Niklas Sister Reunion- Indo Style!

We arrived safely in Bali last night. My sister, Rachel, is due at the hotel in T- 5 hours....so excited!!!!

Guest Blogger!

Lookout out for Matt's blog on Bangkok in the next couple of days. He loved it and I thought it would be fun for him to write about his first taste of Southeast Asia.

The Greek Islands

I know this may seem a bit cheesy, but I really can't explain how amazing our trip to the Greek Islands was, especially Santorini, so I'll try and take a stab at it-

The night before we left for Greece, Matt and I were packing and watching tv, some special on the magician Chris Angel was on. He was doing his usual stunt, hypnotizing people on the streets of Las Vegas and levitating them and what not. Anyways, as he started the act, he told each person to think of the happiest moment in their lives. Now, this got me thinking, "what would be the happiest moment in my life?". I mean, don't get me wrong, I've been very blessed and have had many great moments in my life. But for some reason I couldn't pick out "the one".

Then it happened- It was exactly a week later. I was riding with Matt on the little ATV we had rented. We were driving along the cliffs of Santorini looking down onto the ocean during sunset. I literally could not wipe the smile off my face if I tried. It was the most beautiful place I had ever seen in my life. So, there it was, "the happiest moment of my life"... have you booked your flight yet? ha!

Our whole visit was amazing. We spent 4 nights in Mykonos and 4 in Santorini. Both islands are beautiful, but Mykonos is known as the "party island" and that's exactly what people go there to do, so we preferred Santorini more.

Santorini is an island literally set on top of a caldera right across from a volcano. The villages are all a stunning white and built into the cliffs of the caldera, giving you amazing views of the sunset. The island also has black sand beaches and the water is the bluest I've ever seen. Plus, Santorini is known as the "wine island" of Greece and has a dozen of great wineries all around the island.

By reccommendation of our guesthouse, we visited the Santo Winery. Their wines are amazing, mostly whites, and are only 2 euro for a tasting, which is basically a glass of wine (no skimping here!). The winery is also built into the cliffs of the caldera giving amazing views onto the volcano and the rest of the island. Best. Sunset. Ever.

View and sunset from the winery...

The Greek Islands were an amazing end to our Europe leg...now on to Asia!

Get a Bottle of Rum...

And read this book. Enjoy!

This is all I heard. All. Summer. Long.

This song was blaring EVERYWHERE we went in Europe. In the stores, on the streets...you could even hear it blaring in all the teenage boys ipods on the metros! Sorry if I have ruined your day, because this song will stay in your head for a LONG time.

Greek Life

Let me just start this post off by saying how much I loooooveeeed Greece. The people are the nicest and funniest people you'll ever meet in your life. Everywhere we stayed, I literally felt like I was staying in the home of an old family friend. And the food is to die for, even on a budget! 2 euro spinach pies and gyros, yes please! I lived on those alone for the entire 10 days.

Ok, so after Rome, we flew to Athens and spent 3 days there before heading to the islands. Athens was really a pleasant suprise for me. I had heard a lot of bad things about it so I wasn't expecting much but I found the city to be a really fun and interesting place.

Taking a stroll around the city literally takes you back in time. Walking around you run into ruin after ruin and you can stare up at the Acropolis basically anywhere you go.The whole city is really clean too (you could lick the floor of their metro stations, no joke), which I assume is due in part to the cleanup before the Olympics. And for some reason, I got a really island feel from the whole place. I don't know why, maybe because everything is white? Nonetheless, beautiful city that I'd highly reccommend.

We found a nice room at the Hotel Phaedra for 50 euros a night. Our room had the craziest view of the Acropolis, check it out!

After a couple days of sightseeing we took a ferry down to Mykonos and Santorini which I'll post within the next day or two.

Italia!

Well, I certainly do apologize for being such a bad blogger lately. So much has happened since my last post about Portugal, I can't believe it! Just to catch you up to speed, after Portugal we flew in to Rome for two days, headed up to Cinque Terre for three, Florence for four and then back to Rome for one more day. Then from Rome we flew into Greece and did Athens and the Greek Islands, but that will be an entirely different blog post...I have way too many good things to say about the country of Greece.

Where to begin? Well, for starters I am just going to be completely honest and admit that I was a tad dissappointed by Italy. Rome knocked my socks off. I mean literally everything anyone has told you about the city is true....its romantic, its ancient, its holy, its...ROME! The place is amazing, we had such a great visit. I guess when we visited Cinque and Florence, I was expecting them to be a little less touristy then they ended up actually being. For instance, Cinque has tours come in daily from Siena and Florence, so all of a sudden around noon a hundred tourists come flooding in to the small villages all wearing the same matching hats...annoying! As for Florence, I wish I did our whole visit differently. Since I really was looking for some peace and quiet, what I should have done was stay outside of the city, somewhere quiet like Chianti, drink wine all day, then make a day trip to see the sights in Florence. Instead, we spent all four days shoulder to shoulder with everyone and their mom that decided to visit Florence in August. Another downfall was the price of food. Italy had by far the most expensive food out of all of the countries we have been to yet. I mean, come on, a girl cannot survive on pizza and pasta alone! And even that was expensive.

Now, I realize from the comments above you would probably think we had a horrible ten days in Italy. But even though it was not what we expected, we still had a really good time in each place.

I'll start with my favorite- Roma! First off, we stayed in an amazing place in the Vatican City area, Colors Hotel. The room was huge with a flat screen tv, a fridge, and the most amazing crown molding I have ever seen (I know I'm a dork, but check the room out below). Plus a really good breakfast that is included in the room price. When checking in, we found out the front desk worker's mom had just moved to Durham, NC (where my family lives), so she was super helpful with recommendations and even mapped out a walking route for us that she takes her own family on when they come to visit. By the end of our first night we had literally seen all of Rome, which was good because we did the Vatican the next day and just walked around and relaxed that night.

We stumbled upon an amazing restaurant on our first night, called Il Fico. I am only including the address because out of all the cities we have visited, Rome is probably the most likely for anyone reading this to visit, so here ya go- Via di Monte Giordano, 49. Their eggplant parmesan and carbonara are out of this world and the prices are the cheapest you will find around Piazza Novano. Plus, the restaurant is situated on this really quiet cobblestone street and has really cool outdoor tables lining the road across from it. Needless to say, it was very romantic and we ended up heading there both nights.

After our stay in Rome, we headed up for 3 nights in Cinque Terre on the Italian Riviera. Cinque Terre literally means The Five Lands and it consists 5 small villages strung along the coast all connected by a 10 km hiking trail. Matt unfortunately was sick during our entire stay so he spent a majority of our stay in bed. I did the hike to 4 out of the 5 villages starting in Riomagiorre, the village we stayed in. Here's the view from our room below.

The trail from Riomagiorre to Manarola is the easiest and is known as the "Love Walk". Here's Manarola below..
....then Corniglia....
After Corniglia the hike gets a little more strenuous but you get amazing views along the trail.
next is Vernazza...
Then the trail ends in Monterosso, which is the most touristy spot of the villages so I just decided to stop in Vernazza. We spent the other days laying on the beach and relaxing. Matt started feeling better just in time for our train to Florence, which I will post about tomorrow.

Hope you all are doing well, miss you all!

MIA...again

Sorry for the bad blogging yet again. Matt and I are having the best time ever in Greece. Trying to soak up every last second of it all so I will get Italy and Greece up when we get back to Athens. Hope you all are enjoying the long weekend and happy Labor Day!!