Hydra

According to my Discover Greece guide book by lonely planet, "Hydra is the diva of the Saronic Gulf." I didn't believe it at first, but it's so true! It's the perfect getaway island that you've always dreamed of visiting. The water is crystal clear, there are beautiful mountains, and high up castles to visit that offer even more breath taking views. 


When we first arrived, we took a short one hour tour of the island (it's only 12 miles long). Fortunately, we didn't have to walk the whole length of the city, but we got a good idea of where all the good shopping, beaches, and most importantly, omnom were. A fun fact I learned about hydra yesterday is that all of the roads used to consist of rivers,  and that's were the name hydra comes from (stems from the word hydro). Nowadays the roads are small, narrow, and rocky. This probably explains why there are absolutely no cars allowed on the island. That's right no cars, everyone has too walk everywhere. Except for the garbage truck (singular!), and one other exception that isn't coming to mind at the moment...

Anyways, we spent the first half of the day walking along the island checking out views like this (so pretty!). Even though the pictures look heavenly, what you don't get to see in the pictures is the major heat wave that's passing through Greece right now. The predicted temperature for tomorrow is 100 degrees Fahrenheit (and it's going to get even hotter on                          Wednesday!). 

You know what that means? Time to hit the beach! After about a 15 minute hike up the mountain we found a good spot to relax and take a dip into the blue waters. Even though I forgot my 3 euro my goggles that I bought at a cheap beach store in Sounion, fellow study abroaders were nice enough to lend me theirs whenever they weren't using them! The water was super clear and really nice! There was one thing about the beach that looked cool, but wasn't so cool on my feet-sies, the rocks! 


After swimming for a good couple of hours to the point where my skin was thoroughly wrinkled, we dried off and headed to lunch (yumm yumm). I ended up getting some kind of eggplant dish with red sauce and something that resembled and tasted like cheese which was extremely delicious (as always!).


Then, with full tummies, we headed into town for some shopping! There were plenty of touristy shops available, but there were also a few shops which seemed more local. I found that the majority of the shops that we looked at were focused mainly on jewelry products (good thing I'm not too big on accessories or else I would have been broke by the end of the day!).

We headed back around 7:30, but didn't get home till a little before 11 pm. Needless to say we were all exhausted from the day in the sun and lots of walking. Fortunately, for the first time today we got to sleep in (I was able to get a good 9 hours of sleep, hoorayy!!). When I woke up, I used the morning to study for our midterm that we had (hopefully I did alright!) and also to get some grocery shopping done for the weeks.

Tomorrow I've got to wake up extra early (good thing I got my sleep last night) to head to the Acropolis for a second look with my professor... Wish me luck!

And I couldn't resist, here's a few more pictures of hydra (taken by yours truly)