The final trip of my Harlaxton experience is one I think about often. Most often, if I’m being honest. Every time I eat strawberries, I am watching a man scoop fresh strawberries into a brown paper bag in the city center. Every time I hear the song ‘So Will I’ by Hillsong, I am sitting on a rooftop in Athens, admiring the beautiful world God has created. Every time I see my friend Sarah, she is with me on that roof, sharing strawberries and stories and thoughts and laughter.

We almost talked ourselves out of going.

It was a few weeks before our last long weekend. We had been watching the prices of tickets all semester, and they stayed about the same: expensive. It was the most expensive plane ticket we would buy, and by the end of the semester I can confidently say I was crying about finances at least once a week. My mom said I should do it now, because when will I be here again? Sarah’s mom said the same (and also got upset with Sarah when she suggested going to an island and not going to Athens). So we did it. We booked our tickets to Greece.

I am not the best student, but I was much better at Harlaxton. I was a non-honors student in an honors seminar, and I really did love my professors too much to miss class. So I didn’t miss class. My refusal to skip class left me with multiple saved up absences, and at Harlaxton we are advised to ‘use our skips wisely’. I used mine to go to Greece in the middle of the week. It was very wise.

Two days after we got home from Italy, Sarah and I packed up and hopped on the latest train to Leeds. It was a Tuesday night, and our flight left early the next morning. We took a street car at 10:15, got to Leeds late at night, and then had to wait for the next bus to leave from the train station to the airport. I suffer from a condition called ‘I will talk to any foreign stranger who talks to me’, so we had an uncomfortable encounter with a very strange man. Luckily, Sarah does not have this condition and saved us by saying, “We should probably get going!”

We got to the airport around 1:00 AM. Our only options were sleeping in the airport or finding a hotel, and us Harlaxton folk ain’t no sissies. We opted for the cold, hard floor, which only got colder and harder as the night went on. We were able to go through security at 4:00 AM and continued to sleep on the floor until it was time to board the plane. I fell asleep again almost immediately, and I didn’t wake up until we landed in Corfu. I thought we still had another hour of our flight and I wasn’t wearing my glasses, so I was very confused when I found out we were no longer in the air.

“There were mountains all around us, and I don’t remember a time where I’ve ever felt like I was seeing so much sky all at once. There were no clouds in sight, it was warm and sunny, and we had the Mediterranean Sea on either side of us.”

Me, from my journal (28 March 2018)

I got a cappuccino to kickstart the day, then we met up with our Airbnb host who picked us up from the airport. Our actual host, Helen, had an appointment on mainland Greece that day, so she sent her sister to retrieve us. We checked in, got ready, and went on a hunt for a beach. If you’ve been within walking distance of the Corfu airport, you probably know we did not find one. We gave up and walked into town instead. We sat on a ledge overlooking the mountains and the ocean and just tried to take it all in.

For our late lunch/early dinner, we went to a seafood restaurant. I got salmon and Sarah got French fries. Sarah doesn’t like seafood; she is just a really great friend. Our waiter brought us free dessert when we were finished with our food. I still don’t know what the dessert was, but I do know it was delicious.

After dinner, we walked the 40 minutes back to our Airbnb before going to watch the sunset. We sat on a bench overlooking the airport runway and got to watch planes land while the sun set over the mountains. We made our way back before the sun really finished setting, and we stopped at a little market along the way so I could buy a Coke.

The next morning, we woke up and left for the airport. We decided to walk, and I decided to take us on a little detour that seemed shorter. The detour led to a dead end right next to the airport, but we managed to find a path and climb through some foliage and over a fence to get there. We got to the airport way too early, went through security way too early, and sat inside for a long time instead of being outside (but it was okay). We had a quick flight to Athens with Aegean Air, and they gave us candy and a free granola bar!

We landed in Athens 30 minutes ahead of schedule, so we stopped to get lunch in the airport before heading to our hostel. I got a giant cinnamon roll, because, you know, lunch.

We took the metro from the airport and came out in an incredibly lively town square. There were tons of people selling things at stands or just walking around. The Acropolis was right behind us the entire time we walked to our hostel, but we didn’t see it yet. We checked into the hostel and put down our bags. Our view of the Acropolis from our window was unreal. We climbed to the roof to check it out the view from higher up.

We left the roof and began our short trek to the Acropolis. I, of course, got stopped along the way by a man trying to give us bracelets and invite us to his ‘music show’ that night. He tied bracelets on our wrists and made wishes on them. Sarah hates me at least a little bit for this weakness I have. Anyway, the man wouldn’t leave us alone and eventually started asking for money, to which we said, “No, sorry.” And he took our bracelets back.

We passed the Aeropagus on our way to the Acropolis, so we climbed up before continuing on. The Aeropagus was the huge, slippery rock the Apostle Paul preached on when he came through Athens. Sarah was so excited she said she could have left in that moment and been content.

When we’d gotten enough of the view from the Aeropagus, we headed towards the Acropolis again. Along the way, we stumbled upon a slushy stand. We got our slushies (strawberry lemonade!) and scored free tickets to the Acropolis (Harlaxton IDs!). After we finished our slushies, we went in to the Acropolis and got some good views of the Parthenon.

We spent the rest of the day exploring a flea market before getting chicken kebabs at a restaurant called Savvas. We topped it all off by buying strawberries from a street vendor and eating them on the roof of our hostel while we watched the sunset. We talked about Jesus and listened to worship music and I cried. Later we decided we should have washed the strawberries before we ate them.

The next morning, we explored the original Olympic Stadium (from the first ‘modern-day’ Olympics). I ran a lap around the track, and then we went into the museum under the stands. There were Olympic torches from all of the Olympic games (including the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea). Sarah is skeptical of the torches’ authenticity. I’m more easily persuaded.

Before leaving Athens, we stopped for lunch and bought our last souvenirs of our Harlaxton adventure. We ate some more unwashed strawberries in the town square, and then we headed back to the airport. I almost got emotional walking into the airport to go home, but all good things must come to an end, right?