The (Bastard) Travelling Bug

The first time I went travelling was to Eastern Europe. It was between my first and second year of university and with very little money and even less travelling experience, I set off with two friends. Following the release of Hostel, our first stop was Bratislava (obviously we did NOT see the movie prior to leaving). To say I had the most incredible time doesn’t even begin to cover it. Jumping out of planes, throwing myself down waterfalls, accidentally stumbling across a nudist beach (try not to think about the naked lunges we were subjected to) and being sh** on by a dog whilst sleeping in a garden were only some of the highlights (perhaps not the latter so much). Even so, we managed to return to England in just about one piece and I was itching to skip off somewhere new.

Hvar, Croatia

So a little over a year later I did. This time to Greece. Armed with a little more  experience and a lot less money, we set off in the summer of 2007. Following my previous years’ dog/garden/sleeping escapade due to lack of available rooms anywhere, we decided to book our first few nights’ accommodation in advance. If you learn anything from this blog, it’s this…always organise somewhere to stay on your first night! Even if you don’t like it, at least you’ve got something. It beats wandering around at 1am with a heavy rucksack desperately trying to find a bed. And the room you do eventually find might have some weird sort of animal living in your toilet making even weirder noises with a door that doesn’t lock (nightmares of The Thing emerging from the bathroom ran amok that night).

Our six weeks in Greece flew by. We hopped from island to island, starting in Lefkada, quintessentially Greek, and finishing in Ios, decidedly not so quintessentially Greek. Due to lack of funds, we spent a random week in Crete in a hostel room that must have been pushing 40 degrees during the day and not much less at night. I don’t think the tiny room, two extremely small windows, 12 bunks, and a very ill person appeased the situation in anyway. In order to combat the terrific heat, we spent our time at the beach swimming in a rather overcrowded, unpleasant sea. Or we did until something rather nasty floated by us, at which point we had to find ourselves another beach. 

But like the previous years, university was calling, so back we went.

Lefkada, Greece

Lefkada, Greece

Santorini, Greece