(my very delayed spring break post)
a little lizzie:
we spent a couple days at the beginning and at the end of the trip in rome, italy.
i ate some hearty italian pasta, saw the spanish steps (shout out to my second homeland), and visited the trevi fountain. it was all very beautiful & i could see how a girl like lizzie mcguire would wanna find a paolo and show the world that this is in fact what dreams are made of.
but it also wasn’t for me. it was busy and touristy and crowded and the cobblestone almost ended me. i mean don’t get me wrong it’s a wonderful place and i still found an opportunity to shove half a pizza in my purse, but i encountered more tranquility in greece.
a lotta lena:
we spent almost a week in athens, greece. madre mía que bonita.
of the países i visited this semester abroad, i think greece was my favorite. athens itself was so rich and antiguo with culture and history. and for once, i didn’t feel obligated to see a million cathedrals and attempt to appreciate hundreds of years of catholicism and the expulsion of other religions.
we saw a lot of ancient, crumbling, historical sights and a lot of museums with like, really old shit in them.
one of my favorite parts of greece (apart from the free student admission to everything) was the orange blossoms. every day when we would trek to the central market and shopping area, we would pass these orange trees along the street with intensely fragrant orange blossoms. the weather was fair and it smelled lovely and it was a pleasant place. i still considered it pleasant after seeing a protest/riot/whatever have you on the first day; that was an act of civil unrest protesting the aid and support of syrian refugees. i naturally grabbed my camera to film what i could, but i was mostly in awe. not necessarily the good kind of awe. but just in that i experienced something incredibly pertinent to our contemporary history that’s currently being written.
so you know in the movie hercules after he buffs up and looks all godlike? and his legs are unrealistically huge and muscley and you’re like mhmm he’s hunk-ules? i totally get that. some of those hills, like the one up to the acropolis, were pure madness for my pastry filled bod. there’s no way i would’ve made it in greek times. id be the ball shaped abuela that’s always in the house complaining about how her grandkids don’t eat enough (also a v spanish thing too). so yeah. every day is leg day for the greek.
this beautiful city was only a small glimpse of greece and it made sense to me why a girl like lena kaligaris would want to bring her traveling pants here. it was so stunning. we found a beach one day and of all the waves and oceans ive been lucky enough to dip my toes in, this one felt older. the aegean sea was calling out to me and standing with my feet in the warm sand i felt as though i could have been king aegeus watching and waiting for theseus’ white sail.
i felt the history a lot more in greece than anywhere else. i know of all the places in europe, this is the one im destined to revisit in my life (but preferably on an island laying on the beach for most of the time).
pocketfulofpassport 
Great post. I absolutely understand your love of and connection to Greece. When I was there, my professors said maybe I was Greek Oracle in a previous life. I took it as a compliment, ignoring the allusion that they thought sniffing sulfur fumes was a feasible way for me to spend my time. .
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