The Greek Islands

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When we got to Paros the weather wasn't great so we checked into the hotel and then we walked to a church that is known as "The Church of 100 Doors". The funny thing is that there is actually only 99 doors that anybody has actually found and it is said that if you find the 100th door you will return Turkey back to Greece (there has been fighting over who it belongs to for years). After that we wandered around the town a little bit before heading back to the hotel and meeting everyone for dinner. We went to a local restaurant but we had a set menu and nobody really enjoyed their dinner. After dinner we headed out to a small bar for a couple of drinks and when we got inside it started to pour outside. Everyone was pretty tired from the last couple of days so most of us headed home pretty quickly.
Saturday morning the weather was horrible again. There was a tropical storm passing through the islands and it was raining pretty hard. We went into town and had a look around in the local shops. There were some cute shops but most of them were quite pricey so we just window shopped. The weather started to get worse as the day went on and that afternoon we went back to the hotel and sat in the bar and played cards with everyone all evening. At dinner time the ownder of the hotel (the sweetest man you will ever meet) gave us a ride right around the corner (literally right around the corner) to a small restaurant because we were all wearing flip flops and he said he didn't want our feet to get wet. It was so cute. We all had a good dinner then headed back to the hotel to bed.
Sunday we caught the ferry over to the third island Santorini. The weather was much nicer and when we got the hotel we checked in and went for a walk around the town of Fira. The town is built on the top of a cliff and when you go to the top the view was amazing. Sanorini is known for it's silver jewelery and the majority of stores in the town were jewelery shops. Unfortunatley it was again all very pricey so we could only window shop. That evening we went for dinner on the clifftop overlooking the water during sunset. The view was unbelievable. I think a few of us had to pinch ourselves to make sure we weren't dreaming. after dinner we headed out on the town for some bar hopping.
Monday we hopped on a small boat and headed across the water for a volcano excursion. Santorini was a big volcanic island and thousands of years ago the volcano erupted and it separated from the island and it is just across the water. We walked up to the top where you got a 360 degree view around you of Santorini, again it was beautiful. When we got back to the boat they took us around to the side of the volcano where there are hot springs in a small inlet. They couldn't pull right into the hot springs as they were too shallow so we all jumped off the boat and had to swim. After we jumped in we were warned about jellyfish in the hot spriings, as they love warm water. We all swam as fast as we could but luckily no jellyfish seemed to be around. The hot springs were unbelievably warm because of the gases rising from the volcano. After the hot springs we did some shopping in the town and then headed back to the hotel to get ready for our picninc that evening. Our picninc was at the very top of the town overlooking the sea where it is known to have the best view of the sunset in all of Europe. It was so beautiful, it really was the best sunset I have ever seen. We also celebrated a girl's birthday who is in our group, she turned 21. We got her a cake and sang her happy birthday while the sun went down....I can't really think of a better way to spend a birthday!
Tuesday morning we headed down to the ferry and took the boat over to our last island, Ios. Ios is known as the "party island'. There isn't much life before noon and the bars get started at about midnight and go till sunrise. Our resort was amazing, right across the road from the best beach on the island, and we had 2 pools, 2 bars, 2 restaurants, basically everything you need not to have to leave. We spent the first day lounging by the pool before getting ready for a poolside dinner and heading out into the town for some bar hopping. The night was full of drinks and dancing till 3:30am where most of us headed home to bed. The next morning we all surfaced around 11am and headed out to the pool for another day of lounging (we had to catch up on our suntanning since we had 2 days of rain!). We spent the entire day outside, and needless to say that evening when I went in I realized I was slighty burnt. That evening we just stayed in the resort and had a couple drinks while watching the final Champions League game.
Today is our last morning on Ios and our last morning in the Greek Islands. I've had such an amazing time here it's sad to leave. it went as fast as I thought it would. I am excited to keep going though, on to Venice and Italy!!

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