Erika's European Encounters

Today we left Barcelona for Palma Mallorca. The flight was quick, but it was Ryanair, so of course it was not very enjoyable. It was cloudy when we landed, and it was cloudy the rest of the day.

Once we were settled into our hotel/condo, which was much later in the evening than we anticipated, we went to the grocery store and stocked up on food and drink for the rest of our stay and spent the evening in our wonderful room.

Today was another early morning (Lia and Maxi wake up insanely early), and the whole family plus Erika walked around town. We visited the Mother’s Day flower market, which was very pretty, and I bought Carola some flowers that I saw she really liked as a thank you gift for being my substitute mom over the past few days. After the market, Carola and Walter made me a big, special lunch since I was leaving. 

In the afternoon, Carola dropped me off at the train station, so I could catch a train that went to Stuttgart in order to meet Ivonne. Eventually, I found Ivonne in the train station and we caught another train to go to Frühlingsfest, which is Stuttgart’s springtime version of Octoberfest. 

The festival was huge! It was like a giant carnival with drunk Germans and beer tents everywhere. We walked around for a while before going into a beer tent, which was SO fun. When you enter one of them, you just never want to leave. Everyone is so friendly and standing on benches and dancing and singing to folk songs while eating a drinking. It was a great time.

When we finally left the beer tent some hours later, we walked around the carnival, went on the Ferris Wheel, and Ivonne even convinced me to try on a traditional German dress, which I did not buy because it was absurdly expensive (even though it looked adorable!). After leaving the carnival, we got my stuff from the locker and went to Ivonne’s charming apartment to crash.

Today we left Rome and rode the bus for over three hours in order to get to Florence. After our arrival, we had a quick lunch at the American style diner that was right next to our hotel (and so cheap!!). 

 We also walked to the Galleria dell’Accademia to see Michelangelo’s “David” as well as some unfinished works. Later we partook in another Loyola tour. We saw San Lorenzo, the Palazzo Medici, the Duomo and its Baptistry, Plaza della Signoria, Palazzo Vecchio and the Ponte Vecchio, and Palazzo Pitti.

Afterwards, I had a delicious American dinner of a bacon cheeseburger and walked around the outdoor market for a while.

Last night we went to the disco again, so the three of us decided to sleep in. However, we forgot about the time change. So when we docked in Crete (the third largest island in the Mediterranean), we only got to spend an hour in the island’s capital, Heraklion. We didn’t get to see very much of the city, but we did get to walk along the smaller port and see an old Venetian fortress. 

The island we saw in the evening was Santorini, the famous Greek island, which was formed by a volcano visible from the island. Apparently there was no port for the ship to dock, so we had to take a very rocky tender boat to get to the island. However, once arriving on the island, there was a hike to get up to the villages at the top. Either you could walk, which would take a while, ride a donkey, or take a gondola. We opted for taking a donkey. I was hoping this experience would be fabulous, but apparently my donkey had to disagree with this. He was the nastiest ass! Everytime another donkey approached he would snap at him, AND he really enjoyed sprinting up the steep hills. I was bouncing on this donkey—positively petrified that I was going to fall off him and break my neck. We did not bond as I had hoped we would, and I didn’t even get to take ANY photos of the experience.

Once at the top, we met this very nice woman from Idaho named Camille, who we befriended, and we went into many shops of Fira (Santorini’s capital) and had a fun time. I personally thought Mykonos was more beautiful, but that could also be because of all the hype I heard before the trip about Santorini.

Once back on the boat, we went to the Captain’s Dinner. Unfortunately though, Amanda was feeling a tad seasick (as she and Brigette also felt a bit seasick earlier in the day and the previous evening) so she didn’t accompany us for the whole dinner. After dinner, Brigette and I went to see the show given by the cruise’s entertainment team, and then went to the disco again. We encountered the high schoolers again since they were the ones who regularly attended the disco.

Something I forgot to mention about the cruise: there were a TON of high schoolers. Apparently a bunch of high schools in Canada and various parts of the USA were having their spring breaks, and so they offered a special spreak break getaway on the cruise. But as a result, everyone we encountered assumed we were all in high school as well because there were so many present on the cruise. There were also a lot of older people on the cruise, including a few church groups. We befriended a few high schoolers as well as a few people from one of the church groups. 

Today we got up earlier in order to get our free breakfast from the hotel and then head over to the acropolis. We walked up the South Slope of the hill and saw the Theater of Dionysus, Temple of Asklepios, the choregic monument of Thrasyllos, and the Odeon of Herodes on the way up to seeing the acropolis. I positively loved it. Afterwards, we went to the ancient agora. 

Later we walked around and went into some shops. I got a souvlaki for lunch. It was different than the ones from Greek restaurants back home. Later we walked to Hadrian’s Arch and the Panathinaiko Stadium (where the first Olympics took place). And later in the day, we saw the President’s house, where we happened to catch the changing of the guard ceremony. It was very goofy and different from the changing of the guard in the UK. The guards wore funky shoes and had these very strange dance-like steps. It was definitely a show.

Something that surprised me about Athens was how many dogs there were! I LOVED it. There were dogs all over the city. Apparently the government allows the dogs in order to hinder crime as well as serve as guards for the monuments of the city. Another surprise was all of the orange trees everywhere. And by everywhere I mean EVERYWHERE in the city. Brigette picked one for us to share, but it was still too sour and tart.