I know what you’re thinking. “Brittaney, you’ve been back in the US for months. Why is this post just now coming out?” Well, if you know me, you know I procrastinate. So, just take a trip with me down memory lane back to August 🙂
We left Berlin by train and hmmmm 5 hours later we arrived in Prague! I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical about Prague when we left the train station. It looked a bit rough around the edges to me, but Prague was absolutely beautiful! We had a great Airbnb near Old Town and everything was very walkable. In the event that we needed to go a bit farther, there was a great tram system.
After dropping off our stuff at the Airbnb, mission #1 was food. We found a Korean place that was either really really good, or we were really really hungry. Afterwards, we stumbled into somewhere that is probably the real reason I loved Prague so much. It was a wonderful little wine bar. We had a sampling of Czech wines which were delightful. After about two glasses, it hit us that the prices were in Czech crowns and not euros. We knew that wine in Europe was cheap, but I guess we were so used to American wine bars that we automatically assumed that the bottles for sale were super expensive. Needless to say, once our lightbulbs went off and we did some quick math in our heads, we ended up buying a bottle to share in the room during our stay in Prague. We each had probably 3 glasses of wine and with the bottle we bought to take, our bill came to a grand total of like 20 bucks. Amazing. In retrospect, I’m not sure why we didn’t buy more.
You probably already guessed this, but….we did a free tour. Haha. Our tour guide was the epitome of dry humor, so it was fun listening to his stories about Prague’s history. What was even more fun was taking in all of the beauty that Prague had to offer. My cousin spent a semester abroad here, so I remembered how much he liked it, but I wasn’t expecting to like it as much as I did. The architecture was amazing, and because Germany occupied the Czech Republic before WWII even started, there wasn’t much damage from the war.
Apparently, Prague is also known for its nightlife. We didn’t really know that going in, but we decided to roll with it and went on a pub crawl. It was fun! The first club was below ground in what seemed like a cave. Quite interesting. I have pretty much no pictures from that part of our Prague visit, so I guess that means I was enjoying myself a lot 😉
The next day, we did another walking tour of the Prague Castle. This one wasn’t free, but really helpful. The castle grounds are huge, so it was nice to have a guide to explain what you’re looking at and the history of the castle.
Greece
After 3 days in Prague, it was time for our final stop….Greece. To maximize our time there, we got a flight with a 14 hour layover in Athens. We arrived at about 3 pm and our flight to Santorini left at like 5 in the morning, so the morning was going to suck, but at least we could see the Acropolis! After arriving in Athens, we checked into our Airbnb, and headed to the metro to go to the Acropolis. Of course, there were hills, lots and lots of hills and walking and sun. But we made it eventually. It was a bit anti-climatic for me, mainly because most of what you’re looking at is a pile of stones and a picture in front showing you what it used to look like. Nonetheless, the views of the city were amazing. I didn’t realize how big Athens was until I was looking out at it. After the Acropolis, it was time to eat and then time to sleep. Well, time to pretend to sleep. I had a bit of work to do, and afterwards, of course, I couldn’t get to sleep. Our flight left at 5 am, so we had to get going at about 3. Not fun at all, especially since sleeping in front of the fan in our Airbnb in Athens had aggravated my sinuses. But we made it and arrived in Santorini!
After arriving in Santorini, we had to wait a bit to store our bags at the Airbnb since our room wasn’t ready yet. Then we had to find somewhere to wait until we could check-in. It was about 7 in the morning and you could see the drunk people trickling home from their nights out. That was a bit funny to watch. One of them was actually the friend of the son of the owner of the Airbnb we were staying in. She was super excited about us being there, and told us so, repeatedly 🙂 We found a cafe that was opened and had some tea. Then we found food! A breakfast place finally opened up. At this point, we still had an hour to kill before we could get into the room and I was officially delirious from lack of sleep. We headed to the Airbnb and sat outside waiting for it to be cleaned. After about 30 min, it was finally ready and it was really nice! Most importantly there were beds! And we immediately put them to use. After much deserved naps, we explored the city a bit and grabbed dinner. We planned for our time in Santorini to be really laid back, so that we would be refreshed when we came back to the US.
On our second day, Joselyn wanted to take the hike from Fira, where we were staying, to Oia. The sunset in Oia is supposed to be one of the best in Santorini. We rested up on Sunday since it takes about 3 to 3 1/2 hours to get to Oia on foot. Around 4:30 we headed out. The trail was on the caldera side of the island and was quite hot with the sun shining down on us, but it was also really beautiful. I’m not exactly a nature girl, so there were some moments where I was like, can we find a bus? But it ended up being fun and we made it just in time for the sunset.
Our last day in Santorini, we took a wine tour which was marvelous! Our tour guide was great and I really feel like I learned a lot about Santorini wines. We visited 3 wineries and had a small sunset dinner at the end of the tour. One of the most interesting things was how the grapes are grown in Santorini. The grapevines are made into a basket shape so that the grapes grow on the inside and are protected from dry and hot climate.
The sunset at our dinner after the wine tour was the perfect end to our Santorini adventure!
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