Last but not least, this will be my last travel blogpost for a while! I moved home from Jönköping a few days ago, only 3 days after returning from a quick trip to Greece. 
My best friend Carolyn met me in Gothenburg airport and we were due to fly to Greece shortly after her flight from Toronto landed. Unfortunately, her connection in Iceland had extreme fog weather and her flight ended up landing 1.5 hours later than it was due.. Ultimately meaning that we missed our flights to Greece 😦 we tried to rebook with our airline with no help whatsoever (THANKS SAS..). Instead of just ditching our Greece trip, we rebooked completey new flights. The only issue was the flight didn’t leave until 21:00 and it was only 7:00… AND we were due to have another 9 hour layover in Copenhagen (our connection) meaning we wouldn’t get to Greece till 24 hours later than we were originally due to! We booked the late flights nonetheless, spending over 9 hours in Gothenburg Landvetter airport where there is absolutely nothing to do. After we took our mere 55min flight to Copenhagen, we stayed 9 hours in that airport as well. We looked desperately for a place to sleep in the airport but couldn’t find anything other than double chairs, so we settled on that and tried to sleep, but it was so bright and loud. We decided to move ‘beds’ and found a longer row of seats to sleep on. We thought it was a good spot until we found out that it was a place where all the security guards hung out after hours…. We woke up every half hour probably because they were so loud. Also I was FREEEZING! In the morning we felt disgusting. Our flight to Greece went smoothly and we landed around 12:30. My cousin’s husband picked us up and we were going to stay with them in Athens. Since we already missed so much time due to the flights, we didn’t want to miss another afternoon, so we took quick naps and then headed out to a seafood restaurant on the water. Apparently it was called “Le Crab” but I don’t know the name in Greek! It was absolutely delicious… I loved the shrimp and the calamari… Totally hit the spot and some of the best seafood I’ve ever had! After that we went to a small lake nearby for coffee. The lake is rumoured to have healing powers. It’s also ‘bottomless’ and many divers who have tried to get to the bottom have died! It’s majestic, a little water whole surrounded on all sides by very tall rock. It was one of the highlights of the trip for me.
Since I was staying with my family, we did everything with them which was awesome since I feel like we got the true Greek experience! That night I visited some more people and met some more cousins. The next day, Carolyn and I went to a beach for the morning. In Greece, it’s common to leave mid afternoon from the beach because it gets unbearably hot and the sun is at its strongest, so we only stayed till about 14:00, went back and took a nap. We ate more delicious food thanks to my aunt, and then explored an old neighbourhood in Athens called Plaka. It wasn’t the nicest but it was cool to see an older neighbourhood. The whole area surrounding Plaka was amazing, super busy and fun to walk though. Greece has a really fun vibe to it I think. Everyone looks like they’re enjoying life whenever I’m there! We walked around downtown and of course got some souvlaki for dinner ahhhh so delicious. It was nice to see so many people out and doing things.
The day after that, we went to a different beach. It was a bit windy so we didn’t swim this time. The beaches in Athens are nice but they aren’t as great as the Greek island beaches of course. My cousins were at work on this day so we just hung out until they came back later on. They took us to the Parthenon around 19:00.. Only to realize that it closes at 20!! We had to skip out on that and went to the first Olympic stadium in the world, and then to the biggest pier in Athens and did a drive through. We stopped at this bar called Don Quixote and had some wine on the top deck of the bar that had a view over the harbour area. It was really pretty.
The day after we we flew out late afternoon, so Carolyn and I took the metro to the Acropolis to see it first thing in the morning. The metro in Athens is only 4 lines so it’s super easy to work and the stop at the Acropolis literally let’s you out like 10 meters away from the entrance. I’ve been to the Acropolis before but it was amazing of course. Ancient Greek ruins are incredible. It was a hike to get up there and definitely kind of slippery on the rocks so you have to make sure you’re dressed appropriately for it! It was nice to go first thing in the morning because there were barely any people there yet and it wasn’t deathly hot.
We went to the airport after this for our flights to Dusseldorf and then Gothenburg…. Aaaaand the travel trauma continues! Our flight from Athens was delayed and we were scared of missing our connection in dusseldorf. Finally when the plane came, it was delayed again because there was a strange man with strange behaviour who got kicked off the plane?!? Everyone has to take their baggage out of the overheads so that they could see if the strange man left anything behind. Luckily everything was fine and we were safe. We got free food because of him to make up for it. On top of this this absolutely macho man sat in the window seat next to me snoring his head off. It was hilarious. When we finally got to Dusseldorf, our flight there was also delayed -_- and there was like no food whatsoever to eat. I had a chocolate croissant for dinner… Finally we got on the flight and got to Gothenburg. Our bus home to JKPG left at 23:30 and we landed around 22. Just when you think things can’t get any worse, they lose Carolyn’s luggage….!! For two whole days. They ended up sending it straight to my address in jkpg a few days later but I was so done with travelling.
We spent 3 days in JKPG doing the usual! I said goodbye to everyone. We spent 1 day in Gothenburg the day before flying home which was nice, we just went shopping and such and then had a spa night watching modern family in the hotel hahaha. We flew from Gothenburg to Iceland, Iceland to Toronto, and then drove to Windsor from Toronto in the same day and a half. We just wanted to get home and to be done with travelling!
Overall it was super fun but as you can tell, the bad stuff just kept on coming! It’s kind of hilarious now when we think about it though. Athens was amazing and it was hard to say bye to JKPG, but I’m also so glad to be home.
I’ll be in California in a few weeks which is exciting. We’re taking a road trip around there so stay tuned for that one 😉
all over the place 