Day 34: Fira, Santorini [Day 3]

We headed to Fira for the day.  I got a ton of shopping done at a lot of cute little shops.  Then, I decided to chop all my hair off. I told the guy I wanted a bob and he gave me a cute sassy one.  Forrest and I ate a delicious rooftop dinner [spaghetti with feta and orzo with veal stew.] We watched the first half of Robin Hood and I was out.

Day 33: Perivolos, Santorini [Day 2]

We slept in SOOOOOO much!! We didn’t set any alarms or anything since we hadn’t slept in FOREVERRRR.

Then we headed to Perivolos again and rented an umbrella and chairs and laid out for hours. We bought a huge loaf of bread and a huge chunk of feta for lunch. It was phenomenal.

We bought Toy Story 3 and Robin Hood on the beach. The peaches we ate were ridiculous. We got turkey and cheese for dinner and ice cream cones for the rest of the week.

DIN DIN

Day 32: Athens to Santorini

Soooooo another bad morning…

Since we still had an extreme lack of sleep, I didn’t wake up to the alarm. 

I woke up at 6:45 instead of 5:45. Our ferry was supposed to leave at 7:25. We packed (had to leave our mead behind) and stored half our luggage in the storage and only took my backpack to the island. We grabbed a taxi and MADE IT ON OUR FERRY!!!!

IT WAS RIDICULOUS! I honestly don’t know how we made it, but we did, just in time. Forrest and I had our only little fight that morning. We were playing cards and my brain wasn’t functioning and we got snippy with each other, but we were fine within an hour. 

best picture of forrest. 

As soon as we landed on Santorini, we took an taxi to Fira to our Hostel Estefina.  It was only 9 Euros a night, but it was actually pretty nice. We dropped our bag off, changed into our swimsuits and headed to the nearest beach; we just walked until we hit the coast. [Perivolos Beach]

The water felt amazing, but the sand was SUPER HOT.

For dinner, we walked around the corner from our hostel to this really cheap seafood restaurant.  When we asked what the fish of the day was, he pointed to the box on the wall with fish in it, so we said why not?

It was a special for two: Greek salad, prawns, fish, and calamari.  Calamari meaning just squid, not fried. It was interesting.

We finished the night with some BBC World News and Fashion TV.

Day 31: GREECE!

We fell asleep in Italy and woke up in Greece :)

At this point, we hadn’t showered since the day before we left Rome…SICK.

So, our ferry landed in the morning and we took a bus to another place and then a train into Athens.  Then we hopped on the metro and finally got to our hostel—Athen’s Easy Access.

We got constant, strong internet, so we wasted a lot of time on the computer before we grabbed salads for dinner. It was a nice change from salami.

We found donuts with nutella in the middle for dessert. We went to middle super early because we were obviously exhausted.

Day 30: Napoli, Italia to Bari, Italia [Not as easy as it sounds]

Our train was at 8, so we had a while to waste.  I think we woke up around 6 and I went and bought some pastries and coffee. We finally checked our bags out of bag storage and caught our train to Bari without too much issue.

It was freezing on our train though.   so Forrest borrowed my rain jacket (my sister’s jacket). After we got in Bari, we met a couple who was trying to figure out the ferry to Athens too, so we tagged along with them to figure things out.  They were from Kenya, but really from the United States; they were doing relief work in Kenya and were on their honeymoon-ish. We ate lunch here. Hilarious. This restaurant was also on Failblog because of the name.

So we all wander around Bari and ended up here. The Basilica of St. Nicholas, where St. Nicholas is buried. YUP Good ol’ St. Nick. 

The town was really pretty and obviously right on the coast, since we were waiting for a ferry.

We found out that the ferry didn’t leave til 4, so we had to waste a lotttt of time. Then we sat by the sea. Best idea and worst idea. Forrest’s camera was too close…a huge wave came up. gahhhh worst moment ever. Forrest was like “MY SHOES.” and I was like “YOUR CAMERA!!!” So I whipped his camera away from the water, but it still got wet, by sea water, which has salt, which destroys cameras…

After that, we napped in the park til we could get on the ferry. The ferry didnt have anywhere to store our luggage, which was a little frustrating, but we just explored for a long time and saw one of  my favorite sunsets of my life.   Forrest being weird :) perfect pose.

The rest of the night we tried to play cards and get on the internet, but that took foreverrrrrr. We didn’t sleep too much, but we got a couple solid hours towards the end of the night.

Day 29: POMPEII and Worst Day of Our Trip

We started off the day super early by hopping on a train to Naples and then on to Pompeii.

Since it was a Sunday, the town was pretty empty, but we asked around and found out we just need to walk 2 kms to find the main part of Pompeii that was preserved.  The walk wasn’t that bad and we got to the little entrance, got our tickets, and they gave us little brochures that explained everything.  We walked around for hours and it was super interesting.

MT. VESUVIUS.

Now the real story starts…

We knew the trains back to Naples came twice every hour. On our walk back, we found a little buy one get one free coupon book for McDonalds. I, of course, picked it up and kept it, since I go to McDonalds in every country I’ve been to.

We were walking up to the train station and realized our train was there. We ran under the tracks to get to our track. Forrest pulled the handle, the door was jammed, and it pulled away. Not too bad though, right, because another train would be there in less than a hour…

Nope, not at four o’clock…

Four o’clock HAD to be the weird hour.

So we go to this little restaurant next to the train station and ask about buses. Oh wait, it’s Sunday…the buses dont run on Sunday.

But it’s okay because we can still make it to Naples on time if we get on the next train.  So Forrest decided to get a gatorade.

Whoops. We’re out of cash… SERIOUSLY!

So Forrest runs to the ATM while I stay at the restaurant. By that point, the guy at the restaurant said “just have a drink.”

Instead we decided to get one of each dessert they had :) Alright, so I go to check the train board to see what platform we need to go to at five. Okay. Platform 1.

So we go there and wait and hop on a train. Almost immediately it felt wrong. Both for me and Forrest, but we didn’t tell each other soon enough. YUP. We were going the wrong way. AWESOME.

So, it was supposed to be a 20 minute train ride back to Naples, but we got off an hour later. In Buccino, Italy, which is in the MIDDLE OF NOWHEREEEEE!! But is absolutely gorgeous. So instead of being upset about the fact that not only did we miss our trains/take the wrong ones, we wouldn’t be making it to Bari in time for our hostel reservations…which meant we were out 40 euros… We took lots of pictures of the gorgeous scenery and took some of my favorite pictures from our whole trip

favorite. just spinning around best friends.   

So we finally catch a train back to Salerno, which we then took to Naples. Our stuff was stored at the train station in Naples, so we decided to take our smaller bags out for the time being.  We then decided that our best bet, it was like 10 by the time we got back to Naples, that we would just sleep in the train station.  We decided that I would stay with the bags while Forrest went to find something to eat, since we hadn’t eaten since our desserts in Pompeii.  So I gave him the coupon book, just in case, and he hurried outside.  Not only did he find a McDonalds, but he was the last one to get inside before they closed. They even denied this woman and her son after Forrest got inside.  Then he came back with Sundaes, Nuggets, Fries, and even sweet and sour sauce. That’s why we call this THE MCDONALD’S MIRACLE!!!

This face was because I was taking a picture…not because of the nuggets.

  YUP.

So, it kinda got a little worse from there… We decided to sleep in the train station, but we didn’t know it closed at midnight. So we were forced to go outside until it reopened at 3.  It wasn’t too cold and we made friends with two German guys, so it wasn’t too bad, at first. There were a lot of homeless people outside, who were on drugs, so that was a little scary. One of the ladies laid down pretty close to one of the German guys and when she got up, she had peed all over the place.  It was kinda bad, but Forrest tried to sleep some, while I watched our stuff with the German guys.  At 3, we went back inside and it was my turn to sleep…off to Bari in the morning.

Day 28: Roma [Day 4]

We woke early and stood in line at the Vatican. We got in just in time before it rained!

We saw our fill of famous artists, including Dali, da Vinci, and Raphael.

It was phenomenal to see the Sistine Chapel in real life.

We headed back to the hostel for a nap , when Santy gave me a bracelet…

He made me salsa with him and Forrest got a huge kick out of it.

We also bought some internet, booked a hostel for Bari and checked emails. Mama Moog wanted a picture of Forrest jumping in front of the Coliseum, so we caught the metro and took a few pictures

 

That night we decided to go out with all of the people from our hostel.  It was really fun. We went to a bar/club til 2 and then walked to the Coliseum. We finally called it a night around 4:30.

Day 27: Roma [Day 3]

We planned on waking up early and heading to the Vatican, but Fo wasn’t feeling well because  it was blazing hot in our room. So we slept in, I caught up on my journal, and then we found out Norah Jones was playing in Rome that night.

We headed all the way across the city to find out it was sold out :(

We found a little pizzeria and had some legit Italian pizza. After lunch, of course we grabbed gelato and walked up to the huge park above the Piazza next to the Spanish steps. We stuck our feet in freezing water and relaxed.

Then an epic moment occurred. Forrest was singing “sometimes love comes around and it knocks you down..” and when he said knocks you down, I punched him in his arm. We went our separate ways.

We were magically reunited at a fountain. He said a real friend wouldn’t punch another friend in the arm, and a real friend would prove their devotion. I asked how would this friend do that. He said he or she would swim in this fountain. Since Forrest Alexander is one of my dearest friend, you all know what happened next…

After Italian Chinese food, we headed with Robert from our hostel to take night pictures of the Vatican.  We got the biggest serving of gelato of our lives and called it a night :)