Anyway, thank you all for my cards!! It was a lot of fun opening them all up at the same time, even if my roommate was sleeping, because I just couldn’t wait any longer. And mom made me cookies and banana bread. The bread is one very disgusting loaf of mold now, but the cookies are still good, and almost gone. Yesterday I decided to hang all of my cards up on the wall so I can see them all of the time.
For my birthday a bunch of friends and I went out for a sushi dinner. It was really good. Half of the group had not eaten sushi before and the other half were advanced sushi eaters, I fell somewhere in the middle. I also got myself a flowering plant. Mom and Dad always get me flowers for my birthday, but I was not going to be around during the life of the flowers so I decided to get a pretty plant instead. It has even lived through my trip to Greece. I may have to find it a good home before I leave for St. Louis, if I don’t kill it before then.
Thursday we took the hard path to the Acropolis- unintentionally. It was a rather warm day but luckily I bought a hat with a big brim so I kept out of the sun. I went the whole trip without getting burnt, I am very proud of myself. The Acropolis had a lot of reconstruction going on so Brit and I were disappointed. But it was good to see it in person since we studied it in history class. Thursday night the Benaki Museum was open late for a free entrance fee, which worked perfectly for us. Athens was a great city for European students because the entrance fee for every museum we went to was free. Because I am studying in the Czech Republic I saved at least 50 Euro. Students Cards from the US, only got you 50% off.
We also went to Applebee’s for dinner; Brittany and I were in need of some American food. It’s been 3 months and I am really starting to miss food from home. We ordered the nachos- amazing!! They don’t know what nachos are here; every time I see it on the menu it tricks me. They really mean chips and salsa not nachos which to me means melted cheese, it defines nachos…usually in the Czech Republic there isn’t even any cheese!! Anyway, it’s a little strange that my friends and I travel to other countries in Europe to get US things. Like Starbucks in Vienna, I really needed a cai latte, they don’t have those in the Czech Republic either. We try to blend in when we are in Prague, we don’t go to all of the tourist spots, but when we are in another country for some reason we don’t care if we blend in.
Friday we saw the rest of Athens, another big museum, saw the stadium where the Olympics were held a few years ago (designed by Santiago Calatrava, famous Spanish Architect) walked around the historic part of town, and bought some books to read for our trip to Santorini. 
Saturday we got up early and headed to the port to catch the ferry to Santorini Island. It’s an 8 hour trip!! That’s a long time on a ferry. At least it’s a good view. When we arrived we checked into our hotel and went to dinner and took a walk on the beach. The hotel was on the black beach, I was hard to walk on because the sand is more like gravel.
Tuesday we got back on the ferry and then took a taxi to the airport. We had planned on taking the bus, but there was a strike and the metro and busses were not running. We also found out that even the post office was on strike. It’s been a long last two days of travel blended together, but it was all lot of fun.
Saturday we got up and started the day at the Schonbrunn Palace. It is really beautiful; it was the summer Palace of the Hapsburgs, only 4 miles from the winter palace in the city center. Next we did St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and lunch. Then we saw the Hofburg Palace (the winter palace) in the city center, but since we had already seen the Schonbrunn we did not tour the apartments. We did see the Treasury which contained some really amazing jewels and priceless historical artifacts. 
The group broke up at this point (mostly because we don’t all like horses, and people were getting cranky) and I went to go see the well known Opera House. But it was closed, I was an hour late. So I decided to walk around the city and see some of the architecture sites we studied in history class. The photo below is the Austrian Post Office Savings Bank one of the first buildings to use this much day light. There is an exhibit of architecture in the lobby, but I only got a few photos in before they closed the building and kicked me out. 
Sunday was museum day, Brittany and I started at the Modern Museum of Art, a really nice building with good art in it. Their collection has a good deal of architecture and the traveling exhibit was very interesting, very BLUE. The artist started painting blue on canvas, just blue, a royal aqua marine BLUE. And he then moved to adding dimension with sponges all with out using brushes. The next phase of his work was paint people and using them to get art on the canvas.
Next I went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, 1450-1650 art. A very nice collection of Bruegel, Van Eyck, Rubens, and Rembrant. I skiped most of the other art in the building, it was HUGE so that I could get to the Opera House for my 3:00 tour.
The opera house was built in the mid 1800’s but mostly distorted during WWII. The central part of the opera house is original but the outside has been restored. The opera shows a new opera every night in order to allow the singers to rest their voices and give their best performance. However, they have to have two crews of workers to take the set down from the night before and then put up another stage for tonight’s performance. It doesn’t seem worth all the effort, and the expensive tickets are sold out every night, but the opera is still not making any money. At least the tours are not too pricy.
