Greece and arrival in England

My journey to Greece was by far the longest travel time I'd had at any point in my trip so far. It took around 32 hours, and involved a train, an overnight ferry, a taxi and multiple buses
, and at every point where I had to change modes of transportation I came really close to missing the next one, but somehow I just made it every time. Finally I made it Saidona, the small village where I did WWOOFing for a week. I stayed with a family on their small olive farm and helped them harvest olives and burn the extra branches afterwards. The harvesting process for the olives was different than I expected. We had to put down tarps underneath the trees to catch the olives, and then hit the branches with sticks to get the olives to fall off. It was pretty fun!

Their house was on a hill overlooking the sea. What a great view! The family I stayed with let me use their camera to take some pictures, and they took some while we were working to, so I actually have pictures of my time in Greece!

Picking sticks and leaves out of the olives

Harvesting

View from the house

Lots of olive trees!

The house

More harvesting

Burning the leftover branches

Sunset over the sea

I had a good week at the farm, and after that I spent a night in Athens before flying to England so I could see the city a little and just to make sure I made it to the airport on time. Honestly, of any city I've seen on this trip Athens was the least impressive. I expected better from a city that has so much history. It was pretty dirty and there was graffiti everywhere, even in the center of the city where the tourist attractions were. I'm thinking maybe the city has gone downhill recently because of the bad economic situation in Greece, so that could be it, but either way I was a little disappointed, and I was glad once I got there that I wasn't staying very long. I don't have any of my own pictures but I'll include some pictures from the internet of the things I saw.

The Acropolis

Panathenaic Stadium, where the first modern Olympic games was hosted in 1896

Parliament Building. I saw this at night and the square in front of it was decked out with Christmas lights. It was really pretty. 

Parthenon at the Acropolis. Unfortunately like many landmarks I've seen it was under construction, but most of the construction was on one side so this angle still looked pretty nice. 

So those were the highlights of Athens, and since I didn't have much time it was basically all I saw. But I was very excited to go to England and see my friend Vickey, so I wasn't sad to leave Athens. Once I arrived in London though, I had some problems to deal with before getting to see her. I had taken for granted that it was easy to travel around Europe with an American passport because getting into the Schengen area back in September had been no problem. When I arrived in Iceland for my layover on my way to Germany, the border control agent basically just checked the basic information on my passport, looked at me to make sure the picture matched, stamped it and handed it back and I was on my way. But as I learned the hard way, the UK asks lots of questions about what you are going to do in their country, and are very concerned with when you are going to leave. As soon as they heard I didn't have a return ticket to leave the UK they started asking all kinds of questions about what I was doing there, how much money I had, what my plans were for my travels (once I told them I was traveling), who this friend was I was staying with, etc etc. Then once they found out I didn't have a job back in the U.S. they got even more concerned. They had me sit and wait twice while the 2 of them discussed whether to let me in and made lots of notes on my landing card, and called me up to answer more questions about what my parents did for a living and whether they would be able to give me money if I needed it, how much money I had spent on my travels so far, and whether I was going to try to work in the UK if I ran out of money. Eventually I was able to convince them that I would be fine with the money I had and that if I ran out of money I was going back to the U.S. I basically got into the country on sheer luck and the fact that the two border control agents were feeling nice. They told me next time I come to the UK I should have more definite plans and that another agent might have made a different decision. I was so thankful that they hadn't sent me back to where I came from or sent me back to the U.S. So lesson learned, next time I enter a new country, have a ticket to leave that country! I had gotten so used to going from country to country so easily in the Schengen area that I forgot that some countries care way more about who they let in. I won't be making that mistake again.

Now that I'm here in England, I've mostly been relaxing and catching up on things I haven't gotten a chance to do for a while. It's nice to have a place where I can just sit around all day and do whatever I want, it's exactly what I needed after so much moving from place to place. I have been doing some things though, I've met a bunch of Vickey's friends and coworkers, gone out to the pub, wandered around town a little, and gone ice skating, which I thought would be a disaster but it was actually really fun. Vickey and I will be going to London for Christmas and spending a few days with some family friends of her's that live there. This will be my first Christmas away from home but at least I get to spend it with a good friend, and from the sounds of it we will have lots of amazing food! I hope everyone is having a great holiday season!