Friday, September 30, 2011

▶ ▷ Eurotrip: GREECE! - Part 2 (picture-heavy)

Part 2 of our Greece vacation will be on Ioannina :D

What's Ioannina and where is that?

Ioannina is a city in  the northern part of Greece. It is not a common tourist place compared to Athens, but many tourists also visit the place and its surrounding cities like Preveza and Parga, which you will see if you continue reading :)

We rode a plane to Ioannina, which took two hours. Greece's coastline is so beautiful.

A week-long adventure in Ioannina will be difficult to sum up in one post, but I'll try. We did sooo much! So, I'm going to start on the place we stayed at.

My mom's friend was so kind to invite us to her condo (TOP FLOOR!) and we had such a good time. Cafes were everywhere by the way! And in Greece, life starts at night. They have siesta in the afternoon wherein stores, banks etc etc are all closed. Not many people are in the cafes until dark. Yes, pretty interesting!
Cafes across the street and beside the building.

The reason behind it is it gets really hot in the afternoon that there is nothing to do but to sleep. Greeks are pretty relaxed and laid back unlike the workaholic nature of the Americans. It was a very interesting contrast.

/sigh I wish I took a picture of the view during the day but this is basically the view up close. Mountains and lake *-* It's so dreamy!

Oops I actually did take a picture.. What a nice vacation house *.*

Of course, we ate at one of the restaurants lined up at the lake.

Their water comes in nice bottles!

I guess I'll just spam with more pictures in Ioannina.

Wax Museum
Look at the background. That's Ali Pasha, the ruler of the Ottoman empire, beheaded. 
Perama Cave is 1.5 MILLION years old. It was beautiful and my first time entering a cave, lol. Sadly, pictures were not allowed because the flash and lights from the camera can hinder the formation of the stalagmites and stalactites. So, here's a picture of us out of the cave haha.


Riding a boat to another island!


This is the actual place where Ali Pasha was beheaded (on those steps).

A little about history.. The Turks conquered the Greeks for more than 300 years! So for a long time, Greece was a part of the Ottoman Empire (Turkish Empire) until the Greeks triumphed and the ruler, Ali Pasha, was killed . Up to this day, the Greeks are still proud that they retained their own culture. Heh, I would! It is really amazing how their culture was not completely taken over and influenced by the Turks for all those years!

Turkish mosque 
A cafe near the mosque. Students mostly hung out in this place. By the way, Greeks love talking about politics... just something I noticed.

Sorry! A really picture-heavy post.. and there's more.. ahh! Pictures from the beach, Preveza and Parga!
View from the backyard of a house. Can I live here?!?

YAY BEACH! I could not wait to dip in that clear, blue water and it is right in front of our hotel!!


Hands down.. best Greek restaurant I have been!! The resto is only  managed by a small family, but the foods were so awesome!
Moussaka (I call it Greek lasagna). It is soooo goooood!!!



PREVEZA!
Boardwalk. There were a lot of yacht parked from different countries especially from Italy. 




Haha, we were the ONLY Asians in town. I felt like a celeb because everyone literally stared at us, lol.

Awesome service and the crew were all nice. This hotel is right at the beach too!!






PARGA!!





I say more than half of the people here were tourists. So yeah, they didn't stare at us much. We were still the oddballs because all of them were Europeans, lol.




Ending it with a gyro... NOT. Save the best for last so here we were having lunch on top of a mountain. Seriously, it was just amazing.




Considering the location, ambiance and service, the prices were really not bad. I thought it would be more expensive than this!!
I think this was the "Stuffed Pork Tenderloin"
"Trilogy"
OMSGDHJAHDYGU THE VIEW!

Haha, I am gonna end  with some famous Greek sweets. Delicious!!


Yay! This ends everything about Greece. Definitely coming back to this awesome country.

I think I will also blog on our vacation in Paris and London. I have videos of the Eiffel Tower at night, which I haven't edited yet! Hope I don't get lazy in the next days, haha.

Thank you for reading!