What a week in Greece!

Hello friends!  What an amazing and busy week its been here!  I wanted to write sooner but we literally have been going non-stop for about 5 days straight now and its only getting better!  A day after seeing the birthplace of the ancient Olympics and running around in the first Olympic stadium which is thousands of years old, we made it to Athens and explored the first modern Olympic stadium (which itself is actually over a thousand years old as well).  The entire stadium is built of marble and is absolutely incredible!  Being exposed to these places, especially as the Olympic junkie that I am, is just surreal.  The stadium in Olympia was something I'll never forget.  A group of foreigners set up their own 4x4 relay, I pretended to do a shotput with my bunched up sweatshirt and others posed like Olympic stars.  The site just encourages creativity and imagination.  I'm just loving Athens...such a beautiful city and everyday we have been meeting new people and going places together creating friendships that I'm sure will last well beyond this trip.  Our first night in Athens was another highlight of the trip for me, seeing the Acropolis lit up at night from the streets below is right up there with seeing the Colloseum in Rome for the first time.  I have some awesome photos to share when I get more time and a better internet connection (wifi is soooo slow here).  Oh! I forgot to mention Delphi too, which was another crazy and awesome day.  After staying out til 4 AM with some of our new Greek friends, we got back to the hostel and fell asleep around 4:30 and had to leave to catch a bus by 630 if we wanted to see Delphi, we barely made it but it was glorious.  We ran into a few other somewhat lost backpackers outside the bus station in Delphi and ended up spending the whole day with them exploring one of the most special places I've seen.
  I didn't want to leave Athens, but it's time to move on and keep exploring this spectacular country. Today we arrived in Kastraki, a little village far north of Athens where hiking the cliffs of Meteora is on the agenda (if you havent heard of it check it out or wait for my pics, its unbelievable).  Tomorrow we will be hiking up to more of the mountain-top monasteries and then back to Athens to catch a ferry over to Santorini.  Time to cross another item off the bucketlist.  We are going to be staying in the heart of Santorini in one of the most expensive villages known as Fira but I got a steal of a deal at 14 bucks a night!  The plan is to rent four wheelers and drive around the whole island, explore some ancient sites and see what are supposedly the best sunsets on earth.
Alright, time to work on some photo albums and then maybe - just maybe - catch up on sleep tonight before heading out on more adventures.  Meteora is incredible btw...cant wait to show everyone some of the stuff we saw today!

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