Europe Part 2

Ok, picking up from the previous post:

After leaving Venice, Lauren and I headed to Santorini for a 4 night stay in a villa in the town of Fira. A good piece of advice for the five people that happen to read this blog: Do not fly with the airline Alitalia!!! On our way to Santorini, we connected in Athens and had a 5 hour layover. The flights were booked separately so we had to pick up our baggage and recheck it. So after waiting for thirty minutes, we and about a third of the other people on our flight proceeded to the lost luggage counter where a Greek and Italian speaking man proceeded to nearly get arrested while yelling at the counter worker. In all the chaos, I managed to figure out that the luggage got lost and would be forwarded to us in Santorini. The luggage didn't arrive for two days, which left me wearing the same clothes for way too long of a period. As for Santorini itself, it was definitely my favorite place that we visited. The towns of the Greek isles are all set on the sides of cliffs, so they have magnificent views of the Aegean sea and it makes for very beautiful sunsets. While staying in Santorini, we took a boat excursion to the volcano and then sailed off to a swimming point that had hot springs (even though we had to swim through some very cold water). This experience really showed me how out of shape I am, as I watched a big fat man just blow by me as I used every muscle in my body to stay afloat. Oh and another cool thing about Santorini is that it has red and black sand beaches which was very different. So overall, Santorini is definitely a place that needs to be visited.

Our next stop was Athens, which I won't spend much time on because it wasn't really that great. The ruins were actually very cool as I have always liked Greek Mythology and it interesting to relate them. But Athens as a whole was very large, cramped, and dirty. It reminded me of a shitty version of Los Angeles, especially with all of the traffic. We were only there for one night and we made the most of it and moved on to Madrid. We didn't actually do anything in Madrid because we were only there because that is where our flight home departed from, so nothing to write about. It is interesting to note that we flew there with Alitalia, and once again, the luggage got lost and I still don't have it as of this writing. My next will be a return to poker as I lay out my WSOP schedule...