A. its SMOLDERING hot, no joke. it is 98 degrees every day and cools down to about 85 at night. gee thanks NIGHTTIME. so alllll i want to do is lay in my room with a bag of frozen spinach on my head with my fan blowing in my face drinking frozen water and listening to bon iver...we attempted shopping at the touristy stores today to buy our families some cheap piece of crap souveniers that they will no doubt shove in a box and forget they existed....i lasted about 6 minutes until i overheated and needed to go pass out somewhere. some otter pops would do me real good right now. to eat and to put all over my body. cheap and delicious air conditioning. just the way i like it.
B. im broke. as a joke. ive got $2.30 in my checking and $.46 in my savings account....and a whopping 11 euro in 2 euro, 1 euro and 10 cent coins.
C. they turned off our internet. so i spent the greater part of my day hacking into my neighbors internet....watching apple.com/trailers and waiting for them to load.
D. washer broke. ohh no not the broken it was before. that was live-able. all it needed was to shove a broom up against it. this time they took the door. awesome. i love wearing a dirty swimsuit ive been wearing all week in greece as underwear.
E. oh no big deal - theres a gas leak. can't cook either!!
F. i just realized im lettering this....
7. im still on an island...in my head. spent the last two weeks adventuring around greece and turkey with sar stace and dom so you do the math at where my motivation is at.
speaking OF greece and turkey. i think its time for a recount. its going to be tedious but i enjoy writing and its for MYSELF thank you very much - so when i'm old and senile i can remember what i did back in my young, crazy year in europe. quit judging me.
last trip of the year. last time i'm gonna have europe at my fingertips. last time for a while i will be sleeping on the hard floor of an airport. taking an overnight train or rampaging around on student loans and getting to see the middle east in style. im not gonna get this opportunity again for at least a couple years - till i re-save up all that money from my south america fund that i was forced to spend in my broke state.
anyways. we did the usual granada - madrid midnight bus ride to the airport to catch a 930 am flight to athens. so u can imagine when we got to athens all we wanted to do was sleep. we were greeted by 100 degree weather and a nice long walk with our 100 pound backpacks in search of our couch surfer. we finally found the place on some sketch side street with the oldest school elevator of all time and went up to the apartment only realizing that we would be sleeping on the hardwood floor of some greek dude's living room with 15 other backpackers. apparently this guy always has ppl stay - literally ever night, so when we got there, we found out he was sick cuz he never gets any sleep. someone told us he tried stopping for a while but he got so bored not having travelers to hang out with, that he just said screw it....and let anyone stay. cool enough dude i guess - but clinically insane for having 12 - 18 ppl stay the night every single night. we were famished so we got food and sat in front of the temple of zeus and played with a dog that seemed to like us. he ended up following us and almost getting hit by a car. welcome to greece. i killed a dog. kidding.
we were supposed to stay in athens two nights but when we started walking around the next day we were like screwww this its wayyyy too hot so we bought tickets for a 5 oclock ferry to santorini. a 13 hour 5 oclock ferry....
when u picture athens, u picture a city with character.....old and covered in ruins and dripping with history - but its only really like that when ur actually IN the ruins. the rest of the city is just like any other dirty place. for all i knew - i could have been in detroit. and it was so hot we literally would have payed 100 euro to get out of there. so thats just what we did. and hopped that 13 hour ferry to athens. good thing were really good at sitting at one place - talking, debating, laughing, bickering, and people watching would be considered a specialty. so with that, we spent the last bit of the sun laying on the top deck, then watching the sunset over passing islands, and getting in fights with indian families blocking the bathroom with their creepy children.
we got to santorini at 630....docking and getting off the boat into a beautiful 75 degree sunny morning in greece. sleep wasnt an option so we rented ATVS and drove all over the island. if thats not ultimate freedom i dont know what is. we drove like madmen to every beach....laying in the sun and eating $2.50 euro gyros for the next two days. delicious. i got to cliff jump and see greece's most beautiful sunset, in Oia, and they weren't lying. it was incredible. pictures dont even do it half the justice. white houses with blue rooftops. dogs sleeping in the sun. it was the most beautiful place i have ever seen in my life.
mykonos is an island and an adventure worthy of it's own novel....but sadly, i dont have the time, or energy to exert to make it that long. we had been lugging a heavy tent around for the first 4 days of our trip in the effort to make our 5 day stay in mykonos as cheap as possible. we had plans to camp at a campsite called paradise beach. it was supposed to have a pool, and food, and a beautiful beach so we thought PERFECT. so we get there....only to realize we have just walked onto the set of an MTV Spring Break reality show. it was nauseating. frat lookin guys walking around in cutoff tank tops drinking monsters and smirnoff and stupid ridiculous girly girls prancing around in their brazilian bikinis. i was absolutely positive i just walked into to a Sig Ep Parrot Bay day party at san diego state. VOMIT. we decided to give it a chance so we pitched our two person tent for 4 people (not as simple as that) and went to sleep. we made a friend who was more than entertained watching us put up our tent, and took a picture with the pathetic looking finished product. spent a terrible night squished together getting eaten alive by mosquitos....woke up, and got the heck out of dodge. as much as i love trashy people getting trashed in their B-suits, we decided to hike over to the next campgrounds. we ditched that stupid tent and went to stay in some grass hut bungalows on the beach. on our hike over we saw more than we bargained for. apparently paradise beach is gay friendly - maybe more than just FRIENDLY. and the things i saw on that fateful day - its still hard to talk about. i shudder at the thought. we ended up having the best time at the other place. there were semi normal people and a fair share of hot australians to watch. we swam to this rock in the middle of a coral reef every day and just layed there, soaking up the sun and diving off the rocks. our nights out in mykonos were interesting to say the least - and are better left to my own memory. dancing the night away to infinity and the dj screaming MYKONOOOOOSSS over the mic every 3 to 6 seconds. swedish guys. and delicious delicious vino. oh and a cockroach here and there.
next leg of the trip was a test to see if we really are capable of entertaining ourselves anywhere. it went like this. ferry back to athens. 22 hour train ride to istanbul. not too bad, except the first part....to thessaloniki. it smelled like old foot and there were these spaniards SCREAMING and playing cards and drinking - being typical spaniards of course. 22 hours is a long time in the big scheme of things - especially when my ipod was A dead, and B the right side of the headphones was broken so i had to duck tape my ipod in such a way that it worked. so ghetto.
istanbul. wow. awesome. we downgraded to a 6 euro a night hostel that overlooked the aya sophya mosque. a 25 bed dorm on the rooftop with all access to the city. and by all access i do mean all access to the 5 a day prayer time where they, throughout the whole city, have a call to prayer that echoes and reverberates off every wall. yes, including 5 am. thats not even mentioning the one on sunday that was 35 minutes. yes, i looked at my watch. but the town was crazy. haggling store owners in the grand bazaar and having to wear a head scarf and a long skirt in the blue mosque were experiences of there own. another experience worthy of a 13 page book is the smell of the mosque - everyone has to take off their shoes to go inside. once again, please do the math.
dom has a friend from Sd who has a turkish friend. he was there for the summer so him and his friend took us out every night. they payed for everything because they are supppper rich. we got to see the other side of istanbul. nightclubs on the bosphorous that cost 50 euro to get in. 20 euro drinks. valet boats that dock u on the dancefloor. it was almost like we were in the richest part of LA and u would never picture turkey like that.
i dont even know what im talking about anymore. all i know is i will never forget that trip and the other thing i know is that its bedtime. good night freaks.
