First Adventure of the Semester

Pictures from this weekend! :

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2031655&id=1325820025&l=c575ed52ca

and if you want to see ALL the pics I took this weekend (including more scenery and stuff) go here:http://picasaweb.google.com/kaitz.j/LongWeekendAdventureInGreece#

So here's what I did this weekend:
Saturday-
5:30 am woke up
6:30 am left for the train station with 7 other girls from the study abroad program
7:20 am train to Drama
we found out when we tried to sit down and everyone kept telling us that we were in their seats that there was actually seat assignments and that we didn't have seats. oh well, it was kind of funny. After about an hour and a half of standing on the train, people starting getting off and seats opened up so we didn't have to stand the whole time. It was a very nice ride through the country. We were mostly driving through farmland but there are so many huge mountains around here. The scenery was just amazing so I tried to take some pictures, but it's hard on the train/bus.
around 11 am arrived in Drama and took a taxi to the bus station
11:30 am bus to Kavala
Scenery on this ride was amazing too. Kavala is on the coast so we were driving though hills and cliffs and can see the ocean. When we came into Kavala too it was cool because we came around the corner and down over the cliff we could see the city.
-When we arrived in Kavala we had to find a hotel first. We knew some other study abroad students were staying at this one hotel so we checked there. This one girl I was with apparently had amazing bargaining skills and we managed to get it so we only paid 25 euro each for two nights. yay!
- Then we walked around Kavala and went up to the castle on the hill. I'm definitely going to come back with a toned lower body because all I do is walk up stairs and hills. haha. Anyway, unfortunately, it started to HAIL as we were walking up, but there were still great views.
- Hung out in a cafe for a while drinking nescafe for a while after that cause that's just what you do in Greece.
- Walked along the water and took a lot of pictures :)
- For dinner we went back up the hill near the castle to a cute little taverna. So good. We got free wine too. It was really good and from the owners village and I don't even usually like red wine. We ordered a bunch of food for all of us: bread, feta cheese, greek salad (which varies here depending on whatever they have they put in, but doesn't usually have lettuce), fried zucchini with tzatziki (yum!), meatballs, chicken, fish (don't know what it was but it was a fried white fish), and I think that's it. All for only 5 euros each. Awesome.
- Some more walking around and of course stopped for dessert because there's way too many bakeries and pastry shops here.

Sunday
- woke up relatively early and took a short bus to Philippi
- Saw the ruins there which was cool of course. It was amazing how much was still there. Apparently the town was destroyed because of an earthquake so I wonder what it would have looked like now if that hadn't happened... But in the ruins we saw a theater thing, a church, the prison where St. Paul was supposed to be held (? don't know much about that but I guess it's in the bible), and the main town I guess which included houses, a bath house/toilets, and a tomb (but we couldn't see inside it).
- Lunch in Philippi: Had my first Gyro here in Greece! It was deliiiiiicious. The pita bread was like a million times better than it is in America.
- Next we went back to Kavala on the bus, took a nap, and then hung out in a cafe for a while cause it was cold and rainy. The weather right now is kind of crazy and rains randomly all the time but at times it will be really sunny and nice. But hopefully soon it will just be sunny and nice all the time :).
- Dinner: Italian restaurant, I had a huge ham, mushroom and cheese calzone. I hope you're all interested in what I eat cause I'm going to talk about it...
- We checked with the front desk at our hotel to see what the weather was going to be like Monday because we wanted to take the ferry to the island Thasos that's nearby. But they said that it was supposed to rain all day :( so we decided to just go home and get back earlier and hopefully come back to the island another weekend.

Monday
- Woke up and went to the bakery recommended by the travel book as the "bakery you wish you grew up with". I got this thing that was kind of like a mini blueberry pie with chocolate cake on top. haha yum!
- It wasn't raining, it was actually really nice out but it was too late to get the ferry to Thasos :(
10 am Bus back to Thessaloniki. On the way back we were driving more along the coast so I was seriously looking out the window for the entire 2 hour drive. I wish I could have taken pictures but it didn't work at all. It was like the most perfect scenery ever and the first time I thought I would like to stay here forever. Some of the coast was cliffs and some of it was beaches. The water is that nice turquoise color and in the distance you can always see huge mountains in the skyline area. Plus pretty much all of the houses along this drive had solar panels on their roofs :). Oh and sometimes we would drive actually through mountains, like they tunneled the road right through the middle of it so that was cool. It was so beautiful and this is their winter! I wouldn't mind that being the worst of my weather.
So it turned out to be an excellent long weekend and I didn't spend too much money either.