Number 19:

I know that Im a little bit late in making this (I‘ve just been so darn busy!) but Greece was absolutely amazing!

On Sunday afternoon my family and I finished packing up our bags, ate some lunch, and got on a train to the Zurich airport. By the time we arrived it was about seven o’clock, so we checked in our bags and ate some Chinese food for dinner. Then we decided to check into our room…….. my parents had a room reserved for us in the part of the airport where you already have your boarding pass checked (since our plane left at 6:30 or some ungodly hour)… but when we tried to go in they told us that in the morning we wouldn’t be allowed to leave until 6 because that’s when the front desk people came to work!! So by then we were all really tired but we had to go find a hotel room not in the airport so that in the morning we would be able to get through customs and everything before our plane left. The next morning we had a 5 am taxi from the hotel, but it was totally worth it when we arrived in Greece before lunch that day :)

We were staying in a small, not super touristy town (at least not at this time of year…) in north eastern Crete called Sissy. It was right on the beach and the food was good but I think the most exciting thing about it was that most of the staff could speak at least 4 languages!! They mostly spoke Greek, German, English, and Dutch. It was really amazing for me to be on vacation and having the other people on vacation not speaking English! Like for me, I automatically assumed that if someone doesn’t speak the native language of a place the next choice will be English (ignorant… I know) but here the tourists spoke mostly German, but tons of other languages as well from all over the world.

In Greece we stayed very busy! We had a car so we could drive all over the island exploring cool places like….

Beaches: we went to a few totally different beaches. Some were totally rocky while others had sand. Some had BIG waves (like in Kona) and some had barely any waves at all.

We also had a mega stormy day while we were in Greece. We went to the beach and it was so windy that we had to put giant rocks on our stuff to keep it from blowing away! Then the next morning there was a boat washed up on the shore. 

Taverns (restaurants): Holy moly we ate some delicious food! We had greek salad almost every day because it is obviously delicious, and we also had some really good stuffed veggies (with no shortage of olive oil ;), and interesting Greek coffees. Oh! And we went to a Greek night thing at our hotel and I learnt how to dance :)

Historical places: One day we drove a few hours up a mountain to walk down into a big huge cave! This cave was apparently where Zeus (you know… the god from Greek mythology…) was born. It was super eery and green and soooooo cool!! We also went to Knossos, the site of the giant archeological excavation of King Midas’s castle. We had a tour (IN GERMAN!!) and it was absolutely amazing seeing all of the super advanced technologies they had in ancient Greece (like plumbing! This castle was built like a thousand years ago and they had three water lines: one for rain water collection, one for purified drinking water, and the other for dirty water)

Like I said before… I had a really really great time, and it was so good to see the ocean again <3 I still can’t believe how lucky I am that my host family took me with them.

We got back from Greece on Monday evening, then on Tuesday I went to Wallis, and yesterday I went to Tessin…. I would write about both of those adventures but I think they’re already well enough documented in Ana’s vlogs!

Wallis: 

Tessin: