Part One: Oxford
I landed in Gatwick at about 6pm GMT, cursing myself once again for my east to west to south to north travel plans--which led to way too much time spent on board airplanes. However, I diligantly cleared customs (as an American, unfortunately...which meant that everything took way too long. I mean, what's so suspicious about an American with a Danish residence permit flying from Budapest to London...) and hopped on a train for another two hour journey to Oxford. There I met Diego, along with a few other Williams people, and had a quiet evening at the Williams House.
The next day, I was mostly on my own to walk around and explore the city. It is a really interesting place. A college town on steroids, that decided to compensate for some of the negative side effects by building huge buildings and steeples all over town. It was interesting to get a chance to see the original college town, though. So much of American college life is modeled after Oxford. Anyways, I have way too much work to do a thorough blogging, so what follows are some highlights:
-Neat museums...mostly free
-Christ Church College, where a ton of the Harry Potter movies was filmed
-A store going out of business and getting £200 worth of stuff for £10.
-Student Night at Lava, a club in town. You can see what happens when students have one or two class meetings a week.
-Dinner at the Exeter Hall...Crappy food, but it was fun anyways.
-Listening to copious amounts of HP VII on my iPod, including while riding a train through England... If only I could have gotten myself to Kings Cross Station.
-Saw a whole slew of Williams people.
-I could understand EVERYTHING that was going on around me! (English, you know...)
-Skips! They are prawn flavored crisps that I got addicted to while living in Ireland.
Anyways, there are a bunch of pictures up on facebook. I'll put up a public link in a few minutes.
Part 2: Greece
Greece was incredible! It was so warm and so much fun. I landed in Athens on Saturday afternoon, and after a very brief hiccup, where neither my parents nor myself noticed that I walked right past them, we found each other, and had a wonderful reunion over spanikopita, Greek beer, and cappuccinos. We traded hugs and stories and enjoyed each other's presence as we waited for our flight to Crete.
After an uneventful 40 minute flight to Heraklion airport, we landed, found our rental car, and navigated the 40km through the dark to our hotel. When we got there, the smell of horse and delicious food (a weird combination, I promise you...) told us that we were at the right place. I was a little tired (following a night of only two hours of sleep), and my parents were exhausted (following a day and a half of travelling), so we had dinner in the restaurant at the hotel and turned in for a full night of sleep.
Considering I had never ridden a horse before, the guide thought it might be a good idea for me to have a few lessons before joining my parents (and other guests) on the trails, so the first morning, my parents went off without me. Left to my own devices, I sat by the pool reading for a little while, and then went for a run up the mountain behind the hotel (something I've been missing since moving to the flattest country on earth). When they returned we had a very late lunch, and I had my lesson.
The next day, my mom stayed behind as my dad and I headed to Agia Pelagia to do some SCUBA diving. There wasn't much to see underwater, but it was great to be back under the surface of the ocean for a while. There is something remarkably calming about being 100 feet underwater. It's eerily quiet, and you can let your breathing fall into a pattern, and spend some good time thinking, swimming, and looking around at an entirely foreign world. It was a lot of fun.
On day three, we went on a relatively easy ride (that I was allowed to join!) up the same mountain I had run up two days earlier. By the time we got to the top, the rest of the group respected me a bit more--both because I hadn't fallen off of my horse on the way up and because they thought it was an absurd place to run up to... There was a really cool old abandoned village that still had a neat Greek Orthodox Church with a couple of really old frescoes. Also, a little higher up the mountain (we had to walk up--the horses couldn't handle it) was a cave that had been used to hide the church's valuables back in the 1600s. It has since been converted into a church in its own right, with an alter and a shrine, and it was really cool to go back in there in candlelight and look around inside.
That afternoon we went to the Plateau of Lasithi. To get there, we had to drive up about one kilometer (it was a 30 km drive, but the elevation gain was about 1km). When we got there, we crested over the shoulder of one ridge, and saw this incredible plateau on the other side. The plateau sits at about 800 meters, and is surrounded on all sides by mountains that drop off over the other side back to the see. It is probably about 20km around the plateau, and there were a bunch of little villages all around it. The middle was left as arable farm land. It was a neat drive.
The next morning, my dad and I went diving again, and my mom came over to the sea with us. While we were underwater, my mom went to the Palace of Knossos and sightseeing in the city of Heraklion. When we came up, we got lunch at a little hotel in the city before heading back to the hotel for naps!
The next day (I think we're up to Thursday now), we went on a 5 hour ride around the mountains, stopping at a little mountainside restaurant for lunch and coffee in the middle. The scenery was breathtaking, but considering I had never been riding until two days prior, after the five hour ride, I was a little saddle sore. We also went riding on Friday.
Friday night, we were invited to a Raki party by our guide and our breakfast cook. It was a neat experience! Raki is a Greek hard liquor that tastes absolutely foul. I had a couple of shots of it, mostly because that seemed like the thing to do, but stuck mostly to the locally grown Cretian wine that was being passed around heartily. There was a large quantity of freshly cooked meat--most of which had been alive that morning--and baked goods, and we had a really good time! My dad was raving about the party for literally the next day and a half. I got to hold and feed a 16 day old lamb!
On Saturday morning, we headed back to Athens. We had an overnight layover, which left us with an afternoon to explore Athens. We went to the Acropolis and did all of the touristy things associated with it. I took about as many pictures in Athens as I had taken the entire time we'd been in Crete. It's weird how little you can remember from when you are younger, because I had been to the Acropolis when I was three, but it was still like seeing it for the first time.
The next morning, my parents and I parted ways, and they started their long journey back to the states. I was back in Denmark that evening, getting ready for the final five week push before I myself get on a USA bound aircraft. It's now the final push! There's not a whole lot of time left before I'm back in America. Between the 20 papers I have left to write (a slight exaggeration only...), I plan on making the best of my short time remaining! See you all soon!
Pictures link to the left...
From the castle on top of the hill in Buda, the views of Pest were breathtaking! The first picture is of me and Steve with the Danube in the background. The second picture is of the Hungarian Parliament (Steve was right, it is in fact cooler than Denmarks...), and the third is of me with the Pest skyline in the background. After walking around the castle grounds for a little while and exploring a few other old buildings, we went to a cafe to have coffee and cake, a very European afternoon event.
