bio: Hello world. My name is Aaron Palmer. I am 23 years old and I attend Brevard College. I major in English with an emphasis in Wilderness Leadership and Experiential Education. I am from Baltimore Maryland and have been living in the mountains of Western North Carolina for a few years non. This past May (2005), I took a class in Geology and Archeology of the Mediterranean Basin. For our lab after school ended we traveled to the beautiful Greek islands to continue our studies and here are my journals. Feel free to Email me at Palmeraj@Brevard.edu.

May 15

Ruth and I drove out to Dulles airport in D.C., which I can’t stand. BWI is much more convenient and a lot bigger, so it’s not as bad to get stuck in. Unfortunately the cheapest flight was out of Dulles. After some brief panic and chaos since the airport was packed we made our way to the plane just in time. It was a long flight. Our only layover was in Milan, Italy. Of course we got stuck next to two guys who must not believe in bathing, because they carried the aroma, to put it nicely, of rotting garbage. I can’t even remember what the movies were on the flight. Both were forgettable, and I had started drinking right away, since it was free. We weren’t in Milan long enough to explore, just long enough to look around and kill some time.

May 16

We arrived in Athens about half an hour before we were supposed to meet up with the group. We quickly made our way out to the bus area and figured out which one to catch, which took us right downtown to Syntagma Square. We only had to walk right down the street before we heard Kyle and Emily yelling out their window to us. We made it just in time to throw our stuff in the room and start walking with the group.

The streets all seemed very narrow and crowded. On top of that there were no traffic laws, so we had to watch for crazy motorcyclists and cars driving on the sidewalks. It was such a relief to finally be there and be walking around. First, we walked up the hill of Muses and got an incredible view of the whole city. I had no idea how big the city really was. It was incredibly smoggy, but we could still see the water. Not a very clean place. It felt very dry. The walkway up the hill was lined with large aloe plants and small thin trees. Strange atmosphere for a city. We took a picture at the top near the ruins of an old city wall.

The sun was starting to set, so we went back in search of dinner. We ate as a group the first night in a restaurant down an ally. There were stray dogs and cats everywhere. They were called “free” animals. They were all pretty friendly though, even though a few of them looked pretty mangy. The dining room was up a tight spiral staircase and we took up most of the room. Instead of ordering separate meals, the instructors ordered us a couple large platters with a variety of traditional Greek foods on them. Some were good, some were vile. Then we all tried Ouzo for the first time when the waiter brought rounds of shots and showed us how to take them, with ice. That way the liquor turns a milky color and is diluted some. I’m not a big licorice fan to start with and that is exactly what it tasted like.

After dinner, we walked around the city for a little while just to explore and check out some of the culture. The stray animals were everywhere, even in some nice boutiques. The streets were all cobblestone and still narrow.

May 17

We met up bright and early in the lobby and started walking. It was ridiculously hot out. Our first big sight was the Acropolis. All I could think of was Yanni. It felt like walking into Disney World. The place was so packed with people from all over. There were fanny packs everywhere. It was incredible. I felt like a little kid scurrying through the masses to get in. Walking into the sight was breathtaking. We had seen slides of it all year, but that doesn’t prepare you. The Parthenon was under construction, but still cool to see. I knew it would be big, but wow. I got a picture of someone standing in front of it. They were about the size of the first step. The museum was hard to appreciate due to the masses.

After leaving there, we made our way down to the Agora and ate near a site Dr. Chapin helped to excavate. Ruth and I walked down the street looking for a cheap café. We ended up finding a nice little place and got some great feta and olive sandwiches. Afterward we entered the Agora and saw where people had walked around and shopped thousands of years before us. We made our way to a reconstruction of the Stoa which was a covered hall that was designed to stay cool even on hot days. There was a museum inside that held tons of small artifacts found in the area. We then spent a little time wandering around the markets before we had to catch the ferry. When I heard we were catching a ferry overnight, I wasn’t quite sure how that would work. I imagined the type of ferry you take from the mainland to Nantucket.

When we walked down to the harbor (dodging insane traffic) dragging our luggage, I was quite surprised to see that the ferry was an 8 story cruise ship. We boarded and checked into our cabins and had the rest of the night to do as we please. We hung out on the roof for a while and sipped some drinks as we took off. It turned out to be a pretty fun night running around the boat. We even found a dance club on one floor.

May 18

We arrived in Crete and boarded some buses that took us way the hell up some sketchy mountains. There were goats everywhere. The top was quite a view. I was thrilled to do some hiking. I heard it would be very light, which was true that it wasn’t too strenuous, but it was about 13 miles down a mountain and through and the Samarian Gorge. We couldn’t have asked for a better day. I love getting out and hiking and the views were incredible. I got some good shots walking into the Gorge. The river running through it was crystal clear which was pretty cool and we say a bunch of ruins of old Byzantine villages. About half of the time I walked at my own pace and just enjoyed looking around. The other half the time I tried to stay with J.R. (the geologist) to listen to what he had to say about the Gorge. You could clearly see all the folds in the walls that had developed over centuries.

We ended the hike at a small town right on the shore where the sea was just as clear and blue as the river. The town was lined with all types of brilliant flowers. The change in scenery was so drastic between all the levels. We chilled out for little bit before the next boat ride and all had some drinks. We caught the last boat out of Agai Roumeli and I couldn’t keep my eyes off of the shores. The color of the water was so intense. We took another bus into the town of Matala. It was dark by the time we got in, so I had no idea what the town looked like. Didn’t stay up late. I was exhausted.

May 19

When I woke up in the morning, I walked out on the balcony and discovered that our hotel was on the beach in a cove like area surrounded by caves. Pretty awesome to wake up to. We left to go to the palace of Phaistos. Unlike the Acropolis, we could make our way around without stepping on toes and we could touch everything without whistles blowing. I got some pictures of some giant storage pots held underground.

We got back to Matala pretty early. I got to go swimming. I didn’t stay in long though because it was freezing cold, so I just hung out on the pebble beach and caught some sun. The group met up after a while and we explore the caves bordering the beach. They were old Roman tombs that were all interconnected and had scattered pieces of Roman pottery all over them as well. I got to climb all around in them. We also found out that in the 60’s a bunch of lazy hippies infested the caves and painted a bunch of crappy psychedelic art on the inside of them. These freeloaders included that folk singin’ hobo Cat Stevens.

This was one of the most memorable dinners of the trip. Ruth and I met up with Kyle and Emily and we walked down the street into some empty little restaurant and sat next to a huge window overlooking the beach. We couldn’t ask for better atmosphere. When we ordered, the waiter spoke broken English, so it was a little difficult. He asked if we liked fish or lobster and brought out one of the biggest lobsters I had ever seen. We didn’t have that but we all had incredible seafood fresh from out back. Afterward the waiter brought us some fruit in a bowl and poured us all shots of something out of a water bottle and told us it was water. I didn’t really believe him to start with but we all said bottoms up and downed what tasted like pure gasoline. The waiter just laughed at our reactions and made us take a few more shots. The girls wouldn’t take them again, so Kyle and I took theirs. I mean, we didn’t want to be rude. When the sun went down, there were spotlights lighting up the caves which made them look like red rocks in Colorado. We walked around the town for a bit afterward and found some other people at this cheesy little dance club where we all hung out for a bit.

May 20

We made our way to the Skoteino cave. This was the first place we went where we didn’t see anyone. It was out in the middle of nowhere. It was made of limestone and was about 65-140 million years old. Of course I got excited, heard nothing the professors said about safety and took off down into the darkness. I made my way all the way to the bottom (it was sketchy as hell to get down there) and stood in a pitch black room that was wet and really cold.

Next we went to Gortyn and saw the oldest law code in western civilization written on the wall there. The writing was carved in “as the ox plows”. I got a picture standing in one of the trees nearby. They were all hollow and looked some something off of a Tim Burton set. Afterward we went to the villa at Ayia Triada to search for earthquake damage. We found evidence that the Minoans might have had knowledge of compasses before the Chinese because the palace was aligned with magnetic north. We went back and checked Phaistos which was aligned as well.

May 21

We drove across the Lasithi Plains which were wide, open and had lots of windmills. We stopped and had lunch at a small cafe and ate outside on a patio. I tried to watch my beer consumption even though everyone drank all the time. It was too hot outside and we were hiking around too much to be dehydrated. Afterward we went out to the Dikteon cave. I was pretty excited about this one. It’s the supposed place that Zeus was hidden from his father. The hike up was pretty serious, not too long, just steep. It was a very touristy spot. There was walkway that went down and around the cave. It almost looked fake the way the stalactites hung and were covered with condensation.

We took the bus, our second home at this point, down to the shore at Mochlos. When we got there we saw the island that we had spoke of in class that was covered with Minoans ruins. We decided to swim out to it, since there was no boat. It was about 100 yards from shore, so some of the group decided to not take the swim. It was exhausting swimming that far against the current, but it felt great and we could see everything under us as we swam. Eric and I found some red urchins and anemones when we got back near the shore.

May 22

We had some time to explore the town of Cherissionos. This place was more of a small city than the towns we had been in. I decided to go walking around and explore it and I walked for a long time. I sort of lost my way and ended up in God knows where. I actually found a different harbor than the one I was staying at. This became a trend as the trip went on. I never got too worried though. I’m pretty comfortable exploring or being by myself.

We went to Palaikastro and Gournia. Palaikastro was interesting, but windy. We found pottery everywhere. It’s hard to believe that so much pottery still sits around this place that’s thousands of years old. I had imagined that it would all be collected by now. Afterward we journeyed on to Gournia. The remains of this village sat on a hill, so we could see most of it driving up. It was pretty cool. The only thing left were the perimeters of all the buildings that stood about a foot or two high and the stairs. The whole place was surrounded by rows of olive trees. When we got up to the gate, we found that it had closed for the day. That’s when it got interesting. We walked up and down the fence for a minute and found a hole in the bottom of it in one point. About half of us crawled under and sketched our way in to go look around for a minute. We had to stay low as to not be seen from the road, since we weren’t supposed to be in there.

We went for a walk after dinner that night on this long stone walkway that followed the water around the town. I climbed down to the water and looked around for a minute. I was set on a finding a cuttlefish sometime on the trip. It was dark out though so I didn’t see much. I went back into town and went out with Ruth for a drink by the water.

May 23

We finally made our way to the palace everyone was looking forward to. Knossos was a pretty incredible site. I can’t imagine what it would be like living in one of these palaces. It was enormous. A lot of people weren’t impressed by the reconstruction of this palace since it looked to bright and cheery. It was fun to walk around it though since it was designed like a labyrinth. I got a picture of some swallows nest in the roof of one room near where they were depicted in the frescoes. I thought it was hilarious that Kyle has some strange phobia of birds and kept getting attacked by them throughout the trip. We saw a peacock at the palace that kept calling and sounded like it was squawking “Kyle!, Kyle!”.

We finally arrived in the first big city since Crete. Heraklion was the capitol of Crete and it had sort of a New York feel to it. Tall buildings, lots of advertisements, crowded streets. Ruth and I went exploring right away. We were gone for a while and forgot the name of the hotel we checked into or where it was. No one spoke English anywhere. Ruth was a little freaked out. We thought we would just have to live there for a while. After about an hour or so of searching we finally pieced some of the scenery together and found the hotel. We walked up as the group was leaving to go to the beach. We joined them and got to go swimming for a while.

Back in the city we got to go out for some food (I had discovered Gyros by this point. Real Greek Gyros are so much better than they are in the U.S. and you can fill up for less than 3.00 Euros). The café we were sitting at was right on a corner in the middle of the city. While we were eating a truck pulled up and a guy smoking a cigarette unloaded some bloody skinned lamb carcasses into a shopping cart. I took a picture, and then finished my Gyro.

The hotel was one of the nicest one we stayed in. It was like a normal hotel here, with a real bathroom, as opposed to a detachable shower head with a drain in the middle of the floor. We dressed and went out for dinner. This meal was probably my least favorite. Too saucy. The waiter sang the horrible song to the girls that was all the craze in the country. Apparently some girl won an international American Idol type of contest and this was her song. It was horrible, even for pop standards. The lyrics were ridiculous. It was like a 6 th grader wrote it. For some reason the whole country was totally into bad pop and techno. The guys that tried to look tough and raced around in their smart cars and Peugeots would be blaring this stuff. It was hard to take them seriously.

May 24

We went down the street to the history museum of Heraklion. Many of the artifacts we looked at in class were to be found in here. I turned the flash off on my camera, but every time I would turn the camera off and on again, it would reset and the flash would be on. There was someone there to let me know every time too. The giant axes were pretty cool. I got a picture of Eric who stands at 6’4” under one of them. He looks like a midget. For some reason we got yelled at for posing under the axes. I was expecting to see the Snake Goddess standing in one of the rooms and walked through the whole museum without seeing her. The I went back and found the statue in a display case standing at about 6 inches. No wonder I missed it. The detail on it was incredible though. I got a good picture.

After I was done in the museum, I split and made my way down to the open market. You could find just about anything there. I bought a kilo of olives for like 2 or 3 Euros. They were so good. I love giant Greek olives. My friends bought kilos of fresh fruit for the same price. We caught the next ferry shortly after to Santorini. We spent some time sitting on the roof because it was nice out and it was fun to watch the sea. We were on the boat for a long time though, so I had to move around. I ended up meeting a bunch of sorority girls from Radford inside. We hung out and played some drinking games to pass the time. Tried to get some sleep later on with no success.

May 25

We made it to Santorini. Everyone was looking forward to this part of the trip. I got some cool pictures arriving. It’s amazing to see these white villages built literally on the edge of these enormous cliffs. The entire island is a caldera, which means that it was once a volcano, it erupted and spread across all the Greek islands and now the island is a crescent shape around the newly forming volcano. We took a boat out to the volcano. To get to the boat we had to descend this huge, long stairway down the side of the cliff that I heard has been shown in some movies recently. There were men trying to pawn donkeys off on us the whole way down. I tried to bargain with them with little success.

The volcano looks pretty small from the island but it’s pretty well developed already. It was tiring walking up it because it was so hot. There was no shade and it was all loose gravel. The water around it was green from sulfur. There were a few huge craters from recent eruptions on it. You could still feel the heat on the rocks. I can’t imagine why people still live so close to it when they know it will erupt again.

We left there and continued on the boat tour. We stopped at a hot spring that was sort of murky looking and I heard was not very warm, so I didn’t jump in. Oh, we were on a glass bottom boat that I was all excited about getting on and turned out to be a joke. You couldn’t see anything when we were moving and the place they drifted at that was supposed to be the “hot spot” was laughable. They turned on this cheesy music that sounded like the score from some epic fantasy film and we floated over a shipwreck that looked fake. There was nothing around it. No sea life at all.

We stopped on shore that was sort of tucked away but still had a row of small restaurants built on it. I walked into with a few of the guys that was built on a pier. We sat down at the very end of it. It was kind of sketchy since I was on the end and there was no end to the pier, so I couldn’t lean back. The view was amazing though. I got some great pictures. We all pretty much ordered the same thing, a round of beers and the grilled calamari. I have never seen squid like this. It was huge chunks of meat on a skewer and it was so fresh. They caught it right off the shore and were grilling it right in front of us. There was an abundance of giant squid all around the islands. It was more than I could eat and the whole meal cost about 5 bucks. On the ride back, some people stopped to watch the sunset from this one cliff. I went with the rest back to the hotel. I rested for a bit, then went out to meet up with some people, but quickly went back to the room and got all kinds of sick. It wasn’t from the calamari though.

May 26

We took a bus down to Akrotiri. The site was completely covered since it was under excavation. It was pretty cool to see how that’s done. We couldn’t touch anything, but we got to walk through it all and see a village being uncovered. We had to guess what some of it was though since it wasn’t completed. The site was supposedly destroyed from an earthquake and there was sufficient evidence of that. We saw a staircase that was cracked down the middle and where houses had fallen in. They said people fled to the harbor, which had not yet been excavated.

The opposite side of the road led down to the red beach. It turned out to be quite a walk, by this point I was used to it. The road led around to a sketchy trail that went down the side of a cliff. The red beach was tucked away in a small cove. I never would have found it alone. We hung out down there for a while. The water was nice. The beach was too hot to sit on since the sand was so dark. We eventually made our way back up and caught a bus back to the hotel in Thira. Eric and Ryan and I decided to eat Gyros here and save money for going out at night.

Leaving our hotel, you had to walk down a bunch of narrow walkways. That’s where all the shops and clubs were located. There was loud music all over. Everyone goes out at night. The bars played horrible American songs that everyone knew and hated, until we all got drunk and started singing along and dancing to them. There was a nice jazz club down the street playing good music for awhile. I met a girl working in a posh martini bar that was from New York that said she was traveling and then just stayed there. We ended up taking a “shortcut” later that Justin was trying to show us to get back. We walked up and down stairs, down hallways, through buildings and around cliffs and definitely took the longest way back possible. It was fun to run around the town though at night.

May 27

We woke up and met in the lobby to have the guy at the front desk drive us down to the shore in his sketchy car. We were all cramped and piled with luggage praying that we would make it down. The driver was pretty funny though. At the harbor, we waited forever in this little hallway filled with people for our next boat to arrive. I got a bite to eat while we waiting. Eventually the boat came. It was a Flying Cat. It seated like an airplane and was incredibly smooth. This could have been the shortest ride. All the towns started to look similar after a while. White buildings with blue shutters. It had a very calming effect though.

I walked around the town right away. It much more developed than Santorini. As much as I liked Santorini, it was a pretty dirty place. The views were amazing, but I wasn’t really into the culture or nightlife there. It seemed very touristy. We stayed in a hotel right near the beach. I think this was the first topless beach we went to, which was a bit of a surprise. The water felt great. It stayed about knee deep for like 50 yards, and then dropped off. The sand was incredibly soft. We all ate down the street at nice little restaurant that had a terrace on the roof. We all ate up there and were the only ones. Down the street from there we found a Waffle House. Not the weird late night hillbilly eatery that’s in the south. This was an ice cream parlor that had some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had. Ruth and I went out for a little while afterwards.

May 28

We spent the day in the vans. The island was bigger than I thought. We had a few statues that we wanted to find. The first one was way out in the middle of some orchards. It was abandoned kouros statue that was about 15 feet long. I didn’t even get it at first. It was odd to walk up to a 15 foot marble statue laying in a orchard. I found a giant lizard crawling around. They were everywhere, but not of this size.

Coming back through town, we got stuck in a narrow passageway and took about 15 minutes to turn around. Some woman was standing in her doorway yelling. We went up to another kouros abandoned on a hill on the side of the road. There were a few other people checking this one out too. We could climb on these giant statues and no one said anything. I’m not really used to that. We also saw the marble quarry. It was a giant cliff being carved at that was solid white. There was marble all over the road as well.

Back in town we walked up on this hill that sat above the harbor. On top there were the remains of a wall that looked the Stargate. We poked around up there and found ridiculous amounts of pottery from several periods. We found obsidian weapons, bronze coins, glass and large pieces of pots. We had a bite to eat at the bottom by the harbor, which was beautiful. There were actually people swimming in it. It was clear and blue. Coming from Baltimore which has a murky unswimmable harbor, this was amazing.

That afternoon, Ruth and I bought tickets to some festival that was happening that night. The poster said Traditional Greek music, local liqueurs wines. We had no idea what to expect. We found directions and weaved through all the narrow walkways until we came up to a castle on the hill above the town. About half of the group was there too. They led us into this small balcony area on the side of the castle that overlooked the harbor. As soon as we walked in they displayed a table of all local wines and liqueurs and said “please don’t stop drinking”. The event lasted a couple of hours and consisted of some men playing traditional Greek music and later on they brought in dancers. It was very lively and entertaining. We got to watch the sun set over the wall and everyone was encouraged to join at the end. Afterward we walked through the passageways of town with the rest of the group and found everyone else down by the harbor. We all stayed out all night and completely lost track of time, money and drinks. I do remember sparklers in one drink, a bar that was made for Ryan (math and moose theme, yes it was an odd combination). I had more fun that night than all the nights in Santorini.

May 29

Rough morning. I forced down some breakfast and we moved onto the museum of Mycenaean pottery. There were some incredible pieces in here. Lots of snakes. There were also tons of assorted little jugs. The museum was small and the floor was a warped slanted wooden floor. The ceilings were low too. I constantly felt like I had to tiptoe as to not break something. Had to take a break after a while and chug a lot of water.

After we left we walked back up toward the castle. We stopped for a minute to discuss something and when I turned around, Molly was holding a pigeon. There was nothing wrong with it, she somehow just picked it up.

Afterwards I went with Eric, Ryan and Molly to grab some food. I think I ate a sandwich. I asked a man in front of the store what the hell those beads were that everyone kept flipping in their hand. He proceeded to give us the full history of Komboloy (stress relief beads), where to find them and how to use them. During his demonstration, his broke and went all over the street, so I helped him pick them up.

We got back on the flying cat and cruised quickly to our last stop in the islands. We were all looking forward to Mykonos, but I didn’t really know what to expect of it. By this point, we had done just about everything on our schedule. It was supposed to be one of the top party beaches in the world, which I couldn’t even think about at the moment.

When we got off the boat, we were bombarded as if we celebrities by people shoving sign for their hotels in our faces and grabbing us telling us to come with them. They were so overly aggressive that I’m not sure how they get anyone to go with them. I literally had to push through them. They were all screaming at the top of their lungs at the tourists getting off the boat. I made a joke and screamed something, I don’t even remember what, but the aggressive hotel person next to me turned to me and scolded me for yelling. Go figure. Our bus was not there to pick us up and when we called they denied everything and tried to get out of it, even though our teachers had recently spoken to them. We got in a crowded sketchy bus and went to the hotel. The hotel was surprisingly nice. We had a huge balcony off of our room. We could look down and see the entire blue and white city. We walked around later and got lost again searching for our hotel. The TV was hilarious there. It was all total cheese. Bad music videos and even worse soap operas. I took a nap when we got to the room at about 4 in the afternoon which is totally irregular for me. I woke up sometime in the middle of the night and went out for a while. Suppose my body was trying to tell me something.

May 30

We all got up early this morning ready to hit some museums only to find out that we were given a free day. Not like this trip has been hard work, but it was nice to do our own thing for a day. A few of us hopped a bus and headed out to the infamous Paradise beach where one of our friends from school happened to be, in the middle of her travels. It was incredible. It was a soft, white sand nude beach covered in the umbrellas made out of straw. The clear blue water ran out about 50 ft before it hit a reef. The back of the beach was lined with this long bar covered by draperies playing some mellow trance music. There was a large bed in front of it with a canopy over it. Instead of chairs, we all layed out on this huge blanket covered in large, soft pillows with a small wooden table in the middle of it. The waitress said we could stay there as long as we wanted as long as we ordered drinks. Not a problem. We all got rounds of boat drinks and spent the day there. The water was freezing cold, but felt nice after sitting in the sun. There was some weird guy in a Speedo in the water asking people to take his picture while he posed.

Eventually, we made our way back into town and went out with our friends to dinner and saw some 4 ft pelicans by the harbor.. The nightlife there was even crazier. How it worked was, you walk through the city, which is designed as a labyrinth and people grab you and pull you into clubs. You party there and move on until someone else grabs you. You never know where you are and then try to make it home through the impossible labyrinth. It was fun.

May 31

We took the ferry out to Delos which was a large island that looked like it was nothing but extravagant palaces at one point. There were ruins as far as you could see. We went through the museum and saw statues that had been restored or found all throughout the island and lots of marble heads. We were going to hike up the hill, but there wasn’t enough time. Delos was supposedly ruled by Apollo, who was the lizard king. That explains why those things were scurrying everywhere.

We made our way back to Mykonos and eventually caught the ferry back. This was not a fun ferry though. We were not allowed anywhere except the ghetto roof area. I tried to sit somewhere else and ended up arguing with security. There were no fun people on this ride, just the shady American hating Europeans that remind us of the poor stereotypes from home.

Back in Athens it was raining. We all got on the tram (80 cents), but a few of the people in the group refused to walk with their luggage, so they got two taxis (a lot of money). It actually took them a couple minutes longer and both taxis gave them different prices. Haha. We all met up as a group again and got dinner together. It was sort of sad cheering one last time. We walked around for the night and checked in early. We were all tried and had to get up early to figure out arrangements for departure.

June 1

Ruth and I had a few days until our flight home, so we checked the internet for cheap places to stay and took off down the street in search of them. None of them turned out to be cheap. My mom had worried about this part. My dad said that I would be fine. Ruth and I had no idea where we were going to stay with the little money we had left. We wandered further down the street and eventually found a hostel that was run by a bunch of Australians that spoke English. It was a cool place and everyone staying there was about our age. We checked in ran back to the other hotel to say goodbye and grab our bags. We also found out that our friend that we met up with in Mykonos was staying in that same hostel at the moment. The guys who ran the place couldn’t have been nicer. They showed us the rooms, the kitchen and took us up to the roof to wait for our friends. The roof had a bar on it and had a perfect view of the Acropolis, which looked incredible lit up at night. We met up with the friends and spent the night and the next day hanging around the hostel and walking around town to do some shopping in the open markets and check out some sites. We went up the hill of muses and the acropolis again. The next day our flight left in the middle of the night, so they let us stay in the hostel until midnight, and then gave us the boot. We had finished everything we wanted to do by 4, so we all spent the afternoon and night around the hostel partying with everyone else that was staying there. By the time we left, Ruth and I were a mess. We had time to kill so I passed out on the floor of the airport for a little while. The flight home went fine. I spent the whole time recovering. Bad idea to drink for 8 hours before getting on a plane. We made it home fine and even though the I was delighted to get back home, I was missing every second of the trip.