what a flop!

today i fully intended to go to the jewish quarter of prague and then explore areas of the city i hadn't been to. instead, i walked the two kilometres to the pinkas synagogue to be refused entry because i'd forgotten my student card. by the time i walked back to the hostel i was feeling like crap, so ended up spending the entire afternoon fast asleep. such a poor effort! 

tonight is my last night in prague before i head to budapest first thing tomorrow. have made some really great friends at this hostel and sad to go, but cannot wait to party with steph and daniel in a reputedly incredible city. bring on tomorrow!!!

death and a wedding

another failed upload...

today i went with a group of people from my hostel to kutna hora, a town in the czech countryside. in kutna hora is a church famous for its human bone artwork, created with the remains of over 30,000 people!

whilst at the church we had a special ceremony. two of our group were married by another resident of our hostel who spent the morning getting his celebrant's licence online. so there we were, surrounded by thousands of skulls, while lynn and ryan exchanged hilarious vows.

got back and had a delicious red curry for dinner with kerry before having a cheeky nap. from which i was abruptly woken by two of the madhouse staff attacking me with water pistols - out of love supposedly! hmmph!!

went out to a few cool bars tonight, but laying off the alcohol because i'm on antibiotics for an ear infection. as a result, home and going to bed at 1am. night!

antibiotics anyone?

yesterday, along with a group of canadians and americans from my hostel, i joined a free walking tour of the prague castle. was quite shattered they chose the non-paying one, as the guide of the paid one was super cute and i'd already had good chats with him my first day and yesterday morning! robbed! 

anyway, so we caught a tram from old town up to the castle. first stop was a monastery, but as it is still in operation we simply went to their brewery to sample their famous beer. it was also a great way to escape the torrential downpour outside!

so after drinking half a litre of beer in 15 minutes, we began our tour of the castle proper. built in stages over 1,100 years, it was quite disjointed and not overly spectacular. though we were informed that was due to the need for churches to be the most spectacular buildings - which the castle's gothic/renaissance cathedral certainly was!

following the tour i met up with casey, a guy i met in turkey, and his friend claire for a couple of ours, and they later joined everyone from our hostel for a night out on the town. was such an awesome night!! played shithead for a couple of hours in the kitchen before heading to 'the pub' where each table has their own beer taps and races each other table - such a great concept. then onto james dean bar to dance and dance to awesome old music and finally to harley's to go wild on table tops. so much fun!

woke up early again this morning and have a terrible hangover! had one beer the whole night... stupid antibiotics!

how people in landlocked countries cool off

arrived back at madhouse hostel in prague shortly after 3pm from cesky krumlov, and was told to get changed into my bathers as everyone was about to leave to go to the beach club. so of course i hastily complied and then as a group we all trammed to the 'beach'. in the czech republic, a beach constitutes a large grassy area on the banks of the filthy river, which we of course swam in repeatedly as it was 37 degrees!!

after an enjoyable 4 hours at the beach club drinking mojitos, we came back and had dinner at the hostel before heading out to a series of bars. it was quite a weird night, didn't get to dance much and seemed to wander from crappy bar to crappy bar until 4am when we had gyros and called it a night. still had a pretty ok time, but hoping tonight will be better!!

beautiful prague

so after one of the worst nights of my life - 100 times less enjoyable than my overnight bus in turkey - i am now staying at my best hostel so far. sure, the rooms are quite small, but the common areas are awesome and they arrange activities every night! 

after reception opened at 9am, i slept on a couch in the lounge on and off until 1pm, and then decided i couldn't waste an entire day! ventured out into the old town to join a free tour of prague.

for three hours our tour guide callum (randomly from melbourne, as was half our group) took us around and explained the history of this gorgeous old city. he was really knowledgeable and it was a fantastic tour, going to have to go back to some of the places he showed us over the next few days.

anyhow, after a family dinner at the hostel for $2.50 each, i'm off to bed! total party pooper i know, but i want to have lots of energy for my river pub crawl in cësky krumlov tomorrow afternoon!!

turning into a bum

how did i not realise before that backpacking was lowering my standards on the acceptable bit by bit? this morning i found myself sleeping on the ground at prague train station after a horrible 12 hour train trip from ljubljana. everyone else seemed to be, so i surrendered to my tiredness on the warm concrete. to enlighten me to my fall from grace, at 6am i was kicked into consciousness by security guards like a bum at flinders st station. awkward. 

so now, i'm sitting on the bluestones in the lane way outside my hostel, waiting until the reception opens at 9am. please just let me sleep! never again do i want to go on overnight trains or buses!

a nice day in ljubljana

since we knew nothing about ljubljana we decided to attend a free walking tour this morning. meg was sick so she went home to sleep 😔 our guide eva took us around the old town for over two hours, during which time we walked maybe 500m and learnt a whole lot about the history of ljubljana, slovenia and the break up of yugoslavia. 

as our tour was ending another thunderstorm rolled in, so steph and i took shelter in a pastry shop - such a coincidence! of course we just had to sample a couple of their delicious mini black forest cakes, accompanied by a hot cocoa. had a lovely time chatting for a couple of hours before heading back to check on meg.

took meg back to our favourite supermarket and trusty drugstore, before depositing her back in bed and heading back out for another wander. 

ljubljana is so small for a capital city and the buildings are really new in comparison to the other old cities in europe. regardless, the city was really pretty and we had fun being super touristy.

once again back home quite early, though we may go people watching or see gatsby again. anyhow, got to start eating my packet of soup for dinner! 

 

a place that can't be real

today the girls and i got up bright and early for a trip to lake bled. after a relatively short bus ride we arrived at the picturesque town of bled (think sound of music) and immediately made our way down to the lake. it was utterly spectacular, it looked like a movie set rather than something you'd see in real life! 

we started to walk around the lake first as the weather forecast was not that fantastic. the girls got snap happy and i went a little overboard feeding signets pringles. so cute!

we had a whole lot of touristy things we wanted to do for the day, first thing on the agenda was hiring a rowboat and going to the island in the middle - the only natural island in slovenia. of course we had to make sure we found the cheapest rentals and shortest distance to the island possible, so walked half way round the lake to find the appropriate vessel. had a bit of fun going back to my old rowing days, kept wishing there was a slide in the boat! 

after a look around the island we rowed our little boat back and proceeded to pass out on the manmade pebble beach for an hour or so. while we were there a thunderstorm began, but strangely the sky was still mostly blue and the air was warm. anyhow, was a nice energy boost before we set off to finish our loop of the lake and somehow find vintgar gorge.

on our way we managed to hike up to the castle, but like on the island were too cheap to pay entry fees. instead we trotted off and asked for directions to the gorge as we started to get lost. a lovely man at a hostel showed us the route on our map, a meandering wander through slovenian streets and little towns to the gorge. 

despite the looming bad weather, we were so glad we persevered. vintgar gorge was absolutely breathtaking! seriously something out of a fairy tale.

the way out was a little bit hairy, utterly exhausted we were trekking through forest on barely marked paths. thankfully we made it out alive and once back in bled i inhaled a chicken kebab. 13 hours after our day begun we made it home, going to sleep well tonight! 

post croatia sailing depression

after our highly enjoyable trip to slovenia -during which we hardly slept and coughed our lungs out - all we did today was go for a little bit of retail therapy and sleep. 

we want to be back on the boat with everyone so badly, was the best week ever and now everyone has scattered around europe and the world. we were definitely heartened to hear that pen-dizzle and the crew are missing us all!

we found an awesome supermarket today (photos coming mum) so are planning on cooking dinner at our hostel tonight. off to lake bled tomorrow, can't wait!!

a nothing sort of day

today was spent in dubrovnik killing time before our overnight bus to ljubljana in slovenia. checked out of my hostel at 10am and was not permitted to leave my backpack - thankfully some of the boys from the other boat had a sick apartment close by.

watched dodgeball with neil while waiting for the girls. meg arrived a sweating mess - steph had fainted on the bus. so we jumped on another bus to go find her armed with water, soft drink and food. eventually she was ready to go into town, so we went back to the boys apartment. 

spent a couple of hours figuring out accommodation and transport around eastern europe before heading to the beach. except we never made it, as we discovered that steph had fallen on her slr camera when she fainted and had broken the lens despite it being inside its bag. so the next few hours were spent at the bus ticket office and then traipsing through scorching heat to find a police station.

first police station on our map informed us they could not help as they were traffic police. the second yelled that its not their problem if something gets broken, it's not their job, and told us to leave the building!! we were absolutely shocked given how much of a touristy place dubrovnik is!

so that ended any plans for the day, instead we bought ingredients to make pasta for everyone for dinner. had a bit of fun cooking and hanging with the boys, and then it was off to the terminal. a 10 hour bus ride and a 2.5 hour train ride will get us to ljubljana. see you on the other side!

i think i'm dead

croatia sailing has been quite possibly the best week of my life. had an absolutely awesome group of people and an amazing busabout rep, penelope. definitely lived up to its hectic reputation!

started the week last saturday. met up with meg, and was introduced to her friends maddy, krystal, daniel, steph and nikki. instantly felt accepted and like i'd known them all for years. they were all snap happy, so i took very few photos for the week. boarded the boat and found out we were super lucky with the ratio of girls to boys 12:14, generally girls significantly outnumber boys which would suck! 

so on board with me were...

the melbourne crew - meg, steph, maddy, krystal, daniel, nikki, av, marcus and dillon

five adelaide boys - dan, blake, echo, jarsy and scotty

token kiwis - rach and chris

the solo adventurer - nina

crazy perth chicks - jayde, ellie and paris

two brothers + a mate - nathan, chris and kristian

the exes - emily and mitch

and our crew was...

penny - our awesome rep, who somehow managed to party seriously hard every night despite having already spent 9 weeks doing so! the day before we boarded, she'd spent the day climbing up and down a mountain searching for a crazy girl from her tour, christened cookoo, who believed she'd married the mountain

kreso - our bartender and waiter, a young croatian guy with seriously gorgeous eyes

mama susie - our wonderful cook, who despite only giving us carbs carbs and more carbs was loved by everyone on our boat and was often cheered when she took to the water

ivan - one of our sailors, he was rather quiet

mate - our second sailor and all around creeper. we christened him tighty whities after he appeared in the hallway one night to physically shove us into our rooms. krystal and i also had the immense pleasure of hearing him take care of himself one morning - utterly revolting weirdo!!

ante - our captain, he didn't speak english and was decidedly grumpy most of the time. though he got pretty excited for the captain's dinner and pirate party, getting me to draw scars and a goatee on him

day one on the boat began by settling into our cabins and setting sail for omis. mama susie put on a two course spread for lunch and everyone began drinking for the week. after a swim stop in a bay, we arrived in omis for our workout for the week - a seriously gruelling 45 minute climb up a mountain to an awesome fortress. we all bitched our way up, but it was a great way to bond as a group and the views were utterly spectacular! 

we had bought rings and lilos on board with us, so had a great time paddling and floating when we stopped for a swim in the clear blue water every morning and afternoon - the water was annoyingly was seriously salty but a great way to perk us up after nights of drinking! 

the first day also happened to be ellie's 20th birthday, so everyone was in for a big night. we had a croatian barbecue on the boat before heading out. had a great night at a beach club to kick off a ridiculously loose week! whilst some people got absolutely trashed, this night was possibly the tamest of the week!

day two saw me at breakfast at 8am. we spent the day lounging around on the decks in the sun, swimming and talking shit. the size of the cabins and lack of wifi were brilliant in ensuring that we all socialised all day long. during the day we stopped in pucisca for lunch and an explore. side note - pucisca is where the marble for the white house came from! anyhow, penny told us we had to be kids and go on a wipeout course while we were there. new respect for the people who do the real wipeout - it was seriously exhausting and difficult! five minutes in and meg lost her gopro camera in the water - ended up paying a croatian guy 100€ to freedive 15m to retrieve it - so lucky!! had a really great race around the course, absolutely annihilating each other in the process and resulting in a victory by maddy and a seriously damaged nipple on kiwi chris. ouch!! 

we docked that afternoon in makarska. everyone predrank on the boat before heading to smile bar, getting free shots and dancing on couches - so much fun. then we were off to rave in a cave!!! unfortunately was only there for a little while as had to leave with dillon and maddy, who i somehow third wheeled the whole week, awkward! as drunk as i was, i managed to put four people into the recovery position before going and passing out myself somehow minus my top (don't worry dad, i wasn't up to any mischief)

once again began the day with 8am breakfast and a morning swim. the eagerness of everyone to get in the water each day was pretty amusing. this night in stari grad was meant to be a quiet one, yet no one on our boat seemed to believe in quiet nights. an relaxing evening of wine tasting at a vineyard turned into rock offs to scull wine and total outrageousness. we all drank and danced on the boat, i third wheeled for a drunken food run, and a brawl broke out between our boys and 15 guys on a footy trip on the boat rafted next to us! thankfully policeman scotty saved the day, and we were separated from that boat for the rest of the week. oops!

the following morning i was 40 minutes early for breakfast. the plan for the day was rather uncertain but we ended up catching a bus from stari grad and the boat met us later. spent a relaxing afternoon shopping and lazing on a seriously beautiful beach in hvar. the beaches here are all rocks, so gave a couple of the girls hot rocks massages, just wished i could have had one myself! the evening in hvar was once again set to be a big one. we got ready on the boat, had a few drinks and set out to a laneway bar for free shots and dancing. was so excited to run into people from back home there, but it was so packed i promptly lost them again! most of our boat ended up going to carpe diem, the world famous island nightclub, but $40 entry seemed a bit steep! so instead went back to the boat and had a few d&ms. 

next on our itinerary was a stop in korcula. supposedly the birthplace of marco polo, there were things named after him everywhere!! went for cocktails at the top of a historic watchtower and went for pizza as a group. on the way back the boys all bought bb guns - do they ever grow up? spent the evening predrinking on the other busabout boat before heading to a bar that sold buckets. had great fun and a bit of drama there before heading to boogie jungle nightclub further inland. devastated it wasn't jungle-like, instead was a superclub but had the sickest night regardless. music was great and everyone just went wild! 

the following morning we were far too dead to get off the boat for a trip to mljet national park, so instead just lazed around before docking at some little island i have no idea the name of. the night was the captain's dinner and pirate party, had an absolute ball giving all the guys black eyes and dressing up. ended up on the other busabout boat again instead, played never have i ever for a solid 3 hours! supposedly our boat was hectic and lots of glasses got smashed, the only bit i witnessed was one of the boys peeing his pants!

sadly our last night on the boat had arrived. we docked in dubrovnik port and caught buses to the old town for the afternoon. totally recognised places from game of thrones in there - it was gorgeous! walked the city walls with emily and went for a swim off the rocks before heading back to the boat to get ready for our last night out! 

our night in dubrovnik was awesome. headed to a bucket bar with the other busabout boat before heading to revelin nightclub inside the walls of the city. it was absolutely huge and yet another crazy night. by the time we left buses had resumed for the following day and we had the old town to ourselves! 

after making menaces of ourselves back on the boat in the early morning we passed out for a couple of hours before hastily disembarking the boat. our poor crew would have had a seriously difficult time cleaning our mess in the two hours before the next group boarded! spent a lazy day in dubrovnik before heading up the cable car with jackson. so happy to see him and the views were spectacular! 

spent the night hanging out with boys from the other boat. today off to slovenia with meg and steph, so excited!!!

sailing

croatia sailing is the best thing ever! having an absolutely brilliant time - everyone on my boat are lovely and getting on like a house on fire. lots of swimming during the days and absolutely wild drinking at night - i'm really impressed with how well i'm holding up! have very limited internet access, so will write a proper post after we get to dubrovnik 😊

croatia baby!

haven't exactly seen much of split, but having an awesome time regardless! met some lovely canadians on my flight from rome, picked up a ukrainian girl at my hostel and met two americans at dinner. had a really nice night, were at dinner until 2am. 

got up and had breakfast at the food market, sooo yum! then spent the day with the boys and maryana at the beach... i went cliff jumping!!!!

no idea what's planned for tonight, but getting on the boat tomorrow!!

roma capitale

i have to start by saying that rome is ridiculous. the sheer scale of every building is out of this world. rome has exceeded my every expectation! 

got up this morning intending to go to the vatican but decided i didn't have enough time. instead i managed to get to rather a few of rome's main tourist attractions.

                    spanish steps

                 fontana di trevi

                   panteon

the thing that have i loved most about walking around this city is that with every street you walk down you are surprised by yet another gorgeous church or monument that wasn't noted on your map. even mcdonalds are housed behind historical facades! on the topic of food - finding it super hard to eat healthily when lots of places don't have anything fresh on the menu!! ignoring the desire to be healthy, i think i'm going to have to add ice cream in every country to my bracelet in every country goal! today i tried a must have - a tartufo ice cream (before you get excited mum it looks like a tartufo, but it's most definitely chocolate). no judging... i only managed 5 bites before i put it in the bin! 

had enough time to make it down to the colosseum, but going to have to wait until i come back to go in - the queues were a mile long!

about to leave my hostel to head to split. bring on croatia!! 

best gelato i've ever tasted

today i finally left santorini and arrived in roma! this city is incredible. almost every single building is old and beautiful, every street corner has a marble statue and practically everyone you see is a tourist with a map in their hand! 

checked into my hostel near termini and then proceeded to wander for three hours in the area close by. my first stop was a tiny little baguette shop where i picked up an olive, prosciutto and semi-sundried tomato multigrain baguette. yum. 

wandered past some truly spectacular architecture and into a couple of parks and churches. my favourite was definitely santa maria angeli and terme diocleziano - originally a roman bath, it was turned into a church by michelangelo! it looked truly underwhelming from outside.

but inside was an immense area covered in pink and white marble, intricate columns and huge frescos. i was a bit awestruck by the sheer size of the church! 

afterwards decided it was time to treat myself to a gelato. found a wonderful and cheap gelateria that was established in 1847! the ice cream was still made and stored in traditional sunken steel vats, so i had no idea what was on offer as the signs on the wall were all in italian. so i asked the lady serving me to simply give me her two favourite flavours. turned out to be lemon creme and bacio. one of the best things i've ever tasted, think i'm going to have to go back tomorrow, or maybe even tonight for dessert! 

not sure what's in store for tonight, there's been no one else in my dorm room since i got back - think i'm going to have to brave the bar alone and hope some nice people adopt me! 

ps. just to make you jealous mum. had a lovely time exploring a few delis and think i may go to one of the awesome enotecas around the corner for dinner 😊

wine anyone?

once again just found a post that failed to upoad...

today i decided that it'd be a nice idea to go to santo winery, one of the top tourist attractions on the island.

but before i could do that, i wanted to go up and get the contact details of the lady in the tourist office to support my cash card dispute. upon stepping off the bus i thought i was hallucinating! the emporiki bank atm had been replaced by an alpha bank atm... guess something really was wrong with the damn machine! and they weren't small atms either.

so after my highly eventful trip to oia i set off to the winery. got myself set up with my kindle and my wine tasting platter and had a lovely couple of hours. i was really surprised by how much i was ok with being on my own, despite being surrounded by couples making out! 

just fyi, the wines weren't very much to my liking, i only drank 3/6. one was a dessert wine, one white tasted like chemicals and one red tasted like straight ribena 😣 but it was a nice afternoon regardless and then slowly strolled the 5km back to town.

took almost all of my clothes to the laundromat this evening - don't even have pjs for tonight - and then went out for dinner with another solo traveller. tomorrow is my final full day in santorini and then i'm off to croatia via rome! so excited!!!

being a girl!

this morning i faced the onerous task of redoing my subject selection for exchange. the course catalogue was released yesterday and, typically, half my approved subjects aren't being offered. so spent a wonderful hour at an internet cafe researching the new units and emailing my faculty coordinators back home for unit evaluations. something much easier to do back home!! and the selection itself will be done during the middle of sail croatia 😣

after that, my jobs were complete for the day. so once again headed to kamari beach to relax and tan. unfortunately have been getting a bit of heat rash, so spending lots of time in the shade. but on the up side, it allowed me to finish my fifth book of the trip! 

since i'm going to a sailing trip in croatia for 8 days, i figure i'm going to be spending a lot of time in my bathers... so today's mission was to find a new bikini. i went to every shop in kamari and had no success!

got back to fira and went to have a nice sunset dinner for my last evening. on my way decided to go into a few clothing shops... where i found a bikini!!

i may have also had to purchase a pair of shorts too, so did what girls have been doing for forever - bought clothes and went without dinner 😊

got back to my hostel and danni and helen, two of my roommates, decided we should go out for a snack and drinks to chat. ended up having a slice of pizza for dinner after all and had a great time chatting with the girls. about to go to bed now as i leave early tomorrow morning to fly to rome!!

today was a really nice day

when i woke up this morning i knew today was going to be a good one - the sky was completely clear and there was only a light breeze.

once again spent some time at kamari beach - have decided its my favourite of santorini's beaches due to its lack of wind, wifi and awesome ice cream! 

at 2pm dee, annie and i caught the bus back to fira in order to go on our much anticipated boat cruise. ever prepared, we took changes of clothes, jumpers, baguettes, pringles, water and alcohol. 

to be honest, the boat cruise itself was an absolute letdown. but we had an awesome time regardless! the volcano required lots of uphill walking in scorching heat, only for us to be greeted with mounds of volcanic rock and no sign of the supposed active volcano. 

our second stop was the hot springs. try water that looked like the yarra blending with sea water. it was like swimming through patches made artificially warm by other swimmers. the highlight of the stop was a newlywed husband losing his wedding band in the murky waters.

onto sunset at oia. we made a brief detour to thirassia in order for our beverages to be distributed. best wine i've ever tasted - think warm vinegar in a water cooler cup. then the one good part of our trip - the sunset was spectacular. the sky was blush pink and the sun looked like a peach orb, rapidly lowering towards the horizon. 

despite the underwhelming tour, the girls and i had lots of fun and embraced our inner tourists. when we got back this evening we cracked open our bottle of white, got some crepes and then went out dancing. it was a really awesome day! 

my first hiccup

today my intention was to switch accommodation and then take the bus to kamari beach again. unfortunately today wasn't my day.

checked out of my hostel in oia and went to get money out before catching the bus to fira. the atm swallowed my travel money card. cue freak out!! 

a lovely irish man came over to the atm after i'd been standing there for 15 minutes. he minded my bag while i went across to the tourism office for help. they called the bank to which the atm belonged - typical greeks, nothing could be done until monday. so i attempted to call mastercard - lo and behold, my phone wouldn't allow me to make outgoing calls. adding insult to injury, my account deducted the 200 euros i was attempting to withdraw! 

after 3 hours of talking with my parents, borrowing mobiles from kind australians and listening to wonderful hold tones, it was finally sorted - i think! 

just wandered a bit this afternoon as the weather is rather overcast and windy. guess it matched my mood. tomorrow is going to be a much better day - going on my boat cruise!!! 

someone, please help me with my sunscreen!

after another leisurely sleep at my hotel last night, i checked out and moved to the youth hostel in oia. then decided to once again go exploring alone after realizing the only people were sitting around the hostel were writing prayers!!

now, i know it may seem like an entirely trivial matter, but being by yourself means that you have no one to sunscreen your back. i spent 5 hours today at the wonderful kamari beach, but was unable to lie on my front or spend much time in the water because i didn't have sunscreen on my back! seriously frustrating! 

regardless, i had a wonderful day by myself. had a great time perving on hot brazilian boys and ate two cups of ice cream. so yum! 

         bitter chocolate and tiramisu

was super lucky that the beach had free wifi too, so spent a great couple of hours chatting to people back home. by the way... for some unknown reason my skype is refusing to work, but i'm contactable by viber or whatsapp (+37257119212). anyhow, that was my day, no idea what i'll get up to tonight, but i guess that's the beauty of this trip!  

a place that lives up to hype

oia is utterly gorgeous. simply imagine postcards of santorini and that is where i am for the next 4 nights! 

got up this morning after a lovely 10 hour sleep and decided to walk into town. big mistake. it was utterly boiling, steep and 6km away! thankfully after walking for over half an hour a lovely man honked his horn at me and then offered me a lift. my first ever experience hitch hiking! 

started off by exploring oia, where i made my first clothing purchase of the trip - denim shorts are just too hot in this weather! 

then wandered down 300 steps to ammoudi bay to have a dip in the azure waters. added bonus that there were super hot scandinavians swimming there too! of course, i wasn't really looking forward to walking back to climbing back up the stairs...

it was awesome! thought i was going to fall off so many times, but definitely don't regret doing it - so much fun!!! 

caught a bus into fira to check it out, where i almost immediately ran into some guys from brisbane who'd been at my hostel in ios. ended up spending the day touring the island with them on quad bikes!

just got home from having a great dinner at watching the sunset over the caldera. have booked to do a boat trip around the island in a couple of days and i can't wait. santorini is definitely my kind of place!!! 

my first party stop

just realised the internet wasn't working when i tried to post this, figured i might as well anyhow....

before i start talking about ios, i first need to announce the conquering of one of my fears - well at least temporarily. was about to have dinner by myself when i saw three random guys from my hostel approach the restaurant. despite never having spoken to them before, i decided to invite them to have dinner with me. felt incredibly vulnerable but thankfully they said yes. turned out they were americans on their last night of their travels, and we ended up having dinner for three hours! 

this morning caught a ferry to ios at 7.30! was meant to be taking a cab with another guy from my hostel, but he left without me! so i attempted to make my way to the train station, got horribly lost in windy athens streets so ended up catching a cab to the port anyhow!

arrived in ios and i'm not too sure about this place. it's pretty gorgeous and the daytime activities seem awesome, but it's a massive party place - not exactly what i was looking forward to. decided to have an open mind about it, ended up having a really nice time with a few st caths girls at a mexican beach bar. 

...so the internet wasn't uploading my post last night. ended up going for dinner, pre-drinks and out with the melbourne kids. the girls are lovely, soph has been an angel. was a pretty fun night, got home at 4am and but still the decision has been made - i'm heading to santorini today.

relaxation?

following my decision to leave ios, i booked myself into a nice looking hotel in oia, santorini before heading to the beach this morning. had a rather uneventful day at the beach - except for the wind turning sand into daggers. 

caught the same ferry across as the melbourne boys before jumping in a cab to oia. what a disappointment. my room is pretty crappy (for what i'm paying) and the hotel is quite far from oia town. 

oh well, going to have an early night tonight and then go exploring tomorrow. 

exploring athens

today i managed to see all of the main tourist attractions in athens. definitely worth a day here, but that's enough! 

got up first thing to beat the crowds at the acropolis. along with two of my roommates, annie & sarah, i marveled at the vastness of the ancient site. was a bit of a shame that there was construction going on, but was pretty breathtaking regardless. plus as a bonus, being a student meant i got in half price! 

on our way to our next tourist attraction we grabbed greek yoghurt for breakfast. i got granola, kiwi and blackberries - sooo yum! we went to hadrian's arch, had a quick look at the ruins of the temple of zeus, before making our way to the athens flea market. 

we wandered through the ancient agora and acropolis museum before having a nice lazy lunch. i got a whole fresh grilled calamari, amazing!!

contemplating going to the archaeological museum now, but feeling quite content to laze though after such a packed morning!