Andrea Hearts Traveling

Now I'm off to the Balkans!!!

My start in Albania was a little shaky. First, at the border with Greece (in the middle of the night) I gave my passport to an officer in the border and looked at my passport and he literally went like this: “El Salvador… HA! El Salvador… HA HA”… I just looked at him and said “Well, I guess you don’t get many El Salvadorian through here!” I was annoyed! What’s so funny? I think waking up for border crossings at 2am is not my thing!

Then we crossed over to Albania and handed my passport to the bus driver and 20 minutes later everybody had received their passport except me. After a little bit another officer came and asked for me and that I needed to get out of the bus since Ecuador needs a visa!!!! I was so confused because I knew I did not need a visa and I said I was NOT from Ecuador but he kept saying I needed a visa!
I got to the booth and the new officer told me the same, that my country needed a visa and I told him that I did not! The conversation went like this:

Officer: “You need a visa to enter Albania”

Me: “I do not, El Salvador does not need a visa to enter Albania”
Officer: “Do you have a US visa?”

Me: “No”

Officer: “Do you have a UK visa or Shenghen?”

Me: “I am visa free in UK and Shenghen”

Officer: “Are you sure you don’t need a visa?”

Me: “Yes, I’m sure!”

Officer: “Are you sure?”

Me: “Yes”

Officer: “ ARE… YOU… SURE?”

Me: “YES!”

And showed him 3 different sites that said I did not while he pointed at his phone and said that I did… Finally I think he figured out that he was dumb and doesn’t know how to read El Salvador and Ecuador! So at the end he looked at me, wrote my info on the computer and said “Welcome to Albania” and let me go…

Well, I think both my mom and I agree that Delphi was a total snooze!!! haha OR we are both not into rocks that hundreds of years ago used to be something!

Mid morning the following day we left Kato Gatzea and drove to Meteora. The drive was just wonderful although we got some rain. Driving through green mountains and looking at yellow wild flower fields all over was awesome; both my mom and I were delighted by the views.

My favorite view was the 5km before getting to our hotel when we could see Meteora from the highway and below it Kalampaka, our final destination for the day.

We left the touristy island and decided to go back to the main land and explore the other beauties that Greece had to offer. My first plan was to drive to Thessaloniki but the more I thought about it the lazier I got about having to drive 6-7 hours all the way there so decided to google something in between to stop kind of on our way to Meteora.

I found the city of Volos but couldn’t really find any decent hotels so I decided to stay 20km away from Volos in the cute little town of Kato Gatzea.

We picked up our rental car after spending one night in Athens and witnessing the festivities of Good Friday. There were processions all over town and they passed right in front of our hotel!

Our next destination was Santorini, only two hours away from Naxos in ferry!!!

When we arrived our hotel pick up service was already waiting for us and it was then when we figure out that Santorini was very very different than Naxos. In Naxos as we got off the boat we could walk straight into the town but in Santorini we had to go up a very very very windy street and then drive for 10 minutes to the town of Thira (Fira in English.)

Off to Albania!

zZzZz... Delphi

Meteora

Kato Gatzea

Santorini

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