Destination: Greece

If you're reading this, and nothing has gone terribly wrong on our end, we're in GREECE!

via

Santorini Island to be exact. That's right. In fact, we've been here for three days. One of the most beautiful places on earth. Also possible inspiration for the mythological utopia Atlantis. I admit I wrote these posts in advance (I'm not going to spend precious vacation time blogging, sillies), so I can't tell you yet exactly how amazing it is first hand. Rest assured. The trip review will come. I bet you can't wait.

In the meantime, we're heading off the island this evening and back to the mainland for the rest of our adventure. For those of you travel-philes who like these sorts of things, I've included our road trip route. I mean, since I've dragged you through all my trip preparation, it's only fair you get to tag along for the rest of the tour. Here's Greece. See that island in the bottom right corner? Fira (Santorini) is where we are!

All those little green letters are places we are stopping. They are all chosen for historical sites we want to see. >NERD ALERT.< I spent massive amounts on the Trip Advisor forums, asking questions and reading other's trip reviews, in putting together this itinerary. It wasn't easy. The hardest part was cutting places out, actually, since there is such a wealth of things to visit in a country so rich in ancient history. If you notice, we're not venturing much into Northern Greece, which is a real shame because it's supposedly absolutely beautiful mountainous countryside. But with only 10 days in country and the goal to keep it feeling more like a vacation and less like speed dating, we had to reign in our fancies just a bit.

Let's zoom in just a tad.

A/H) Athens. B) Delphi. C) Olympia D) Mycenae. E) Nafplion. F) Epidaurus. G) Corinth.

Despite the way it looks, even our longest drive isn't much over 3 hours according to GoogleMaps. Of course, we are prepared for a 3 hour drive in a foreign country to take quite a bit longer, especially since it's mountain territory and we'll be driving on questionable roads trying to decipher a another language. Thank goodness for GPS rentals.

Oh yeah, did I mention we had to get these?

Basically, we paid AAA $15 a piece to give us this book that translates our US Driver's Licenses into other (participating countries') languages. We didn't have to do this for our South Africa trip, and the other time I've been to Europe I didn't have to worry about driving, so this was new territory for me! Pray that our marriage survives the Hubs navigating foreign roads and drivers. (Sometimes I worry about us surviving Austin, TX traffic, and by that I mean: survive each other.)

So next Friday will find us finishing up our road trip for two days in the metropolis of Athens, and then we'll be on our way back home. Stay tuned... and wish us luck!

On the road again....

As always, you can find me the other days of the week at alittleWhitenoise.