This past weekend I took a school-sponsored trip to Mt. Athos and Halkidiki. On the way to Ouranoupoli, (the town where we caught our boat tour of Athos) I felt like I was driving through every country and every climate of the world. I had the desert lands of Africa, the green rolling hills and mountains of Ireland, the rocky cliffs and fjords of Norway, canyons of Colorado, and the blue clear waters of the Caribbean. I really enjoyed seeing the land of Greece on our journey. We haven't seen much more than city life since we've been here, so it was nice to see the villages and the nature of Greece.
It was cloudy and chilly when we got on our boat in Ouranoupoli, and while we would have preferred a more sunny and warm day, I was really excited to see what Mt. Athos was. I didn't really know much about it, and I was expecting to see just one dinky monastery. I was definitely wrong. Mt. Athos, which means Holy Mountain, is a large peninsula that is home to about 20 monasteries, built by different countries of the world. The peninsula is covered with cliffs and mountains (reaching up to the actual Mt. Athos at 6,670 ft) and each of the monasteries is very much separated from the rest. Women are not allowed to step foot on the peninsula and are only allowed to see the monasteries from boats at least 500m from shore. This is because of a religious reason, and it is a law that has been followed since the very first monastery was built in 980. Men need an entrance permit, and Orthodox Christians get first dibs. All of the monasteries were impressive - built nestled into the cliffs overlooking the sea, they had beautiful architecture. Its hard to imagine when and how these monasteries were built.

The village of Ouranoupoli

This is what I thought the monasteries would look like. I was wrong...

The cliffs and hills of the peninsula

The first monastery

The Russian monastery. This one was my favorite. 2000 Russian and Greek monks live here.

A monastery on a cliff

Mt. Athos, called the "Garden of the Virgin" by the monks

Once the boat turned around to head back to Ouranoupoli, we decided to go downstairs and get out of the chilly wind for a while. Maggie, Dana, and I sat down at a table near an elderly man. When his wife came back she started talking to us in Greek. We quickly pulled out our Greek dictionaries, but it wasn't really helpful at all. We quickly introduced ourselves (mainly because thats the only real Greek that we know) and started talking to them with hand gestures and very very simple language. Demitri and Dana (I think thats his wife's name. She got all excited when Dana told her her name, so we think they had the same one) loved us. Demetri gave us lavendar and Dana kept kissing our cheeks. We also took several pictures of us all together. I'm pretty sure they wanted us to come to their home for lunch, but we had very little time to spend in the village. As we said goodbye we exchanged cell phone numbers, as though we would be able to understand eachother on the phone.

Boat and Ouranoupoli

The we drove an hour or so back to our hotel in Halkidiki, a beach resort town. Our hotel was beautiful. It was in its own little cove of crystal clear blue water. Because the summer tourism season is now over, we were the only ones in the hotel except for a family from Germany. We explored the beach before we drove into the village for dinner. This is the taverna we ate at right on the water. Taverna is my favorite word in Greek mainly because with Greek letters it is spelled "TABEPNA" and I think its funny. It also means really good cheap food and free wine, which may also be a reason its my favorite Greek word.

The next day the sun came out, but it was still pretty windy and cold. A few brave souls decided to swim in the Aegean, myself included. Obviously. Why in the world would I miss out on what might be my only opportunity to swim in the Aegean sea? The water was so warm and once you got past where the "waves" broke the sand was soft. It was a great swim, it was only getting out that was the hard part. This is Jaime and I after our swim. We were the only girls to brave it, and we were pretty proud of ourselves. But you guys know me, even if the air and the water had been colder I still would have done it.


We got warmed up and hung around the hotel for a while before having lunch and heading back to Thessaloniki. Its too bad that the wind never died down, I know we all would have enjoyed sunbathing a bit more, but it was a great trip anyway!