Spring break in Santorini.

Finally getting caught up on my blog! It's taken me a little while to actually sit down and write about my absolutely wonderful spring break, but here we go.

Verona, Italy

So after our time in Venice, we boarded our train to Verona, Italy, only after grabbing pasta at Dal Moro's of course. We arrived in Verona in the afternoon, found our way to our very nice Air Bnb, and settled in. We spent the afternoon checking out the sights in Verona, the beautiful churches, the house of Juliet, from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and others. The city was beautiful and it was a nice change from constantly being lost in Venice and it was nice to get out of the big city for a while.

Verona was such a romantic city. The house of Juliet was packed with people, and it was funny to see each couple that came out onto the balcony and kiss in front of all of the people that cheered for them. There is a tradition of touching Juliet's boobs for good fortune in love, and the statue was constantly surround by men touching her and people taking photos. The courtyard was packed with people just coming to Verona to see the House of Juliet. I knew that Verona had inspired Shakespeare to write his famous play, but I was surprised to read that each family, the Montague's and the Capulet's were real Italian families. And each house, the House of Juliet and the House of Romeo were actually houses that belonged to the families. I had always thought the play was fiction, but according to our guidebook, it was written on account of real events.

Juliet's Balcony

We then made our way to the medieval city walls and saw Verona's colosseum, and we were surprised to find a huge Italian food and wine festival happening in the square. I have never had such better food and more fun. We were constantly given tastes of cheeses, sausage, desserts, wine, olives, and even shots of grappa, just for free by the locals that were selling their goods. The olives were to die for, the sausages were spicy, and of course I ended up buying tons of cheese, and the five of us left the festival with seven bottles of wine from a local vineyard. The people were incredibly nice, which was a good change up from the people in the city. We even had some of the weirdest things too, like pistachio cream, which tasted like frosting. I had a cannoli that was out of this world and has now started a ridiculous obsession with them.

Thanks for the many, many samples.

Couldn't turn down the cheese.

Snapchat says it all.

We spent the rest of the day walking around, stopping for an apertivo, which is just what you do in the afternoon in Italy, and then had a late dinner and some wine. Our train to Rome was very early the next morning so we called it a night in Verona. We all really loved Verona.

Star crossed lovers, me and wine.

Our next stop was Rome. We boarded our early train, got checked into our hostel and immediately headed to see the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. It was a really great day seeing all of the ancient ruins, and unlike anything I've ever seen before. We skimped and didn't want to pay for tours but Rick Steves kept us informed with his podcasts and it was really interesting to hear what he had to say about the Colosseum. It was pretty much just a place where people were killed for entertainment, which is pretty hard to wrap your head around. It reminded me of an ancient version of The Hunger Games.

At the Roman Forum.

Inside the Colosseum.

The next day, we headed to the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel and then St. Peter's Basilica, which was my favorite part of Rome. It was incredibly humbling to see everything at the Vatican and was just one of the coolest feelings. It's pretty cool to say that I have made the pilgrimage as a Catholic and I am really glad I was able to go to Rome. It was just a really great feeling being there. We even made the comment that you walked out feeling light, just like you had been to confession. It was incredible to see the basilica, and we even climbed the dome and had great views of Rome and St. Peter's Square.

St. Peter's Square

St. Peter's Basilica. It's seriously amazing how huge this church is, but it doesn't look it from the front.

The alter.

The Holy Door that we passed through. It is only open every 25 years, except for this year, since it is the Year of Mercy.

Michaelangelo's Dome

That night we went to one of the cooler, less-touristy parts of Rome called the Trastevere. It was a great place to wander around and get to know what Rome really seems like. The buildings were brightly colored and packed into this little area connected with cute little alleys with laundry hanging from window to window across them. We did another Rick Steves tour of this area which included the church of St. Cecilia which was really beautiful, with different architectural influences and a few other sights. We eventually grabbed a drink, then dinner at a great little trattoria. I had tiramisu which was a must.

One of 100 gelato's.

St. Cecilia's church in the Trastevere area.

Another church in the Trastevere.

St. Cecelia's church.

Our last day in Rome we checked out the Pantheon, the Trevi fountain, and the Spanish steps. It was nice having the day to just wander around, do a little shopping, have some gelato, and some wine. We eventually made our way to beautiful park and relaxed for a while, found some happy hour deals and then had the best dinner in Roma at a little restaurant we found on lonely planet. We had a delicious meat and cheese appetizer and the best pasta.  I had cacio e pepe, which is like cheese and pepper pasta, and a glass of great red wine. Which was also a must for our last night in Italy. We got our 100th gelato on the walk home, got packed and had some more wine, and got ready to head to Greece!

Taylor and I at the Trevi fountain. We definitely tossed our coins in!

Tossing our coins in!

The Pantheon

Anotha one.

Views from the park we found.

When we arrived in Santorini, we found our way to our hostel, just gawking at everything we saw. Every building is white-washed just like in the pictures, the people are beautiful and nice, and we knew we were going to absolutely love Greece. We learned right away that the way to get around the island was either on a four-wheeler or a scooter. So we walked around the main town, Fira, for the day, got a gyro, walked down to the port, and then later rented four-wheelers for the weekend. I definitely sniffed out the boutiques and found some cute dresses and bought a million pieces of opal and turquoise jewelry, but it was really cheap in Santorini. They love their evil eye jewelry there so I was loving it. We decided to head to the most northern, and the most picturesque town for the night. The town, Oia, is famous for its sunsets and is the cutest little town. It's what you think of when you think of Santorini. We had seafood and greek salads for dinner, watched the sunset, and later buzzed home on our four-wheelers.

We went out that night and I had one of most fun nights in Santorini. Santorini was absolutely lit. The wine was great and the bars and clubs were really cool and fun. In the first bar, we walked in and of course when for the cheapest shot on the menu, "head shot". We had no idea what it was so you can imagine my surprise when the bartender handed me a helmet and said "put it on". So I put the helmet on, the bartender poured me shot, and clubbed me over the head with a wooden bat right after I took it. Definitely one for the books. But we had a ton of fun that night bouncing around from bar to bar and of course going for late night gyros' which cost only 2.50 euros! They were insanely cheap. For instance, a gyro was only 2.50 euros while a gelato was 4.00 euros.

One of many many gyros.

So beautiful. The town Fira.

The donkeys used to transport people and things up the steps from the port.

At the old port in Fira.

Just loving Santorini.

Another village on the cliffs.

That next day, we bought tickets to take a boat from the main island to the island with an active volcano that formed the group of islands, what they call the "caldera". So we took a little pirate looking ship across the caldera and hiked up to the top of volcano. You could even feel the heat from the volcano if you dug in the dirt just a few inches!

The boat also took us to these natural hot springs, that we swam in. It was a really windy day so the sea was rough, but we still jumped off the boat and swam into the little bay where the water turned hot. It was so cold in the actual sea where we jumped in and us geniuses didn't bring towel for the ride home. But it was a really great day. We had the best dinner in Fira that night at a place called Mama's house. Thank God for good friends and recommendations.

Our boat to the other islands. Look at that water!!

The volcano.

The water drastically turns green in the port at the volcano because of the sulfur.

A great Greek beer.

So many Greek salads and souvlaki.

Fried eggplant

Eggplant stuffed with lamb and veggies. The flavors in all of the food was just out of this world.

The next two days in Santorini we spent just relaxing at the beach. This day was by far the most interesting of the trip. We got up early and went on a beautiful hike along the cliffs, grabbed some lunch, and headed from the famous Red Beach. It was a little hard to navigate the roads as everything is written in the Greek alphabet, but we eventually found it. We parked, hiked around the little cliff, and came down into the Red Beach that was really beautiful. We spent the day just lounging in the sun, where I fell asleep and proceeded to just fry in the sun. That Greek sun is pretty intense, I'm telling ya. So we got super sunburnt, laid around and read, swam in the sea and enjoyed the day. We then headed back to Oia for the sunset, and found a good place for Greek salads for dinner. We watched the sunset by the funniest older couple from Australia that took some pictures for us. She was so hilariously blunt.

It was just Taylor and I together for the day, so when we were done with dinner we hopped back on the four-wheeler to head home. We got about halfway when our four-wheeler just went "put put put" and died. I immediately just figured we had run out of gas since the gauge didn't work. We weren't about to try and walk, since it was like 11 pm, or take the ride from the nice (?) guys that offered us one, so we walked into this fancy, fancy hotel nearby and asked them for help. They were so sweet and called us a taxi. We found out the next morning that we did not in fact run out of gas but something was up with the power on the four-wheeler so despite how the guy treated me at the rental place, I didn't feel so dumb. He treated me like a dumb blonde and said something along the lines of "driving in your pretty dress" so you could say the feminist in me was pretty fired up.

Taylor and I on our janky lil four-wheeler.

In Oia.

The view from our morning hike.

Watching the sunset in Oia. Thanks to the spunky Australian woman for the picture.

Such an amazing sunset.

We spent our whole last day at the beach, this time what they call the Black Beach. I found a shady cabana to lie under and we all spent the day reading and napping and listening to the waves. We had the absolute best time in Santorini and I couldn't help but reflect that day about how blessed I am to have been able to see this part of the world and how just content I was life. We had great food again that night, and went out was last time which was really fun. Taylor and I had the best crepes at like 2 am that were a major drunk food game changer.

Our dank crepes. 

The next day was hell. We had about 12 hours of traveling ahead of us and abut 8 hours of layovers, but hey cheap college kids still found a way to do Santorini. That night though was absolutely amazing as I met up with Hana, my friend Ally Pietrock that had just finished semester at sea, and a couple of our Delt friends from UNL in Prague and had a great night just drinking beers and being with some of best friends. It was really great that we could all get together, it made me really thankful for friends. On Monday, us girls got breakfast at Cafe Savoy, which is a world renowned bakery, before I had to head back to Olomouc.

So great to have some beers with these two lovely people in Prague.

With seeing old friends, and destinations that would become my new "happy places", I had an absolutely wonderful spring break, and truthfully this entire semester has just been wonderful. I absolutely loved Santorini and had the best week, just exploring Europe. I can't wait to get back to Greece honestly, maybe someday for a honeymoon. Maybe. Or maybe it'll just be me when I'm 30 and single, that seems more likely.