Grace Says Smile: The Greek Odyssey: part two.

After so much traveling, it was nice to finally be able to have a place to lay our heads – and by that I mean, it was nice to be in a clean bed as opposed to an airplane or bus chair or a ferry cabin bed littered with hair from an unidentifiable source. Creepy.

We went out to dinner and tried an amazing Greek specialty… Pizza. Okay, so we weren’t too adventurous, but we were flipping tired. Check us out.

Once we headed back to the hotel, we realized we could buy internet access minutes from the hotel. Um, YES PLEASE. Going from seeing and talking to my parents and Ethan everyday to not seeing or talking to them for two days was pretty killer. At some point, I was joined by an adorable fuzzy friend.

This is Tommy (toe-me), a little stray cat informally adopted by the hotel. Stray animals are all over Greece, but cats in particular cover the country. It's actually really sad. It warmed my heart to see Tommy so well cared for.

He was a little skittish, but once he took a liking to me, he climbed up onto my lap.

Then this happened, and my heart exploded with joy.

Alright, so, the next day we visited Gortyn and Festos Palace. Gortyn was pretty sweet in that there is a temple there. This temple is actually where Titus (this dude from the Bible) served as bishop after being appointed by Paul (this other dude from the Bible – maybe you’ve heard of him?). That was actually really crazy, especially because even the ruins of this temple are gorgeous.

The temple in all its grandiosity.

A doorway in the temple.

View from the window.

Tons of birds all up in herr.

I will be honest with you. Ruins are ruins. At times it’s hard to get past that fact. Sorry, ancient Greeks. That plus our lethargy led to some less than enthusiastic feelings on our part. However, things started to look up. We visited a little town called Matala.

A few of us walked into a restaurant we selected at random and, upon asking for a menu, were taken upstairs. We were seated next to a window with the most breathtakingly gorgeous view. We only had a short time to eat, so we were super adventurous and ordered… pizza. Don’t hate.

After lunch, we met up with the Professor and the rest of the group for presentations. Before the trip, we were each assigned a topic around which we had to form a presentation that would eventually serve as the basis of a final essay. The Professor told us we had to walk to the presentation site, which was situated on some “sea cliffs.” Well, that kind of sounded like no fun, but I was wrong. We followed and found ourselves sitting in a quaint restaurant literally, like one hundred feet above the most beautiful water you’ve ever seen. The weather was perfect – warm with a sea breeze. That’s when we decided: Greece ain’t so bad.