In the summer of 2017 I got to travel to one of the prettiest places in the world. A place full of unique Islands, everlasting sunsets and lets not forget it’s mouth watering greek yogurt and Moussaka. This place is Greece. When me and my brothers first got the news, we were so thrilled we couldn’t sleep! I had seen so many beautiful pictures of this place on instagram and pinterest for so long and I was finally going. Me and my family left for Greece on early morning of June 12. First we went from Guatemala to Miami were we waited for two hours. Whenever we stop in Miami we go to this really good Cuban restaurant called “La Carreta.” So we ate some sweet mango and beans. I also took some time to wonder around the little shops at the airport like bookshops. After the 2 hours our flight got delayed 2 hours more so we had to wait more! It was frustrating because we had still 9 hours left to go.
So after the other 2 hours went by, we finally got in the plane to go to Madrid were we would take our final flight into Italy to get the cruise that would take us to the Islands in Greece. This was going to be the longest flight, so what I did during all the plane was read and watch downloaded films from Netflix like The Flash, Friends and 13 going on 30. One of the things that you might be wondering is if I ever slept during the flight? Well the answer is no. Never in my life have I slept during a flight. Its just really difficult thing for me to do. One of the most important things I took with me was my book, sunglasses, Go Pro and my Canon EOS Rebel. One of the things I couldn’t wait to do was take pictures. I love how with just one image, many things can be seen such as emotions, places and meanings. The places we visited were Malta, Santorini, Mykonos, and Athens.
When we finally got to Madrid we went directly to Rome, Italy. We were with a lot of jetlag so we stayed up for a long time joking around and then we finally went to sleep. At the next morning we went directly to the dock were the cruise was going to leave from. When we started going in I was s amazed by the size of the ship. When we entered we were given a key to our room. The room was medium sized exactly for 5 people and it had a balcony right outside that gave a beautiful view to the ocean. I loved that the cruise had many restaurants like sushi, grill, Italian and so much more. But my favorite was the dinning room because they had buffet and all you can eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And my favorite thing were their soft vanilla ice cream. I probably ate like 2 per day but believe me, it was worth it. In total we were on the cruise for 6 days. 4 days were spent on the Islands and the others on board. During the days we were on board, I went to a really cool place that was called the reading tree. There you could go in to some really cool places to read. And I also went to the pool, spa or to eat ice cream. Many of activities were going on in the cruise so there was never a time when I got bored.
SANTORINI: I can tell you that Santorini was my favorite place in Greece. One of the things that I adored was it’s blue colored domes that were all around the town. Me and my family didn’t do a specific tour in Santorini, we just walked around looking at shops and markets. I enjoyed walking around the white streets of Santorini, looking at the different things they had about Greece like clothing, food and crafts. As my mom says “the best way to get to know a place is by walking in its streets.” And that is totally true because you learn so much about the place just by walking in it like it’s people, architecture, food, style and more! At noon, we went to the other side of the Island to eat. We went to a restaurant that served mainly sea food, but we decided to try out Greece’s famous dish “The Moussaka.” Then we kept on walking throughout the place and we stopped for a while to admire the golden afternoon. When the spectacular show ended we went back to the cruise riding donkeys that took us down 400 stairs! This was a thrilling experience but at the same time really scary because I thought the donkey was going to slip and fall because of the slippery stoned stairs. But gladly nothing bad happed. When we got to the bottom of the stairs we went back to the cruise to eat dinner.
ATHENS: Now Athens is all about sightseeing. There are many places to go to like the Acropolis and the Partenón. We got up early in the morning, went to get breakfast and got in the tour bus. On our way to the sites we listened to a recording of a person explaining the history behind the monuments. When we got there I was amazed by the big columns that the buildings had. I looked carefully at the people that were doing maintenance to some of the monuments for a while and then I kept on going to see the other sights. I was actually very interested in not only seeing but in understanding the whole story behind each site.
MYKONOS: Mykonos was somehow similar to Santorini but also different. Again me and my family only walked around Mykonos. Our first stop was at an Ice cream shop called Lolitas. There we grabbed a mouth watering, natural greek yogurt ice cream. Because the sun was really hot we decided to go up to a part called little Venice. The bad thing is that there were so many people that my dad almost fell to the ocean because the street to cross to the other side was so small but gladly a person was there to hold him. When we checked to see if my dad was ok, we went to the famous wind mills. It took us about 40 minutes to walk from little Venice to the mills, but the satisfaction when we reached the top was the best feeling I had. What my eyes say was a turquoise, endless ocean and all around it you could see the white houses that made up Mykonos. We stayed there for about an hour enjoying the afternoon sunset
MALTA: In Malta we decided to take a tour given by the cruise. This included going on a sight seeing bus all around the place. I loved this because I saw so many little restaurants and shops. Not to forget the incredible views we were given as we went higher into the mountain. We went to eat to this beautiful place were we ate Greek food. In the afternoon we went a huge sailing boat which took us all around the Island. I used my time wisely and got to tan myself. At the end of the day we went back to the cruise were we took a swim in the pool.
Victoria Morales 