Saturday June 4th

I am writing this sitting at Athens airport waiting to catch our flight back to Belgium. It is A little before 5am. These excessive early flights are getting all to regular ;) Greece has been absolutely amazing. I was not impressed the first day here and really did not care for Athens. Athens is big and really dirty. It was fun to see all the ancient ruins and do some culture stuff but nothing prepared me for the Greece I got to see yesterday.

We woke up at 6am to catch a bus to the local port. We ended up getting on the wrong bus for a bus tour and the guy had to bring us back to our hotel and get it straightened out. It was a rough way to start out and early day but we made it to the ship socks before the boat left.

We cruised from 8:00am until 7:30pm. We made three separate stops at different Greek Islands. Aegina, Poros, and Hydra. We were unsure if we could even write a blog about yesterday because there really are no words or pictures that could ever come close to describing what we saw or experienced. The water is so blue and so clear you can see the bottom of the ocean from anywhere. The little towns on the inlands are just like the ones you see in the movies with the donkeys and the old boats tied up. There are little shops and café restaurants that line the stone streets and are tucked up in the cliffs where you can jump of off into the water and swim in little inlets and caves. The islands are much like I pictured Greece to be.

The boat we took was really nice and big. We got a very nice lunch served to us. There were bars and dancing and lots of places just to lay out. We got a spot on the very front of the boat on some lawn chairs so we had a 180 degree view. It was beautiful. The weather was about 85 and sunny all day long. I have never been so burnt in my life. I can barely put a shirt on but it was well worth it. Michelle is not far behind me in the burnt category, but we would go back and redo it any day to have that experience again!

Aegina we saw some huge private yachts and did some chopping and got Gelato. We were there the shortest amount of time. It was a cute island and had cool stuff to see. We got back on the boat for a couple of hours to head to Hydra. Hydra was my absolute favorite stop. We walked and stopped at a café to get a drink and then continued up the hills to some cliffs to cliff dive and swim off the rocks into the ocean. This was probably one of the coolest things I have ever done. It was awesome. We spent some time there before heading back to the boat for lunch. Out last stop was around 5pm. We stopped at Poros which was the largest island. A few of us headed off to find some good Pina Coladas and Margaritas. We spent most of our time there sitting ocean side having a few drinks while a few people went shopping. We boarded back on the boat to start or trip back to Athens.

We took the bus back to the hotel and needless to say we were all pretty tired and had a 4am wake up to look forward to today to get back to Belgium with a connection in Zurich, Switzerland. We decided to walk into Glyfada (the town we are staying in) and grab dinner at a really good place called Bobos. They had kebabs and gyros and lots of good authentic Greek food. By the time we finished dinner and got back to the hotel and packed it was already midnight and we just wanted to sleep. Three hours of sleep and a cab ride later we are sitting at the gate waiting for our flight.

I continue to be in absolute amazement by all the cool things we get to see and experience while we are in Europe and we still have so much more left to see in the little time we have left in Europe. Greece has definitely topped anything else in Europe so far and will go down as a memory of one of the best trips I have ever/probably will ever take in my life!