Na Shledenou!

It’s true what they say, that all good things must come to an end. Three months ago I packed up my entire life and traveled 5,000 miles away from everything I’ve ever known to explore the unknown as a studied abroad in the Czech Republic. My main goals on this endeavor were to make friends, learn new things, and make every moment count. The days flew by, and I often found myself wishing I could pause a moment, to remember it forever. I think I accomplished my goals pretty well - I didn’t take anything for granted along the way and truly feel like I made the most out of the opportunity presented to me.

Throughout the three months when we weren’t in class, we had group field trips and often served a very education purpose, and weekend trips of our own to wherever we so chose. All in all I visited 10 different countries! Among some of my favorites were Italy, Croatia, Spain, and Greece (maybe just because I was a fan of the fantastic weather), but every single place I visited had a unique beauty all it’s own and a story to tell. The story I would like to tell today is my last little adventure which took me by tram, train, bus, and plane all the way down to Greece. Greece has always been somewhere that I’ve dreamt of visiting. There’s all kinds of beautiful photos on the internet of beautiful white buildings stacked up on hillsides along the beautiful coast, and I made it my mission to see this for myself. For this trip it was just down to Megan and I, the two of us together in the end just as we had started in the beginning. We started our Greece adventures in Athens… which wasn’t exactly what I had expected.

There are parts of Athens that are quite beautiful, but the vast majority of the city seemed to me to be in desperate need of some help. I had learned recently that Greece is actually in some serious financial troubles, and it was evident in Athens. The only parts of the country that seem to thrive are the ones that rely heavily on tourism, which is sad for such a beautiful nation with a long and rich history. There were good parts of Athens however, the acropolis was such a cool experience. I’m so glad I got to see the Parthenon in person! It’s crazy to see something that you’ve looked at picture of your entire life up close and personal.

After our day in Athens we had a whole new travel experience by ferry. The views were fantastic! The whole ordeal was a little hectic however, we got there just in time only for them to tell us we needed to print our ticket, which took a few minutes, and when we made our way back to the ferry the doors were going up and there was some frantic yelling that this was indeed NOT the ferry to Mykonos, and we needed to get to the other ferry. So we went sprinting down the port with all our luggage down the length of these two ginormous boats to FINALLY arrive at the correct ferry just in the nick of time. In the confusion I accidentally handed the wrong ticket and ended up being called over the intercom multiple times to go the reception desk. The only issue was we couldn’t quite understand because of the heavy accent of the announcer. We didn’t discover it was actually me being paged until we got back on the ferry for our return trip and a man approached me with questions! In the end everything was alright and they thankfully didn’t throw us overboard!

Mykonos was truly a dream come true. We stayed in the nicest hotel with the best service we’ve received our entire time in Europe. The people were also super friendly which always makes for a better experience. The first night we were there we met up with some of the others from our study abroad group for dinner, we had Italian for the 9,000th time and I’m somehow still not tired of it! It was good to meet up for one last time, it was very bittersweet saying goodbye.

The next day was marked by a sailing excursion around the southern coast of the island. We didn’t know coming into it, but Mykonos is windy 300 days out of the year, and that day was definitely one of them. We beach hopped to several beautiful beaches, jumped off the back of the boat into the salty sea water, had lunch at a cute little restaurant on the coast, climbed to the top of a small mountain (almost got blown away in the process), laid out on the beach and drank wine, and explored a little fishing village. Overall the day was fantastic! For dinner we went down to Mykonos Town for pizza and crepes, and saw the famous windmills.

Greece was the perfect end to my study abroad experience. Saying goodbye to Europe was extremely bittersweet, but the day had to come. I can’t wait for the day to get back out there and see more new places, the love of traveling has truly captured my heart.