as romantic. Isabelle and I parted ways when we got back to Athens, as she had to catch a plane back to Prague at 4am and my flight to Paris wasn't until 11am. We arrived at the port a bit after midnight, which meant we had no other choice but to take a taxi, a fact that the taxi drivers loved to yell at you every five seconds once you got off the ferry. I ultimately gave in after trying to find a bus to the center of the city that was still running and got in a taxi with a very large, very Greek cabdriver. He didn't speak English at all, but he still thought that everything I said was just hilarious.

Me: I'm staying at the Backpacker's hostel
Him: *laughs*
Me: So.. you know where that is?
Him: *laughs even louder*
Me: Okay.. well here's the address just in case

I'm not sure what would have happened if I didn't have the hostel's card on me. The cabby continued to laugh at all my hysterical jokes throughout the drive, and at some point picked up something wrapped in aluminum that was on the console and started waving it in front of my face. I had no idea how to handle this social interaction so I just started laughing SUPER loudly, hoping that it was a joke and that it would stop immediately. But it didn't. He started waving the foil even more adamantly until I finally took it from him. He seemed pleased and urged me to open it. I'm not sure what I thought it could have been, but I was extremely relieved when I realized it was cake. It was then very clear that he wanted me to eat this gigantic piece of cake and he started singing what I'm 95% sure was a broken English rendition of Happy Birthday. Still full from the huge dinner we had on the island and moderately nauseated from the ferry ride, the last thing I wanted to do was eat this cake, but I ate half of it out of politeness (and fear that he would kick me out of the taxi if I refused his cake gift). He then started repeating over and over what seemed like the only three words he knew in English: "You, me, bar?" I declined as tactfully as I could and luckily he still took me to my hostel and didn't abandon me on the side of the road (though he did stop laughing at every word that came out of my mouth.) I will now forever be skeptical when a man laughs at my jokes.

Math is hard

In my defense, I still don't have a computer..

We arrived in Greece at about 2 pm, giving us plenty of time to walk up to the Acropolis and pick up our first souvlaki. The Acropolis was, of course, very cool, and on the way up a woman selling flowers tried to con me into buying one by referring to me as J-lo. This event alone made it a fantastic day. 

Still skeptical about flower woman's J-lo comment

We had a great dinner of seafood risotto, moussaka, and other awesome Greek foods that I was unaware existed. Our time in Athens was pretty short, however, because the next day Carson and I caught a 7:30am ferry to Santorini. The ferry ride was nearly 8 hours long, but when we saw the island we decided it was worth the travel time. This island is somehow even cooler than the postcards let on and I instantly regretted not booking a longer stay. When we got to the hotel, I pretty much felt like a cameo in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. The manager was unbelievably nice and immediately offered us wine, and then a carafe of wine, and then coffee, and more or less single-handedly fulfilled every stereotype of an older Greek man that ever passed through my mind.

Highlights of Santorini include: the 7 mile hike from Fira to Oia along the caldera, sunsets on roof bars, ridiculously good food, the black sand beaches... really I could go on for days but why bore you with that when I have an equal amount of things that went wrong..

So, I'll start with the minor screw up. The first night we went out to a restaurant on the caldera that was suggested to us by our lovely hotel manager. I was about to order a bottle of wine when I noticed that the house wine was much more reasonably priced. I should have realized that this was not a wise choice after this interaction with the waiter:

Me: You know, actually, let's just do the house wine. It's not like were wine experts. Is it pretty decent?

Waiter: Well, it wine. It certainly wine. It not bad. Gets better more your drink it like everything! Right?

Me: Exactly! We'll do a liter of that. 

Well, I knew a liter was kind of a lot, but I wasn't fully prepared for the what-have-I-done moment that followed. Next thing I knew we were served a vase of wine that tasted like paint thinner and sad grapes. This was the first time in my life I did not finish wine that was placed in front of me. 

Overall this was a minor incident and more hilarious than problematic anyway. The rest of the trip went by smoothly and we had a wonderful time. On our last day we were on track to make it to the ferry back to Athens in perfect time so that Carson could fly to Paris the next morning and so I could meet up with my friends from boarding school. We arrived at the hotel at 4:30 so that we could drive down to the ferry that left at 5:30, when we realized that, in fact, the ferry left at 15:30- also known as 3:30 by those (read: me) who are too stupid to understand military time. I spent a semester in France, and still managed to not be able to tell the difference that the one in front of the five can make.

Anyway, it was a quick fix. There was a fast ferry that ACTUALLY left at 5:30, so we decided to just get a new ticket for that one. Due to high winds, the sea was extremely rough that day, so the speed ferry was about an hour late. I asked the guy who drove us to the port what the boats were like, as I had absolutely no idea. He responded: "You have strong stomach, yes?"

I immediately knew this would be an issue. I figured I would be fine, but after seeing the reaction on Carson's face I was led to think that perhaps my travel companion would not be. The ferry pulled up at 6:30, and we nervously stepped on to the boat (a metal box with airplane seats). We both popped a dramamine and the boat took off. It kind of felt like a roller coaster, but slower, and in the water, and more jolting. Carson pretty much immediately became sick and I spent the first 30 minutes of the trip thinking about straight lines and flat land until the dramamine finally kicked in. After that, I was ready to try and help Carson. That's when they sat a man down on the other side of me who very well could have been dying. The entire crew was surrounding our row in the very back of the boat and screaming at this man in Greek. They laid him down so that his head was virtually in my lap and held his legs in an upright position. Meanwhile, Carson is telling me that we have to get off the boat and get on the slow ferry at the next stop. I didn't know how to tell him that there was no slow ferry, so instead I told him that we were only an hour away. He quickly called me out on my lie, but I just explained that he was sick and delusional and didn't notice how much time had passed. Since he is such a trusting person, he let it go.

The ferry finally started to slow down and I realized we were coming to our first stop. I also realized that meant that we still had 5 hours on the boat. The ferry was slowing down and the rocking was becoming far more manageable, so I got Carson some more dramamine and told him to take one and a half this time.

Me: Here, we're slowing down so just take this

Carson: No, I already took one, I don't want too many and we're almost there anyway

Me: No, really, just take it

Carson: I don't want to be completely unconscious if we're getting off the boat in 40 minutes

Me: Well actually it's going to be five hours so you might as well just.. take it..

And he did, and the rest of the ride was uneventful as we were completely asleep. An emergency team came on to take off the man laying next to/on me, and we got back to Athens in time to sleep for about four hours before Carson had to get up to catch his plane to Paris. My biggest regret is not taking any pictures during this struggle. But here are some pictures we did take:

View of the caldera

Obligatory sunset picture

The black sand beach. Very pretty and unique, but also painful for bare feet. 

The rest of Greece and final leg of the trip to come!